“And these are the comparatively mild forms of sport. What of rowing till you are blue in the face, what of climbing frightful mountain-peaks, with half an inch of rock between you and a fall of a thousand feet? Why do people do all these things, voluntarily, gladly, enthusiastically? I can only suppose that they do these things to make life tolerable, even entertaining, just as I add tomato sauce, Worcester sauce, pickles, beetroot, cucumber and salad to the cold mutton, to make _that_ tolerable and even appetising. It would seem indeed that life must be an awful business, if you have to plaster yourself on the walls of a sheer Alp before you can endure it. This is “drowning” your cold mutton in strong sauce with a vengeance.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
12 large ripe tomatoes. 3 onions of medium size. 4 red peppers of medium size. 2 tablespoonfuls of brown sugar. 2 tablespoonfuls of salt. 1/2 pint of vinegar. Peel and slice the tomatoes. Chop the onions and peppers fine. Put all the ingredients in the preserving kettle and cook slowly for an hour and a half; then bottle and seal.
Sources: The passage is from Arthur Machen, Things near & far, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Parloa, Miss Parloa's Young Housekeeper of 1893, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — forest cloth, amphora stamp.