554 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
favour of milk with a good dessertspoonful of cornflour. In 
Alice through the Looking Glass the White Knight invented a 
new pudding during the meat course at dinner. “ What did 
you mean to make it of ?”’ Alice asked. “It began with 
blotting-paper,” the Knight answered; ‘“ not very nice alone, 
but you've no idea what a difference it makes mixing it with 
other things, such as gunpowder, and sealing-wax.” 
“In Hamelin Town” (R. Browning, 1842) ‘the inhabitants 
cling so devotedly to the Pied Piper Legend (Browning’s poem) 
that they take every opportunity of commemorating it, one 
of the ways being by the manufacture of representative rat-like 
doughnuts, which is quite a local industry. The Hamelin Rats 
are made from a fermented dough of so light a character that they 
look almost like biscuits. It is composed of the very coarsest 
kind of flour, and becomes so hard that unless having teeth as 
sharp as the rat itself anyone attempting to eat the dough-nut 
would fail to make an impression thereupon. The tails, and 
paws are put on separately, but the ears are cut, and two 
currants form the eyes, whilst a few stout bristles passed through 
the dough make the rat’s whiskers; the shapes are then baked 
of a dark-brown colour, and glazed; they find a ready sale as 
associated with the legend. 
The Saturday Review has said in cynical mood that “ pie-crust 
has killed more people than drink.” For all persons who lack 
strong digestive powers, especially for the _ sick, pastry, of 
whatever sort, and however well made, is very questionable. 
Puddings, pies, and sweet confections of this character are 
baked, or boiled, at a high temperature, so that changes take 
place in the fats used, with formation of butyric, and other 
unwholesome acids; the flour, too, is altered in condition, and ii a 
pudding or paste is boiled, the mass becomes solidified, and 
tenacious, so that the digestive juices cannot easily penetrate it. 
Goldsmith, who was always at his wit’s end for money, and 
seldom sat at a well-furnished table tells in the Hawnch of 
a enison respecting such feasts as he obtained access to in his 
: doce 
“ At the top a fried liver, and bacon were seen, 
At the bottom was tripe in a swingeing tureen, 
At the sides there was spinach, and pudding made hot, 
At the middle a place where the Pastry—was not.” 
The Pasty, or Turn-over, in truth a Cornish device, originated 
