““Everything is ready, Diana, except my cake which I’m to make in the morning, and the baking-powder biscuits which Marilla will make just before teatime. I assure you, Diana, that Marilla and I have had a busy two days of it. It’s such a responsibility having a minister’s family to tea. I never went through such an experience before. You should just see our pantry. It’s a sight to behold. We’re going to have jellied chicken and cold tongue. We’re to have two kinds of jelly, red and yellow, and whipped cream and lemon pie, and cherry pie, and three kinds of cookies, and fruit cake, and Marilla’s famous yellow plum preserves that she keeps especially for ministers, and pound cake and layer cake, and biscuits as aforesaid; and new bread and old both, in case the minister is dyspeptic and can’t eat new. Mrs. Lynde says ministers are dyspeptic, but I don’t think Mr. Allan has been a minister long enough for it to have had a bad effect on him. I just grow cold when I think of my layer cake. Oh, Diana, what if it shouldn’t be good! I dreamed last night that I was chased all around by a fearful goblin with a big layer cake for a head.””
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
2 cups scalded milk ½ cup farina (scant) ¼ cup sugar ½ teaspoon salt 1 egg Mix farina, sugar, and salt, add to milk, and cook in double boiler twenty minutes, stirring constantly until mixture has thickened. Add egg slightly beaten, pour into a buttered shallow pan, and brush over with one egg slightly beaten and diluted with one tablespoon milk. Brown in a moderate oven. Cut in squares, and serve with a cube of jelly on each square.
Sources: The passage is from L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, 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 — forest cloth, pear stamp.