Pet food : 1847

"If you wish to teach the Birds airs, or artificial notes of any kind, they must hear nothing that can in any way distract their attention. Every time you enter the room, the oftener the better, and especially when you feed them, whistle, or play on a flute or flageolet, the tune you wish them to learn. Whistle or play that, and no other. Repeat, and repeat, and repeat, until they can pipe it correctly."

People would capture wild birds of all kinds and either teach them human songs or raise them with nightingales so they would have a nightingale's song. Some people even sold birds that had been trained this way. But getting food to feed the birds could be troublesome:

"Take some meat, or fish, or a dead cat, rat, or dog, and hang it in a shady place until it is well fly-blown or maggoty. Then place it in a large box half full of earth, and cover. In the course of a week or ten days the maggots will bury themselves in the earth, and may be dug up, if the box is kept in a cold place, at leisure."

I wonder if the cats and dogs just happened to be dead, or were killed specifically for this purpose.

--From Manual of Cage-birds, British & Foreign--

Mac 'n' cheese, 1823 fusion cuisine edition

--Macaroni.

The usual mode of dressing it in this country is by adding a white sauce, and Parmesan or Cheshire cheese, and burning it. But this makes a dish which is proverbially unwholesome: but its bad qualities arise from the oiled and burnt cheese, and the half-dressed flour and butter put in the white sauce.

Macaroni plain boiled, and some rich stock or portable soup added to it quite hot, will be found a delicious dish, and very wholesome. Or boil macaroni as directed in the receipt for the pudding, and serve it quite hot, in a deep tureen; and let each guest add grated Parmesan and cold butter, or oiled butter served hot, and it is excellent; this is the most common Italian mode of dressing it.

--English way of dressing Macaroni.

Put a quarter of a pound of macaroni into a stew-pan with a pint of milk, or broth, or water; let it boil gently till it is tender, and then put in an ounce of grated cheese, a bit of butter about as big as a walnut, more or less, as your cheese is fat or poor, and a tea-spoonful of salt; mix it well together, and put it on a dish—and strew over it two ounces of grated Parmesan or Cheshire cheese—and give it a light brown in a Dutch oven.—Or put all the cheese into the macaroni, and put bread crumbs over the top.

--From A Modern System of Domestic Cookery--

Macaroni and cheese was considered "proverbially unwholesome"; kind of hard not to be if everyone was burning it. The dish seems to have been of Italian origin, originally dressed with butter and cheese. The English innovation was to make it in a rich cream sauce and brown the dish or cover it with bread crumbs.

Mac 'n' cheese, 1852 edition

--CHEESE MACARONI.

Take a quarter of a pound of macaroni, a pint and a half of new milk, put it in a stewpan, and let it stew till quite tender, take half a pound of Parmesan, grate it, add it to the macaroni, quarter of a pound of butter, pepper and salt, and a little cayenne, according to taste, mix them well together, and let them stew ten minutes, brown with a salamander, and serve.

--From The Illustrated London Cookery Book--

This sounds delicious and rich. By the way, salamanders were blobs of metal you could heat up in the fire and hold over food to brown it. Much like chefs might use a butane torch today.

Easy as pie, 1852 edition

--MARROW PUDDING.

Take half a pound of beef-marrow finely chopped, a few currants washed and picked, some slices of citron and orange peel candied, a little grated nutmeg, a table-spoonful of brandy, and the same of syrup of cloves, and half a pound of Naples biscuits; strain to this a quart of new milk boiled with cinnamon and lemon peel; allow the mixture to cool, and then add the yolks of eight eggs, and the whites of five. Bake it in a dish with a puff-paste round it.

--From The Illustrated London Cookery Book--

Most pies were meat based and recipes for sweet pies were mixed in with recipes for savory ones. They would even make free-standing pies, which almost sounds like an alien idea to me:

Spam, 1852 edition

--VENISON POTTED.

Put the venison into a pan, and pour red wine over it, and cover it with a pound of butter, put a paste over the pan, set it in the oven to bake. When done take the meat out of the gravy, beat it well with the butter that has risen to the top, add more if necessary, season with pepper, salt, and mace pounded, put into pots, set them in the oven for a few minutes, take them out; when cold cover with clarified butter.

--From The Illustrated London Cookery Book--

To preserve meat, you'd cook it, mash it up with fat and spices, and then cover it with clarified butter. There were many recipes for 'potted meats' as they were called and even suggestions on how to deal with meat that didn't smell good any more. Potted meat is still made today.

Beef, it's what's for dinner, 1852 edition

--BEEF STEAKS—À LA FRANÇAISE.

Take a fine steak and dip it into cold spring water, let it drain a few minutes, lay it in a dish and pour over it sufficient clarified butter hot, and cover it; let it remain twelve hours, then remove the butter, and roll the steak with the rolling-pin a dozen times rather hardly, let it lie in front of a clear fire ten minutes, turning it once or twice, put it into a frying-pan, with water half an inch in depth, and let it fry until it browns.

Mince some parsley very fine, chop an eschalot as fine as can be, and season them with cayenne, salt, and a little white pepper, work them with a lump of butter, and when the steak is brown take it from the pan, rub it well with the mixture on both sides, and return it to the pan until enough; dish it, thicken the gravy in the pan with a little butter rolled in flour if it requires it, and pour it over the steak and serve.

--From The Illustrated London Cookery Book--

Other than their habit of keeping meat at room temperature for long periods of time, their recipes sound pretty good. By the way, many of the recipes called for prodigious amounts of meat; ten or twenty pounds. Obviously soups would always be going, to handle the leftovers and extra bits.