“Anton and Sam would down a heavy breakfast, eat plates of eggs, Ellen cracking a dozen in the skillet for them. They reached for more coffee cake and bread and slabs of cold meat. After they ate they walked stolid to the fields, working corn rows with cultivator and team, mowing and raking and hauling in towering wagonloads of timothy and soybean and clover hay. They mended fence lines, repeatedly repaired harness and machine, sharpened saw, adz and ax, scythe, knife and cutting blades. They would throw from the fields the larger stones that cropped up under the bite of the share. Some fields had a rock outgrowth too large to be removed and it must stand bared and alone, machines and men circling it. At mid-morning and afternoon Frankie would search until she found the men in a field. She brought them a stone pitcher of water spiced with vinegar or a ginger stick. They mopped their rough-bristled faces with red kerchiefs, and drank. Sam was shirtless, his overall straps cutting his scrawny sunburned shoulders. Anton, powerful upper body covered to protect his freckled skin, had soaked his black sateen shirt with perspiration. His large arms shone red and glistening. The odor of sweat and earth rose strong about the men.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
BREAD AND BREAD-MAKING. 1668. AMONG the numerous vegetable products yielding articles of food for man, the Cereals hold the first place. By means of skilful cultivation, mankind have transformed the original forms of these growths, poor and ill-flavoured as they perhaps were, into various fruitful and agreeable species, which yield an abundant and pleasant supply. Classified according to their respective richness in alimentary elements, the Cereals stand thus:--Wheat, and its varieties, Rye, Barley, Oats, Rice, Indian Corn. Everybody knows it is wheat flour which yields the best bread. Rye-bread is viscous, hard, less easily soluble by the gastric juice, and not so rich in nutritive power. Flour produced from barley, Indian corn, or rice, is not so readily made into bread; and the article, when made, is heavy and indigestible. 1669.
Sources: The passage is from Helga Sandburg, The wheel of earth, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Beeton, The Book of Household Management of 1861, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — forest cloth, teapot stamp.