52 The Connecticut Pomological Society 



a great many people who say they cannot eat strawberries 

 and strawberry shortcake. I will venture the opinion that 

 the reason for such inability is unripe fruit and poorly made 

 shortcake. Have you ever eaten a piece of shortcake at a 

 restaurant, with the cake three-quarters to an inch thick, 

 with only one layer of strawberries, and they not near enough 

 together to be neighbors, and the berries not half ripe? And 

 after eating the same you have felt as though some one had 

 dumped a load of lead into your stomach. If you have not, 

 I have, and paid my twenty or twenty-five cents for same, 

 and tried to make myself believe for a little while only that 

 I had been eating fruit. I very soon found out that I had 

 been eating one of the most indigestible compounds made of 

 lard and flour, and I felt like one who thought the next best 

 thing to do was to take an emetic, and offer my little prayer> 

 "Lord, forgive me this time, and I will never do so again." 

 I will venture to tell you how to eat strawberries. 



First, for a family of four, not less than four quarts of 

 berries each day, and they to be thoroughly ripe. I discard 

 all of the very sour kinds. Please do not eat warm bread or 

 biscuit with berries. 



Next, how to make a shortcake. Make a plain biscuit 

 cake shortened with butter. Roll as thin as possible, and 

 bake in three layers, a little butter spread over each laj'er to 

 prevent sticking together, and bake quickly in a hot oven 

 until brown. One hour before the cake is ready, have pre- 

 pared two large quarts of strawberries which have been cut 

 in two, and sugar put on to them. When the cake is baked, 

 separate the layers and place in a deep earthen dish, and 

 cover each layer with the berries, adding cream if you wish, 

 and cover tightly with a plate; set the same in the oven 

 with the door left open, and when ready for dessert one 

 quarter of this will make one feel as if he were dining at a 

 king's table, for you have not been eating a lot of stuf?y 

 shortcake with hardly any fruit but lots of fruit and very 

 little cake. 



1 have been telling you how I eat my strawberries. In 

 fact, that is the way we make our shortcake for peaches and 

 blackberries. Perhaps right here I might say that we eat 



