BUTTER.
The illustrious Ude, or some one constituting him the authority for the nonce, has sneered at the English as being a nation having twenty religions, and only one sauce,—melted butter. A French commentator has added, that we have nothing polished about us but our steel, and that our only ripe fruit is baked apples. Guy Pantin traces the alleged dislike of the French of his day for the English, to the circumstance that the latter poured melted butter over their roast veal. The French execration is amusingly said to have been further directed against us, on account of the declared barbarism of eating oyster-sauce with rump-steak, and “poultice,” as they cruelly characterize “bread sauce,” with pheasant. But, to return to butter:—the spilling of it has more than once been elucidative of character. When, in the days of the old régime, an English servant accidentally let a drop or two of melted butter fall upon the silken suit of a French petit-maître, the latter indignantly declared that “blood and butter were an Englishman’s food.” The conclusion was illogical, but the arguer was excited. Lord John Townshend manifested better temper and wit, when a similar accident befell him, as he was dining at a friend’s table, where the coachman was the only servant in waiting. “John,” said my Lord, “you should never grease anything but your coach-wheels.”
It was an old popular error that a pound of butter might consist of any number of ounces. It is an equally popular error, that a breakfast cannot be, unless bread and butter be of it. Marcus Antoninus breakfasted on dry biscuits; and many a person of less rank, and higher worth, is equally incapable of digesting any thing stronger. Solid breakfasts are only fit for those who have much solid exercise to take after it; otherwise heartburn may be looked for. Avoid new bread and spongy rolls; look on muffins and crumpets as inventions of men of worse than sanguinary principles, and hot buttered toast as of equally wicked origin. Dry toast is the safest morning food, perhaps, for persons of indifferent powers of digestion; or they may substitute for it the imperial fashion set by Marcus Antoninus. Of liquids I may next speak; and in this our ancient friend, Tea, takes the precedence.