Deviled eggs
Boil a dozen eggs hard, throw into cold water, and at the end of half an hour remove the shells. Cut the eggs carefully in half, extract the yolks and rub these to a paste with three tablespoonfuls of salad oil, two tablespoonfuls of vinegar, a half-teaspoonful of made mustard, a dash of paprika, two or three drops of Tabasco sauce, and salt to taste. Form this paste into balls, put the balls back into the halved whites and fit the whites into place. Run a wooden toothpick through the two halves of each egg to hold them together. Wrap every egg in waxed or tissue paper to keep it from becoming dry. Eat cold, with or without mayonnaise dressing.
Omelets cachés
Wash and wipe six large, smooth tomatoes of uniform size. Cut a piece from the blossom end of each and lay aside. Scoop out the pulp carefully, not to break the walls of the tomato. Set together in an open pudding-dish and put this into a brisk oven until the tomatoes are smoking-hot, but not until they break and collapse. Have ready the pulp you have extracted, minced and stewed, seasoned with butter, pepper, salt, a little onion juice and sugar. Drain off most of the juice. Beat four eggs light, add four tablespoonfuls of cream, a tablespoonful of butter heated to a roux with one of flour, mix quickly with three tablespoonfuls of the drained tomato, and fill the tomato shells with them. Fit on the tops and set in a shallow pan upon the top grating of a quick oven. Five minutes should cook them. Slip a spatula under each tomato, transfer to a hot platter and serve at once.
Pass thin slices of brown bread with them.
Chicken or turkey timbales
Boil eight eggs very hard and leave them in cold water for two or more hours. Take the shells off, cut in half, and extract the yolks. Chop the whites before running them through a vegetable press. Now mix with them four heaping tablespoonfuls of the breast of chicken or turkey minced as finely as possible; season with half a teaspoonful of onion juice, paprika and celery salt to taste, and mix to a white paste with the whites of three eggs beaten to a standing froth. Have ready enough buttered “nappies” or pâté pans to hold the mixture; fill them, set in a pan of hot water and bake twenty minutes in a quick oven.
Turn out upon a hot platter; pour a good white sauce about the base, heap a teaspoonful of the powdered yolks on the top of each and serve.
The yolks are prepared by running through a colander or, better still, a vegetable press.
Scallop of chicken and eggs
Strew fine, dry, buttered crumbs over the bottom of a buttered baking-dish, then put in a layer of cold, cooked chicken cut into small dice. Cook a teaspoonful of chopped onion in a tablespoonful of butter till slightly colored, add a cupful of milk, and when hot stir in half a cupful of dry bread-crumbs. Add a teaspoonful of chopped parsley and a little salt and paprika. Let it cool until blood-warm, then stir in two well-beaten eggs, and pour the mixture over the meat. Cover with fine crumbs. Place in the oven and bake, covered, half an hour. Serve in the dish in which it is baked.
A savory mince
Use any cold meat you have left over, except beef—poultry, lamb, veal, mutton, will do—and a little ham chopped and mixed with the other meat. Add one-third bread-crumbs soaked in stock or gravy and season well. Stir in a saucepan until very hot. Prepare “cups” of stale bread by cutting round, then with a smaller cutter marking out an inner circle, from which scrape out the bread, leaving bottom and sides whole. Dip these in a raw, sugarless custard made of a cupful of milk and two beaten eggs, and let each absorb all it will hold. Fry in hot cottolene or other fat to a light brown, drain, fill with the mince, which should be quite soft, drop a raw egg upon each, and set in the oven until the egg is “set.”
Larded sweetbreads (roasted)
Blanch the sweetbreads. With a sharp skewer make holes in them and run through these openings narrow strips of salt pork. Let the bits of pork project half an inch on each side. Lay the sweetbreads in a covered roaster, pour about them a pint of cleared and seasoned soup stock, cover closely and cook for an hour, then transfer to a hot dish. Thicken the gravy in the pan, season and pour it about the sweetbreads.
Larded sweetbreads (fried)
Prepare as in the last recipe, but instead of roasting dip in egg, then in crumbs; set on ice for an hour and fry in boiling butter.
Sweetbread pâtés
Make shells of rich puff paste, bake them, and fill, while hot, with a mixture made according to the following recipe:
Cut a pair of blanched sweetbreads into small dice. Cut ten canned mushrooms into quarters and mix them with the sweetbreads. Add eight blanched and chopped almonds and six olives cut into tiny pieces. Heat a cup of cream and thicken it with a teaspoonful of cornstarch rubbed into one of butter. When smooth and thick add the sweetbreads, olives, etc. If too thick now, thin the mixture with a little mushroom liquor. As soon as all the ingredients are heated through remove from the fire and turn into the shells.
Timbales of sweetbreads
Blanch and chop two pairs of sweetbreads until as fine as powder, then rub them very smooth with the back of a silver spoon. Work into this paste a gill of sweet cream and the beaten yolks of two eggs. Season with salt and white pepper, and beat long and hard. Butter small timbale molds or “nappies,” and pour the mixture into them. Set the molds in a pan of hot water and bake in a hot oven until “set.” Loosen the contents of the nappies with a sharp knife, and turn out the molds upon a hot dish. Pour a white sauce about them.
Sweetbreads en nid
Follow directions for larded sweetbreads, and keep hot. Make a “nest” for them of cold boiled ham shredded into bits hardly larger than coarse straw; cold roast chicken, turkey or veal, and cold boiled spaghetti in four-inch lengths. Arrange upon a hot platter to simulate a nest, pour a little scalding, well-seasoned gravy over them, and set the dish in a hot oven about five minutes. Have ready a large cupful of rich tomato sauce, strained and thickened with a roux of butter and flour, and seasoned with salt, paprika and onion juice. Lay the sweetbreads upon the “straw,” and pour the boiling tomato sauce over all.
A baked mince
Mix together two cupfuls of minced cold lamb, chicken or veal, one cupful of chopped ham and one cupful of fine bread-crumbs. Moisten thoroughly with well-seasoned soup stock. Turn into a greased bake-dish and set in the oven until heated through. Break upon the top of the mince as many eggs as will lie side by side on it, sprinkle with salt and pepper, return to the oven and bake until the whites are set and firm. Send to table in a pudding-dish.
Curried beef
Melt three tablespoonfuls of butter in a frying-pan and cook in it for five minutes an onion, sliced. Remove the onion, and stir into the melted butter two tablespoonfuls of browned flour, mixed with a tablespoonful of curry powder. Cook until they bubble, then pour on them a pint of beef stock. Stir until you have a thick, brown sauce. Season with salt and mix with it two cupfuls of cold roast beef cut into dice. Toss and stir until the meat is heated through. Have ready on a platter a hollowed mold of boiled rice, and pour the meat and sauce in the center and about the base of this.
Curried veal
Cut three pounds of lean veal into dice an inch square. Fry a sliced onion in two tablespoonfuls of butter until it begins to color. Strain out the onion; heat the butter to hissing, put in the meat cubes and shake over the coals until heated through and slightly browned. Turn the contents of the frying-pan into a pot, rinsing out the pan with a cupful of boiling water, just enough to cover the meat. Sprinkle over all three tablespoonfuls of finely-minced salt pork and some chopped parsley, cover closely and stew gently for two hours, or until the veal is tender. Drain the meat free from gravy in a colander and keep hot over boiling water. Return the gravy to the fire; add salt if necessary. Have ready in a cup a great spoonful of browned flour, wet to a paste with cold water. When smooth, add a teaspoonful of curry, and stir in well before adding both to the hot gravy. As it begins to boil put in the meat; cook gently (covered) ten minutes, and serve.
Always serve boiled rice with curry, the same person helping both. A large spoonful of the rice is put upon the heated plate, and the curry poured over it. Bananas that have been chilled upon the ice are a most grateful accompaniment to curry of any kind. One is given to each person, who peels and slices it with a silver knife.
Curried lamb or mutton
Make in the same way, substituting either of these meats for veal. If you like, stir a little currant jelly into the gravy.
Curried chicken
Joint the chicken as for frying, divide the breast and the back into two pieces, and proceed as with a curry of veal. It is particularly nice and popular with all who have been gently led on to appreciate a savory curry.
A “toss-up” of veal
Make a roux of one tablespoonful of butter and the same of flour; when very hot and bubbling, add a little onion juice, pepper and salt, four tablespoonfuls of hot milk (cream if you have it), with a pinch of soda heated in it; lastly, six tablespoonfuls of rich, strained tomato sauce. Stir in two cupfuls of cold veal, cut into dice, and the moment it begins to boil remove from the fire to a hot dish.
Mince of veal garnished with eggs
Make the mince as directed in foregoing recipe, but somewhat stiffer; season highly, bring to a boil and mold in the middle of a hot platter. Against this hillock of mince lay fried eggs, neatly trimmed, and outside of these curled strips of fried breakfast bacon. This dish will be much improved by the addition of half a can of mushrooms, minced fine.
Mince of lamb and rice
This is very much like the mince just described, the main difference being that a cupful of cold boiled rice and a green sweet pepper minced fine are added to the meat and tomato sauce. You may also substitute poached eggs for fried, and ham for bacon.
Any of the dishes just mentioned make savory a plain family luncheon, and may be easily prepared at little expense by the housewife who keeps a bright lookout for available “left-overs.”
An Italian hotch-potch
which became a favorite with us under the general name of “Frittura” during the winters we spent in Florence.
I suppose that it was a weekly clearing-house for all manner of leavings from roast and boiled meats, but it was good! Calf’s and poultry livers; cold mutton, lamb and veal; calf’s brains; now and then oysters; small artichokes; sprigs of cauliflower; potatoes; celery—all cooked, cut into small pieces, seasoned, rolled in flour, next in egg, again in flour, and fried; first the meat, then the vegetables, in boiling oil, and drained,—were duly sorted, but served upon one and the same dish—very hot.
Stew of mutton and peas
Cut three pounds of lean mutton into dice. In a pot fry six slices of fat salt pork; when crisp, remove them with a skimmer and lay in the grease the mutton, dredged with flour and half an onion sliced. Cook for five minutes, then cover with cold water and simmer until the meat is very tender. Remove the meat, lay it on a platter, sprinkle with salt and pepper and keep it hot while you thicken the gravy in the pot with a brown roux, and season it to taste with a tablespoonful of tomato catsup, a teaspoonful of kitchen bouquet and salt and pepper to taste. Now add the contents of a can of peas. These peas should have been drained and exposed to the air for an hour. Bring the stew to a boil, cook for five minutes, return the meat to the pot for a minute, then pour all into the hot platter.
Mince turnovers
Two cupfuls of flour, sifted twice with one rounded teaspoonful of baking-powder and half as much salt. Chop into it two tablespoonfuls of butter, and wet up with a cupful of milk, quickly and lightly. Roll into a sheet less than a quarter-inch thick, and this into squares about six inches across. Put into the middle of each square a large tablespoonful of minced poultry, veal, ham or lamb—or a mixture of these well-seasoned and wet with gravy. Double the paste into a triangle, enfolding the meat; pinch or print the edges to hold them together, and bake.
They are good hot or cold.
Beef with sauce piquante
Cut slices from yesterday’s roast of beef, mutton or veal. Put into a saucepan three tablespoonfuls of butter, a teaspoonful of vinegar, a half-teaspoonful of kitchen bouquet, a tablespoonful of tomato catsup, a teaspoonful of made mustard, and salt and pepper to taste. Stir these ingredients well together and lay the sliced meat into the sauce thus prepared. Turn the meat over and over until heated through, and serve with the sauce poured over it.
Larded beef
With a sharp knife make through a round of beef incisions an inch apart. Into the holes thus made stick long strips of fat salt pork. Rub the meat with a dressing made of equal parts of oil and vinegar, seasoned with salt and pepper. Let the meat lie in this for eight hours. Put the meat into a covered roaster, pour a pint of beef stock around it and roast for four hours. Set away in the gravy with a weight on the top. When cold, slice very thin and serve.
Beef loaf
Mix together three pounds of chopped raw beef, one-quarter of a pound of minced salt pork, one cup of cracker dust, two teaspoonfuls, each, of salt and pepper, and moisten all with two beaten eggs and a teaspoonful of onion juice. Work in two tablespoonfuls of melted butter, and pack in a greased mold. Cover; set in a roasting-pan of boiling water, and cook in a steady oven for two hours. Let the loaf get cold in the mold before turning out.
Veal loaf
Chop two pounds of cold cooked veal very fine, and work into it a teaspoonful, each, of salt, pepper and onion juice, a dozen chopped olives and as many minced mushrooms. Wet with a half-pint of veal or chicken stock. Pack in a greased mold and cook as in the preceding recipe. Have the loaf very cold before turning it out.
Pressed veal
Boil two pounds of lean veal in enough water to cover it. When cold, remove the meat from the liquor, skim the grease from the latter and chop the meat fine. To the chopped veal add a cupful of minced boiled ham and two hard-boiled eggs, chopped. Season the veal liquor with celery salt, pepper, a little tomato catsup and a dash of nutmeg. Make the chopped meat very moist with this liquor and press the mass hard into a buttered mold. Cover and set in the oven for half an hour. Remove from the oven; keep in a cool place for twenty-four hours, and turn from the mold upon a chilled platter.
Jellied tongue
Boil a tongue, and when cold place it in a brick-shaped mold. Into a pint of seasoned and heated beef stock stir a half-box of soaked gelatine, and when this is dissolved pour the stock around the tongue in the mold. When cool, set on the ice until the jelly is very firm. Turn out on a cold platter.
Jellied chicken
Boil a chicken the day before it is to be used. When the liquor is cold skim from it every bit of fat.
Soak a half-cup of gelatine in a cup of cold water for two hours. Remove all skin from the chicken and cut the meat into neat dice. Cut two dozen canned French mushrooms into halves. Stone and halve one dozen large olives.
Bring to a boil and strain a pint of the chicken liquor; stir into it the soaked gelatine, and set aside to cool. As it begins to thicken prepare your chicken loaf in the following manner: In a buttered mold lay a stratum of the chicken, sprinkle with pepper and salt, and a few halved olives and mushrooms, pour upon this the thickening, but still liquid, jelly. Then add more chicken, mushrooms and olives; pour upon them more jelly, and proceed in this manner until the mold is full. Set in a cool place for twenty-four hours before using. Lay a warm cloth for a moment about the mold, then invert it upon a chilled platter. This loaf is delicious served with lettuce and mayonnaise.
Beefsteak and sherry sauce
Broil a porterhouse steak over a clear fire until done. Lay on a hot platter. Make a sauce of a cupful of beef bouillon, thickened with a tablespoonful of brown roux, and when this is smooth add to it a wineglassful of sherry, a tablespoonful of onion juice and a half-cupful of French mushrooms, cut in half. Boil up once and pour over the steak.
Mock roast chicken
Boil and chop fine the giblets from three chickens saved from roast or fricassee. Trim the fat from a good-sized, but not thick, round steak. Make a forcemeat in the following manner:
Mix together the chopped chicken giblets, two hard-boiled eggs, chopped fine, and a half-cupful of fine bread-crumbs. Moisten all with chicken stock. Lay the steak upon the table, cover thickly with the forcemeat and roll it up, as you would a sheet of music, tying it in shape with stout strings. Melt two tablespoonfuls of butter in a frying-pan and cook the steak in this just long enough to brown it lightly. Remove the meat from the pan and put over the fire in a large pot. Add to the fat in the pan a tablespoonful of browned flour and pour upon it two cups of chicken stock. Stir to a smooth sauce, season to taste and pour over the steak in the pot. Cover closely and simmer for an hour and a half. Transfer the meat to a hot platter, remove the string, and pour the sauce over it.
Stewed rump steak
Trim the fat from the edge of a thick rump steak, and put the steak over the fire in a large pot. Pour over it a cup of cold water, cover closely and set at the side of the range, where it will simmer for three-quarters of an hour after it reaches the boil. Remove the meat from the pot and transfer to a baking-pan; season the gravy and pour it over the top, and cook for fifteen minutes longer, basting three times during the process. Remove the steak to a hot platter and set in the open oven while you add to the gravy a cup of soup stock and thicken it with a little browned flour rubbed to a paste with a spoonful of butter. Season with kitchen bouquet, celery salt and a half-teaspoonful of good sauce. Add a dozen canned mushrooms cut in half. Cook one minute and pour over the steak.
Rump steak and tomatoes
With a sharp carving-knife split a thick rump steak, thus making two thin steaks. Spread the lower half of this with bits of butter, a little minced ham and a cupful of tomatoes. (Use the canned tomatoes, straining off the juice and using it for the sauce.) Lay the upper half of the steak, sandwich-wise, upon the lower, and fasten the two together with small, stout skewers. Lay the meat in a covered roasting-pan, dash a cup of boiling water over it, and cook, allowing twenty minutes to each pound. Transfer to a hot dish, remove the skewers and pour over the steak a savory tomato sauce.
Mutton mince with tomatoes
Make three cups of good tomato sauce thickened with a heaping teaspoonful of flour rubbed into one of butter. Keep hot in a double boiler set at the side of range.
Toast slices of bread, butter, spread on a platter, and put a tablespoonful of tomato sauce on each. Into the remainder of the tomato sauce turn two cupfuls of minced mutton, put the saucepan over the fire, stir until the meat is thoroughly heated, season to taste and pour upon the toast.
Porterhouse steak with oysters
Broil a fine tender steak on both sides and transfer it to a hot dish. Pepper and salt well, then rub into the steak a mixture of butter rubbed to a cream with the juice of half a lemon.
Put one pint of oysters into a saucepan without any of the liquor. Stir until the edges ruffle, add one tablespoonful of butter creamed with an equal amount of flour and cooked to a roux. Pour over the hot steak and serve at once.
Savory stew of beef
Cut two pounds of raw lean beef into very small strips, almost like straws, with a keen blade. Put into a saucepan; cover with cold weak stock, or, if you have none, with cold water, and cook slowly two hours. Put into another saucepan a cupful of rich brown stock, one small onion chopped fine, a little grated nutmeg, cayenne pepper and the juice of half a lemon; boil these ingredients a few minutes and mix with the beef, adding a little browned flour if necessary. Dish upon a hot platter, lay triangles of fried toast about the base, and serve.
Roulades of beef
Cut two pounds of lean steak into pieces about five inches long and half as wide, and less than half an inch thick. Make a forcemeat of cooked sausage, chopped fine, and mixed with one-fourth as much fine, buttered and seasoned bread-crumbs. Place two tablespoonfuls of this mixture on each piece of meat, roll them into the shape of a small cylinder, and sew both ends with fine thread. Let them brown in butter in a frying-pan, then put them into a saucepan with the juice of a lemon, two cupfuls of brown stock, a carrot and an onion, sliced, and salt and pepper to taste. Cover closely, and cook for two hours. Transfer to a hot platter, clip and draw out the thread; thicken the gravy left in the saucepan with browned flour, add a little Worcestershire sauce and a glass of sherry; boil up once and pour over the roulades.
How to use up the cold tongue
Cut cold boiled beef-tongue into dice. Make a roux in a saucepan with two tablespoonfuls of butter and the same amount of flour, salt, pepper, and the juice of half a lemon. Add a cupful of strained tomato. Simmer slowly for ten minutes. Strain, return to the saucepan, lay in the tongue and let it stand where it will keep hot without boiling for five minutes. Serve in a hot platter.
This is still better if made of fresh beef’s tongue.
Galantine
Cut a strip of lean veal from the loin or the breast, about six inches wide and twice as long. Prepare a forcemeat of cooked ham, chopped mushrooms, any scraps of poultry you may have, the yolks of two hard-boiled eggs, one-third as much crumbs as you have meat, season with paprika and grated onion.
Lay this forcemeat in the center of the veal, roll up carefully, wrap in cheese-cloth and sew up closely. Lay it in a plate in a kettle, cover with cold water, add one-half teaspoonful of salt, one bay leaf and a sprig of thyme, cover and boil for fifteen minutes. Then put it at one side of the fire where it can only simmer for two hours. When done set aside, with a plate upon it and a heavy weight upon the plate, until next day. Clip the threads, unwrap the meat and serve, garnished with cress and nasturtiums. Cut perpendicularly.
Chipped smoked beef
Shred the beef into thin straws. Make a white sauce, lay in the beef and simmer for five minutes. Then stir in a beaten egg, a little onion juice and pepper. Stir until the egg is set, and serve upon toast.
Brains on toast
Scald and blanch the brains, beat smooth, add three eggs and beat hard. Have ready a tablespoonful of butter in a frying-pan hissing hot; turn in the mixture and stir steadily for three minutes. Serve upon rounds of toast.
Baked calf’s liver (larded)
Lard with strips of fat salt pork, inserted perpendicularly. The lardoons should project on both sides. Cover the bottom of a saucepan with minced pork, place the liver on it; add a carrot, two small onions, a half-dozen stalks of celery, all chopped fine; the juice of a lemon and a quart of strong stock; cover the saucepan and bake slowly for two hours and a half, basting often with the liquor in the pan. When done remove the liver, and put into the oven for a few minutes to brown; make a rich gravy of the remainder of the gravy in the pan; put the liver in the center of the dish, strain the sauce and pour over it.
Mock pâté de foie gras
When poultry is in full season and the weather is cold, save the giblets from half a dozen fowls, boiling them, salting slightly to keep them and setting them in a cold place. When you have enough, chop them, rejecting tough portions, and run through a vegetable press. Work to a smooth paste with melted butter, season with paprika, salt, and a dash of onion juice. Pack down in small jars, pour melted butter over the top, and keep in a cool, dry place. If you will boil a few mushrooms in salted water, strain, cut them into coarse dice and intersperse throughout the paste, you will have a veritable imitation of the famous Strasburg pâtés.
You may substitute calf’s, lamb’s or pig’s liver for those of fowls if you can not get the latter.
Savory ham
Fry slices of boiled ham on both sides. Transfer to a hot dish. Cook together in a frying-pan four tablespoonfuls of vinegar, a teaspoonful of granulated sugar, a teaspoonful of French mustard, and a dash of paprika. Stir until very hot, and pour over the fried ham.
Cottage pie
(Contributed)
Chop cold meat very fine. To each cupful add one saltspoonful of salt and one-and-a-half saltspoonfuls of pepper, a pinch of summer savory and one-half cupful of stock. Put into a baking dish and cover with a crust of mashed potatoes. Brush over the top with milk and bake in an oven to a golden brown.
Breaded tongue with tomato sauce
(Contributed)
Take six slices of cooked tongue, one-half can of tomatoes, one slice of onion, three tablespoonfuls of butter and a bit of bay leaf, three tablespoonfuls of flour, one-third cupful of bread-crumbs and one egg. Cut the tongue in slices about one-half inch thick. Dip into the crumbs, then in the egg and then in the crumbs again, and sauté in butter. Place on a dish and pour around it a sauce made by cooking together the tomatoes, onion and bay leaf fifteen minutes. Season with salt and pepper.
Steamed beef
(Contributed)
Select a piece of lean beef, wipe well with a cloth wrung out of cold water; remove all pieces of fat and gash with a sharp knife. Put the meat into a stone crock, sprinkle with salt and pepper and put in a few cloves. Cover with a tight lid. Cook in an oven slowly for several hours allowing no steam to escape. When done the meat will be very tender.
Irish stew
Take a pound of meat from the neck of beef or mutton and cut into neat pieces. Stew gently, and about an hour before it is done season and add two onions cut into dice and two carrots also cut into dice. About half an hour before the meat is done add two potatoes and three stalks of celery cut into dice. Serve on a platter, putting the vegetables around the meat.
Veal loaf (raw meat)
Put three pounds of raw veal and one-fourth pound of salt pork through the meat chopper; add to this one teacupful of fine bread crumbs, one tablespoonful of butter, three beaten eggs to which four tablespoonfuls of cream have been added, one teaspoonful of pepper, three teaspoonfuls of salt and two teaspoonfuls of powdered sage. Mix well together and form into a loaf. Bake in a mold two and a half hours, basting with butter and water.
Peppers stuffed with giblets
Extract the seeds from large sweet green peppers, and cut the latter into halves. Pour boiling water over them to mellow their pungency. Leave them in this until they are cold and set them on ice to get firm. When ready to cook them fill each half with minced giblets seasoned and moistened with gravy. Put the halves together, fasten in place with skewers or toothpicks, set in a bake-dish; pour in enough stock to prevent scorching and bake, covered, twenty minutes.
FAMILIAR TALK
LIVING TO LEARN
When one is too old to learn anything, his day of life is virtually over, so far as usefulness to his kind goes. The ten or twenty years left to him upon earth are a blunder on the part of some one, and we know that the Creator and Father of us all makes no mistakes. In the eloquent (and pessimistic) description of old age from the pen of the royal preacher-poet, we read that the aged shall be afraid of that which is high. The shrinking from new emprises, characteristic of the days when the almond-tree shall blossom and the knees that upbear (or keep) the house, shall tremble, is excusable when physical infirmity has enfeebled nervous forces and digestion. There is no excuse except this for the cessation of mind-growth.
This may sound didactic. It is written with a purpose. Given a sane mind in a sane body, and learning should go on indefinitely. The man or woman of mature years leaves off lessons because he chooses to get out of the habit of study. The prejudice against old cooks—said by one authority to be either drunk or crazy as a class—is founded upon this disinclination to learn novel methods. She who honestly aspires after excellence never thinks that she has reached it. When, in saying, “that is not MY WAY,” a cook believes that she has put an end, not only to controversy, but to any suspicion that the world may have moved an inch or two since she learned her trade—she registers herself among the incurables.
The mistress who yields to the earliest manifestations of an inclination to draw the dead line in housewifely progress is weakly indulgent or blindly foolish. In one wealthy family, not a hundred miles from a great city, “a valued old servant” played the tyrant for over a score of years. Little by little, the employers, mindful of her long term of faithful service, admitted her pleas that this or that new-fangled way was opposed to her habits and inclination, until family bills of fare were monotonous to boredom, the style of serving that of a preceding generation. At last Elizabeth died and was buried at the master’s expense.
“It’s dreadful, I suppose,” piped the youngling of the long-suffering band on the way home from the funeral. “But it ought to be some comfort that we won’t be obliged to have rice pudding three times a week any more.”
Faithful Elizabeth had her epitaph.
Nothing is more solemnly and sadly sure in this rushing age than that he who does not keep up with it will be thrown down and trampled out of sight. It is a trifle, apparently, when a woman tabooes oil in salad dressing because she “has never been used to putting it in,” when she thinks mint sauce a “trashy” accompaniment to roast lamb, and “won’t hear of hot sauce with cold pudding,” or whipped cream as an accompaniment to ice-cold raw tomatoes. When the vegetable dishes must all be set on the table with the meat, “as she has always had them,” and lettuce be cut up and dressed in the kitchen at the cook’s convenience, instead of being served, crisp and cool, from the deft fingers of some member of the family who is “up in salads.”
Each protest is a symptom of decadence which is wilful, not inevitable. She has stopped learning because she has “stopped.” In time, mental muscles become stiff, but disuse is the cause of the change.
“I account that day lost in which I have learned no new thing,” said an aged sage.
Our housewife may lay the saying to heart. If there be a better way than hers of doing anything—from making pickles to giving a wedding supper—she should be on the alert to possess herself of it. It is not true that it is easier for young people to keep themselves and their houses abreast of the times than it is for their elders. The first step that counts in the downward road is the tendency not to take any step at all. To stand still is to be left.
Many who believe that they cultivate the seeing eye, the hearing ear, and the willing, receptive mind, live and die without learning the great truth that the mighty thing we call Life is made up of minute matters. They see and admire the coral reef that heaves a back a mile long out of the surf, and give never a thought to the coral builders.
A man who thinks much and observes much, once told me that one essential difference between a man’s work and a woman’s is that he grasps general principles while she gives her attention to details.
A man, according to this authority, is an impressionist painter, handling his brush boldly, dashing in broad effects of light and shadow, while a woman finishes each object carefully, sometimes, after the manner of the Dutch school of painting, showing the very hairs upon the brawny peasant’s arm.
(I may be excused for saying, in passing, that, being a woman, I founded upon his general principle the particular moral that one sex supplements the other, and that the Creator meant the work of the world to be done by them in concert.)
He had turned from his desk to talk with me and, while talking, looked ruefully at an inky forefinger.
“I should keep some pumice stone, or acetic acid, or acetate of soda, or ammonia, here to remove ink-stains,” he said. “I always spill ink in filling my fountain pen.”
A box of matches was in a pigeonhole; a wet sponge, used for stamping and sealing letters, was close to the disfigured hand. I bade him wet the match and rub it upon the stain until it disappeared—the work of a minute. The sulphur in the ever-convenient match acted upon the black spots without blackening the skin, whereas any one of the four detersives he had mentioned would have left a hard, disagreeable sensation upon the cuticle. He was all right as to the principles. The one driblet of practical wisdom was for the moment worth them all.
A bright young woman whom I am glad to know, has written a little book entitled, “First Aid to the Young Housekeeper.” It includes scores of things which everybody ought to know, and which everybody else, especially the writer of household manuals, takes it for granted that the housewife does know. It is intelligent attention to this very matter of detail that constitutes the “finish” of work of whatever kind. One of the “Sunday books” of my childhood was a series called “The Week,” a story of English cottage life. I can recall many sentences and the whole story in substance. One remark was to this effect: “Mary was a good housekeeper; Nanny an indifferent. Nanny’s hearth was free of ashes and cinders, but dusty in the corners. Mary’s was not only swept, but pipe-clayed. Mary’s kettle was bright and black; Nanny’s clean, but brown and dull.”
That is, Nanny had mastered general principles; Mary looked to details.
I read last week in a woman’s corner of a daily paper a letter from a grateful housewife whose hall carpet had been deluged by the kerosene from a broken lamp. By the advice of a visitor she promptly covered the great spot with dry oatmeal. When this was swept off in the morning not a trace of the oil remained.
“My husband explains this by saying that the oatmeal is at once an alkali and an absorbent,” she writes. “I pass the useful knowledge on.”
A careless servant knocked a lamp from the table in the bedroom of my summer cottage and the matting got a full quart of the best kerosene. I had the floating oil wiped up with a clean, soft cloth, opened the windows, shut the door, and let no one enter the room for twelve hours. Not a trace of grease remained at the end of that time. The volatile oil had effaced itself. The alkaline absorbent was not needed.
“We are all fond of cauliflower; my husband and sons like young onions in the season,” said the mistress of a big house. “We can not have either of these vegetables cooked on account of the odor. It fills the house from cellar to attic.”
A housewife who lives in a tiny city flat has both of these dishes whenever she likes. The vegetables are put over the fire in cold water; a little salt is thrown in, and the pot is left uncovered. If these rules be strictly obeyed, the rising odor during cooking will be scarcely perceptible.
A physician, driving with his wife through a lonely country neighborhood, heard screams issuing from the open door of a cottage and went in to see if he could be of use. A child had upset a kettle of boiling water upon its legs and feet and was in agony from the scald.
“Have you linseed oil and lime water in the house?” asked the doctor.
Before the distracted mother could say that there was neither, the doctor’s wife said, “Do you burn wood in any room?”
There was a wood-stove in the parlor. There is always lard in the country pantry. In three minutes an ointment of lard and soot from the stovepipe was beaten up and spread upon old linen; in five minutes the scalds were covered with it. The relief was speedy; the cure complete in a day or two.
The wise housewife gleans a great store of precious driblets against the hour and minute of need. Such study of details is like sweeping up gold filings. The separate particles are nominally valueless, compared with the mastery of great principles. When massed and assorted, they go far toward making life easy.
A suggestive German fable is of a trooper who saw a loose horseshoe on the ground as he was going into battle, got down, picked it up and hung it about his neck by a string. In the first charge a bullet struck the horseshoe and glanced aside harmlessly.
“Ha!” said the trooper. “Even a little armor is a good thing, if rightly placed.”
The horseshoe was “a detail.”
CROQUETTES