Toast and Water.
Toast a piece of bread quite brown, without burning, put it in a covered jug, and pour boiling water on it; before the water is quite cold strain it off.
A Drink for Sick Persons.
Boil 1 oz. of pearl barley in 2 pints of water, with 1 oz. sweet almonds beaten fine, and a bit of lemon peel; when boiled to a smooth liquor, add syrup of lemons and capillaire.—Or: to take in a fever: boil 1½ oz. tamarinds with ¾ oz. raisins and 2 oz. currants stoned, in 3 pints of water, till reduced half; add a little grated lemon peel.
Saline Draughts.
Pour ½ pint spring water on 2 drachms salt of wormwood, and 4 table-spoonsful lemon juice; 2 table-spoonsful lump sugar may be added, if approved.—Or: pour 4 table-spoonsful lemon juice on 80 grains of salt of wormwood, add a small piece of sugar, finely pounded. When the salt is killed, add 4 table-spoonsful of plain mint water, and the same of spring water; strain, and divide it into 4 draughts, 1 to be taken every six hours. If the patient be bilious, add 10 grains of rhubarb, and 4 of jalap, to the morning and evening draught.—Or: pour into one glass a table-spoonful of lemon juice, and dissolve in it a lump of sugar; dissolve ½ a tea-spoonful of carbonate of soda in 2 table-spoonsful of water, in another glass: pour the two together, and drink in a state of effervescence. For delicate persons, a wine-glassful of sherry takes away the debilitating effect.
Coffee.
To be good must be made of a good kind, for poor, cheap coffee, though ever so strong, is not good. A breakfast-cup, quite full, before it is ground, makes a quart of good coffee. When the water boils in the coffee-pot, pour in the coffee, set it over the fire; the coffee will rise to the top, in boiling, and will then fall; boil it slowly three minutes longer, pour out a cupful, pour it back, then another, and let it stand five minutes by the side of the fire. A small
