Fortune Cookies and Eliza Leslie's 'Secrets' with hidden messages

Kata irons made a 19th century Japanese cookie, a precursor to the Fortune Cookie.  More information - including a nice slide show -  available at the links below.  Thin wafers rolled into cylinders or cones.

And the Secrets?  Wrap nuts or sweets with a verse on a paper in colorful glazed paper.

Cheese Toaster for Welsh Rarebit ... or Rabbit

"Cheese Toaster with double bottom for hot water" image from Bishop, 1852. 

A Toasted Cheese or Scotch sandwich, when mustard was added, became a Welsh-rabbit (described in 1827 book). 

Shoo fly! Protecting food on the table - Punkhas, fly covers, meat safes

Flies were a nuisance and a danger, such as "fly blown" - flies leaving eggs on meat which turned into maggots.  Punkas - large fans suspended from the ceiling moved by a cord - were popular in India and the American South.  Other methods described below included meat safes, dish (fly) covers, cloth over milk, meat or windows; spices or chemicals.  Painting from 1637 depicts a fly on the bread.

Cavendish bananas, the Duke of Devonshire & Sir Joseph Paxton

Sir Joseph Paxton (1803-1865) was the gardener at Chatsworth House for 30+ years, built it’s Great Conservatory (left, 1830s) and later built the famed Crystal Palace in 1851. He named this variety of banana after his employer, William Cavendish, 6^th Duke of Devonshire (1790-1858). Queen Victoria visited...