Fondant

“ This pleasing volume, after stating the excellency of fruits, observes, "if fruit trees had no other advantage attending them than to look upon them, how pleasurable would that be? Since there is no flowering shrub excels, if equals that of a peach, or apple tree in bloom. The tender enamelled blossoms, verdant foliage, with such a glorious embroidery of festoons and fruitages, wafting their odours on every blast of wind, and at last bowing down their laden branches, ready to yield their pregnant offspring into the hands of their laborious planter and owner." ”

“ Does it not strain the imagination to the breaking point to believe that the oak, the cedar, the pine and the palm are all the progeny of one ancient seed and that this seed was also the ancestor of wheat and corn, potato and tomato, onion and sugar beet, rose and violet, orchid and daisy, mountain flower and magnolia? ”

“ It was the decorations of the tree, candy and fruit, and fantastic cakes, very beautiful, which had remained, and which we were now to treat as "plunder."
When Frau Doctor had produced more pairs of scissors than I had supposed could be found at one time in a single house be it ever so orderly and had armed the family therewith, the cutting and snipping began in good earnest. It was a pretty picture: the brilliantly-lighted tree with its countless, sweet, rich decorations, and the eager children intent on their "plundering;" ”

“ Fruit cannot be raised on this earth to taste as you imagine those pears would taste. For years you have this pleasure, unalloyed by any disenchanting reality. How you watch the tender twigs in spring, and the freshly forming bark, hovering about the healthy growing tree with your pruning-knife many a sunny morning! ”

“ The neat orchards of to-day, with their long perspectives, and with bush-fruit planted in between the lines of plum and apple-trees, to economise every inch of this wonderful soil, would seem to him even more of an Eden, neater and more extended than in his day. It is not, you will say, the most picturesque form of cultivation, but it has that best of picturesque beauty to some minds, the picturesqueness of profit. ”

“ It is easy to cultivate a herb garden, and amid modern “improvements” of flowers of all sorts it imparts a delightful old-world fragrance to the completeness of the pleasaunce. Moreover, herbs make the most exquisite addition to nearly every form of cookery. ”

“ Then the verdure was tender, and many a bough wore only the promise of its future luxuriance; now every branch was heavy with the weight of foliage, and every leaf was at its utmost growth, and wore its darkest green. ”

“ The yearly harvest, the sower and his seed, the leaven in the loaf, the grain of mustard-seed, the lilies of the field, the action of fire, worms, moth, rust, bread, wine, and water, the mystery of the wind, unseen and yet felt—each one of these is shown to contain and exemplify a great and abiding truth. ”

“ Yea, I will graft in unto them the branches of their mother tree, that I may preserve the roots also unto mine own self, that when they shall be sufficiently strong perhaps they may bring forth good fruit unto me, and I may yet have glory in the fruit of my vineyard. ”

“ A leaf of any one of the mints, or of the sassafras tree, or of the wintergreen vine, after being bruised in the hand and applied to the nose or the mouth, makes instant impression upon the senses of taste and small, and at once informs us of its distinctive qualities. ”

“ And just as surely as she would not attempt to make a new kind of cake without a reliable recipe, just so surely ought she not to expect to grow flowers successfully without finding out first how it should be done. Flowers, like friends, have to be cultivated, and consideration of their needs produces similar delightful results. ”

“ I know nothing more pleasant than the half kitchen-, half flower-garden;—the few trees that extend a light shade—either the apple, with its spring shower of fair blossoms, tinted with the faintest crimson, and its summer show of fruit, reddening every day ”

“ From low, broad spreading trees depended the grape fruit, as large as an infant's head and yellow as gold, while the orange, lime and lemon trees, bearing blossoms, green and ripe fruit all together, met the eye at every turn, and filled the garden with fragrance. ”

“ The roots you see in London shops and markets, wrapped in hard clay and showing two or three big flowers, will not do much good as a rule. If, however, you have some, and want to keep them alive, you should soak the cake of clay off the fibrous roots, plant in a puddle of water, and protect from the sun and wind for several days with a flower-pot. ”

“ No matter in what condition or for what purpose they are to be used the flavors of foliage herbs are invariably best in well-developed leaves and shoots still in full vigor of growth. With respect to the plant as a whole, these flavors are most abundant and pleasant just before the flowers appear. ”

“ Take every sort of pleasing Flowers, as Violets, Cowslips, Gilly-flowers, Roses or Marigolds, and beat them in a Mortar, each flower by it self with sugar, till the sugar become the colour of the flower, then put a little Gum Dragon steept in water into it, and beat it into a perfect paste ”

“ For what are called common fruits and flowers I have ever entertained a preference, and for the latter I have almost a passion. The richest collection of rare exotics do not make the same agreeable and soothing impression upon my imagination as the unpretending garden which my mother formerly cultivated in Surrey, or that of a dear and excellent friend, in which from childhood I have ever delighted, and where the common flowers of each season, fruits, vegetables, herbs, and shrubs, flourish together, in defiance of the more refined arrangements of modern days. ”

“ Passing the homes of our thriving farmers, the tidy lawn, or if you please, door-yard, bright with blossoming shrubs and trees of beauty, is yet the exception. There is a reason for this, and that reason pays no compliment to our taste or refinement. Away with the thought that refinement is to be found only in the city, that country cousin means something wanting in the appreciation or expression of grace and beauty. ”

“ In other words—trench, manure, hoe and water around your young tree, and patiently allow the young fruit to develop of its own juice from the root; your own task being, as the fruit forms, but to bring in all you can of air and sunshine upon it. It must, as every mother and nurse knows, be coaxed to realise itself, to develop, to grow from its individual root. ”

“ Gather herbs when the sap is full in the top of them. Such herbs as you intend to gather for drying, to keep for use all the winter, do it about Lammas-tide; dry them in the shade that the sun draw not out their vertue, but in a clear air and breezy wind, that no mustiness may taint them.”
Cut all herbs just before they flower, except where the flower heads are wanted—lavender or camomile, for instance. ”

“ To form this seed requires the purest juices of the plant, and these are obtained by means of the flowers, through the exquisitely fine vessels of which these juices are filtered, or strained, and thus separated from all that is gross and impure.”
“I never thought of that before,” said [119] Agnes. “Flowers, then, are useful as well as beautiful.”
“Nothing is made for mere beauty. All things in nature regard use as an end. To flowers are assigned a high and important use, and exquisite beauty of form and colour is at the same time given to them; and with these our senses are delighted. ”

“ Some gay and striking tint, which may contrast strongly with the green foliage around, is needed by the developing fruit, or else its pulpiness, its sweetness, and its fragrance, will stand it in poor stead beside its bright-hued compeers. ”

“ Take savory, sage, or any other herb seedlings, four out of five of them will have a poor flavor, while the fifth will have the most delicious odor, flavor and fragrance. Sometimes only one in a hundred or so has this delightful combination. It is simply a matter of selection to produce these herbs so that all will have the delightful flavor of the single individual. ”

“ You may give to every one of your ices the very colour of the fruit they represent, thus: have your colour ready by you, and with a very fine pencil point them quickly, in which case they must likewise be served directly, or at least you must put them in the cave; your cave must have been set in a pail and prepared half an hour before you take your fruits from their moulds; in that cave you are then to set them after they are coloured, till the time comes of serving them; your fruit is certainly much finer and takes more the downy look of the natural one. ”

“ They form a pleasant addition to the food of the poor, while in their growth, favoured as they are by a hot sun, rich soil, and a sufficiency of moisture, their increase is almost fabulous, and anyone of curious taste and plenty of patience, aided by a powerful magnifying glass, might in all probability be gratified by seeing the creeping growth of the watery vine and the steady swelling out of its heavy earth-supported fruit. ”

“ The leaves that had fallen to the earth were musical underneath the foot, and gave forth a faint fragrance that made the air as sweet as any bakeshop. The odor of fallen leaves and wood shrubs sinking into decay is not like any other fragrance so much as the scent of well-baked bread, browned and finished in summer's ruddy heat. ”

“ How to alter the shape, smell, colour and taste of Vegetables by joyning different Roots together?
29. How and what may be chang'd by grafting, joyning or inoculating shoots or Buds on different Stocks or Cyons?
30. How to compound several Liquors to water and feed Vegetables, whereby they may be much alter'd?
31. Of what Roots, Stalks, Barks, Leaves, Flowers, Fruits, seeds, Downs, may be made either Cups, Boxes, Baskets, Matts, Calicoes, Cloaths (as Netie-cloath) and the like? All which will be most useful for the life of Man from the Garden. ”

“ The plasticity of clay and its hardening qualities under the influence of intense heat, its adaptability to the most refined and appropriate forms, its affinity for the beautiful glazes and enamels so often associated with pottery, and its splendid traditions of craftsmanship, of colour, form and decorations, so beautiful and varied in character,—all combine to invest the subject with a charm or fascination of its own. Intrinsically valueless in its natural state, it is capable of being rendered almost priceless by scientific workmanship and artistic skill. ”

“ SOAPWORT. The Herb and Root.—The roots taste sweetish and somewhat pungent; and have a light smell like those of liquorice: digested in rectified spirit they yield a strong tincture, which loses nothing of its taste or flavour in being inspissated to the consistence of an extract. This elegant root has not come much into practice among us, though it promises, from its sensible qualities, to be a medicine of considerable utility: it is greatly esteemed by the German physicians as an aperient, corroborant, and sudorific ”

“ Take red rose buds, bruise them in a marble mortar, adding by degrees fine powder sugar sifted, to the quantity of three pounds; beat them till no particles arise, and till the whole becomes a firm and solid mixture. ”

“ That it hath not only some good in it, but also perfections; hence flowers and leaves are not wont to be called fruits, although they come from the same seed that the fruits do, and be the last two that comes forth, and hath in it that perfection, that it is the end both of the seed, and all other things that arise from the seed before the fruit. ”

“ Make a mixture of the clearest gum and water as above, and temper all colours except green and ceruse and minium and carmine. Salt green is worth nothing for books. You will temper Spanish green with pure wine, and if you wish to make shadows, add a little sap of iris or cabbage or leek. You will temper minium and ceruse and carmine with clear of egg. ”

“ A strip for a little herbary half-way between the flower and vegetable garden would form a very appropriate transition stratum and might be the means, by being more under the eye of the mistress, of recovering to our soups and salads some of the comparatively neglected herbs of tarragon, and French sorrel, and purslane, and chervil, and dill, and clary, and others whose place is now nowhere to be found but in the pages of the old herbalists. ”

“ Trees which are pruned, never attain the size and strength of those, the branches of which grow old with them, because, by pruning of so much of the wood, a larger proportion of the sap is forced into the fruit, than would naturally flow to it. ”

“ This is the principal month for grafting all sorts of fruit-trees, transplanting all sorts of hardy herbs and flovers, make up hot-beds for cucumbers, melons, colliflowers, to come late, to Russia cabbage and tender flower seeds, as amaranths of all sorts, and garden-seed, marvil, of Pern, &c. ”

“ As if by magic, so skilled are the crones in this work, they roll the seeds to one side of the tray, as they are roasted, and the coals to the other. Then they grind the seeds into a fine flour, and make it into cakes and mush. ”

“ Violets, roses, orchids, and all flowers that are dainty in themselves, are always in good taste, but a very few or a single blossom is all that is allowable. A big bouquet on a tray or an invalid's table is as out of place as a whole roast or a whole pudding. ”

“ Take four Ounces of Pine Apple seeds, two Ounces of sweet Almonds blanched, the Whites of two Eggs, one spoonful of Ale-Yeast, one spoonful of Rice Flower, one spoonful of sweet Cream, beat all these together in a Mortar, then add to it Musk or Ambergreece, drop it upon a Pie-plate, and make it in what shape you please, and so bake it. ”

“ Apples, grapes, and such like fruit can be preserved in their natural state by packing them when dry and solid in dry sand or saw-dust, putting alternate layers of fruit and cotton, saw-dust or sand. Some saw-dust gives a bad flavor to the fruit. ”