3 meals in this book
“Mr. Johnson says: “The chief grains of the country are Indian corn, wheat, barley of two kinds, _bájra, jowár_ (two kinds of _holcus_), buckwheat and rice, all of which are superior to the Indian grains, and are of a very fine quality.... The country is certainly superior to India, and in every respect equal to Kashmir, over which it has the advantage of being less humid, and consequently better suited to the growth of fruits. _Olives_ (?), pears, apples, peaches, apricots, mulberries, grapes, currants, and melons, all exceedingly large in size and of a delicious flavour, are produced in great variety and abundance.... Cotton of valuable quality, and raw silk, are produced in very large quantities.””
Wash two-thirds cup rice, add one cup boiling water, and steam until rice has absorbed water; then add one and one-third cups hot milk, one teaspoon salt, and one-fourth cup sugar. Cook until rice is soft. Turn into a slightly buttered round shallow mould. When shaped, remove from mould to serving dish, and arrange on top sections of cooked peaches drained from their syrup and dipped in macaroon dust. Garnish between sections with candied cherries and angelica cut in leaf-shapes. Angelica may be softened by dipping in hot water. Color peach syrup with fruit red, and pour around mould.
Recipe from The Boston cooking-school cook book of 1896.
“NOTE 1.—The mode of making Chinese rice-wine is described in Amyot’s _Mémoires_, V. 468 _seqq._ A kind of yeast is employed, with which is often mixed a flour prepared from fragrant herbs, almonds, pine-seeds, dried fruits, etc. Rubruquis says this liquor was not distinguishable, except by smell, from the best wine of Auxerre; a wine so famous in the Middle Ages, that the Historian Friar, Salimbene, went from Lyons to Auxerre on purpose to drink it.[1] Ysbrandt Ides compares the rice-wine to Rhenish; John Bell to Canary; a modern traveller quoted by Davis, “in colour, and a little in taste, to Madeira.” [Friar Odoric (_Cathay_, i. p. 117) calls this wine _bigni_; Dr. Schlegel (_T’oung Pao_, ii. p. 264) says Odoric’s wine was probably made with the date _Mi-yin_, pronounced _Bi-im_ in old days. But Marco’s wine is made of rice, and is called _shao hsing chiu_. Mr. Rockhill (_Rubruck_, p. 166, note) writes: “There is another stronger liquor distilled from millet, and called _shao chiu_: in Anglo-Chinese, _samshu_; Mongols call it _araka_, _arrak_, and _arreki_. Ma Twan-lin (Bk. 327) says that the Moho (the early Nu-chên Tartars) drank rice wine (_mi chiu_), but I fancy that they, like the Mongols, got it from the Chinese.””
Take half a pound of rice, dust and pick it clean, then wash it, dry it, lay it abroad in a dish as thin as you can or dry it in a temperate oven, being well dried, rub it, and beat it in a mortar till it be as fine as flour; then take a pint of good thick cream, the whites of three new laid eggs, well beaten together, and a little rose-water, set it on a soft fire, and boil it till it be very thick, then put it in a platter and let it stand till it be cold, then slice it out like leach, cast some bisket upon it, and so serve it.
Recipe from The accomplisht cook of 1660.
“They also have milk dried into a kind of paste to carry with them; and when they need food they put this in water, and beat it up till it dissolves, and then drink it. [It is prepared in this way; they boil the milk, and when the rich part floats on the top they skim it into another vessel, and of that they make butter; for the milk will not become solid till this is removed. Then they put the milk in the sun to dry. And when they go on an expedition, every man takes some ten pounds of this dried milk with him. And of a morning he will take a half pound of it and put it in his leather bottle, with as much water as he pleases. So, as he rides along, the milk-paste and the water in the bottle get well churned together into a kind of pap, and that makes his dinner.{5}]”
380. INGREDIENTS.--1 teaspoonful of flour, 2 oz. butter, 1/3 pint of milk, a few grains of salt. _Mode_.--Mix the butter and flour smoothly together on a plate, put it into a lined saucepan, and pour in the milk. Keep stirring it _one way_ over a sharp fire; let it boil quickly for a minute or two, and it is ready to serve. This is a very good foundation for onion, lobster, or oyster sauce: using milk instead of water makes it look so much whiter and more delicate. _Time_.--Altogether, 10 minutes. _Average cost_ for this quantity, 3d.
Recipe from The Book of Household Management of 1861.
Sources: Every passage above is quoted verbatim from The Travels of Marco Polo, tr. Yule, Henry, Sir, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipes come from cookbooks of the period, also free in full. All are in the public domain in the United States. The binding is ours — ochre cloth, grapes stamp.