3 meals in this book
“We spread the napkin on a big stone of the quarry, and set out the feast: scones, oatcake, hard-boiled eggs, a bottle of milk, and a small flask of usquebaugh. Our hands met as we prepared the table. This was our first housekeeping; the first breakfast of our honeymoon I called it, rallying her. "Starving I may be; but starve I will in sight of food, unless you share it," and, "It escapes me for the moment, madam, if you take sugar." We leaned to each other across the rock, and our faces touched. Her cold cheek with the rain upon it, and one small damp curl--for many days I had to feed upon the memory of that kiss, and I feed upon it yet.”
2 cups flour 4 teaspoons baking power 2 teaspoons sugar ½ teaspoon salt 4 tablespoons butter 2 eggs ⅓ cup cream Mix and sift together flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt. Rub in butter with tips of fingers; add eggs well beaten, and cream. Toss on a floured board, pat, and roll to three-fourths inch in thickness. Cut in squares, brush with white of egg, sprinkle with sugar, and bake in a hot oven fifteen minutes.
Recipe from The Boston cooking-school cook book of 1896.
“"Oh, if you choose to play the wit!" said he,--and began to rail at large upon his destiny, the weather, the cold, the danger and the expense of the escape, and, above all, the cooking of the accursed English. It seemed to annoy him particularly that I should have joined their party. "If you knew what you were doing, thirty thousand millions of pigs! you would keep yourself to yourself! The horses can't drag the cart; the roads are all ruts and swamps. No longer ago than last night the Colonel and I had to march half the way--thunder of God!--half the way to the knees in mud--and I with this infernal cold--and the danger of detection! Happily we met no one: a desert--a real desert--like the whole abominable country! Nothing to eat--no, sir, there is nothing to eat but raw cow and greens boiled in water--nor to drink but Worcestershire sauce! Now I, with my catarrh, I have no appetite; is it not so? Well, if I were in France, I should have a good soup with a crust in it, an omelette, a fowl in rice, a partridge in cabbages--things to tempt me, thunder of God! But here--day of God!--what a country! And cold, too! They talk about Russia--this is all the cold I want! And the people--look at them! What a race! Never any handsome men; never any fine officers!"--and he looked down complacently for a moment at his waist--"And the women--what faggots! No, that is one point clear, I cannot stomach the English!"”
1494. Take, for 6 persons, the roes of 2 carp; [Footnote: An American writer says he has followed this recipe, substituting pike, shad, &c., in the place of carp, and can recommend all these also, with a quiet conscience. Any fish, indeed, may be used with success.] bleach them, by putting them, for 5 minutes, in boiling water slightly salted. Take a piece of fresh tunny about the size of a hen's egg, to which add a small shalot already chopped; hash up together the roe and the tunny, so as to mix them well, and throw the whole into a saucepan, with a sufficient quantity of very good butter: whip it up until the butter is melted! This constitutes the specialty of the omelet. Take a second piece of butter, _à discrétion_, mix it with parsley and herbs, place it in a long-shaped dish destined to receive the omelet; squeeze the juice of a lemon over it, and place it on hot embers.
Recipe from The Book of Household Management of 1861.
“"No, Dudgeon!" I interrupted. "Be practical; I know what you want, and the name of it is supper. _Rien ne creuse comme l'emotion._ I am hungry myself, and yet I am more accustomed to warlike palpitations than you, who are but a hunter of hedge-sparrows. Let me look at your face critically: your bill of fare is three slices of cold rare roast beef, a Welsh rabbit, a pot of stout, and a glass or two of sound tawny port, old in bottle--the right milk of Englishmen." Methought there seemed a brightening in his eye and a melting about his mouth at this enumeration.”
1874. INGREDIENTS.--2 very young rabbits, not nearly half grown; 1-1/2 pint of milk, 1 blade of mace, 1 dessertspoonful of flour, a little salt and cayenne. _Mode_.--Mix the flour very smoothly with 4 tablespoonfuls of the milk, and when this is well mixed, add the remainder. Cut up the rabbits into joints, put them into a stewpan, with the milk and other ingredients, and simmer them _very gently_ until quite tender. Stir the contents from time to time, to keep the milk smooth and prevent it from burning. 1/2 hour will be sufficient for the cooking of this dish. _Time_.--1/2 hour. _Average cost_, from 1s. to 1s. 6d. each. _Sufficient_ for 3 or 4 meals. _Seasonable_ from September to February.
Recipe from The Book of Household Management of 1861.
Sources: Every passage above is quoted verbatim from The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, 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 — navy cloth, tankard stamp.