52 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
Miss\ Bates, “makes such a shocking breakfast, but about the 
middle of the day she gets hungry, and there is nothing she likes 
so well as these baked Apples, and they are extremely wholesome, 
for I took the opportunity the other day to ask Dr. Perry; 
and when I brought out the baked Apples the other afternoon, 
and hoped our friends would be so obliging as to take some, 
* Qh,’ said Mr. Churchill, ‘there is nothing in the way of fruit 
half so good; and these are the finest-looking home-baked 
Apples I ever saw in my life.’ ‘ Indeed, they are very delightful 
Apples,’ was the reply, ‘ only we do not have them baked more 
than twice, but Mr. Woodhouse made us promise to have them 
baked three times.” 
Biffins are Apples peculiar to Norfolk, being so called from 
their close resemblance in colour to raw beef. Dickens, in his 
charming little story, Boots at the “‘ Holly Tree Inn,” tells that 
when Mrs. Harry Walmers, junior, was overcome with fatigue, 
the restorative which Boots was desired to procure was a Norfolk 
biffin. “I think a Norfolk biffin would rouse her, Cobbs,” 
said Master Harry. This particular fruit was formerly dried 
in the oven until shrunk up, and leathery. When cooked it 
was stewed in syrup, until soft, and of its original size, being 
esteemed as a delicacy by the youngsters when they came down 
to dessert. In France, be it noted, these biffins are called 
** Pommes bonne femme.” 
Apples, when stored in a room, absorb oxygen from the air, 
and give off carbonic acid gas, so that after a while the atmosphere 
of this room would extinguish a lighted candle brought into it, 
as likewise the life of a small animal. But such an atmosphere 
tends to preserve the fruit, because decay is arrested through 
the deficiency of oxygen; therefore an apple-room should be 
air-tight. “The rotten apple,” says a suggestive old proverb, 
“injures its neighbours.” Again, Shakespeare has told us in 
Henry V: “Faith, as you say, there’s small choice in rotten 
apples.” In The Life of Samuel Johnson it is related that the 
direction of his untutored studies was determined at sixteen or 
seventeen, by finding in his father’s bookseller’s shop at Lichfield 
a folio of Petrarch on a shelf, where he was looking for apples. 
The juices of Apples become matured and lose their rawness 
by keeping the fruit a certain time. These juices (as likewise 
those of the pear, the peach, the plum, and other such fruits), 
when taken without any addition of cane sugar, diminish acidity 
