“Awful and huge, he treads the ground like one of Bruce's moving pillars of sand! What a dark and deep abyss he carries before him--the grave insatiate of turtle and turbot, red mullet and John Dories, haunches and pasties, claret, port, and home-brewed ale! But his good-humour alone would keep him at twenty stone were he to cease larding himself for a month to come; and when he falls, may the turf lie lightly on his stomach! Then shall he melt gently into rich manure;”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
1332. INGREDIENTS.--1-1/2 lb. of rump-steak or mutton cutlets, pepper and salt to taste, 1/3 pint of weak broth or gravy, 1 oz. of butter, mashed potatoes. [Illustration: POTATO-PASTY PAN.] _Mode_.--Place the meat, cut in small pieces, at the bottom of the pan; season it with pepper and salt, and add the gravy and butter broken, into small pieces. Put on the perforated plate, with its valve-pipe screwed on, and fill up the whole space to the top of the tube with nicely-mashed potatoes mixed with a little milk, and finish the surface of them in any ornamental manner. If carefully baked, the potatoes will be covered with a delicate brown crust, retaining all the savoury steam rising from the meat. Send it to table as it comes from the oven, with a napkin folded round it. _Time_.--40 to 60 minutes. _Average cost_, 2s. _Sufficient_ for 4 or 5 persons. _Seasonable_ at any time.
Sources: The passage is from C. M. (Charles Molloy) Westmacott, The English Spy: An Original Work Characteristic, Satirical, And Humor, 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 — slate cloth, grapes stamp.