FRUIT. 217 



amount of the nutritious principle, and tliey are easily and 

 quickly digested, and promote the growth and health of the 

 body. Baked or roasted, they are excellent as a dessert, or 

 eaten with milk and bread. Fried with butter or lard, or stewed 

 with white sugar, they make a fine relish, eaten with fresh or 

 salted meats. With cider molasses, they when stewed, make 

 the old-fashioned "apple sauce," the favorite dish of our ances- 

 tors a hundred years ago. And the article when properly made 

 is just as good now as ever. Apple pies, tarts, jellies, &c., form 

 no mean part of the delicacies of every well-ordered pantry. 

 The dried fruit finds a variety of uses in the hands of the 

 skilful housewife, in the preparation of numerous delicious 

 dishes, when the raw fruit cannot be obtained. 



APPLE CIDER OR WINE. 



Every latitude produces those fruits and acids conducive to 

 the health of the inhabitants. In tropical regions, where great 

 heat prevails, very acidulous fruits are required, and they have 

 the lime and the lemon. In the frigid zone, where intense cold 

 prevails, few acids are required, for the inhabitants need none. 

 They drink the oils and eat the fatty flesh of the whale, walrus, 

 and seal, and grow rotund and obese, and so are protected from 

 freezing. In these " temperate reg-ions,'' we seem to need not 

 too much fatty food, nor too acidulated fruits or drinks. So 

 we have the grape, cranberry, currant and apple, moderately 

 acidulous in their character. Apple cider, the fermented juice 

 of the apple, when properly prepared, is not only a grateful and 

 healthful acidulous beverage, taken at proper times, and in 

 proper quantities, but it takes the place of imported wines and 

 brandies in the cure of many ailments incident to the human 

 system, and peculiar in these latitudes. 



In cases of indigestion, from a lack of a proper secretion of 

 the gastric juice, it gives tone and vigor to the stomach, and 

 helps to restore its normal functions. In the latter stages of 

 typhoid and bilious fevers it is quite as useful as most foreign 

 wines or brandies, and very much more so than the vile prepa- 

 rations palmed off upon the public, purporting to be the gen- 

 uine imported articles. The sweet cider, boiled down to a 

 syrup, enters into the composition of many delicious articles of 

 food. Brandy distilled from the fermented wine is a pure 



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