Marion Harland's Complete Cook Book: A Practical and Exhaustive Manual of Cookery and Housekeeping

be eaten at breakfast with the caps on. Choose the finest fruit for this meal, using the stem as a handle, and dipping the berry into powdered sugar, if not sweet enough to be eaten without. Raspberries and blackberries Never wash these, or strawberries, unless they are intolerably gritty. Water is ruin to flavor and integrity, where the more delicate berries are concerned. Set on ice for an hour or more before sending to table. Pass sugar for those who wish it, and in helping out each portion avoid bruising the berries. “Mashed” berries suffer an instant change in flavor. The air begins at once to act chemically upon the liberated juices. Huckleberries and gooseberries Wash, drain and leave on ice for two hours. Pass sugar with huckleberries for such as wish it. They are better without at breakfast. Gooseberries are always eaten without. The large English varieties are delicious and very healthful. If cream be eaten with breakfast fruit, it should be as an after-course—or dessert. It loses character and effect as an assuasive and persuasive agent. Melons Cantelopes and nutmeg melons are prime favorites as an introductory step to the weightier business of the morning meal. They deserve their popularity. Cut those of small and medium size in half; scrape out the seeds and put a lump of ice in each half. The larger may be divided into thirds, and a piece of ice laid upon each piece. Pass salt and pepper, also sugar with them. Many epicures prefer to eat them _au naturel_. Stewed fruits In the late winter or early spring-time, when apples are scarce and dear, and oranges have not yet come to their full plenteousness and flavor, the human system needs anti-bilious food. Our foremothers compounded a villainous preventive against spring “humors,” of sulphur and molasses, stirred together to a cream and administered before breakfast to each shuddering creature who had pains in the bones, headache and nausea at rising, and a general sensation of good-for-nothingness. “Advanced” matrons added cream of tartar to the villainous preventive, and gave their families to drink of cream-of-tartar