“April 11, being Easter-Sunday, after having attended Divine Service at St. Paul's, I repaired to Dr. Johnson's. I had gratified my curiosity much in dining with JEAN JAQUES ROUSSEAU, while he lived in the wilds of Neufchatel: I had as great a curiosity to dine with DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON, in the dusky recess of a court in Fleet-street. I supposed we should scarcely have knives and forks, and only some strange, uncouth, ill-drest dish: but I found every thing in very good order. We had no other company but Mrs. Williams and a young woman whom I did not know. As a dinner here was considered as a singular phaenomenon, and as I was frequently interrogated on the subject, my readers may perhaps be desirous to know our bill of fare. Foote, I remember, in allusion to Francis, the NEGRO, was willing to suppose that our repast was BLACK BROTH. But the fact was, that we had a very good soup, a boiled leg of lamb and spinach, a veal pye, and a rice pudding.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
Open the lower end with a sharp knife close between the skin and the ribs, leave hold enough of the flesh on both sides, that you may put in your hand between the ribs, and the skin; then make a pudding of grated white bread, two or three yolks of eggs, a little cream, clean washt currans pick't and dried, rose-water, cloves, and mace fine beaten, a little saffron, salt, beef-suet minced fine, some slic't dates and sugar; mingle all together, and stuff the breast with it, make the pudding pretty stiff, and prick on the sweetbread wrapped in the caul, spit it and roast it; then make sauce with some claret-wine, grated nutmeg, vinegar, butter, and two or three slices of orange, and boil it up, _&c._
Sources: The passage is from James Boswell, Boswell's Life of Johnson: Abridged and edited, with an introduction b, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from May, The accomplisht cook of 1660, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — forest cloth, pudding stamp.