whinstones

Over this a top course was to be laid, seven inches in depth, consisting of properly broken hard whinstones, none exceeding six ounces in weight, and each to be able to pass through a circular ring, two inches and a half in diameter; a binding of gravel, about an inch in thickness, being placed over all.

The Life of Thomas Telford Smiles, Samuel, 1812-1904 1867

Of course, if you simply put the whinstones into a kettle and boiled them, you would not get much out of them by such rough cookery as that.

Madam How and Lady Why Charles Kingsley 1847

Now I know that the Scotch have a saying, "That you cannot make broth out of whinstones" (which is their name for lava).

Madam How and Lady Why Charles Kingsley 1847

But Madam How is the best and most delicate of all cooks; and she knows how to pound, and soak, and stew whinstones so delicately, that she can make them sauce and seasoning for meat, vegetables, puddings, and almost everything that you eat; and can put into your veins things which were spouted up red-hot by volcanos, ages and ages since, perhaps at the bottom of ancient seas which are now firm dry land.

Madam How and Lady Why Charles Kingsley 1847

I never saw any broth in Scotland, as far as I know, but what whinstones had gone to the making of it; nor a

Madam How and Lady Why Charles Kingsley 1847

Dig trenches, unpave the streets, ye others, assiduous, man and maid; cram the earth in barrel-barricades, at each of them a volunteer sentry; pile the whinstones in window-sills and upper rooms.

The French Revolution Thomas Carlyle 1838