“Poor Mr. Jellyby, who very seldom spoke and almost always sat when he was at home with his head against the wall, became interested when he saw that Caddy and I were attempting to establish some order among all this waste and ruin and took off his coat to help. But such wonderful things came tumbling out of the closets when they were opened—bits of mouldy pie, sour bottles, Mrs. Jellyby’s caps, letters, tea, forks, odd boots and shoes of children, firewood, wafers, saucepan-lids, damp sugar in odds and ends of paper bags, footstools, blacklead brushes, bread, Mrs. Jellyby’s bonnets, books with butter sticking to the binding, guttered candle ends put out by being turned upside down in broken candlesticks, nutshells, heads and tails of shrimps, dinner-mats, gloves, coffee-grounds, umbrellas—that he looked frightened, and left off again. But he came regularly every evening and sat without his coat, with his head against the wall, as though he would have helped us if he had known how.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
Take a quart of picked shrimps: if very salt, only season with mace, and a clove or two in fine powder; but if not salt, mince two or three anchovies, mix with the spice, and season them. Put some butter at the bottom of the dish, and over the shrimps, and a glass of sharp white wine. Put a good light paste over. They do not require long baking.
Sources: The passage is from Charles Dickens, Bleak House, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Rundell, New system of domestic cookery, formed upon principles of of 1806, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — ochre cloth, teapot stamp.