A treatise on the art of baking, with a preliminary introduction, shewing the various productions... with a number of valuable receipts, original and selected for the baker and domestic circle / by John White.

  • John White
Date:
1828
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the art of baking, with a preliminary introduction, shewing the various productions... with a number of valuable receipts, original and selected for the baker and domestic circle / by John White. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    with it, without rhyme or reason. ‘The subject may be of little consequence, but that is nothing ; I promised instruction, and what instruction, I presume, you will ask again ? Why, Sir, to end the matter at once, I mean instruction in that art, which every old woman is acquainted with, and, for ought that I know to the contrary, an art that our grandmother learned before the flood; in short, I mean to give instruction how every one may make a piece of bread. What impudence some one may say,—you give instruction who has hardly, by your own confes- sion, a coatupon your back ; have not many wealthy and learned men wrote upon the subject already ? Besides, is not the art known to every old woman in the land, and of what use will all your instruc- tion be, even on the supposition, that your coat was a much better one than what you say it is? Pray, what great discovery can you make in an art that is so well known already ? Perhaps I may, or perhaps I may not make some great discovery, —the subject, however, I deem, is of as much consequence as a discourse on the wing of a fly, or a learned dissertation on the propagation of insects. I grant that many an old woman can bake bread,—let them count the cost of it,— and I also grant, that many a great, wise, and perfect man, has written upon the subject before me; but, to me, who am neither great, wise, nor learned, it seems something strange, that the im- perfections of perfect men should be so many, and so great !
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