“I think there are few sportsmen who will not share my regret that these meagre notes are all that remain to record the experience and observation of one who landed in the Isle while it was still a true paradise for sportsmen—when the multitude of wild animals was as described by Sir James Emerson Tennant—when there were no game-laws, no need of licences, only a grateful people, not, like the villagers of to-day, provided with rifles, powder, and shot, but ready to bless the white man, who freed them from the incursions of dangerous foes and provided them with abundant food, in the form of wild pigs and sundry kinds of deer. For his own camp fare there was a most appetising variety of birds, jungle and pea fowl, red-legged partridges, plover, and pigeons, quails, parroquets, fine fat wild-ducks, snipe, cranes—in short, ample materials for savoury stews and roasts; and of these also we occasionally received amusing notices, as, for instance, when one day he had shot a lovely rose-tinted marabout stork that he might send me its feathers, and its body had furnished an excellent stew. After dinner his servant remarked that fish must surely be very scarce this season. On his asking ‘Why?’ the reply came, ‘Because in cleaning that bird for master’s dinner I found a large rat inside of it!’ Now, even in the jungle, that was not a very pleasant suggestion!”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
The Pigeons being drawn and trust, make a fearsing or stopping of some sweet herbs minced, then mince some beef-suet or lard, grated bread, currans, cloves, mace, pepper, ginger, sugar, & 3 or 4 raw eggs. The pigeons being larded & half roasted, stuff them with the foresaid fearsing, and put boil'd cabbidge stuck with a few cloves round about them; bind up every Pigeon several with packthread, then put them in a pipkin a boiling with strong mutton broth, three or four yolks of hard eggs minced small, some large mace, whole cloves, pepper, salt, and a little white-wine; being boil'd, serve them on fine carved sippets, and strow on cinamon, ginger, and sugar.
Sources: The passage is from C. F. (Constance Frederica) Gordon Cumming, Two happy years in Ceylon, 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 — burgundy cloth, amphora stamp.