“"He does not! These eggs and this bread were perfectly good, before he did black magic over them. And did you see the contemptuous look he gave me when I was so eccentric as to order toast? Oh, Reaper, Reaper, you desire a modern town, yet I wonder if you know how many thousands of tourists go from coast to coast, cursing you? If I could only hang that restaurant man--and the others like him--in a rope of his own hempen griddle cakes! The Great American Frying Pan! I don't expect men building a new town to have time to read Hugh Walpole and James Branch Cabell, but I do expect them to afford a cook who can fry eggs!"”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
BREAD AND BREAD-MAKING. 1668. AMONG the numerous vegetable products yielding articles of food for man, the Cereals hold the first place. By means of skilful cultivation, mankind have transformed the original forms of these growths, poor and ill-flavoured as they perhaps were, into various fruitful and agreeable species, which yield an abundant and pleasant supply. Classified according to their respective richness in alimentary elements, the Cereals stand thus:--Wheat, and its varieties, Rye, Barley, Oats, Rice, Indian Corn. Everybody knows it is wheat flour which yields the best bread. Rye-bread is viscous, hard, less easily soluble by the gastric juice, and not so rich in nutritive power. Flour produced from barley, Indian corn, or rice, is not so readily made into bread; and the article, when made, is heavy and indigestible. 1669.
Sources: The passage is from Sinclair Lewis, Free Air, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Beeton, The Book of Household Management of 1861, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — teal cloth, sheaf stamp.