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and Drury Lane. According to Elizabeth David, the earliest published recipes for such muffins appear in eighteenth-century cookbooks and typically include flour, yeast, salt, and water, which you mix and let “lie” in your “Trough.” Here’s Hannah Glasse in the 1754 edition of The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy: “When you eat them, toast them crisp on both sides then with your hand pull them open, and they will be like a honeycomb; lay in as much butter as you intend to use, then clap them together again, and set it by the fire.” Good advice, now as then.

CANADIAN BACON

You can and should try making your own Canadian bacon, which is meatier and sweeter than anything you can buy. The chapter about meats.

POACHED EGGS

The geniuses at Nestlé and Kellogg haven’t yet figured out how to vacuum-pack eggs, so for now we must poach our own.

Regrettably, it is possible to buy powdered hollandaise.

HOLLANDAISE SAUCE

Everything about homemade hollandaise is golden: it’s sunny yellow with the richness of butter and the clean, precise bite of lemon. Knorr’s powdered hollandaise, when prepared, tastes like a beef bouillon cube and is slimy and semicongealed, like room-temperature gravy. It is without question one of the most repulsive things I have ever eaten. You make hollandaise, to quote Julia Child, by “forcing egg yolks to absorb butter and hold it in creamy suspension.” Its reputation for difficulty is undeserved.

Make it or buy it? Make it.

Hassle: Hollandaise from scratch: 7 minutes. Mixing powdered hollandaise from the Knorr packet: 4 minutes.

Cost comparison: Homemade: less than $2.00. Prepared using the Knorr packet: $3.50.

3 large egg yolks

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted

Kosher salt

Dash of hot sauce

Freshly ground white pepper

1. In a bowl that can serve as the top of a double boiler, whisk the egg yolks and lemon until very thick and opaque.

2. Put the bowl over (not in) simmering water and, whisking constantly, drizzle in the melted butter. Whisk until light and billowy. Add salt to taste, a generous dash of hot sauce, and a grinding of white pepper. Remove from the heat. The hollandaise will keep for 45 minutes or so if you leave the bowl over a pan of warm water, but you should serve it as soon as possible. Thin if necessary with a little warm water.

Makes about 1 cup

COCOA

Very economical and tasty.

Make it or buy it? Make it.

Hassle: None at all

Cost comparison: Swiss Miss charges about $0.38 per 1-ounce packet of cocoa. One ounce of homemade costs about $0.18.

1½ cups dark brown sugar

1 cup cocoa powder

2 teaspoons kosher salt

1. Sift the ingredients into a bowl. If any salt or sugar gets left in the sifter, just pour it into the cocoa mix and whisk to blend. Keeps indefinitely in a lidded jar.

2. To make hot chocolate, use 2 tablespoons per cup of hot milk. Stir in ¼ teaspoon vanilla.

Makes 2½ cups mix, enough for about 20 cups of cocoa

CROISSANTS

Most commercial croissants are spongy, pale, scorpion-shaped pastries that deposit flakes all over your clothes but no delicious butter flavor on your tongue. Today, croissants are often made with shortening instead of butter—even in France! Here in Northern California, where you can’t throw a Birkenstock without hitting an artisanal bakery, it’s still hard to find finicky butter-based pastries like the croissant, let alone the long-lost petit four and nearly extinct Napoleon. Every crumb of this homemade croissant is saturated with butter, from the crispy crust to the tender interior.

Because the butter flavor is so important, you should use the freshest butter you can find.

Make it or buy it? Make it, unless you live near a French bakery that bakes all-butter croissants. In which case, you’re very lucky and should buy your croissants.

Hassle: Unbelievable hassle, requiring not just time but concentration

Cost comparison: From the in-store bakery of Safeway, croissants made