“The members of this board were very sage, deep, philosophical men; and when they came to turn their attention to the workhouse, they found out at once, what ordinary folks would never have discovered—the poor people liked it! It was a regular place of public entertainment for the poorer classes; a tavern where there was nothing to pay; a public breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper all the year round; a brick and mortar elysium, where it was all play and no work. “Oho!” said the board, looking very knowing; “we are the fellows to set this to rights; we’ll stop it all, in no time.” So, they established the rule, that all poor people should have the alternative (for they would compel nobody, not they), of being starved by a gradual process in the house, or by a quick one out of it. With this view, they contracted with the water-works to lay on an unlimited supply of water; and with a corn-factory to supply periodically small quantities of oatmeal; and issued three meals of thin gruel a day, with an onion twice a week, and half a roll of Sundays. They made a great many other wise and humane regulations, having reference to the ladies, which it is not necessary to repeat; kindly undertook to divorce poor married people, in consequence of the great expense of a suit in Doctors’ Commons; and, instead of compelling a man to support his family, as they had theretofore done, took his family away from him, and made him a bachelor! There is no saying how many applicants for relief, under these last two heads, might have started up in all classes of society, if it had not been coupled with the workhouse; but the board were long-headed men, and had provided for this difficulty. The relief was inseparable from the workhouse and the gruel; and that frightened people.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
to a boil in three different waters; soak eight ounces of stale bread in tepid water, and wring it dry in a towel; scald ten sage leaves; when the onions are tender, which will be in about half an hour, chop them with the sage leaves, add them to the bread, with one ounce of butter, the yolks of two raw eggs, one level teaspoonful of salt, and half a saltspoonful of pepper; mix and use. 108. =Onion Sauce.=--Prepare six ounces of onions as in receipt No. 107; chop them fine, pass them through a sieve with a wooden spoon, and put them into half a pint of boiling milk, with one ounce of butter, one saltspoonful of salt, and one quarter of a saltspoonful of pepper. 109. =Roast Wild Duck.=--Prepare a pair of ducks as directed in receipt No. 99; do not stuff them, but tie over the breasts slices of pork or bacon; roast fifteen minutes to the pound; serve with gravy in a boat and quarters of lemon on the same dish. 110.
Sources: The passage is from Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Corson, The Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical of 1877, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — slate cloth, sheaf stamp.