“I give in detail all I did to successfully entertain my friends for ten days in this old family house, as it may instruct others how to act in a similar case. In London, during the season, one hires a house for a few days to give a ball in, and there are many very superb large houses used there in this way every year. Telegraphing at once to the agent who had charge of this house to put an army of scrubbing-women in it, and have it cleaned from cellar to garret, I next went into the wholesale business of kerosene and lamps. In the country particularly there is nothing like an illumination _à giorno_ at night. I hunted up an experienced _chef_, got my servants, and then made _menus_ for ten dinners, lunches, and breakfasts, as my guests were asked for a certain length of time; engaged a country band of music for the evenings, telegraphed to Baltimore for my canvasbacks, arranged for my fish, vegetables, and flowers to be sent up by train daily from New York, purchased myself every article of food that I would require to make up these _menus_, gave orders for my ices, bonbons, and cakes, everything that must be fresh to be good, to come to me by express; sent up my wines, but no Madeira, as I knew there was enough of that wine in the wine cellars of that old house to float a frigate; looked after my stabling, and found we could stable twenty horses in a fine brick stable, and house all the drags and vehicles. The conservatories were full of orange and lemon trees. The house itself, architecturally, was a duplicate of the White House in Washington, and almost as large. It had a superb marble hall, 20 × 45, leading to a dining-room, 36 × 25. The house was built in 1836, of brick, in a forest of trees, with the three farms surrounding it really forming part of the grounds, containing a thousand acres of land. The house and grounds cost in 1836 over $150,000. All I had to do, then, was to reanimate the interior and take from hidden recesses the fine old family china, and the vast quantity of silver accumulated in the family for three generations. My wife’s grandfather had been a distinguished lawyer; being wealthy, he had some of his lawyer’s fees which were paid in Spanish dollars, melted into plate. I only wish it had been my good fortune to have secured some of those old grand silver salvers.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
Whisk four fresh eggs until they are as light as possible, then, continuing still to whisk them, throw in by _slow_ degrees the following ingredients in the order in which they are written: six ounces of dry, pounded, and sifted sugar; six of flour, also dried and sifted; four ounces of butter just dissolved, but not heated; the rind of a fresh lemon; and the instant before the cake is moulded, beat well in the third of a teaspoonful of carbonate of soda: bake it an hour in a moderate oven. In this, as in all compositions of the same nature, observe particularly that each portion of butter must be beaten into the mixture until no appearance of it remains before the next is added; and if this be done, and the preparation be kept light by constant and light whisking, the cake will be as good, if not better, than if the butter were creamed. Candied citron can be added to the paste, but it is not needed.
Sources: The passage is from Ward McAllister, Society as I Have Found It, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Acton, Modern cookery for private families of 1845, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — forest cloth, grapes stamp.