TWO NATIONAL TASTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2373, 24 August 1899, Page 55

TWO NATIONAL TASTES.

CARAWAY SEEDS AND THE CRUST ON BOILED MILK LIKED BYi GERMANS. " One of the two things that occupied my time in Germany," said a student who had just returned from a semester in Berlin, " was dodging caraway seeds. That was not as easy as it sounds. '' In the manual of German cookery, which is admirable enough in every other respect, the use of caraway seeds is a matter evidently regulated by the caprice of the. cook. -She is at liberty to put them in soup or cakes, salad; or pudding. They are evidently appropriate anywhere.' " After carefully putting as many of

them in an article of food as necessary, according to German taste, I fancy that the cook sprinkles every dish with caraway seeds before it is put into the oven, and also after it comes out, in order that there may be no deficiency in this popular ingredient. "My worst struggle came in the home of an officer to whom I carried letters of introduction. He lived in delightful fashion, and the dinner I took with him remains a delightful gastronomical reminiscence up to a certain point. That point ,was the goose. "ty was a fine bird, and looked deliriously brown. Disillusionment came, however, with the first mouthful of it. The cook, faithful to the traditions of her country, had filled the stuffing with the seeds as if to make up for the lack of them elsewhere. It was the cruellest application of them I had ever known, for the goose that was spoiled by them would have Been a credit to any dinner. " Their presence was highly typical, hpwever, of the part that caraway seeds play in every German kitchen. It may be possible to escape them for several courses, but they are certain to crop up somewhere in the place where they are least expected. To get through a meal without them is impossible. . - "Next to the caraway seeds, I had the hardest time with the skim on the boiled milk. That was always an aversion of mine, but it was never so necessary before to keep up a steady fight against it as in Germany. " By closely watching the milk, however, I contrived to avoid it fairly well. Finally, by a wonderful application of the theory similia Similibus curantur, I came to like the stuff. " One day I was sitting with a friend in a cafe. He ordered a drink of which I did tot hear the name. I was sick of grenadines, capuciners and cold chocolate, so I told the waiter to bring me the same thing. It proved to be a whitish yellow mixture. I ate it with a spoon, and found it delicious. My friend, who knew my aversion to the skim on the top of the boiled milk, laughed when I asked him .what I had just eaten. "It is a glassful of the skimming from the top of the boiled milk," he answered; "merely put into the- tumbler and not changed a particle. It is skimmed from all the boiled" milk in the place to give you that glass." " After that I was never so fearful about the skim on the milk, although I never grew to like it. But I found it less disagreeable in a coffee cup and learned to like it when heaped in a glass." — New York JTimes.