“The girls had prepared a nice supper. Ellen had been making pop-overs, and Theodora had fried a great panful of crispy doughnuts. They cut a sage cheese to go with these; and rather unwisely Ellen made a pot of fresh coffee. It tasted much better than that which we ordinarily had at breakfast; for she roasted the coffee, then ground it smoking hot from the oven, and poured it into the pot before it had time to lose its delicate aroma. They set on a brimming pitcherful of cream to put in it; and we each had two cupfuls, at table, in consequence of which we all felt very bright and jolly throughout the evening. But this was not a wise procedure, from a hygienic point of view; I scarcely slept at all that night.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
Take some of the young top leaves of the sage plant, and pound them in a mortar till you have extracted the juice. Put the juice into a bowl, wipe out the mortar, put in some spinach leaves, and pound them till you have an equal quantity of spinach juice. Mix the two juices together, and stir them into the warm milk immediately after you have put in the rennet. You may use sage juice alone; but the spinach will greatly improve the colour; besides correcting the bitterness of the sage.
Sources: The passage is from C. A. (Charles Asbury) Stephens, When Life Was Young: At the Old Farm in Maine, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Leslie, Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches of 1837, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — plum cloth, cheese stamp.