“That Johnny certainly could cook! Served on china dishes upon a cloth-covered table, we had mounds of fried steaks and shoals of fried bacon; and a bushel, more or less, of sheepherder potatoes; and green peas and sliced peaches out of cans; and sour-dough biscuits as light as kisses and much more filling; and fresh butter and fresh milk; and coffee as black as your hat and strong as sin. How easy it is for civilized man to become primitive and comfortable in his way of eating, especially if he has just ridden ten miles on a buckboard and nine more on a mule and is away down at the bottom of the Grand canyon--and there is nobody to look on disapprovingly when he takes a bite that would be a credit to a steam shovel!”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
Shave off any brown rancid part from the bacon, and put it on to boil in plenty of cold water; when it is nearly done put in the peas with a good bunch of mint, and let all boil together until the peas are done soft; then dish up the peas round the bacon.
Sources: The passage is from Unknown, The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Francatelli, A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes of 1852, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — slate cloth, boar stamp.