“Imagine on the top of the above-mentioned hill, a rushlight of a boy just entering his tenth year, surrounded with the _recherché_ provision and delicacies claimed by his rank and wealth, taking merely the consumption of his daily meals. By close calculating, he would be surrounded and gazed at by the following number of quadrupeds, birds, fishes, &c.:--By no less than 30 oxen, 200 sheep, 100 calves, 200 lambs, 50 pigs; in poultry, 1,200 fowls, 300 turkeys, 150 geese, 400 ducklings, 263 pigeons, 1,400 partridges, pheasants, and grouse; 600 woodcocks and snipes; 600 wild ducks, widgeon, and teal; 450 plovers, ruffes, and reeves; 800 quails, ortolans, and dotterels, and a few guillemots, and other foreign birds; also, 500 hares and rabbits, 40 deer, 120 guinea fowl, 10 peacocks, and 360 wild fowl. In the way of fish, 120 turbot, 140 salmon, 120 cod, 260 trout, 400 mackerel, 300 whitings, 800 soles and slips, and 400 flounders; 400 red mullet, 200 eels, 150 haddocks, 400 herrings, 5,000 smelts, and some 100,000 of those delicious silvery whitebait, besides a few hundred species of fresh-water fishes. In shell-fish, 20 turtles, 30,000 oysters, 1,500 lobsters or crabs, 300,000 prawns, shrimps, sardines, and anchovies. In the way of fruit, about 500lb. of grapes, 360lb. of pine-apples, 600 peaches, 1,400 apricots, 240 melons, and some 100,000 plums, greengages, apples, pears, and some millions of cherries, strawberries, raspberries, currants, mulberries, and an abundance of other small fruit, _viz._ walnuts, chestnuts, dry figs, and plums. In vegetables of all kinds, 5,475lb. weight; about 2,434-3/4lb. of butter, 684lb. of cheese, 21,000 eggs, 100 ditto of plovers. Of bread, 4-1/2 tons, half-a-ton of salt and pepper, near 2-1/8 tons of sugar; and if he had happened to be a bibacious boy, he could have formed a fortification or moat round the said hill with the liquids he would have to partake of to facilitate the digestion of the above-named provisions, which would amount to no less than 11,673-3/4 gallons which may be taken as below:--49 hogsheads of wine, 1,368-3/4 gallons of beer, 584 gallons of spirits, 342 ditto of liqueur, 2,394 ditto of coffee, cocoa, tea, &c., 304 gallons of milk, 2,736 gallons of water--all of which would actually protect him and his anticipated property from any young thief or fellow-schoolboy. This calculation has for its basis the medium scale of the regular meals of the day, which, in sixty years, amounts to no less than 33-3/4 tons weight of meat, farinaceous food, and vegetables, &c.; out of which the above are in detail the probable delicacies that would be selected by an epicure through life.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
Pick and draw the birds immediately after they are brought in. Before you roast them, fill the inside with pieces of a fine ripe orange, leaving out the rind and seeds. Or stuff them with grated cold ham, mixed with bread-crumbs, butter, and a little yolk of egg. Lard them with small slips of the fat of bacon drawn through the flesh with a larding needle. Roast them before a clear fire. Make a fine rich gravy of the trimmings of meat or poultry, stewed in a little water, and thickened with a spoonful of browned flour. Strain it, and set it on the fire again, having added half a pint of claret, and the juice of two large oranges. Simmer it for a few minutes, pour some of it into the dish with the game, and serve the remainder in a boat. If you stuff them with force-meat, you may, instead of larding, brush them all over with beaten yolk of egg, and then cover them with bread-crumbs grated finely and sifted.
Sources: The passage is from John Timbs, English Eccentrics and Eccentricities, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Leslie, Miss Leslie's Complete Cookery of 1851, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — teal cloth, oyster stamp.