“We have a great many other holidays; it is impossible to speak of them all. Simply to name some, there are God Fox's day on the second of the second month; the Feast of Dolls, for little girls, on the third of the third month; the Feast of Flags for little boys on the fifth of the fifth month; the ablution mass in the sixth month; the Tanabata (eve of the seventh) on the seventh of the seventh month; the day of chrysanthemum flowers and the festival of Inoko late in the fall, not to mention festivals of several local deities. The vital importance of these holidays to us children centered in the dainties and delicacies with which our mothers and sisters served us then and not often at ordinary times. We enjoy boiled red beans and rice on the second of February; rice-flour cakes wrapped in the leaves of a species of oak called kashiwa on the fifth of May; rice-flour cakes daubed with the an on the day of the Buddhistic ceremony of ablution; roast and boiled chestnuts and rice and chestnuts on the ninth of September; and the saké on almost all occasions, but with a spray of peach blossom inserted in the bottle on the third of March, and a bunch of chrysanthemum flowers on the chrysanthemum day.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
1746. INGREDIENTS.--To every 1/2 lb. of rice-flour allow 1/4 lb. of pounded lump sugar, 1/4 lb. of butter, 2 eggs. _Mode_.--Beat the butter to a cream, stir in the rice-flour and pounded sugar, and moisten the whole with the eggs, which should be previously well beaten. Roll out the paste, shape it with a round paste-cutter into small cakes, and bake them from 12 to 18 minutes in a very slow oven. _Time_.--12 to 18 minutes. _Average cost_, 9d. _Sufficient_ to make about 18 cakes. _Seasonable_ at any time. GROUND RICE, or rice-flour, is used for making several kinds of cakes, also for thickening soups, and for mixing with wheaten flour in producing Manna Kroup. The Americans make rice-bread, and prepare the flour for it in the following manner:--When the rice is thoroughly cleansed, the water is drawn off, and the rice, while damp, bruised in a mortar: it is then dried, and passed through a hair sieve. ROCK BISCUITS. 1747.
Sources: The passage is from Shigemi Shiukichi, A Japanese Boy, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Beeton, The Book of Household Management of 1861, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — oxblood cloth, amphora stamp.