spirits up to the right level. Study to be a man, or a woman, although
breakfastless. To be thrown in the first round of the day by the
sluggish flesh and the devil of ill-humor, before the world has a
chance to grapple with you, is cowardly and sinful.
One word of friendly counsel to my fellow brain-workers, who are also
sister-women, may not be amiss in this connection:
Never write or study in the morning until you have broken your fast. A
physiologist of note estimates that the draft on the nervous forces and
the eyesight of working on an empty stomach is equivalent to the labor
of lifting thirty pounds dead weight.
However this may be, stay that long-suffering organ with a few
morsels—a slice of bread and butter, moistened by a cup of tea, if
your rising is in advance of that of the rest of the household and you
meditate an hour’s work before the family breakfast.
BREAKFAST FRUITS
[Illustration]
The imported fashion of beginning breakfast with fresh fruit has become
an American custom. The assuasive effect of the generous juices upon
the coat of the stomach, usually clogged at early morning with a mucous
deposit, is a wholesome preparation for digestive processes—a “toner”
to just-awakened energies. To commit suddenly to the long-suffering
stomach, as yet inert, and but dimly aware of what is expected of it,
a “feed” of beefsteak, potatoes and hot breads, is always an unwelcome
surprise. Sometimes the abused organ turns with the proverbial blind
wrath of the patient, and revenges itself, if not speedily, surely and
fiercely. It would fain be awakened kindly and gently. To this end,
stay it with oranges, comfort it with apples and grapes.
Oranges
1. Cut in half, crosswise, and dig out the pulp with a silver or gold
orange spoon.
2. They are yet nicer prepared beforehand by running a sharp knife on
the inside, close to the rind, thus severing the membranes that divide
the lobes. Take these membranes out carefully, leaving the pulp in the
two cups of the halved orange. It can be then eaten as easily as a
custard could be. Set on ice until you are ready to serve.
3. Peel the oranges; separate the lobes and cut each into three pieces.
Serve in a chilled glass dish, passing powdered sugar for those who
like it.
Breakfast fruits are far more wholesome when eaten without sugar.
Grapes
Keep them on ice for an hour before sending to table, even in winter,
and scatter cracked ice over and among them. This has the double
advantage of cooling and of cleansing them. Pass grape scissors with
the dish of fruit.
Peaches, pears and apples
Wash and dry pears and apples with a soft cloth. Have a silver fruit
knife at each plate, and let the eaters pare the fruit for themselves.
Peaches should be left with the fur (and bloom) on.
Berries
These should never in any circumstances be sugared in the dish. Let
each person sweeten his portion for himself, after which they should be
eaten immediately, before the sugar has time to draw out the juice and
thereby wither the berries.
Strawberries should be eaten at breakfast with the caps on. Choose the
finest fruit for this meal, using the stem as a handle, and dipping the
berry into powdered sugar, if not sweet enough to be eaten without.
Raspberries and blackberries
Never wash these, or strawberries, unless they are intolerably gritty.
Water is ruin to flavor and integrity, where the more delicate berries
are concerned. Set on ice for an hour or more before sending to table.
Pass sugar for those who wish it, and in helping out each portion avoid
bruising the berries. “Mashed” berries suffer an instant change in
flavor. The air begins at once to act chemically upon the liberated
juices.
Huckleberries and gooseberries
Wash, drain and leave on ice for two hours. Pass sugar with
huckleberries for such as wish it. They are better without at
breakfast. Gooseberries are always eaten without. The large English
varieties are delicious and very healthful.
If cream be eaten with breakfast fruit, it should be as an
after-course—or dessert. It loses character and effect as an assuasive
and persuasive agent.
Melons
Cantelopes and nutmeg melons are prime favorites as an introductory
step to the weightier business of the morning meal. They deserve their
popularity.
Cut those of small and medium size in half; scrape out the seeds and
put a lump of ice in each half. The larger may be divided into thirds,
and a piece of ice laid upon each piece. Pass salt and pepper, also
sugar with them. Many epicures prefer to eat them _au naturel_.
Stewed fruits
In the late winter or early spring-time, when apples are scarce and
dear, and oranges have not yet come to their full plenteousness and
flavor, the human system needs anti-bilious food. Our foremothers
compounded a villainous preventive against spring “humors,” of
sulphur and molasses, stirred together to a cream and administered
before breakfast to each shuddering creature who had pains in the
bones, headache and nausea at rising, and a general sensation of
good-for-nothingness. “Advanced” matrons added cream of tartar to
the villainous preventive, and gave their families to drink of
cream-of-tartar lemonade. According to these wise and worthy women,
“spring fever” was as inseparable from the opening season as robin song
and pussy willow.
Even now, cooling medicines are advised by physicians and believed
in by families. The careful student of hygiene, a science the prime
principle of which is prevention, and not cure, shows us a more
excellent way. The kindly fruits of the earth never merit their name
more truly than when winter is going and spring-time is coming; when
benevolent bile, balked in its rightful channels, becomes a baleful
agency to be fought as an acknowledged foe. In fruit and in succulent
vegetables we find our cooling medicines, “indicated” by the great
physician, Nature. If fresh fruits be wanting, we must accept
substitutes.
Stewed rhubarb
Wash, scrape and cut the stalks into inch lengths. Leave in cold water
for an hour. Put over the fire in the inner vessel of a double boiler,
set in cold water, bring to a boil and simmer gently until tender and
clear. Keep the inner vessel closely covered that the steam may do its
work. Remove from the fire, sweeten to taste—not heavily—turn into a
bowl and cover until cold.
As a breakfast dish, this is refreshing and most wholesome. Cooked as
above, you get the benefit of the anti-bilious juices, undiluted by
water. Set on ice for an hour before eating. Some add a handful of
sultana raisins to the raw rhubarb.
Prunes
Wash and soak for two hours. Drain, put over the fire with just enough
cold water to cover them, and cook tender. Turn out and cover until
cold. Put on the ice for an hour before sending to the table. No sugar
should be added to prunes when they are to be eaten at breakfast time.
They are slightly laxative and anti-bilious.
* * * * *
The unfortunate few who can not begin breakfast with acid fruits “may,
with pleasure and profit, conclude the meal with oranges, apples,
grapes or melons.” One family I know of eats, the year around, fresh
uncooked fruit as a last course to the breakfast that is invariably
inforced with oranges, melons or grapes, each in its season.
And there is not a dyspeptic among them!
BREAKFAST CEREALS
Some dietetists, who are neither cranks nor simpletons, disbelieve in
cereals of whatsoever sort as a first course at breakfast. They urge
that to spread a hot poultice all over the lining of the stomach is to
relax and weaken that organ; that it goes to sleep, as it were, and is
too inert to dispose properly of the rest of the meal.
Others are strenuous in the belief that the act of chewing is necessary
to the proper assimilation of even semi-solids, and since few people
think of chewing porridge, the value of it as nutriment is doubtful.
There is force in the latter demur. Children should be taught to chew
porridge of all kinds, also bread and milk. One zealous dietist insists
that milk—“the one and only perfect food”—ought to be masticated. The
motion of the jaws excites the salivary glands, he says, causing the
flow of a secretion most favorable to digestion.
As to the “hot poultice,” there is a grain of reason in the objection.
As I have explained in urging the propriety of beginning breakfast
with fruit, the coat of the stomach is masked, after the sleep of
the night, by a thin mucus, which interferes with the task of the
digestive agencies. If fruit is not eaten, a draft of cold water, not
iced, will do the work in part. A few swallows of really hot water are
better still. A sip of tea or coffee—or, perhaps, best of all, vichy,
apollinaris or other good mineral water, may precede the nourishing
cereal.
That it is nourishing when the stomach gets hold of it, is undeniable.
Oatmeal builds up bone, and muscle, and brain; Indian meal mush and
hominy are gently laxative and cooling to the blood; preparations of
wheat are less laxative, and therefore safer in hot weather, and for
teething children, than oatmeal in any form. Rice boiled tender in milk
is both palatable and wholesome. Each and all of these should be eaten
with cream, and except as a dessert, never with sugar. Children who
are trained to eat porridge and milk, or cream, without sugar, find
the addition of this unpleasant. It certainly tends to acidity of the
stomach.
Every cereal, with the exception of rice, that needs any cooking
needs a great deal of it. Soaking over night is indispensable to the
excellence of most of them. Four hours of boiling make oatmeal good;
eight hours make it better; twenty-four hours make it “best.”
Oatmeal
Soak over night. Even the varieties which are advertised “to require
no soaking, and but fifteen minutes’ cooking,” are improved by this
process. Turn a deaf ear to the charmer who would persuade you to the
contrary. “Steam cooked” is often a delusion and a snare. Put your
oatmeal into the inner vessel of your farina kettle, cover deep in cold
water, put on the lid and set at the back of the range at bedtime. In
the morning add boiling water, salt to taste, and draw to the front,
filling the outer kettle with hot water. Cook steadily for an hour and
as much longer as you can. My own taste is for oatmeal boiled to a
jelly. It is as far superior to the ordinary preparation of the cereal
as creamed cauliflower is to Dutch cabbage.
Send to table and eat with cream.
Never throw away oatmeal “left-overs.” Cook again, and yet again,
always in a double boiler.
Hominy
Soak all night; cover with boiling water, slightly salted, in the
morning, and cook for an hour. A delicious preparation of hominy is
effected by cooking it in plenty of salted water until tender, turning
off the water and supplying its place with cold milk. Bring to a boil
and serve.
Cracked wheat
Cook as you would oatmeal. An hour’s boiling suffices.
Milk porridge
Heat a pint of milk to boiling. Into a pint of cold milk stir four
tablespoonfuls of flour, and when this is smooth stir it into the hot
milk. Cook in a double boiler for an hour, add salt to taste, and serve
with cream.
Meal-and-flour porridge
Mix together two tablespoonfuls of Indian meal and the same quantity of
flour, wet them with cold water, and stir into a cup of boiling water.
Cook in a double boiler for half an hour, stirring often. Add salt, and
beat in slowly a pint of scalding milk, cook, stirring constantly for
fifteen minutes longer. Serve with cream.
Brewis (as made by our grandmothers)
Dry bread in the oven and crush with the rolling-pin into crumbs. Heat
two cups of slightly salted milk, and when it boils, stir in a cupful
of the dried crumbs. Add a tablespoonful of butter, and cook, beating
steadily for five minutes. Serve hot with cream, or an abundance of
sweet milk.
Rice
Wash a cupful of rice in two waters, then drop it slowly into two
quarts of salted boiling water. The water should be at a galloping
boil. Do not stir the rice once during the twenty minutes in which it
must cook steadily. At the end of that time test a grain to see if it
is tender, and if it is, turn the rice into a colander; shake this hard
that the air may reach all the kernels, and set in the open oven five
minutes before dishing. Each grain should stand separate from the rest.
This is the South Carolinian way of cooking rice, and the one and only
right way.
Indian meal mush
Moisten a cupful of corn-meal with enough cold water to make it into a
paste. Stir this paste into a quart of salted, boiling water, and cook,
beating it hard and often, for an hour at least. If the mush becomes
too stiff, add from time to time more boiling water.
Farina
A good, inexpensive cereal, which seldom appears upon the breakfast
table. Yet it should have honorable mention.
Soak overnight. In the morning, stir it into boiling water, slightly
salted, and cook half an hour, stirring up well from the bottom.
Each patented breakfast cereal has its champion. It would be invidious
to name any of them here. Nearly all are founded upon wheat, corn,
rye, barley or rice. Each is accompanied by full directions for the
preparations of the same for the table.
Oatmeal, rice, mush, farina—any of the cereals that must be cooked
before they are eaten—are delicious and nutritious when committed to
the “hay-store” of which we are hearing so much.
The soaked cereal is cooked for five minutes after the boil begins, and
the bubbling pot, closely covered, is set immediately in a nest made by
hollowing out the hay with which a box is packed. The hay is pressed
closely all around the pot, an old quilt is spread over all and the
whole left untouched for five, six or ten hours. The cereal will be hot
when served, and tender beyond compare.
BREAKFAST BREADS
Beginning with the most important and difficult form of bread-making,
I offer three methods of preparing and baking the wholesome home-made
loaf, fondly recollected by those whose early lives were spent in
regions where bakers’ sawdusty cubes and parallelograms were not
delivered at the back door in lieu of the genuine staff of life.
Potato sponge bread (No. 1)
Boil and mash, while hot, four potatoes of fair size, beating into them
a tablespoonful, each, of cottolene or other fat and of white sugar.
Beat smooth, adding, gradually, one and one-half pints of lukewarm
water. Strain through a colander upon a pint of sifted flour. When you
have a lumpless batter, add half a cake of compressed yeast, dissolved
in four tablespoonfuls of warm water.
This is your sponge. Set in a moderately warm place in a bread-bowl
with a perforated cover. If you have not this cover, throw a double
fold of mosquito net or cheese-cloth over the bowl.
In four hours in summer, and six in winter, the sponge should be light
and the top broken by air bubbles. Have ready in another deep bowl
or tray five pints of dried flour of the best quality, sifted with a
tablespoonful of salt. Hollow a space in the middle and work the sponge
gradually into the flour with a clean, cool, bare hand, well floured to
hinder the dough from sticking to it.
The dough should be just stiff enough to handle. When you can lift it
to the kneading-board without spilling, it is ready. Rinse the bowl
out with a little warm water and work into the dough in order to get
all the sponge. Flour the board and knead the ball of dough, always
working from the outside of the ball toward the middle. After ten
minutes’ hard work, turning the dough over and over and around and
around, the dough should be so elastic that if you deal it a smart blow
with your fist the indentation will fill up again instantly.
Return to the mixing bowl, cover and leave as before, out of drafts in
a steady temperature. When it has risen to double the original bulk—in
four or six hours—return to the board and knead again, quickly and
vigorously, for eight or ten minutes. Make into loaves and set to rise
in pans, filling each half-full. Cover with a cloth, let all rise for
an hour, or until the pans are two-thirds full, and bake.
Have a steady fire, with coal enough to last until the baking is over.
See that the ovens are “just right” by holding your naked arm in one.
If you can hold it there comfortably for one whole minute and not more,
you may put in the bread. Or try the oven with a little flour put
upon a tin plate and set well back in the closed oven. It should be
delicately touched with brown in five minutes if the oven be right.
In ten minutes open the oven door very cautiously, and if you see the
pans filled to the top, cover with light-brown “grocer’s paper” to
prevent the crust from hardening before the heart of the loaf is done.
Ten minutes before the hour for baking is up remove the papers and let
the top crust brown.
Turn out the loaves carefully upon a cloth, propping them against a pan
or other clean object, that they may not get sodden in cooling. Do not
put into the bread-box until they are entirely cold. The box should
have a cloth in the bottom, and another thrown over the bread before
the box is closed.
Bread with plain sponge (No. 2)
Chop a tablespoonful of cottolene or other fat, or butter, into a quart
of flour; wet with a quart of warm water; add a tablespoonful of sugar,
and half a yeast-cake dissolved in warm water. Beat all together _hard_
for ten minutes, as you would cake batter. Cover, and set aside to rise
as with potato sponge. In the morning work into two quarts of salted
flour and proceed as directed in last recipe.
Milk bread (No. 1)
Sift two quarts of flour with a tablespoonful of sugar and an even
teaspoonful of salt. Have ready a pint of boiling water into which you
have stirred an even tablespoonful of butter. Add, while the water
is boiling, two cups of milk, and take from the fire at once. When a
little more than blood-warm, stir into the milk-and-water half a cake
of compressed yeast, dissolved in half a cupful of warm water. Make a
hole in the sifted flour, pour in the mixture and work quickly with a
wooden spoon to a soft dough. Flour your hands, make the dough into a
manageable ball and knead hard and steadily for ten minutes. Let the
dough rise to double the original bulk in your covered bread-bowl, make
into loaves when you have kneaded it for five minutes, and proceed as
already directed.
Milk bread (No. 2)
Sift two quarts of flour into a large bowl and stir into it a
teaspoonful, each, of salt and sugar. Into this flour stir a pint of
warm milk, to which has been added a scant tablespoonful of melted
butter, a pint of warm water, and half a yeast cake dissolved in a gill
of blood-warm water. Work to a dough; turn upon a floured pastry-board
and knead for fifteen minutes. Put the dough in the bread-raiser and
set to rise over night. Early in the morning divide into loaves, knead
each for five minutes, put the loaves into greased pans and set in a
warm place to rise for an hour before baking in a steady oven. Cover
the bread for the first half-hour it is in the oven. It should be baked
in an hour.
Whole wheat bread (No. 1)
Dissolve a cake of yeast in half a cupful of warm water. Pour two
cups of boiling water upon two cups of milk, and stir into them a
teaspoonful, each, of salt and sugar. When they are about blood-warm
add the yeast. Into this stir a quart of whole wheat flour. Of course,
flour varies in its thickening powers, but there should be enough to
make a good batter. Beat hard for five minutes, then stir in more flour
until you have a dough that is as soft as it can be handled. Knead for
ten minutes on a floured board and set to rise for three hours. Knead
again for five minutes; make into loaves and let these rise. When
light, bake. If the loaves are small they will bake in three-quarters
of an hour.
Whole wheat bread (No. 2)
One tablespoonful of cottolene or other fat and the same of sugar.
One cup, each, of boiling water and of hot (not boiling) milk. One
yeast-cake dissolved in half a cup of warm water. One cup of white
flour and three cups of whole wheat flour, or enough to make a soft
dough. Knead for ten minutes; cover and let it rise until it is twice
its original bulk. Make into small loaves; let it rise for an hour, or
until very puffy, and bake.
Graham bread (No. 1)
Set a sponge over night, as for white bread, and in the morning work
into it a cup of salted whole wheat flour, three cups of graham flour
and three tablespoonfuls of molasses. Knead long and hard, and set to
rise. When very light make into loaves and set in a warm place for an
hour longer. Bake in an even oven. The loaves should be covered with
thick wrapping-paper during the first half-hour they are in the oven,
then allowed to brown. This bread is especially nice when made with a
potato sponge, keeping fresh and sweet much longer than when the plain
sponge is used.
Graham bread (No. 2)
Make a sponge as for white bread, over night, and in the morning add
to it three scant tablespoonfuls of molasses and enough graham flour
to make a soft dough. Knead thoroughly, and after forming into loaves
and putting these into well-greased pans, set them to rise. When risen,
bake in a tolerably hot oven.
Old-fashioned rye bread
Dissolve half a cake of yeast in a quarter-cup of lukewarm milk, with
a small teaspoonful of white sugar. Pour this into a wooden bowl, add
a pint of lukewarm water, a heaping teaspoonful, each, of salt and
caraway seed, and a pint of rye flour. Stir well with a wooden spoon
and set to rise in a warm place for two hours. When sufficiently risen
it will be full of bubbles. Add then flour enough to make a very stiff
dough. Beat this for at least ten minutes and set to rise for two hours
more. Knead on a floured board, let it rise in the pan again until it
begins to crack. Dip your hand in cold water, wet the loaf and put it
into the oven. It must bake one hour. Do not open the door for ten
minutes after it goes in. The oven should be very hot at first, and as
soon as the bread is browned it should be covered with stout paper.
If you like, you may omit the caraway seeds. Some people dislike them
exceedingly. Others would not relish rye bread “all of ye olden time”
without them.
Rye and Indian bread
Make a soft sponge of potatoes, or a plain sponge. (See Bread No. 2.)
When light, sift together two cupfuls of rye flour with one of Indian
meal, a teaspoonful of salt, an even teaspoonful of soda. Make a
hole in the middle, pour in the sponge, and when the ingredients are
thoroughly incorporated beat in half a cupful of molasses. Should the
molasses thin the dough into a batter, add rye flour. Knead until it is
as light as a rubber ball, set aside in a covered bread-bowl and let it
rise six hours. Work ten minutes more, make into loaves, and when they
are well up in the world bake in a slow oven. The loaves will require
three hours to bake properly. Cover with paper for the first two hours.
The dear old grandaunt from whom I got this ancient and honorable
recipe had baked her “rye and Indian” for fifty years in the brick
oven of a homestead two hundred years old. She covered her loaves with
leaves from an oak near the door. The oak overshadowed a well dug in
1640.
Steamed Boston brown bread
Mix thoroughly a cup, each, of graham flour, wheat flour and corn-meal,
and stir in a teaspoonful of salt. Warm together a cup of milk, in
which is dissolved a small teaspoonful of baking soda, and a teacupful
of molasses. Pour over the mixed flours and meal a cupful of boiling
water, and then add the warmed milk and molasses. Beat hard and long,
and turn into a greased pudding-mold with a closely-fitting top. Cook
in an outer vessel of boiling water for three hours. Remove from the
water, take the cover from the mold and set in the oven for ten or
fifteen minutes, or until the bread is dry about the edges. Turn out,
wrap in a napkin, and send to the table.
“Salt-rising” bread (No. 1)
(An old Virginia recipe)