“A mess of rabbits and fowls stewed together in a kailpot, another of broiled fish, with cheese and bannocks, which, like the small kegs of ale and usquebaugh, had merely cost the trouble of carrying them off (at a time when the burgh-merchants had no other police than their own eyes and hands), were freely shared by the thieves with their illustrious guests, one of whom they had foredoomed to death. The other, they deemed already as one of themselves; for the earl, the better to conceal his real character, assumed a strange dialect, and talked, laughed, sung and swore, till he drew upon him the marked attention of the king; but under that matted beard and tattered attire, disfigured by many a gout of blood, the monarch failed to recognise the outlawed noble.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
¼ cup butter 2½ tablespoons flour 2 cups milk Yolks 4 “hard-boiled” eggs 1 teaspoon Anchovy essence 2 cups cold boiled flaked fish Make a sauce of butter, flour, and milk. Mash yolks of eggs and mix with Anchovy essence, add to sauce, then add fish. Serve as soon as heated. Serve on pieces of toasted Graham bread.
Sources: The passage is from James Grant, Jane Seton, 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 — plum cloth, cheese stamp.