“NOTE 1.—The mode of making Chinese rice-wine is described in Amyot’s _Mémoires_, V. 468 _seqq._ A kind of yeast is employed, with which is often mixed a flour prepared from fragrant herbs, almonds, pine-seeds, dried fruits, etc. Rubruquis says this liquor was not distinguishable, except by smell, from the best wine of Auxerre; a wine so famous in the Middle Ages, that the Historian Friar, Salimbene, went from Lyons to Auxerre on purpose to drink it.[1] Ysbrandt Ides compares the rice-wine to Rhenish; John Bell to Canary; a modern traveller quoted by Davis, “in colour, and a little in taste, to Madeira.” [Friar Odoric (_Cathay_, i. p. 117) calls this wine _bigni_; Dr. Schlegel (_T’oung Pao_, ii. p. 264) says Odoric’s wine was probably made with the date _Mi-yin_, pronounced _Bi-im_ in old days. But Marco’s wine is made of rice, and is called _shao hsing chiu_. Mr. Rockhill (_Rubruck_, p. 166, note) writes: “There is another stronger liquor distilled from millet, and called _shao chiu_: in Anglo-Chinese, _samshu_; Mongols call it _araka_, _arrak_, and _arreki_. Ma Twan-lin (Bk. 327) says that the Moho (the early Nu-chên Tartars) drank rice wine (_mi chiu_), but I fancy that they, like the Mongols, got it from the Chinese.””
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
Take half a pound of rice, dust and pick it clean, then wash it, dry it, lay it abroad in a dish as thin as you can or dry it in a temperate oven, being well dried, rub it, and beat it in a mortar till it be as fine as flour; then take a pint of good thick cream, the whites of three new laid eggs, well beaten together, and a little rose-water, set it on a soft fire, and boil it till it be very thick, then put it in a platter and let it stand till it be cold, then slice it out like leach, cast some bisket upon it, and so serve it.
Sources: The passage is from Marco Polo, The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 1, tr. Yule, Henry, Sir, 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 — slate cloth, grapes stamp.