MATERIALS FOR BREAKFAST.
And first of milk. If Britons really have, what they so much boast of,—a birth-right,—the least disputable article of that class, is their undoubted right to that lacteal treasure which their mother holds from Nature, on trust, for their use and advantage.
It is a curious fact, that aristocratic infants are those who are most ordinarily deprived of this first right of their citizenship, and are sent to slake their thirst and fortify their thews and sinews at ochlocratic breasts. Jean Jacques Rousseau was not often right, but he was triumphantly so when he denounced the young and healthy mother, let her rank be what it might, who made surrender of what should be one of the purest of a young mother’s pleasures, and flung her child to the bosom of a stranger. Who can say what bad principles may not have been drawn in with these “early breakfasts?” Certainly this vicarious exercise of the office of maternity is an abomination; and the abomination of having one’s child suckled by a mercenary stranger can only be next in intensity to that of having him——but let us keep to “Table Traits.”
Milk is too popularly known to need description; but it is not all that is sold under that name that comes from the cow. The cow with one arm, that produces what fresh medical students call the aqua pumpaginis, has very much to do with the dairies of London. Metropolitan milk-maids are not as unsophisticated as the milk-maids of the olden time; if, indeed, maids or milk were particularly pure even then; for milk was a propitiatory offering to Mercury, and if ever there was a deity who loved mischief, why, Dan Mercury was the one.
In Rome milk was used as a cosmetic, and for baths as well as beverage. Five hundred asses supplied the bath and toilette-vases of the Empress Poppæa; and some dozen or two were kept to maintain the decaying strength of Francis I. Of course, asses’ milk became fashionable in Paris immediately, just as bolster cravats did with us, when the Regent took to them in order to conceal a temporary disease in the neck.
“Oil of milk” and “cow-cheese” were classical names for butter,—a substance which was not known in either Greece or Rome until comparatively late periods. Greece received it from Asia, and Rome knew it not as an article of food until the legionaries saw the use to which it was applied by the German matrons. The Scythians, like the modern Bedouins, were great butter-consumers. Their churners were slaves, captured in war, and blinded before they were chained to the sticks beside the tub, at which, with sightless orbs, they were set to work.
There have been seasons when, as now in Abyssinia, butter has been burned in the lamps in churches, instead of oil. The “butter-tower” of the cathedral at Rouen owes its distinctive appellation to its having been built from the proceeds of a tax levied in return for permissions to eat butter at uncanonical times; so that the tower is a monument of the violation of the ecclesiastical canons. But there is great licence in these matters; and chapels in Ireland have been constructed with money raised by putting up Moore’s erotic works to be raffled for, at half-a-crown a ticket!
Goats, cows, sheep, asses, and mares have all contributed their milk towards the making of cheese; and national prejudice has run so high on the question of superiority, that as many broken heads have been the result, as there have been rivulets of blood spilt at Dinant on the question of copper kettles. The Phrygian cheese is said to have owed its excellence to the fact, that it was made of asses’ and mares’ milk mixed together. I doubt, however, if the strong-smelling Phrygian cheese was equal to our Stilton,—which, by the way, is not made at Stilton,—and whose ripeness has been judiciously assisted by the addition of a pint of Madeira. Delicate persons at Rome breakfasted on bread and cheese,—principally goat cheese. It was administered, on the same principle that we prescribe rump-steak, as strengthening. People in rude health flourished in spite of it, and therefore ailing people must, it was thought, be invigorated because of it. However, our own system is less open to objection than that of the ancient faculty.
I do not know whether mothers will consider it complimentary or not; but it is a fact, that the milk of asses more nearly resembles human milk than any other. Like the human milk, it contains more saccharine matter than that of the cow, and deposits a large proportion of curd by mere repose.
Milk is easily assimilated, nourishes quickly, and but slightly excites to vascular action. It is stringent, however, and has a tendency to create acidity; but an addition of oatmeal gruel will correct both these matters. Suet, inserted in a muslin bag, and simmered with the milk, is of highly nourishing quality; but it is sometimes more than weak stomachs can bear. Lime-water with milk is recommended as sovereign against the acidity which milk alone is apt to create in feeble stomachs.
Eggs have been as violently eulogized as they have been condemned, and both in extremes. In some parts of Africa, where they are very scarce, and the Priests are very fond of them, it has been revealed to the people, that it is sacrilege for any but clerical gentlemen to eat eggs! The lay scruple, if I may so speak, is quieted by the assurance, that, though the sacred hens produce only for the servants at the altar, the latter never address themselves to the food in question, without the whole body of the laity profiting thereby! I suppose that Dissenters naturally abound in this part of Africa. There is nothing so unsatisfactory as vicarious feeding. Feeding is a duty which every man is disposed to perform for himself, whether it be expected of him or not. All the eggs in Africa, passing the œsophagus of a Priest, could hardly nourish a layman, even though the eggs were as gigantic as those which an old author says are presented by ladies in the moon to their profoundly delighted husbands, and from which spring young babies, six feet high, and men at all points.
If the matrons in the moon were thus remarkable in this respect, the Egyptian shepherds on earth were not less so in another: they had a singular method of cooking eggs, without the aid of fire. They laid them in a sling, and then applied so violent a rotatory motion thereto, that they were heated and cooked by the very friction of the air through which they passed!
Diviners and dreamers dealt largely in eggs. Livia was told, just before the birth of Tiberius, to hatch one in her bosom, and that the sex of the chick would foretell that of the expected little stranger. In Rome and Greece eggs were among the introductory portions of every banquet. But Rome knew only of twenty different manners of cooking them. What an advance in civilization has been made in Paris, which, according to Mr. Robert Fudge, boasts of six hundred and eighty-five ways to dress eggs!
Eggs, filled with salt, used to be eaten by curious maidens, after a whole day’s fasting, on St. Agnes’ Eve: the profit of such a meal was, that she who partook of it had information, in her after-dreams, of that very interesting personage, her future husband!
There is a story narrated of a Welsh weaver, that he could tell, by the look of the egg, whether the bird would be worth any thing or not. He reminds me of an old Monk I heard of, when in Prague, who, on a man passing him, could tell whether he were an honest man, or a knave, by the smell! But the Welsh weaver was even more clever than this. He could not only judge of eggs, but hatch them. A badger once carried off his sitting-hen, and no plumed nurse was near to supply her place. The weaver, thereupon, took the eggs (there were six of them) to bed with him, and in about two days hatched them all! Of this brood he only reared a cock and a hen. The cock was a gallant bird, that used to win flitches of bacon for his master at cock-fights; and the hen was as prolific as Mrs. Partlett could have desired. The result was, that they kept their step-mother, the weaver, in bacon and eggs for many a month; and the two days spent in bed were not so entirely thrown away as might, at first sight, appear.
Let it be understood that eggs may lose their nourishment by cooking. The yolk, raw or very slightly boiled, is exceedingly nutritious. It is, moreover, the only food for those afflicted with jaundice. When an egg has been exposed to a long continuance of culinary heat, its nature is entirely changed. A slightly-boiled egg, however, is more easy of digestion than a raw one. The best accompaniment for a hard egg is vinegar. Raw eggs have a laxative effect; hard-boiled, the contrary. There is an idiosyncrasy in some persons, which shows itself in the utter disgust which they experience, not only against the egg itself, but also against any preparation of which it forms an ingredient, however slight. Eggs should always be liberally accompanied by bread;—of which I will now say a few words, and first of