154 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
poured over slices of hot toast; sometimes cream is added, 
also mustard, or Worcester sauce. If freely peppered with 
cayenne, it proves of help to hard drinkers when threatened 
with delirium tremens, and serves instead of more drink to 
satisfy their cravings. In Lewis Carroll’s Hunting of the Snark 
the baker, having no fixed name, was called by his companions 
“Toasted Cheese.” The famous ‘Olde Cheshire Cheese” 
Tavern, in Fleet Street, London, is historically associated with 
Johnson, and Goldsmith. Here you may yet see the Doctor's 
chair, and sit where he, and Goldy sat. In The Cheese Isaac 
Bickersteth made an epigram which contains the oft-quoted 
lines :— 
“ Perhaps it was right to dissemble your love : 
But why did you kick me downstairs ? ” 
The fare of the “ Cheshire Cheese,” whilst of the good old English 
sort, is world famous; its steaks and its ham are traditions ; 
but the celebrated pudding, made for two centuries from the 
same recipe, and served every Wednesday and Saturday to an 
appreciative and hungry gathering, is the crowning glory of the 
Old Tavern. This pudding ranges irom fifty, to sixty, seventy, 
or eighty pounds in weight; and gossip has it that in the dim 
past the rare dish was constructed of a hundredweight proportion. 
It is composed of a fine light crust, in a huge basin, and there are 
entombed therein beeisteaks, kidneys, oysters, larks, mushrooms, 
with wondrous spices, and gravies the secret of which is known 
only to the compounder. The boiling process takes from 
sixteen to twenty hours, and the scent of it on a windy day has 
been known to reach as far as the Stock Exchange. The process 
of carving it is as solemn a ceremony as the cutting the mistletoe 
with the golden sickle of the Druids. Old William, for many 
years the head waiter, could only be seen in his real glory on 
pudding days. He used to consider it his duty to go round the 
tables insisting that the guests should have second, and third,— 
aye, with wonder be it spoken !—and fourth helpings! “ Any 
gentleman say ‘ Pudden ?’” was his constant query ; and this 
habit was not broken when a crusty customer growled, “ No 
gentleman says *‘ Pudden.’” William, like most of his customers. 
has passed away, but a room remains consecrated to his memory - 
and is still called by his name. 
Cheddar Cheese, made chiefly at Pennard, contains from 
