However, they are innumerable, the omelet family, plain, and with parsley, the fancy omelet, and the creamy omelet. Learn to make every sort from any cooking-book, and your family will never starve.
Conquer the art of toasting bacon with a fork; it is a fine relish for your egg, no matter how cooked. To fry good English bacon in a pan until it is hard, is to disfigure one of Fortune's best gifts.
Study above all things to learn how to produce good toast; not all the cooks in the great kingdom or empire or republic of France (whatever it may be at this minute) can produce a good slice of toast. They call it pain rôti, and well they may; for after the poor bread has been burned they put it in the oven and roast it. No human being can eat it. It is taken away and grated up for sawdust.
They make delicious toast in England, and in a few houses in America. The bread should be a little stale, the slice cut thin, the fire perfect, a toasting-fork should hold it before coals, which are as bright as Juno's eyes. It should be a delicate brown, dropped on a hot plate, fresh butter put on at once, and then, ah! 't would tempt the dying anchorite to eat. Then conquer cream toast; and there is an exalted substance called Boston brown bread which is delicious, toasted and boiled in milk.
Muffins are generally failures in these United States. Why, after conquering the English, we cannot conquer their muffins, I do not know. They are well worth repeated efforts. We make up on our hot biscuits and rolls; and as for our waffles, griddle-cakes, and Sally Lunns, we distance competition. Do not believe that they are unhealthy! Nothing that is well cooked is unhealthy to everybody; and all things which are good are unhealthy to somebody. Every one must determine for himself what is healthy and unhealthy.
A foreign breakfast in France consists of eggs in some form,—frequently au beurre noir, which is butter melted in a little vinegar and allowed to brown,—a stew of vegetables and meat, a little cold meat (tongue, ham, or cold roast beef,) a very good salad, a small dish of stewed fruit or a little pastry, cheese, fruit, and coffee, and always red wine.
Or perhaps an omelet or egg au plat (simply dropped on a hot plate), mutton cutlets, and fried potatoes, perhaps stewed pigeons, with spinach or green peas, or trout from the lake, followed by a beefsteak, with highly flavoured Alpine strawberries or fresh apricots or figs, then all eating is done for the day, until seven o'clock dinner. This is of course the mid-day déjeûner à la fourchette. At the earlier breakfast a Swiss hotel offers only coffee, rolls, butter, and honey.
All sorts of stews—kidney, liver, chicken, veal, and beef—are good, and every sort of little pan-fish. In our happy country we can add the oyster stew, or the lobster in cream, the familiar sausage, and the hereditary hash; if any one knows how to make good corned-beef hash she need not fear to entertain the king.
There are those who know how to broil a chicken, but they are few,—"Amongst the few, the immortal names which are not born to die." There are others, also few, who know how to broil ham so that it will not be hard, and on it to drop the egg so that it be like Saturn,—a golden ball in a ring of silver.
Amongst the good dishes and cheap dishes which I have seen served in France for a breakfast I recommend lambs' feet in a white sauce, with a suspicion of onion.