,--by which I mean to designate all
pleasing and complicated compounds of sweets and spices, devised not for
health or nourishment, and strongly suspected of interfering with
both,--mere tolerated gratifications of the palate, which we eat, not
with the expectation of being benefited, but only with the hope of not
being injured by them. In this large department rank all sorts of cakes,
pies, preserves, ices, etc. I shall have a word or two to say under this
head before I have done. I only remark now, that in my tours about the
country I have often had a virulent ill-will excited towards these works
of culinary supererogation, because I thought their excellence was
attained by treading under foot and disregarding the five grand
essentials. I have sat at many a table garnished with three or four
kinds of well-made cake, compounded with citron and spices and all
imaginable good things, where the meat was tough and greasy, the bread
some hot preparation of flour, lard, saleratus, and acid, and the butter
unutterably detestable. At such tables I have thought, that, if the
mistress of the feast had given the care, time, and labor to preparing
the simple items of bread, butter, and meat that she evidently had given
to the preparation of these extras, the lot of a traveller might be much
more comfortable. Evidently, she never had thought of these common
articles as constituting a good table. So long as she had puff pastry,
rich black cake, clear jelly, and preserves, she seemed to consider that
such unimportant matters as bread, butter, and meat could take care of
themselves. It is the same inattention to common things as that which
leads people to build houses with stone fronts and window-caps and
expensive front-door trimmings, without bathing-rooms or fireplaces or
ventilators.

Those who go into the country looking for summer board in farm-houses
know perfectly well that a table where the butter is always fresh, the
tea and coffee of the best kinds and well made, and the meats properly
kept, dressed, and served, is the one table of a hundred, the fabulous
enchanted island. It seems impossible to get the idea into the minds of
people that what is called common food, carefully prepared, becomes, in
virtue of that very care and attention, a delicacy, superseding the
necessity of artificially compounded dainties.

To begin, then, with the very foundation of a good table,--_Bread:_ What
ought it to be? It should be light, sweet