“21. +Latin Element of the Second Period+ (iii).-- The introduction of the Roman form of Christianity brought with it increased communication with Rome and with the Continent generally; widened the experience of Englishmen; gave a stimulus to commerce; and introduced into this island new things and products, and along with the things and products new names. To this period belongs the introduction of the words: +Butter+, +cheese+; +cedar+, +fig+, +pear+, +peach+; +lettuce, lily+; +pepper+, +pease+; +camel+, +lion+, +elephant+; +oyster+, +trout+; +pound+, +ounce+; +candle+, +table+; +marble+; +mint+.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
Pick out the finest, handling as little as may be, and pile upon a salver or flat dish, with bits of ice between them, and ornament with peach leaves or fennel sprigs. One of the prettiest dishes of fruit I ever saw upon a dessert-table was an open silver basket, wide at the top, heaped with rich red peaches and yellow Bartlett pears, interspersed with feathery bunches of green, which few of those who admired it knew for _carrot-tops_. Wild white clematis wreathed the handle and showed here and there among the fruit, while scarlet and white verbenas nestled amid the green. Send around powdered sugar with the fruit, as many like to dip peaches and pears in it after paring and quartering them.
Sources: The passage is from J. M. D. (John Miller Dow) Meiklejohn, A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Harland, Common Sense in the Household of 1871, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — teal cloth, oyster stamp.