““Our dietary is according to the ancient conventual rules. During Lent there are no meals provided for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. For Tuesday and Thursday we have white bread, stewed fruit with honey, wild berries, or salt cabbage and wholemeal stirabout. On Saturday white cabbage soup, noodles with peas, kasha, all with hemp oil. On weekdays we have dried fish and kasha with the cabbage soup. From Monday till Saturday evening, six whole days in Holy Week, nothing is cooked, and we have only bread and water, and that sparingly; if possible not taking food every day, just the same as is ordered for first week in Lent. On Good Friday nothing is eaten. In the same way on the Saturday we have to fast till three o’clock, and then take a little bread and water and drink a single cup of wine. On Holy Thursday we drink wine and have something cooked without oil or not cooked at all, inasmuch as the Laodicean council lays down for Holy Thursday: ‘It is unseemly by remitting the fast on the Holy Thursday to dishonor the whole of Lent!’ This is how we keep the fast. But what is that compared with you, holy Father,” added the monk, growing more confident, “for all the year round, even at Easter, you take nothing but bread and water, and what we should eat in two days lasts you full seven. It’s truly marvelous—your great abstinence.””
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
(_Economical_.) 117. INGREDIENTS.--1 lb. of bread crusts, 2 oz. butter, 1 quart of common stock. _Mode_.--Boil the bread crusts in the stock with the butter; beat the whole with a spoon, and keep it boiling till the bread and stock are well mixed. Season with a little salt. _Time_.--Half an hour. _Average cost_ per quart, 4d. _Seasonable_ at any time. _Sufficient_ for 4 persons. _Note_.--This is a cheap recipe, and will be found useful where extreme economy is an object. [Illustration: QUERN, or GRINDING-MILL.] BREAD.--The origin of bread is involved in the obscurity of distant ages. The Greeks attributed its invention to Pan; but before they, themselves, had an existence, it was, no doubt, in use among the primitive nations of mankind. The Chaldeans and the Egyptians were acquainted with it, and Sarah, the companion of Abraham, mixed flour and water together, kneaded it, and covered it with ashes on the hearth.
Sources: The passage is from Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, tr. Garnett, Constance, 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 — plum cloth, beehive stamp.