In the aftermath of the inevitable food excesses of Thanksgiving,
I thought it might be interesting to look at the work of an evangelical
vegetarian of the mid-nineteenth century. Our inspiration for the day is A Treatise on a Vegetable
Diet, With Practical Results; Or, A Leaf From Nature's Own
Book, Illustrated by Facts And Experiments of Many Years' Practice (1848) by Asenath Nicholson. I give you an extract
from the Preface:
The following pages are
written with a sincere desire that they may be read, and be read with that
attention that the subject (not the style) demands. They are written with a
view to direct some dispirited dyspeptic to nature's fount, where he can be
healed; some toil-worn student, grown pale by the midnight lamp, how he can
find rest to his body and wings to his mind; some tattered and torn inebriate,
how he can rise out of the mire, put on a new coat, and slake his thirst for
ever from the love of the burning lava that has scathed his vitals and frenzied
his brain. They are written to admonish some tea-sipping maiden of the wrinkles
and hollow eye she is prematurely inviting; some snuff-taking, tobacco-eating
devotee of the sallow skin, the nasal voice, the besmeared teeth, and offensive
breath, which are the undeviating companions of the filthy weed; and some
care-worn mother how she may keep out the druggist's shop from her closet, and
prevent night watchings over her too highly fed children, and eat her bread
with a cheerful heart with the happy ones she loves, knowing that while she
follows nature she follows God, and while she follows God she is safe. Will you
read it?
This work makes no
pretences to science. It gives no details of Anatomy, Surgery, or Medicine.
Neither is it a hap hazard budget of odds and ends, flung together to be hung
up in a dark closet for the hurried housekeeper in some exigency to find a
string or bit of edging to eke out an inefficient cuff or collar. It is a work
of fourteen years' practice, carrying out principles, and making the
experiments here introduced. It is a work not to be proven, but a work that has
been proven. Eleven years of the fourteen were spent in researches after truth,
by practically testing the efficacy of a vegetable and fruit diet on about six
thousand persons from every civilized country on earth.
The nature and effects
of flesh eating have the Bible; the natural laws; the test of all vegetable
eaters of every clime; the testimony of some able physicians, and a host of
disciples converted from flesh eating by the lectures of Sylvester Graham, and
residents in the house before named. The remarks on tea and coffee have been
proven by actual experiment on living bodies. Those on spices, butter, and fat
from ocular demonstration by Dr. Beaumont of New York, who had a person with
him, whose stomach had been perforated by a ball, the ball extracted, and the
wound never healed, giving an opportunity for the Dr., with the help of a glass
tube, to see the process of digestion, which he carefully watched for years, on
all kinds of food and drink, in almost every clime. ….
… The recipes, simple
and unobtrusive as they may be, are the result of much persevering labour to
bring them to their present perfection, without the aid of a deleterious
substance, either butter, eggs, or deadening spices.
So,
if Thanksgiving has left you a dispirited dyspeptic, this book may help heal
you – although the missionary zeal with which the author promotes his cause may
give you a slightly different form of indigestion in the process. I will save
exposing you to the author’s hell-fire and damnation, and proceed directly to
the recipes I have chosen from the book. Some of you may be relieved to note that the simple,
unobtrusive recipes are almost entirely free of “deadening spices.”
Gingerbread Without Ginger.—One
pound of flour, one quarter of a pound of sugar, three quarters of treacle, two
teacups of good cream, a little soda, made into a stiff paste, and boiled on
tins, rolled thin.
Carrot Pudding.—Carrots
should be well washed and scraped, then grated into cold milk, a little hard biscuit
or flour stirred in, sweetened and well baked. They are a healthy, light food,
having something the properties of eggs, in being light; a little cinnamon may
be added.
Plum Cake.—Three
tea-cupfuls of flour to one of oatmeal grits, one tea-cupful of cream to three
of sour milk curdled, one half pound of raisins, one tea-cup of sugar, and two
teaspoonfuls of soda, stirred with a spoon, and made into a thick loaf.
Pies.—Pies
and pastries may be made to have a very bad effect on the stomach and blood,
and they may be made to have at least no injurious
effects.
Apple Pies.—Take
wheaten meal and sift out the coarsest of the bran, grate a few boiled potatoes
and rub them In as you would butter into the flour, then put soda into thick
sour milk, adding more than half good cream, and wet it without much kneading
quite dry, roll it in fine flour, and put it on a flat plate, then your green
apples, if quite sour and tender, may be sliced very thin and laid over, adding
sugar and one-half treacle if the treacle be pleasant, and sprinkle over this a
little flour to thicken the juice, and a little cinnamon, but if no treacle be
used, water must be poured in to make the pie juicy and more sugar used, this
should be covered with a thin paste and a hole cut through the top. If the
apples be tough they should be stewed a little before putting into the pie.
