Wholesome fare : a sanitary cook-book, containing the laws of food and the practice of cookery, and embodying the best British and continental receipts ; with hints and useful suggestions for the sedentary, the sick, and the convalescent / by Dr. & Mrs. Delamere.

  • Delamere, Edmund S.
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Wholesome fare : a sanitary cook-book, containing the laws of food and the practice of cookery, and embodying the best British and continental receipts ; with hints and useful suggestions for the sedentary, the sick, and the convalescent / by Dr. & Mrs. Delamere. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

    689/814 (page 675)
    dull and lurid, and there is something forbidding in its aspect. It is easy, now, to supply its place with hundreds of beautiful, hardy, and innocent plants. In the receipts which some Cook-Books give for Custard, &c., for “ laurel-leaf,” read “bay-leaf.” The first is poisonous, containing prussic acid; the latter is simply aromatic, with a perfume approaching to that of cinnamon. The two plants are quite different, and belong even to different Natural Families. The so- called Laurel is a Cherry, Cerasus Lauro-Cerasus; and its cousin, the common cherry, contains prussic acid in the kernels of its fruit. The Bay-tree, Laurus nobilis, is a Laurel, and is a near relation to the Camphor-tree, Laurus Camphor a, a highly useful and medicinal plant. The confusion may have arisen from Laurier's being French for bay-tree, and so finding its way into translated re- ceipts ; but to avoid all error, it is usually spoken of as Laurier a Sauce, or Sauce-laurel, whereas the other is correctly called the Laurier-Cerise, or Cherry- Laurel. Cherry-laurel leaves should be banished from cook- ery, for fear of the results of an over-dose. True, they are used, in very small quantities, with no perceptible evil effect; but so may arsenic and prussic acid be taken (and are even administered medicinally) in doses of extreme minuteness. Therefore, we repeat, in cookery, for “ laurel-leaf,” read invariably, “ bay-leaf.”