A peculiarity of our American table, particularly in the Southern and
Western States, is the constant exhibition of various preparations of
hot bread. In many families of the South and West, bread in loaves to
be eaten cold is an article quite unknown. The effect of this kind of
diet upon the health has formed a frequent subject of remark among
travelers; but only those know the full mischiefs of it who have been
compelled to sojourn for a length of time in families where it is
maintained. The unknown horrors of dyspepsia from bad bread are a topic
over which we willingly draw a veil.
Next to Bread comes _Butter_--on which we have to say, that, when
we remember what butter is in civilized Europe, and compare it with
what it is in America, we wonder at the forbearance and lenity of
travelers in their strictures on our national commissariat.
Butter, in England, France, and Italy, is simply solidified cream,
with all the sweetness of the cream in its taste, freshly churned each
day, and unadulterated by salt. At the present moment, when salt is
five cents a pound and butter fifty, we Americans are paying, at high
prices, for about one pound of salt to every ten of butter, and those
of us who have eaten the butter of France and England do this with
rueful recollections.
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