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Currant Loaf

To a quart of flour add a quarter pound of butter, and a half cup of sugar, rubbing in well. Scald a pint of milk and cool, adding a half pint of cold water. Dissolve in this a small yeast cake or tablet and add to the flour (making a very soft, thin dough), letting rise until light, which will be under three hours. Add two or three beaten eggs and a cup and a half to two cups of currants, floured, stirring and setting to rise again in a greased cake-pan. In two hours bake in temperate oven for about an hour.

T° CHAPTER XI THE OLIVE (Olea Europæa) O STATE that the olive has from an unremembered limit of time been the symbol of wisdom, peace, chastity, and victory, is to concentrate volumes of panegyrics. And there are truly ages of experience eloquently suggested in the very repression of intensity of colouring possessed by the silent, dignified, mystic-looking graygreen trees which live on indefinitely through centuries. Typifying the fat of those lands "flowing with milk and honey" which across the seas stretch back into impenetrable dimness, and its fruit literally giving it forth, its leaves resemble rather the muscular tissues of ancient Greek youths whose graceful bodies were not permitted to accumulate unnecessary or soft flesh, for these slim, somewhat willow-like leaves are apparently almost devoid of sap, firm to the point of stiffness in texture. The olive of European and Asiatic countries, now also thoroughly a product of American-Californian soil, growing, too, even on south walls in parts of southern England, is known to the world through its oil, its pickled and dried fruits.

The first is often adulterated with those excellent oils of the cottonseed and peanut (which should be allowed to appear under their own names, however) and poppy and other oils, but the adulteration is the more easily detected that olive oil congeals at a higher temperature than the other oils. It is the fleshy part of the fruit instead of the seed which gives the oil and of this there are several grades, the virgin oil, or best grade, being carefully pressed from I22