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"All right, but you always get the better of me, you know. That is just what I paid. Anyhow, don't forget that when I want a new cloak," and he proceeds to measure out the purchases, using as weights two or three bits of old iron, a small cannon-ball, some bullets, screws, coins, etc. "Go with prosperity, my friend; and may God bless thee!"
"And may God increase thy prosperity, and grant to thee a blessing!" rejoins the successful man, as he proceeds to another stall.
By the time he reaches home his basket will contain meat, fish, vegetables, fruit and herbs, besides, perhaps, a loaf of sugar, and a quarter of a pound of tea, with supplies of spices and some candles. Bread they make at home.
The absurdly minute quantities of what we should call "stores," which a man will purchase who could well afford to lay in a supply, seem very strange to the foreigner; but it is part of his domestic economy—or lack of that quality. He will not trust his wife with more than one day's supply at a time, and to weigh things out himself each morning would be trouble not to be dreamed of; besides which it would deprive him of the pleasure of all that bargaining, not to speak of the appetite-promoting stroll, and the opportunities for gossip with acquaintances which it affords. In consequence, wives and slaves are generally kept on short allowances, if these are granted at all.
An amusing incident which came under my notice in Tangier shows how little the English idea of the community of interest of husband and wife is appreciated here. A Moorish woman who[page 111] used to furnish milk to an English family being met by the lady of the house one morning, when she had brought short measure, said, pointing to the husband in the distance, "You be my friend; take this" (slipping a few coppers worth half a farthing into her hand), "don't tell him anything about it. I'll share the profit with you!" She probably knew from experience that the veriest trifle would suffice to buy over the wife of a Moor.
Instructions having been given to his wife or wives as to what is to be prepared, and how—he probably pretends to know more of the art culinary than he does—the husband will start off to attend to his shop till lunch, which will be about noon. Then a few more hours in the shop, and before the sun sets a ride out to his garden by the river, returning in time for dinner at seven, after which come talk, prayers, and bed, completing what is more or less his daily round. His wives will probably be assisted in the house-work—or perhaps entirely relieved of it—by a slave-girl or two, and the water required will be brought in on the shoulders of a stalwart negro in skins or barrels filled from some fountain of good repute, but of certain contamination.
In cooking the Moorish women excel, as their first-rate productions afford testimony. It is the custom of some Europeans to systematically disparage native preparations, but such judges have been the victims either of their own indiscretion in eating too many rich things without the large proportion of bread or other digestible nutriment which should have accompanied them, or of the essays of their own servants, usually men without any more knowledge of how their mothers prepare the dishes they[page 112] attempt to imitate than an ordinary English working man would have of similar matters. Of course there are certain flavourings which to many are really objectionable, but none can be worse to us than any preparation of pig would be to a Moor. Prominent among such is the ancient butter which forms the basis of much of their spicings, butter made from milk, which has been preserved—usually buried a year or two—till it has acquired the taste, and somewhat the appearance, of ripe Gorgonzola. Those who commence by trying a very slight flavour of this will find the fancy grow upon them, and there is no smell so absolutely appetizing as the faintest whiff of anything being cooked in this butter, called "smin."
Another point, much misunderstood, which enables them to cook the toughest old rooster or plough-ox joint till it can be eaten readily with the fingers, is the stewing in oil or butter. When the oil itself is pure and fresh, it imparts no more taste to anything cooked in it than does the fresh butter used by the rich. Articles plunged into either at their high boiling point are immediately browned and enclosed in a kind of case, with a result which can be achieved in no other manner than by rolling in paste or clay, and cooking amid embers. Moorish pastry thus cooked in oil is excellent, flaky and light.