“Shepherd Tom” Hazard, in his inimitable _Jonny Cake Papers_, thus speaks of the old-time methods of baking:-- Rhineinjun bread, vulgarly called nowadays rye and Indian bread, in the olden time was always made of one quart of unbolted Rhode Island rye meal to two quarts of the coarser grained parts of Ambrosia (Narragansett corn meal) well kneaded and made into large round loaves of the size of a half-peck measure. There are two ways of baking it. One way was to fill two large iron basins with the kneaded dough and, late in the evening, when the logs were well burned down, to clear a place in the middle of the fire and place the two basins of bread, one on top of the other, so as to inclose their contents and press them into one loaf. The whole was then carefully covered with hot ashes, with coals on top, and left until morning. Another way was to place a number of loaves in iron basins in a long-heated and well-tempered brick oven--stone would not answer as the heat is too brittle--into which a cup of water was also placed to make the crust soft. The difference between brown bread baked in this way, with its thick, soft, sweet crust, from that baked in the oven of an iron stove I leave to abler pens than mine to portray. In friendly chimney corners there stood a jovial companion of the peel and tongs, the flip iron, or loggerhead, or flip-dog, or hottle. Lowell wrote:-- Where dozed a fire of beechen logs that bred Strange fancies in its embers golden-red, And nursed the loggerhead, whose hissing dip, Timed by nice instinct, creamed the bowl of flip. Flip was a drink of vast popularity, and I believe of potent benefit in those days when fierce winters and cold houses made hot drinks more necessary to the preservation of health than nowadays. I have drunk flip, but, like many a much-vaunted luxury of the olden time, I prefer to read of it. It is indescribably burnt and bitter in flavor.