Books and My Food: With Literary Quotations and Original Recipes for Every ..

IT is impossible to read English novels without realizing how important a part food plays in the mental as in the physical life of the Englishman. The sentimental Anglo- Saxon soul goes out to its roast beef and pudding, to its port and ale, with much the same greeting it gives to its blue violets and Devon cowslips. The associations that cluster about especial dishes are not lightly to be dismissed. Perhaps no writer of another nation could have produced a poem difficult for the least emotional to read without tears, the theme of which should be a favorite soup at a famous restaurant. And if some of us have inherited from transcendental ancestors a species of contempt toward this gross and material affection for the food that gives us life, shares our nationality, and is the intimate of our homes, we may profitably remember the spirit of domesticity and hospitality which makes such an affection possible. It was before Emerson's second and longer visit to England that he wrote against our being the "friends of our friend's buttons." Before he returned from that memorable second visit he wrote to his wife that if an Englishman were to visit her she must build a fire in the guest room and give him bread and wine at bedtime, for should an Englishman go cold, he said, it would chill his own bones, and, should he be hungry, he himself would be hungry all his life, so great had been the hospitality of the English toward him. In making up this collection of recipes suggested by quotations chiefly from English novelists and poets, our idea has been not to provide Bohemian fare for our readers, or give them unfamiliar and unrelishable diet, but to show what a varied list might be gathered from the works of well-known writers, of dishes most of them equally well-known, and all of them good if properly prepared. The recipes for the more characteristically English cookery are taken from English sources. One little cook-book, undated, but apparently more than a century old, has furnished some excellent recipes, not one of which has failed in the trying. We cannot do better than send out this result of what may seem to the seriousminded a somewhat whimsical effort to combine intellectual and bodily sustenance, with Stevenson's envoy to "Underwoods/' M Go, little book, and wish to all Flowers in the garden, meat in the hall." Elizabeth Luther Gary. vu JANUARY 1ST **The wedding-cake, which had been a great distress to him, was all eaten up. His own stomach could bear nothing rich, and he could never believe other people to be different than himself." — JANX Austen (** Emma"). ALTHOUGH wedding-cake can hardly be recommended to invalids, I once heard of its curing a severe attack of indigestion, a statement the verification of which I leave to the skeptical. The following rule has descended from generation to generation of a long-lived family : Twelve eggs, one pound of butter, one pound of flour, one pound of citron, three pounds of raisins, three pounds of currants, a pound and a half of brown sugar, a pint of molasses, half a pint of brandy, a teaspoonful of saleratus, one ounce of mace, one ounce of cinnamon, half an ounce of cloves, a quarter of an ounce of allspice, two grated nutmegs. Cook four hours in a slow oven, covering the top with paper after the first hour. JANUARY 2D ''Lobster patties, rissoles, and two things with French names." — Charles Reade (''It Is Never Too Late To Mend").