CALCUTTA: PAST AND PRESENT
a roast fowl, curry and rice, a mutton pie, a forequarter of lamb, a rice pudding, tarts, very good cheese, fresh churned butter, fine bread, excellent Madeira (that is expensive, but eatables are very cheap). A whole sheep costs but two rupees, a lamb one rupee, six good fowls or ducks ditto, twelve pigeons ditto, twelve pounds of bread ditto, two pounds of butter ditto, and a joint of veal ditto."
In another letter, Mrs. Fay speaks of the highly spiced and seasoned dishes which were served at Calcutta tables, and describes particularly "Burdwan stew," a sort of "Hot-pot" in which fish, flesh, and fowl combined with unlimited seasoning, the whole prepared in a silver saucepan, resulted in the most appetizing of dishes. At this period, when dinner was at two o'clock, supper at ten o'clock was the next meal. Some years later, evening dinners between seven and eight o'clock were introduced; but as the midday meal was still retained under the name of tiffin, it is not surprising to find complaints of flagging appetite.
"Calcutta dinners are but a languid sort of things," wrote a visitor about 1805, "you have stomach perhaps to pick the bone of a floriken, or may get through a fine delicious snipe, but you cannot grapple with a slice of beef or of
110
