Ditto bread

Enid Pearsons e.pearsons at VERIZON.NET
Mon Aug 26 00:00:54 UTC 2002


----- Original Message -----
From: "sagehen" <sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Sunday, August 25, 2002 12:14 PM
Subject: Ditto bread


| Barry writes:
| > Also mentioned are "corn coffee, ditto bread, cowpeas..."  Corn
|>coffee? Ditto bread?<
|
| Probably dittoing the "corn"; IOW, cornbread.  I've never heard of "corn
| coffee," but daresay it's something like Postum, a roasted-grain-based
| drink.
| A. Murie
----------------------------------------------

There's a recipe for corn coffee at
http://www.geocities.com/webcipes/bevs/b781.html

I second the "ditto" as corn.  It was ubiquitous in lists in the 18th & 19th
centuries to avoid repetition.  Custom is custom.  Never mind that it would
have been shorter to write corn bread than ditto bread!

>From a mid-eighteenth-century inventory:
    "3 White Stone Sauce boats, some broke .
    1 ditto Tureen .
    28 ditto Custard Cups"
http://gunstonhall.org/probate/FNDLL63.PDF

And from a log of a journey, written by a Richard Barham in 1841:
    "Very good tea, ditto bread, ditto butter."
http://www.literatureandplace.org.uk/database/en/entries/Barham%20Richard%20
Harris/Margate/147



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