Showing posts with label breakfast. Show all posts
Showing posts with label breakfast. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 30, 2017

How to Eat Avocados, 1891

“But how is it to be eaten? ... A few simple rules are so necessary for the proper enjoyment of this delicacy... In the first place, it is a rich article, and should be eaten with meals in preference to any other time, and always with bread and butter or delicate crackers... Eat it with a spoon or fork, using salt and pepper, and sometimes lime-juice is thought to be an agreeable addition. The avocádo is most frequently eaten in the above way, and when served with thin slices of bread and butter makes a delicious supplementary course for either breakfast or dinner. To try another method, pour over the pulp, just before eating, a spoonful of sherry wine; add a little sugar, a slight grating of nutmeg, if desired; serve with the invariable accompaniments of bread and butter or crackers.”

Anna M. Paris, “The Avocado, or Alligator Pear,” The American Magazine 

Rules of Avocado Enjoyment: sherry optional, toast ALWAYS.

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

How to Make Good Coffee, 1895

Currier & Ives, 1881 (Library of Congress)
"COFFEE THAT IS GOOD. To make good coffee is apparently not so simple as it may seem, if general results count for anything... There is no better stimulant in the morning than a delicious cup of coffee, and there is no better way of preparing it than according to the following recipe: Do not buy the coffee already ground, for it loses its fine flavor more rapidly when in the ground form than when whole. Have a small coffee mill and grind it yourself. A mixture of two or more kinds of coffee will give the most satisfactory result. Two thirds Java, with one third Mocha, will make a rich, smooth coffee. Now for the recipe: Put one cupful of roasted coffee into a small fryingpan, and stir it over the fire until hot, being careful not to burn it. Grind the coffee rather coarse and put it in a common coffeepot. Beat one egg well, and add three tablespoonfuls of cold water to it. Stir this mixture into the coffee. Pour one quart of boiling water on the coffee, and place the pot on the fire. Stir the coffee until it boils, being careful not to let it boil over; then place on the back of the stove, where it will just bubble, for ten minutes... After it has stood for five minutes, strain it into a hot coffeepot, and send to the table at once." 
C. F. Lawlor, The Mixicologist
Breakfast shortcut: just stir the egg into the coffee!