Literary Feast  ·  Read the passage. Cook the meal.
A bill of fare

The Martian: A Novel

by George Du Maurier

THE MARTIAN: A NOVELGEORGE DU MAURIER
Our binding, not the publisher's

“Then, at twelve, the second breakfast, meat (or salt fish on Fridays), a dish of vegetables, lentils, red or white beans, salad, potatoes, etc.; a dessert, which consisted of fruit or cheese, or a French pudding. This banquet over, a master would stand up in his place and call for silence, and read out loud the list of boys who were to be kept in during the play-hour that followed:”

From a cookbook of 1660

A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.

1660  ·  May
Oatmeal Pudding otherwise of fish or flesh blood

Take a quart of whole oatmeal, steep it in warm milk over night, & then drain the groats from it, boil them in a quart or three pints of good cream; then the oatmeal being boil'd and cold, have tyme, penniroyal, parsley, spinage, savory, endive, marjoram, sorrel, succory, and strawberry leaves, of each a little quantity, chop them fine, and put them to the oatmeal, with some fennil-seed, pepper, cloves, mace, and salt, boil it in a napkin, or bake it in a dish, pie, or guts. Sometimes of the former pudding you may leave out some of the herbs, and add these, penniroyal, savory, leeks, a good big onion, sage, ginger, nutmeg, pepper, salt, either for fish or flesh days, with butter or beef-suet, boil'd or baked in a dish, napkin, or pie.

Sources: The passage is from George Du Maurier, The Martian: A Novel, 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 — navy cloth, pudding stamp.

← All entries