Bocage

“ While we eat, a kettle in which the dogs' soup is boiling exhales a fetid vapor that attacks your throat and makes you cough. One almost vomits. More respect is shown for prisoners in their cells and dogs in their kennels.
We had bacon and cabbage, and stinking cheese; for drink, sour cider. Nothing else. Earthen plates, with cracked enamel, and which smell of burnt grease, and tin forks, complete this pretty service.
Being too new in the house, I did not wish to complain. But neither did I wish to eat. Do further damage to my stomach, no, thank you! ”

“ For other breakfast things, George suggested eggs and bacon, which were easy to cook, cold meat, tea, bread and butter, and jam. For lunch, he said, we could have biscuits, cold meat, bread and butter, and jam—but no cheese. Cheese, like oil, makes too much of itself. It wants the whole boat to itself. It goes through the hamper, and gives a cheesy flavour to everything else there. You can’t tell whether you are eating apple-pie or German sausage, or strawberries and cream. ”

“ I stole some bread, some rind of cheese, about half a jar of mincemeat (which I tied up in my pocket-handkerchief with my last night's slice) , some brandy from a stone bottle (which I decanted into a glass bottle I had secretly used for making that intoxicating fluid, Spanish-liquorice-water, up in my room: diluting the stone bottle from a jug in the kitchen cupboard) , a meat bone with very little on it, and a beautiful round compact pork pie. ”

“ Maggie only remaining to express her regret that they were quite out of vinegar to sauce the bacon, but there was a goudy peg-cheese and some barley-meal bannocks. However, as I did not deem vinegar an indispensable accessory to fried bacon, I made a hearty meal, and presently found myself in condition for a rough ride, the chase of the long-legged hill fox, digging out a badger, spearing an otter, or any rude border sport which circumstances might suggest. ”

“ Notwithstanding the privation of our potatoes, we at the fishery lived sumptuously, although our master certainly believed that our fare consisted of corn-bread and river fish, cooked without lard or butter. It was necessary to be exceedingly cautious in the use of our bacon; and to prevent the suspicions of the master and others who frequented our landing, I enjoined our [Pg 224] people never to fry any of the meat, but to boil it all. No one can smell boiled bacon far; but fried flitch can be smelled a mile by a good nose. ”

“ Having corked my jars, and driven in the stopper by means of the bat, the bottles being always placed upright in the bottle-boot, I made use of a compound luting. This luting (communicated to me by Mr. Bardel) is made of quick lime, which is slaked in the air by being sprinkled with water, till it becomes reduced to a powder. The powder to be kept in this state in corked bottles ready for use. This lime mixed with a cheese made of skimmed milk (fromage à la pie) , and formed to the thickness of paste, produces a luting which hardens rapidly, [32] and which withstands the heat of boiling water. ”

“ A slight froth rises during the process of fermentation, which is skimmed off; and the pulque is drawn into casks or pig-skins ready for transportation. What attraction to taste, sight, or smell this thin, sticky, sour, pale beverage can have, is one of the mysteries a stranger can never hope to elucidate. ”

“ Pork, potatoes, butter, crackers, sauce, salt, pepper, vegetables, and meat, if any can be had, clams or fish, or both, are covered with water, placed in a close vessel, and stewed slowly till patience is exhausted, appetite insists upon indulgence, or the mess threatens to burn. ”

“ A little cook fire was started close to the spring that fed the tiny brook, trickling away down the narrow ravine, and in a few moments the aroma of coffee and of appetizing slices of bacon greeted the welcoming nostrils of the hungry men. ”

“ If rum is taken on an empty stomach, day after day, as regularly as clockwork, we cannot expect that the men should be in a state of sound health, or that their blood should be pure; particularly if the voyage is long, the biscuits worm-eaten, the pickled pork of a questionable condition, sometimes even approaching putridity, and the rice-soup—upon which I shall abstain from passing any remarks, further than by saying that it is decidedly not of that quality tending to act as a substantial sustentation of men who work hard, and who are exposed to all weathers, both by night and by day. ”

“ The labourer, from so long living upon coarse, ill-cooked food, acquires an artificial taste. Some men eat their bacon raw; others will drink large quantities of vinegar, and well they may need it to correct by its acidity the effects of strong unwholesome cabbage. The cottage cook has no idea of those nutritious and pleasant soups which can be made to form so important a feature in the economy of daily life. ”

“ The fresh air and the long road have set our teeth on edge and given us an appetite. We halt to break a crust. Some have brought canteens of wine or coffee; bottles of preserves appear, and the improvident—I am one—pay homage to those who pass a full flask. ”

“ When he went in with his arms piled full of cut wood, Bud had the baby sitting on one corner of the table, and was feeding it bread and gravy as the nearest approach to baby food he could think of. During occasional interludes in the steady procession of bits of bread from the plate to the baby's mouth, Lovin Child would suck a bacon rind which he held firmly grasped in a greasy little fist. ”

“ Some of the northern writers state that, from the inner bark of the elm, if stripped off in the spring, and boiled in water, a very palatable kind of beer may be brewed; and that this bark, dried and ground to powder, has, in times of scarcity, been mixed with meal to make bread. It is occasionally administered as a decoction for obstinate cutaneous complaints; and it has been proposed for use in rheumatism, dropsy, and other diseases. The young leaves may be used for the feeding of silk-worms. ”

“ What the eye does not see, the stomach does not get upset over.
We tried river water once, later on in the season, but it was not a success. We were coming down stream, and had pulled up to have tea in a backwater near Windsor. Our jar was empty, and it was a case of going without our tea or taking water from the river. Harris was for chancing it. He said it must be all right if we boiled the water. He said that the various germs of poison present in the water would be killed by the boiling. ”

“ There were casks of beer and wine, great boxes of biscuits, bags of oatmeal, pease, and salt, whole sides of home-cured bacon, several cheeses, a tierce of vinegar, jars of honey and sugar, flasks of oil, pots of balsam and other salves, a pledget for spreading plasters, a pair of scissors, and several rolls of linen, these last evidently provided for the exigencies of fighting. ”

“ We will add only one more proof of the virtues of the cabbage, and that a truly marvellous one—in all vessels in which water is boiled, the incrustations which adhere with such tenacity that it is otherwise impossible to detach them, will fall off immediately if a cabbage is boiled therein. ”

“ Each boiling-house consists of a spacious kitchen filled with immense cauldrons. Here winkle and whelk buyers, who have neither utensils nor convenient premises sufficient to boil at home, can have it done for them for fourpence a bushel. Each boiling is performed separately [24] in a wicker-basket; crabs and lobsters may likewise be boiled at these houses. Half-a-dozen scores of the fish are packed in a large basket, shaped like a strawberry-pottle, a lid is put between each lot, and the hot-water torture is inflicted at the rate of sixpence a score. ”

“ The hop may perhaps in some degree contribute to the production of gravel in the kidnies, as our intemperate wine-drinkers are more subject to the gout, and ale-drinkers to the gravel; in the formation of both which diseases, there can be no doubt, but that the alcohol is the principal, if not the only agent. ”

“ It is singular that the presence of a natural liqueur—the consequence of a complete but not excessive ripeness of the grape, and at present considered one of the highest qualities of the wine—was, at the commencement of the eighteenth century, regarded as a disease. ”

“ Let fruit for preserving be gathered always in perfectly dry weather, and be free both from the morning and evening dew, and as much so as possible from dust. When bottled, it must be steamed or baked during the day on which it is gathered, or there will be a great loss from the bursting of the bottles ”

“ He farther remarks, that water which has endured the fire the shortest time, presided it be hot enough, will make the strongest extract.
6. Of Mashing. When the water is brought to a due heat, the malt is to be put in very leisurely, and uniformly mixed with it.
7. Of boiling the Wort. As the design of boiling the wort is to clear the liquor of its impurities, and to obtain the virtue of the hop, a much shorter time than usual is sufficient. Long boiling of the hop is a most pernicious practice, and produces an austere, nauseous bitter, but not a pleasant aromatic one. ”

“ Every bottle must be first rinsed with wine, for fear of any moisture left in the washing: some, out of a mistaken thrift, will rinse a dozen bottles with the same wine; but I would advise you, for more caution, to change the wine at every second bottle; a gill may be enough. Have bottles ready by to save it; and it will be a good perquisite either to sell, or drink with the cook.
Never draw your hogshead too low; nor tilt it for fear of disturbing your liquor. When it begins to run slow, and before the wine grows cloudy, shake the hogshead, and carry a glass of it to your master ”

“ Salvador made the fire. The commandant detailed himself and myself as cooks for the morning. At supper-time, Don Juan, assisted by Jim and Joe, would officiate culinarily. Slices from a haunch of bacon we had brought with us, cooked on the end of a stick, with “hard tack” and coffee, made in a camp kettle, furnished a delicious breakfast. What is there in the odor of unctuous bacon that makes it so pleasant to the nostrils when one is camping out or “roughing it”? There are people who cannot abide the smell of bacon within the confines [pg 707] of civilization. ”

“ It began with Jerry’s finishing off all the olives that were left, “like a pig would do,” as Greg said. His finishing the olives left us the bottle, of course, and there is only one natural thing to do with an empty olive-bottle when you’re on a water picnic. That is, to write a message as though you were a shipwrecked mariner, and seal it up in the bottle and chuck it as far out as ever you can.
We’d all gone over to Wecanicut on the ferry,—Mother and Aunt Ailsa and Jerry and Greg and I,—and we were picnicking beside the big fallen-over slab that looks just like the entrance to a pirate cave. ”

“ When, a transported felon across the seas, that cottager is told to prepare his master's breakfast from the delicate sides of bacon hanging in the pantry, he shakes his head and supposes that 'that there bacon isn't tanned half enough for the master. See his missus's at home, that's all! ”

“ They are first rubbed with salt on their inside, or flesh sides, then placed one on the other, the flesh sides uppermost in a salting trough, which has a gutter round its edges to drain away the brine; for to have sweet and fine bacon, the flitches must not be sopping in brine, which gives it the sort of taste that barrel-pork and sea-junk have, and than which is nothing more villainous. Everyone knows how different is the taste of fresh dry salt from that of salt in a dissolved state. ”

“ I yearned for a bottle of rum, for any sort of strong waters indeed, guessing that a dram would help us both; and after I had made a meal off some raw pork and molasses spread upon the ship's biscuit, which was mouldy and astir with weevils, I took my lantern and again went on deck, and made my way to the galley where the oil jar stood, and here in a drawer I found what now I most needed, but what before I had overlooked; I mean a parcel; of braided lamp wicks. ”

“ That night Bud camped in the lee of a bank that was fairly well screened with rocks and bushes, and dined off broiled bacon and bread and a can of beans with tomato sauce, and called it a meal. At first he was not much inclined to take the risk of having a fire big enough to keep him warm. ”

“ Water must be only blood warm; its power is destroyed by scalding. The Tincture is made by the bruised green herb with equal quantity good spirits or vinegar. Squeeze and strain it to extract the juice, which save in a close-stopped bottle. ”

“ The flesh takes the salt more kindly than that of any other animal, and, whether dried as bacon, or salted down as pickled pork, forms an excellent and nutritious food, exceedingly valuable for all kinds of stores. ”

“ Bidding the men gather all the gum and balsam they could find, I put the whole of our bacon, some ten pounds at least, half-a-dozen candles, and the gum and balsam into our pot, set it over a brisk fire, and produced the most extraordinary compound you can imagine. ”

“ However, the ale is drinkable. What am I to give you for the pint?”
“You are to give me a groat.”
“That is a great deal,” said I, “for a groat I ought to have a pint of ale made of the best malt and hops.”
“I give you the best I can afford. One must live by what one sells. I do not find that easy work.” ”