While life and taste remain, to thee my heart is clinging.
Who a pie would make, first his apple slices,
Then he ought to take some cloves and the best of spices,
Grate some lemon rind, butter add discreetly,
Then some sugar mix, but mind,—the pie not made too sweetly.
If a cook of taste be competent to make it,
In the finest paste will enclose and bake it."
During years of foreign travel I have never met a dish so perfect as the American apple pie can be, with cream.
Then look at our puddings; they are richer, sweeter, more varied than any in the world, the English plum-pudding excepted. That is a ponderous dainty, which few can eat. It looks well when dressed with holly and lighted up, but it is not to be eaten every day. Baked bread pudding, carrot pudding, exceedingly delicate, chocolate pudding, cold cabinet-pudding, boiled rice-pudding with custard sauce, poor man's rice-pudding, green-apple pudding, Indian pudding, minute pudding, tapioca pudding, and all the custards boiled and baked with infinite variety of flavour,—these are the every-day luxuries, and they are very great ones, of the American table.
One charming thing about dessert and American dishes is that ladies can make them. They do not flush the face or derange the white apron. They are pleasant things to dally with,—milk and eggs, and spice and sugar. A model kitchen is every lady's delight. In these days of tiles, and marble pastry-boards, and modern improvements, what pretty things kitchens are.