“All who knew Sancho Panza were astonished to hear him speak so elegantly, and did not know what to attribute it to unless it were that office and grave responsibility either smarten or stupefy men’s wits. At last Doctor Pedro Recio Agilers of Tirteafuera promised to let him have supper that night though it might be in contravention of all the aphorisms of Hippocrates. With this the governor was satisfied and looked forward to the approach of night and supper-time with great anxiety; and though time, to his mind, stood still and made no progress, nevertheless the hour he so longed for came, and they gave him a beef salad with onions and some boiled calves’ feet rather far gone. At this he fell to with greater relish than if they had given him francolins from Milan, pheasants from Rome, veal from Sorrento, partridges from Moron, or geese from Lavajos, and turning to the doctor at supper he said to him, “Look here, señor doctor, for the future don’t trouble yourself about giving me dainty things or choice dishes to eat, for it will be only taking my stomach off its hinges; it is accustomed to goat, cow, bacon, hung beef, turnips and onions; and if by any chance it is given these palace dishes, it receives them squeamishly, and sometimes with loathing. What the head-carver had best do is to serve me with what they call ollas podridas (and the rottener they are the better they smell); and he can put whatever he likes into them, so long as it is good to eat, and I’ll be obliged to him, and will requite him some day. But let nobody play pranks on me, for either we are or we are not; let us live and eat in peace and good-fellowship, for when God sends the dawn, he sends it for all. I mean to govern this island without giving up a right or taking a bribe; let everyone keep his eye open, and look out for the arrow; for I can tell them ‘the devil’s in Cantillana,’ and if they drive me to it they’ll see something that will astonish them. Nay! make yourself honey and the flies eat you.””
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
Take a Pipkin or Pot of some three Gallons, fill it with fair water, and set it over a Fire of Charcoals, and put in first your hardest meats, a rump of Beef, _Bolonia_ sausages, neats tongues two dry, and two green, boiled and larded, about two hours after the Pot is boil'd and scummed: but put in more presently after your Beef is scum'd, Mutton, Venison, Pork, Bacon, all the aforesaid in Gubbins, as big as a Ducks Egg, in equal pieces; put in also Carrots, Turnips, Onions, Cabbidge, in good big pieces, as big as your meat, a faggot of sweet herbs, well bound up, and some whole Spinage, Sorrel, Burrage, Endive, Marigolds, and other good Pot-Herbs a little chopped; and sometimes _French_ Barley, or Lupins green or dry.
Sources: The passage is from Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, Complete, tr. Ormsby, John, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from May, The accomplisht cook of 1660, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — ochre cloth, windmill stamp.