I promised a few hints, to enable every family to assist the poor of their neighborhood at a very trivial expense; and these may be varied or amended at the discretion of the mistress. Where cows are kept, a jug of skimmed milk is a valuable present, and a very common one. When the oven is hot, a large pudding may be baked, and given to a sick or young family; and thus made that trouble is little: Into a deep coarse pan put half a pound of rice, four ounces of coarse sugar or molasses, two quarts of milk, and two ounces of drippings✪ Baked Rice Pudding; set it cold into the oven. It will take a good while, but be an excellent solid food. A very good meal may be bestowed in a thing called brewis which is thus made: Cut a very thick crust of bread, and put it into the pot where salt beef is boiling✪ Brewis and near ready: it will attract some of the fat, and when swelled out, will be no unpalatable dish to those who rarely taste meat. Although brewis brings up thoughts of hearty Scotch days when "the top of the pot and tail of the herring" were the choice servings reserved for the head of the house, this thin pot is more reminiscent of the Irish potato famine when a cold potato and a glass of buttermilk was almost a banquet. Our "lady" authoress considered a crust of bread soaked in the salt pork scum, that otherwise would have been skimmed off and thrown away, as a "thing" plenty good enough for "those who rarely taste meat." "A jug oi skimmed m\\k" and a "coarse" pudding, made with little trouble and "trivial expense" puts us in mind of Mrs. Hearst's milk fund charities, the milk of human kindness of Borden and Sheffield and the lousy bread lines maintained by the charitable ladies and gents down to this day. But we can't leave this "lady" writer of 1800 without quoting her admonition about the staff of life: Bread is now so heavy an article of expense that all waste should be guarded against, and having it cut in the (dining) room will tend much WE DINE FOR THE POOR 217 to prevent it; since the scarcity in 1795 and 1800, that custom has been much adopted. From this we see that the poor were crying for bread just after the Revolution even as they were under the queen who said **Let 'em eat cake" and later under Mayor Walker who brought that wisecrack up to date. Obviously, the cookbook- writing "lady" warns against the "waste" of bread that might come about through some starving Jean Valjean helping himself to a heel in the pantry. Yet her advice about cutting the loaf in person comes handy in this day when baking trusts get away with twelve cents a loaf and take care to slice it as thick as they can, to make sure that we'll waste enough of every loaf to insure a 12% dividend for them. They cut the end crusts a little closer, to make them too awkward to eat, and as a result most of them are thrown away. So, in spite of the mod- ern convenience of pre-cut bread, which, by the way, even a Gov- ernment Bulletin warns us against, those of us who can't afford any waste and really know the taste of fresh bread will buy loaves whole and slice them in person, as needed. It was not until the year 1823 that anybody spoke up in a cook- book for the vast majority of all eaters, the Have-nots. This was in William Cobbett's Cottage Economy:

AI-modernized reading of the original text

I promised a few hints, to enable every family to assist the poor of their neighborhood at a very trivial expense; and these may be varied or amended at the discretion of the mistress. Where cows are kept, a jug of skimmed milk is a valuable present, and a very common one. When the oven is hot, a large pudding may be baked, and given to a sick or young family; and thus made that trouble is little: Into a deep coarse pan put half a pound of rice, four ounces of coarse sugar or molasses, two quarts of milk, and two ounces of drippings; set it cold into the oven. It will take a good while, but be an excellent solid food. A very good meal may be bestowed in a thing called brewis which is thus made: Cut a very thick crust of bread, and put it into the pot where salt beef is boiling and near ready: it will attract some of the fat, and when swelled out, will be no unpalatable dish to those who rarely taste meat. Although brewis brings up thoughts of hearty Scotch days when "the top of the pot and tail of the herring" were the choice servings reserved for the head of the house, this thin pot is more reminiscent of the Irish potato famine when a cold potato and a glass of buttermilk was almost a banquet. Our "lady" authoress considered a crust of bread soaked in the salt pork scum, that otherwise would have been skimmed off and thrown away, as a "thing" plenty good enough for "those who rarely taste meat." "A jug of skimmed milk" and a "coarse" pudding, made with little trouble and "trivial expense" puts us in mind of Mrs. Hearst's milk fund charities, the milk of human kindness of Borden and Sheffield and the lousy bread lines maintained by the charitable ladies and gents down to this day. But we can't leave this "lady" writer of 1800 without quoting her admonition about the staff of life: Bread is now so heavy an article of expense that all waste should be guarded against, and having it cut in the (dining) room will tend much "WE DINE FOR THE POOR" 217 to prevent it; since the scarcity in 1795 and 1800, that custom has been much adopted. From this we see that the poor were crying for bread just after the Revolution even as they were under the queen who said **Let 'em eat cake" and later under Mayor Walker who brought that wisecrack up to date. Obviously, the cookbook- writing "lady" warns against the "waste" of bread that might come about through some starving Jean Valjean helping himself to a heel in the pantry. Yet her advice about cutting the loaf in person comes handy in this day when baking trusts get away with twelve cents a loaf and take care to slice it as thick as they can, to make sure that we'll waste enough of every loaf to insure a 12% dividend for them. They cut the end crusts a little closer, to make them too awkward to eat, and as a result most of them are thrown away. So, in spite of the modern convenience of pre-cut bread, which, by the way, even a Government Bulletin warns us against, those of us who can't afford any waste and really know the taste of fresh bread will buy loaves whole and slice them in person, as needed. It was not until the year 1823 that anybody spoke up in a cookbook for the vast majority of all eaters, the Have-nots. This was in William Cobbett's Cottage Economy:

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