BREAD. 119 
and butter, and good coffee.” Nine persons out of ten, when 
they call a man an epicure mean it as a sort of reproach, as one 
who is not content with everyday food, one whom plain fare 
would fail to satisfy; but Grimod de la Reyniere, the most 
famous gourmet of his day, author of Almanach des Gourmands, 
(Paris, 1812), said: ‘A true epicure can dine well from one 
dish, provided it be excellent of its kind. Yes! excellence is 
the object to be aimed at; if it be but potatoes and salt, let 
the potatoes be mealy. and the salt ground fine.” Thackeray 
declared an epicure to be “ one who never tires of brown bread, 
and fresh butter.” 
Fried Bread is a good, homely, nutritious dish. ‘‘ Take slices 
of brown Bread, fry them a nice brown with some dripping 
(either of beef, mutton, or fowl), and serve warm, with pepper.” 
“There was a Prince of Lubberland, 
A potentate of high command: 
Ten thousand bakers did attend him, 
Ten thousand brewers did befriend him ; 
These brought him kissing crusts and those 
Brought him small beer before he rose.’’* 
The Art of Cookery. 
“* Likewise a few rounds of buttered toast,” said Mrs. Gamp, 
when giving her orders for her tea to Jonas Chuzzlewit’s servant, 
“ first cuttin’ off the crustes in consequence of tender teeth, and 
not too many on ’em, which Gamp hisself, being in liquor, struck 
out four at one blow,—two single, and two double, as wos took 
by Mrs. Harris for a keepsake, and is carried in her pocket at 
this present hour along wi’ two cramp-bones, a bit of ginger, 
and a grater like a blessed infant’s shoe in tin, with a small heel 
to put the nutmeg in.” “ Toast and water is a friend, a sick- 
room ally. It is as cooling as the wind of the morning across 
fields of dew.’ Again, toast swimming in beef-tea constitutes 
the first solid food that a convalescent patient may take. 
For Brown Bread soup, stew half a pound of brown bread- 
crumbs in half a pint of light beer, and half a pint of water ; 
when these are well blended, add half a pound of brown sugar, 
and half a pound of stewed French plums; boil all together, 
and serve hot. Whipped cream will improve the soup, if suitable. 
In Mrs. Gaskell’s Cranford we read of “‘ Bread-jelly, for which 
* In imitation of Horace’s Art of Poetry (de arte Poetica), by the author 
of Tale of a Tub, (W. King, 1709.) ‘‘Coquus omnia miscet ” (Juvenal). 
