“There was a garden out in the suburbs; a small, leafy corner, with a few green tables under the orange trees. An old cat slept all day on the stone step in the sun, and an old _mulatresse_ slept her idle hours away in her chair at the open window, till some one happened to knock on one of the green tables. She had milk and cream cheese to sell, and bread and butter. There was no one who could make such excellent coffee or fry a chicken so golden brown as she.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
1463. INGREDIENTS.--1 oz. of isinglass, 6 large oranges, 1 lemon, sugar to taste, water, 1/2 pint of good cream. [Illustration: OPEN MOULD.] _Mode_.--Squeeze the juice from the oranges and lemon; strain it, and put it into a saucepan with the isinglass, and sufficient water to make in all 1-1/2 pint. Rub the sugar on the orange and lemon-rind, add it to the other ingredients, and boil all together for about 10 minutes. Strain through a muslin bag, and, when cold, beat up with it 1/2 pint of thick cream. Wet a mould, or soak it in cold water; pour in the cream, and put it in a cool place to set. If the weather is very cold, 1 oz. of isinglass will be found sufficient for the above proportion of ingredients. _Time_.--10 minutes to boil the juice and water. _Average cost_, with the best isinglass, 3s. _Sufficient_ to fill a quart mould. _Seasonable_ from November to May.
Sources: The passage is from Kate Chopin, The Awakening, and Selected Short Stories, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Beeton, The Book of Household Management of 1861, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — moss cloth, cheese stamp.