“We went. We breakfasted. The mess shacks were those other open-sided buildings on the drill-field which I had already seen; their construction, being merely tarred roofs on posts and walled with mosquito netting, promised no elegance of fare. Nor was the fare elegant: milk, coffee, cereal, hard boiled eggs, bread, butter, a bruised apple. The milk was of two kinds, real and canned. Used in the coffee, or with sugar on the cereal, the canned milk was good enough as poured from a hole punched in the container; but a wise man near me prophesied that I should not like to drink it when diluted. Flat, he said. Tasted like chalk. Doubtless it was chemically correct, but (you see how scientific he was) the metabolism of the body despises chemical synthesis, and for real nourishment the palate must be satisfied.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
Cover bottom of a shallow baking-dish with apple sauce. Cut stale bread in one-third inch slices, spread with softened butter, remove crusts, and cut in triangular-shaped pieces; then arrange closely together over apple. Sprinkle generously with sugar, to which is added a few drops vanilla. Bake in a moderate oven and serve with cream.
Sources: The passage is from Allen French, At Plattsburg, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Farmer, The Boston cooking-school cook book of 1896, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — moss cloth, pear stamp.