“We were very glad of this hospitality at first as it would give Matthaios a holiday, which he could devote to the washing of clothes, water being so plentiful. I will describe one day's meals, which were invariably the same. At eight o'clock came several cups, all containing coffee and milk, honey, eggs, hard boiled and peeled, and a large thin leathery kind of bread made plain with water, and another large thin kind made with _ghi_, and like pastry.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
scald with it half a pint of flour; if the milk is skimmed, use a small piece of butter; when the batter is cool, add the rest of the milk, one cup of hop yeast, half a tablespoonful of salt, and flour enough to make it quite stiff; knead the dough until it is fine and smooth, and raise it over night. This quantity makes three small loaves. 258. =Rice Bread.=--Simmer one pound of rice in three quarts of water until the rice is soft, and the water evaporated or absorbed; let it cool until it is only luke-warm; mix into it nearly four pounds of flour, two teaspoonfuls of salt, and four tablespoonfuls of yeast; knead it until it is smooth and shining, let it rise once before the fire, make it up into loaves with the little flour reserved from the four pounds, and bake it thoroughly. 259.
Sources: The passage is from J. Theodore (James Theodore) Bent, Southern Arabia, 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 — moss cloth, beehive stamp.