Take white pickled Herrings of one nights watering, and boil them a little: then pill off the skin, and take only the backs of them, and picke the fish cleane from the bones, then take good store of raysins of the Sunne, and stone them, and put them to the fish: then take a warden or two, and pare it, and slice it in small slices from the chore, and put it likewise to the fish: then with a very sharpe shredding knife shred all as small and fine as may be: then put to it good store of currants, sugar, cinamon, slic't dates, and so put it into the coffin with good store of very sweete butter, and so cover it, and leave only a round vent hole on the top of the lid, and so bake it like pies of that nature. When it is sufficiently bak’t, draw it out, and take Claret wine and a little verjuice, sugar, cinnamon and sweete butter, and boil them together; then put it in at the vent hole, and shake the pie a little, and put it againe into the oven for a little space, and so serve it up, the lid being candied over with suger, and the sides of the dish trimmed with suger.
Gervase Markham, The English Housewife, 1615; Lady Morwenna, SCA