There is a great fashion, now-a-days, in all papers, to set forth
useful recipes for every imaginable purpose. Every newspaper has its
weekly budget of recipes. Our magazines have a page of original
recipes; and, before long, why should not the _North American Review_,
or the _Edinburgh Review_ come out with their quarterly bill of fare
reciped in full? So practical is our nineteenth century, that our
literary men and women feel it to be a solemn duty to indite novel
recipes for cooking, seasoning, removing stains, curing diseases,
etc.; and why not? If one can invent a sonnet, an elegy, or worse yet,
a poem, and thus draw people’s brains a wool-gathering in the regions
of imagination, ought they not to atone for their license by an
invention equally substantial for the body? Miss Leslie writes a
beautiful story, and a recipe for manipulating lobsters. Miss
Martineau writes travels, political economies and suggestions on plum
pudding. Mrs. Sigourney tunes her lyre with a hand most redolent of
pies, cakes and gingerbread. Such is the aspect of culinary affairs,
and the rights of women, that the day seems at hand when no learning
will sustain a man, and no accomplishments a woman, who does not
understand the art and mystery of cooking. It will be the duty of some
future Heyne to give accurate recipes for all the feasts of Homer’s
heroes, the ingredients of all the Horacian drinking-bouts—the dishes
of Virgil’s fine fellows, as well as the minor matters of armor,
language, manners, and customs; and a good lexicon, Hebrew, Greek, or
Latin, must contain clearly written recipes for all the dishes used by
the people whose language it sets forth. We have been led into this
grand prairie of reflections by a recipe found in a country paper
which unquestionably is _salty_.
“INDIAN BAKED PUDDING.—Indian pudding is good and wholesome, baked.
Scald a quart of milk, and stir in seven table spoonfuls of salt, a
tea-cupful of molasses, and a great spoonful of ginger, or sifted
cinnamon. Bake three or four hours. If you want whey you must be sure
and pour in a little cold milk, after it is all mixed. Try it.”
If Misses Leslie, Childs, etc., refuse to mother such a recipe, with
_no_ Indian meal in it, but _seven_ mortal spoonfuls of salt, then we
will consider it as emanating from Lot’s wife. We are sure if one
should eat many such puddings, he would speedily come to her estate.