1 161
2 mere purpose of making money, and bears as its title, 44 The
3 Wonders of Sympathy and Magnetism, &c., by Gerstenbergk.”
4 In India, where the palm, cocos nucifera , grows, the bakers
5 use the juice of it, which is called toddy, to leaven the dough.
6 At Lahore, where toddy cannot be procured, they employ in place
7 of it a mixture of different spices ; and, as the ladies at Lahore
8 w?ould probably like to know what spices they are daily eating in
9 their bread and pastry, I therefore take the liberty of giving
10 them the recipe of my Hindostanee baker. It is true the mixture
11 is composed only of innocent drugs, which are taken in such
12 minute quantities that they can never injure health, and that
13 most of them evaporate during baking. The recipe runs thus : —
14 Musk, nutmegs, cloves, mace, cinnamon, saffron, cardamum seeds
15 (lesser), ginger, fennel seeds, root of the betel plant, bind-weed
16 (convolvulus argent.), mild inderjuo seeds, shell of the cuttle-
17 fish, sugar of bamboo, guin-tragacanth, mastic, and liquorice-
18 root ; of each, one scruple. Some people take also the kernel of
19 the cotton-seed, or the flowers of euryale ferox (a water plant).
20 These different materials are pounded and mixed together, and
21 kept in a small box. When required for use, a small portion is
22 mixed with pollard, or wheaten flour, and made into a paste with
23 sour milk, in the proportion of one scruple of spices to three
24 ounces of the meal. The paste is then enclosed in a cloth, and
25 in summer the leaven is ready for use on the next day, but in
26 winter not till the third day. To this they add three pounds of
27 flour, and, with water, in which a little salt is dissolved, make it
28 into a hard dough, which they knead on a board for half an
29 hour, and then put some sugar into it. Instead of the latter, I
30 used some sweet potatoes (convolvulus batatas ), when they were
31 in season, boiling, peeling, crushing, and mixing them with the
32 dough. These potatoes communicate to the bread an excellent
33 flavour, and keep it for a longer time soft and elastic. The
34 bread is made in loaves of about the third of a pound in weight,
35 and is put to leaven on the leaves of butea frondosa, and after-
36 wards baked. How strange a mixture to replace the toddy, and
37 the office of which is performed in our own country by simple yeast.