A Gastronomic Commonplace

Floris van Dyck - Still-Life

I've been fascinated with references to food, medicine and health (especially off-hand ones) in classic literature, so I decided to keep a log of all the interesting bits I find. Since these are not the type of notes that invite deep contemplation or spiritual enrichment, I decided to skip the hand written commonplace book for these and simply compile them online, (such as convenient copy-pastes from Gutenberg.org).

"I have so often heard Mr. Woodhouse recommend a baked apple. I believe it is the only way that Mr. Woodhouse thinks the fruit thoroughly wholesome....only we do not have them baked more than twice, and Mr. Woodhouse made us promise to have them done three times—but Miss Woodhouse will be so good as not to mention it." - Miss Bates, in Emma by Jane Austen

" He loved to have the cloth laid, because it had been the fashion of his youth, but his conviction of suppers being very unwholesome made him rather sorry to see any thing put on it; and while his hospitality would have welcomed his visitors to every thing, his care for their health made him grieve that they would eat. Such another small basin of thin gruel as his own was all that he could, with thorough self-approbation, recommend" - Mr. Woodhouse, in Emma by Jane Austen

"A husky-voiced gentleman with a rough face, who had been eating out of a sandwich-box nearly all the way, except when he had been drinking out of a bottle, said I was like a boa constrictor who took enough at one meal to last him a long time; after which, he actually brought a rash out upon himself with boiled beef." - Dickens, David Copperfield