Project Gutenberg's A Romance Of Tompkins Square, by Thomas A. Janvier

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Title: A Romance Of Tompkins Square
1891

Author: Thomas A. Janvier

Illustrator: W. T. Smedley

Release Date: December 10, 2007 [EBook #23808]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A ROMANCE OF TOMPKINS SQUARE ***

Produced by David Widger

A ROMANCE OF TOMPKINS SQUARE.

By Thomas A. Janvier

Copyright, 1891, by Harper & Brothers

Whether the honey shall be brought to the boiling-point slowly or
rapidly; whether it shall boil a long time or a short time; when and in
what quantities the flour shall be added; how long the kneading shall
last; in what size of earthen pot the dough shall be stored, and what
manner of cover upon these pots best preserves the dough against the
assaults of damp and mould; whether the pots shall be half-buried in the
cool earth of the cellar or ranged on shelves to be freely exposed
to the cool cellar air--all these several matters are enshrouded in a
mystery that is penetrated only by the elect few of Nuernberg bakers by
whom perfect lebkuchen is made. And the same is true of the Brunswick
bakers, who call this rare compound honigkuchen, and of the makers of
pferfferkuchen, as it is called by the bakers of Saxony.

Nor does the mystery end here. This first stage in the making of
lebkuchen is but means to an end, and for the compassing of that
end--the blending and the baking of the finished and perfect
honey-cake--each master-baker has his own especial recipe, that has come
down to him from some ancestral baker of rare parts, or that by his own
inborn genius has been directly inspired. And so, whether the toothsome
result be Nuernberger lebkuchen, or Brunsscheiger peppernotte, or Basler
leckerly, the making of it is a mystery from first to last.

It was because of this mystery that the life of Gottlieb Brekel had been
imbittered for nearly twenty years--ever since, in fact, his first essay
in the compounding of Nuernberger lebkuchen had been made. He was but a
young baker then: now he was an old one, and notwithstanding the guarded
praise of friends and the partial approval of