“"Yes, I know," drawled Emma McChesney. "Do you know, the thing that gets me is the inconsistency of it. Along come a lot of boobs who never use a hotel the year around except to loaf in the lobby, and wear out the leather chairs, and use up the matches and toothpicks and get the baseball returns, and immediately you turn away a traveling man who uses a three-dollar-a-day room, with a sample room downstairs for his stuff, who tips every porter and bell-boy in the place, asks for no favors, and who, if you give him a halfway decent cup of coffee for breakfast, will fall in love with the place and boom it all over the country. Half of your Benevolent Bisons are here on the European plan, with a view to patronizing the free-lunch counters or being asked to take dinner at the home of some local Bison whose wife has been cooking up on pies, and chicken salad and veal roast for the last week."”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
Separate a knuckle of veal in pieces by sawing through bone. Wipe, put in kettle with one pound lean veal and one onion; cover with boiling water, and cook slowly until veal is tender. Drain, chop meat finely, and season highly with salt and pepper. Garnish bottom of a mould with slices of “hard-boiled” eggs and parsley. Put in layer of meat, layer of thinly sliced “hard-boiled” eggs, sprinkle with finely chopped parsley, and cover with remaining meat. Pour over liquor, which should be reduced to one cupful. Press and chill, turn on a dish, and garnish with parsley.
Sources: The passage is from Unknown, Americans All: Stories of American Life of To-Day, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Farmer, The Boston cooking-school cook book of 1896, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — oxblood cloth, teapot stamp.