The spirit of cookery

Caraway-seed Cake, frequently called Seed Cake merely, is a genuine English invention, and a most excellent preparation. It consists of a fermented dough with milk, whole eggs, yolks, fruit-sugar or honey, and fused butter, sugar and flour ; the caraway-seed may be placed on the top of the cake, if it be flat and thin, or incorporated with it, if it be baked in a high mould like ratan cake ; the carawayseed should be steeped in water for some time before being put into the dough. Brussels Biscuits, or Bisks, Germ. Zioiehack, are real biscuits, inasmuch as their paste is first baked in the shape of a loaf, and subsequently cut and grilled for preservation, by which process they become rusks. Rusks are defined by Johnson as a kind of ship’s provisions, but the product of this reference represents a more delicate variety of cake. In most German towns they can be bought of bakers, confectioners, and specialists under the name of Zwieback, being the literal German for ‘biscuit’; but they may not be asked for under the name of ‘ biscuits,’ as the German bakers and public apply this word to cakes made of sponge-cake or Savoy dough. Variations consist in the omission of the eggs ; the plainer product is intended for immediate consumption when it leaves the oven ; others are baked as buns, cut and covered with jam, sugar, aud ornamented outside, fit for the confectioner’s show-window. Waffles are artistically-shaped pancakes as to their constitution, and, like these, admit of interesting and even greater variations. Their name in Old French was waftre, which was developed into gaufre and gauffre. The word is related to the German Wahe, honeycomb, and as such would be derived from the shape of the waffle, which represents a large-celled honeycomb ; it also occurs as wafer, signifying a thin leaf of cooked starch paste, used for sealing letters, or for producing the thin round cakes used as a religious symbol of bread, and as a base for small cakes which, like macroons and ratafias, would adhere to the baking-sheet, if the wafer did not intervene. They take a place in the history of culture of several widely different nations, and by their constitution and parallelism to Roman scriblita, to croplets and the series of cakes with two doughs, challenge a philosophical treatment. Amongst the western Anglo- Saxons they have gradually been neglected, but survive amongst the Flemish branch of the Teutonic race, and are there cultivated by specialists, who travel far and wide over the Continent, to fairs and feasts, and offer their wares to the appreciating multitude. As a means of social enjoyment and refection waffles offer several advantages over other agreeable cakes and confections. They can be made impromptu — e.g., in the country after the arrival of unexpected or expected visitors, over a free coal or wood fire, or gas flame, and require no oven. They can be consumed pari passxc as they are baked, and their quantity or number can be adapted to the number of persons to be fed. They are more certainly produced and less easily spoiled than