“Hot boiled rice we always have at dinner; at supper and breakfast we pour boiling tea over cold rice in the bowl and are content. Tea is boiling in the kitchen from morning till night. It is drunk with no sugar or milk; indeed, the scrupulous inhabitants of the "land of the gods" never dreamt of tasting the milk of a brute. If a babe is nourished with cow's milk, it is believed that the horns will grow on his forehead. When no palatable dishes are to be had we eat our rice with pickled plums and preserved radishes, turnips, egg-plants and cabbage. The preserves are not done up in glass jars; they are kept in a huge tub of salt and rice-bran. During the summer months when vegetables are plenty and cheap we buy a great quantity of them from a farmer of our acquaintance. He brings them on the back of a horse. The poor animal is usually loaded so heavily that only his head and tail are visible amidst the mountain of cabbage leaves. Days are spent in washing and scrubbing the roots and bulbs of the garden, many more in drying them in the sun. House-tops, weather-beaten walls, fences and all available windy corners are utilized in hanging up the vegetables. When partly dried they are packed in salt and rice-bran and subjected to pressure in bamboo-hooped wooden tubs, commonly by laying old millstones on them. Being but partially dry, the vegetables deliver the remaining moisture to the powder in which they are packed, and in course of time the whole contents become soaked in a yellowish, muddy, pungent liquid. Kōkŏ, as the vegetables are then called, can be preserved in this way throughout the whole year. They are taken out from time to time, washed and sliced and relished with great satisfaction. They are something that is sure to be obtained in any house at any time; with cold rice and hot tea they make up our simplest fare.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
Take three jills of whole rice; wash it, and boil it in a pint of milk. When it is soft, mix in a quarter of a pound of butter, and set it aside to cool; and when it is quite cold, stir it into another pint of milk. Prepare a pound and a half of raisins or currants; if currants, wash and dry them; if raisins, seed them and cut them in half. Dredge them well with flour, to prevent their sinking; and prepare also a powdered nutmeg; a table-spoonful of mixed mace and cinnamon powdered; a wine glass of rose water; and a wine glass of brandy or white wine. Beat six eggs very light, and stir them into the mixture, alternately with a quarter of a pound of sugar. Then add by degrees the spice and the liquor, and lastly, stir in, a few at a time, the raisins or currants. Put the pudding into a buttered dish and bake it an hour and a half. Send it to table cool.
Sources: The passage is from Shigemi Shiukichi, A Japanese Boy, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Leslie, Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches of 1837, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — navy cloth, teapot stamp.