BAKED BREAD OMELET

6 oz. stale bread, crusts removed
5 eggs
1/2 oz. parsley
1/4 oz. lemon thyme

Instructions: Soften the bread thoroughly in a dish; with a little boiling water, covering it over, and let it soak for an hour--then mash it up with a fork, picking out the hard pieces, and adding the parsley and lemon thyme, chopped fine with salt and pepper, as seasoning. Beat the eggs well, mix them intimately with the other ingredients, and bake in a buttered dish (buttered cold) for about 40 minutes. Turn it out of the dish, garnished with parsley, and serve with brown sauce.

From The Home Manual, or Economical Cook and House-Book by Elizabeth Nicholson, 1865.

Comment: Every household kept a jar in the kitchen into which any leftover bit of bread was put, down to the crumbs swept up off the tablecloth at the end of a meal. When you have to make every bit of your own bread with your own hands, pans and oven, you have a different feeling towards it than you do about a loaf for which you gave $.69 at the market! The breadcrumb jar was reached for any time some stale crumbs were need for stuffing a turkey, making a coating for a fried food, or perhaps for thickening a sauce. And if it ever got too full, or if things got truly tight in the food department, why, with the addition of a few eggs, voila! A relatively quick and easy meal, either breakfast or dinner, could be produced.

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