“Percy (how I hate that name!) was here for dinner last night, and all things considered, we didn't fare so badly. We had tomato bisque and scalloped potatoes and prairie-chicken (they need to be well basted) and hot biscuits and stewed dried peaches with cream. Then we had coffee and the men smoked their pipes. We talked until a quarter to one in the morning, and my poor Dinky-Dunk, who has been working so hard and seeing nobody, really enjoyed that visit and really likes Percival Benson.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
1 quart clams 1½ cups cold water ⅓ cup butter ⅓ cup flour ½ onion 2 cups cream 1 cup stewed and strained tomatoes ⅛ teaspoon soda Salt Cayenne Pour water over clams, then drain. To water add hard part of clams finely chopped. Heat slowly to boiling-point, cook twenty minutes, then strain. Cook butter with onion five minutes; remove onion, add flour and gradually clam water. Add cream, soft part of clams, and as soon as boiling-point is reached, tomatoes to which soda has been added. Season with salt and cayenne, and serve at once.
Sources: The passage is from Arthur Stringer, The Prairie Wife, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Farmer, The Boston cooking-school cook book of 1896, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — navy cloth, teapot stamp.