“Course, there were some substitute cooks--reformed laundresses, raw amateurs and back numbers that should have reached the age limit long before. And pretty awful cookin' they were gettin' away with. Vee had heard of one who boiled the lettuce and sent in dog biscuit one mornin' for breakfast cereal. Miss Gray told what happened at the Pemberton Brookses when their kitchen queen had left for Bridgeport, where she had a hubby makin' seventy-five dollars a week. The Brookses had lived for three days on cream toast and sardines, which was all the upstairs girl had in her culinary repertoire.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
Toast crackers and drop them into a cream, made as for milk toast. Let them soak in this for ten minutes; then dish and serve. The crackers will be more delicate if they be soaked in cold water and toasted as for butter toast before being put in the cream.
Sources: The passage is from Sewell Ford, Torchy and Vee, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Parloa, Miss Parloa's Young Housekeeper of 1893, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — oxblood cloth, amphora stamp.