“I cannot eat (to anything like the ordinary extent), and have established this system: At seven in the morning, in bed, a tumbler of new cream and two tablespoonsful of rum. At twelve, a sherry cobbler and a biscuit. At three (dinner time), a pint of champagne. At five minutes to eight, an egg beaten up with a glass of sherry. Between the parts, the strongest beef tea that can be made, drunk hot. At a quarter-past ten, soup, and anything to drink that I can fancy. I don't eat more than half a pound of solid food in the whole four-and-twenty hours, if so much.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
Make this in the same way as chicken soup, with the addition of one tablespoonful of rice, a slight grating of nutmeg, a tiny bit of mace, and a piece of stick cinnamon about an inch long, and the omission of the parsley. When the time required for the cooking has expired, take out the spice and pour the soup into a fine sieve. Rub all the rice through, using a wooden vegetable masher. Put the strained mixture in a clean saucepan with a pint of milk, and let it boil up once. If you have cream in plenty, use half cream and half milk. The soup will be much smoother if it is strained a second time, after the milk has been boiled with it.
Sources: The passage is from Charles Dickens, The Letters of Charles Dickens. Vol. 2, 1857-1870, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Parloa, Miss Parloa's Young Housekeeper of 1893, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — forest cloth, teapot stamp.