1 meal in this book
“"Something splendid!" said Ermengarde, in an excited hurry. "This very afternoon my nicest aunt sent me a box. It is full of good things. I never touched it, I had so much pudding at dinner, and I was so bothered about papa's books." Her words began to tumble over each other. "It's got cake in it, and little meat pies, and jam tarts and buns, and oranges and red-currant wine, and figs and chocolate. I'll creep back to my room and get it this minute, and we'll eat it now."”
The quality of the various articles employed in the composition of puddings and pies varies so much, that two puddings, made exactly according to the same receipt, will be so different[392-*] one would hardly suppose they were made by the same person, and certainly not with precisely the same quantities of the (apparently) same ingredients. Flour fresh ground, pure new milk, fresh laid eggs, fresh butter, fresh suet, &c. will make a very different composition, than when kept till each article is half spoiled. Plum puddings, when boiled, if hung up in a cool place in the cloth they are boiled in, will keep good some months; when wanted, take them out of the cloth, and put them into a clean cloth, and as soon as warmed through, they are ready. MEM.--In composing these receipts, the quantities of eggs, butter, &c.
Recipe from The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual of 1817.
Sources: Every passage above is quoted verbatim from A Little Princess: Being the whole story of Sara Crewe now told for the first time, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipes come from cookbooks of the period, also free in full. All are in the public domain in the United States. The binding is ours — moss cloth, pudding stamp.