A new discovery in baking has been made in New Holland, in consequence of the ignorance of common arts produced by the subdivision of labour. We do not know baking afloat; and in the first settlement of that colony, the women were from the cities, and did not know how to bake. The bakers appear to be a moral class, for the men were equally ignorant. The colony lived for years on biscuits, and even at the governor’s table the guests were in the habit of bringing their own biscuits. The convicts could not be so daintily treated: their weekly allowance of flour was served out to them, and they were allowed to do with it what they liked, when accident or genius led them to treat it in this manner. Each slaked his fourteen pounds with water, and having made it into dough, proceeded to heat and pummel it by the hour: this huge mass of dough was then tumbled into the fire, the ashes having been raked out to heap over it when laid in. The bread so made, is pronounced by those familiar with it, excellent: it is called “damper,” from damping the fire. It is not wet and sodden as might be supposed, the manipulation, as in the kuscoussoo, rendering it palatable, and being perhaps slightly raised by the expansion of the air driven in by the beating which it receives with the fist. I cannot return from this dissertation without a word on the cooking of the two other grains from which national dishes are made--Indian corn and rice. The uncertainties attending the condition of our own island, increase the importance of the knowledge of the best methods of dressing the substances that might be substituted for potatoes; and in the art of cookery, England is behind every other people.[263] Indian corn does not do when eaten cold. As bread, it is kneaded with water and fired upon the griddle, and then eaten hot: as polenta it is cooked like Scotch porridge, or eaten with milk, or it is turned out and left to cool, and then, when wanted, is sliced and cooked on the gridiron or fried. In these forms it is an agreeable and wholesome food.[264] Pilaf is a dish, which, like kuscoussoo, has its secret. I never tasted it eatable when made by a Christian. It is rice and butter, and the art depends in the manner of introducing the butter. Boiled with the rice, or added in the dish, it would be no pilaf. It is only a person deserving the name of cook, who, after several failures, might succeed. Such a person will find all that is requisite in what follows:--