Cornflower

Breakfast like a king

    "They had for breakfast all the things that Kay was fondest of: very hot, little, round loaves of new white bread baked in the embers of a wood-fire, very salt butter, a sardine with a lot of olive oil, some minced kidneys, a poached egg and frizzled bacon, a very fat sausage all bursting out of its skin, a home-made pork pie, with cold jelly and yolk of egg beneath the crust, a bowl of strawberries and cream with sifted sugar, a bowl of raspberries and cream with blobs of sugar-candyish brown sugar that you could scrunch, some nice new mushrooms and chicken, part of a honeycomb with cream, a cup of coffee with crystals of white sugar candy for a change, a yellow plum, a greengage and then a ripe blue plum of Pershore to finish off with."

    From The Midnight Folk by John Masefield.

Home remedies

   

    "EGG EMULSION (For Sore Throats)

    Ingredients:

    Two eggs, perfectly new-laid, if possible warm from the nest.

    Juice of two ripe lemons.

    Squeeze the juice of lemons over the eggs, keeping in a basin until shells have dissolved. Beat up well with two large spoonfuls of thick honey and two of pure olive oil. Continue beating until a perfectly smooth emulsion results, then bottle it and cork well. The dose is a tablespoonful."

    (This sounds like a sweetened mayonnaise with added calcium, though as they say in Cold Comfort Farm, "it might be worth tryin' ". )

    "EGG NOGG (For Colds)

    Ingredients:

    Three eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately;

    One pint full milk;

    Half-teacup fine sugar;

    Half-glassful best brandy;

    Nutmeg to flavour.

    Beat eggs, stir in the sugar, make milk very hot and add it gradually, lastly the brandy and nutmeg. Drink as hot as possible."

    (That's more like it, I feel.)

    These recipes are from The Country Housewife's Book by Lucy H. Yates, first published in 1934, a charming glimpse of rural domesticity and a practical manual for those of the time whose fresh food came from productive gardens, the sportsman's bag, a house cow and some chickens. With much preserving of fruit and vegetables, butter-making, and keeping of "Furred and Feathered Folk", to name but a few of the many tasks covered,  one admires the industry and ingenuity of the ladies for whom this book would have been a vade mecum.