“Some features of the everyday Southern dinner were _pilau_, i.e. boiled chickens on a bed of rice, with a large piece of bacon between the chickens; “Hoppin John,” that is, cowpeas with bacon; okra soup, a staple dish; shrimp and prawn pie; crab salad; pompey head (a stuffed _filet_ of veal); roast quail and snipe, and, during the winter, shad daily, boiled, broiled and baked.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
929. INGREDIENTS.--2 small fowls or 1 large one, white pepper and salt to taste, 1/2 teaspoonful of grated nutmeg, 1/2 teaspoonful of pounded mace, forcemeat No. 417, a few slices of ham, 3 hard-boiled eggs, 1/2 pint of water, puff crust. _Mode_.--Skin and cut up the fowls into joints, and put the neck, leg, and backbones in a stewpan, with a little water, an onion, a bunch of savoury herbs, and a blade of mace; let these stew for about an hour, and, when done, strain off the liquor: this is for gravy. Put a layer of fowl at the bottom of a pie-dish, then a layer of ham, then one of forcemeat and hard-boiled eggs cut in rings; between the layers put a seasoning of pounded mace, nutmeg, pepper, and salt. Proceed in this manner until the dish is full, and pour in about 1/2 pint of water; border the edge of the dish with puff crust, put on the cover, ornament the top, and glaze it by brushing over it the yolk of an egg.
Sources: The passage is from Ward McAllister, Society as I Have Found It, 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 — ochre cloth, boar stamp.