“"The South London Road, laddie? You ask _me_ if _I_ know the South London Road? Come again, boy, come again; I don't get you." He lay back in his chair, and recited, with a half-smile: "The--South--London--Road! God, what sights for the hungry! Let's see--how do they go? Good Pull Up For Carmen on the right. Far Famed Eel Pie and Tripe House opposite. Palace Restaurant, Noted For Sausages, next. Then The Poor Man's Friend. Then Bingo's Fish Bar. Coffee Caravanserai farther up. And--Lord!--S. P. and O. everywhere for threepence-halfpenny. What a sight, boy! Ever walked down it at the end of a day without a meal and without a penny? I should say so. And nearly flung bricks through the windows--what? Sausages swimming in bubbling gravy. Or tucked in, all snug and comfy, with a blanket of mashed. Tomatoes frying themselves, and whining for the fun of it. Onions singing. Saveloys entrenched in pease-pudding. Jellied eels and stewed tripe and eel-pies at twopence, threepence, and sixpence. Irish stew at sevenpence on the Come-Again style--as many follows as you want for the same money. _Do_ I know the South London Road? Does a duck know the water?"”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
349. INGREDIENTS.--2 tench, 2 eels, 2 onions, a faggot of herbs, 4 blades of mace, 3 anchovies, 1 pint of water, pepper and salt to taste, 1 teaspoonful of chopped parsley, the yolks of 6 hard-boiled eggs, puff paste. _Mode_.--Clean and bone the tench, skin and bone the eels, and cut them into pieces 2 inches long, and leave the sides of the tench whole. Put the bones into a stewpan with the onions, herbs, mace, anchovies, water, and seasoning, and let them simmer gently for 1 hour. Strain it off, put it to cool, and skim off all the fat. Lay the tench and eels in a pie-dish, and between each layer put seasoning, chopped parsley, and hard-boiled eggs; pour in part of the strained liquor, cover in with puff paste, and bake for 1/2 hour or rather more. The oven should be rather quick, and when done, heat the remainder of the liquor, which pour into the pie. _Time_.--1/2 hour to bake, or rather more if the oven is slow.
Sources: The passage is from Thomas Burke, Nights in London, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Beeton, The Book of Household Management of 1861, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — navy cloth, teapot stamp.