““Mrs. Bates, let me propose your venturing on one of these eggs. An egg boiled very soft is not unwholesome. Serle understands boiling an egg better than any body. I would not recommend an egg boiled by any body else; but you need not be afraid, they are very small, you see—one of our small eggs will not hurt you. Miss Bates, let Emma help you to a _little_ bit of tart—a _very_ little bit. Ours are all apple-tarts. You need not be afraid of unwholesome preserves here. I do not advise the custard. Mrs. Goddard, what say you to _half_ a glass of wine? A _small_ half-glass, put into a tumbler of water? I do not think it could disagree with you.””
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
Take a pound of almonds, blanch and beat them with rose-water into a fine paste, then put the spawn or row of a Carp or Pike to it, and beat them well together, with some cloves, mace, and salt, the spices being first beaten, and some ginger, strain them with some fair spring water, and put into the strained stuff half a pound of double refined sugar and a little saffron; when the paste is dried and ready to fill, put into the bottom of the coffin some slic't dates, raisins of the sun stoned, and some boiled currans, fill them and bake them; being baked, scrape sugar on them. Be sure always to prick your custards or forms before you set them in the oven. If you have no row or spawn, put rice flour instead hereof.
Sources: The passage is from Jane Austen, Emma, 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 — forest cloth, pudding stamp.