There is, I think, more bread wasted in an ordinary household than is quite pleasant to contemplate. Crusts are cut off and put on one side in the dining-room, and of course no one in the kitchen will look at them after that; or double the quantity is cut at luncheon and dinner that is required, and once more this is put on one side. Now, it is quite easy to calculate how much bread should be used in a small household, but it is very difficult to find out where the waste is when the establishment increases. Still it is possible, and I do hope Angelina will begin by impressing on her cook that she will not allow waste, nor what makes sometimes a fearful amount of waste, i.e. the calling at the back door of those dreadful people with carts, who want to buy bottles, or rags, or bones, or such like trifles; for these men often tempt young servants to thieve, and often enough, too, snatch up a spoon or fork, should one be lying about, while the servant’s back is turned, and she is searching for her hoard of things, none of which really belongs to her at all.
I recollect quite well one year, when I was at Bournemouth seeing these carts going about regularly to different houses morning after morning, and as my window faced the road, I had the curiosity to watch what they received, more than once. Opposite to me lived a family, the mistress of which had often enough lamented to me the fearful appetites possessed by her servants, and one day, about 8.15, just when I was going down to breakfast, I saw the cart arrive, and saw also half loaves of bread, ‘chunks’ of meat, and pieces of butter and bacon, all brought out in an unappetising manner together, and shunted into the cart. My friend’s breakfast-hour was half-past nine, so the cart had merrily gone on its way long before her blinds were drawn up; but the very next time she spoke of her servants’ gigantic capacities for putting away food, I ‘up and spake’ of what I had seen in such a way that the cart never called there again, and her bills were reduced to one-half in less time than it takes to tell of them.
The driver of that cart once stopped at my door and descended into the kitchen. Luckily for me, I was, as usual, writing at the window at my desk, and, seeing him come in, I waited a few moments, and then descended into the lower regions too, and found him eloquently persuading my good little cook to sell bones &c. to him, but she was refusing staunchly; and then I appeared, and though, I confess honestly, I was shaking with fright, and was only sustained by the knowledge that the gardener was cleaning the boots near by, I gave that man a ‘piece of my mind,’ and, informing him that it was he and his fellows who made young servants thieves, bade him begone, telling him that if ever I found him on my premises again I would give him in charge; which so alarmed him that he fled at once to other houses, doubtless vituperating me in his mind all the time; but that I did not mind, as long as he transferred himself and his kindly attentions somewhere else.
In a well-regulated household every morsel of food should be used; the bones always are useful for soup, and a ‘digester’ should be one of Angelina’s most indispensable possessions. This should always be at hand for stock; and excellent soups, than which nothing is nicer on which to begin one’s dinner, can be procured by aid of the digester, if Angelina has a thoughtful cook, who uses every morsel to advantage, and never throws away a bone, even a fish bone, all of which aid the soup, and save buying other provisions.
Care and thought are centred in the kitchen, and once Angelina has carefully trained her maid into nice ways, the house will go like clockwork, and that is why I should advise any young housekeeper to take young girls as household servants (not on any account, by the way, as nurses; no young nurse is worth her keep save as an under-servant); an ‘experienced cook’ quotes her experience, and Angelina, having none to fall back upon, trembles and is conquered; but with a bright, intelligent girl, Mrs. Beeton’s most excellent book on household management (as regards food), a little common-sense, and a mother who has brought her daughter up sensibly, Angelina can start on her way, quite certain that she and her maidens will work together in a pleasant and satisfactory manner, and that she will never be exposed to domestic earthquakes such as occur with ‘experienced servants,’ who, having brought themselves up in a big establishment where nobody cared for them, go into Angelina’s small one in order to get as much out of it as they can, regarding all mistresses as their natural enemies!
One more subject as regards the kitchen. Never allow, on any pretext, that a dust-bin or a ‘wash-tub’ is ever needed. With a kitchener every morsel of débris should be burned in the close grate; and a dust-bin is never a necessity to any one who knows her business, and is determined never to allow of the smallest waste. There is nothing a kitchener will not burn—remember that, please! and flatly refuse to allow a dust-bin in any part of the house; it only means that waste will go on ad libitum, and that dirt and untidiness are favoured by one’s cook.
CHAPTER III.
MEALS AND MONEY.
I am going to devote this chapter entirely to the matter of money—that is to say, to indicating how the income should be apportioned, and what it costs to feed a small family who are content with nice plain food, and who do not hanker after elaborate cooking and out-of-the-way dishes; in which case they must not come to me for advice, as I have really no information to give them; and to further indicate as far as I can—outside the limits of a cookery book—some of the meals that can be managed without either much fuss and worry and an undue expenditure of money and time.
If Angelina really intends to marry on an income varying between 300l. and 500l. a year, she must sit down and weigh the pros and cons most carefully. Dress and house-rent are the two items that have risen considerably during the last few years; otherwise everything is much cheaper and nicer than it used to be before New Zealand meat came to the front, and sugar, tea, cheese, all the thousand and one items one requires in a house, became lower than ever they had been before; and therefore, if she be clever and willing to put her shoulder to the domestic wheel, she can most certainly get along much more comfortably in the way of food than she used to do. For example, when I was married, sugar was 6d. a pound, and now it is 2d.; and instead of paying 1s. 1d. a pound for legs of mutton, I give 7½d. for New Zealand meat, which is as good as the best English mutton that one can buy. Bread, too, is 5½d.—and ought to be considerably lower—as against the 8d. and 9d. of seventeen years ago; and, besides this, there are a thousand-and-one small things to be bought that one never used to see, and fish and game are also infinitely less expensive, for in the season salmon is no longer a luxury, thanks to Frank Buckland, while prime cod at 4d. a pound can hardly be looked upon as a sinful luxury, and this is the price we paid in the season in the Central Fish Market, where fish is always to be obtained fresh, cheap, and in as great a variety as at any West End shop; while of course those detestable Stores, much as I personally dislike them, have done much for us in lowering the prices of grocers, who are always willing to give ready-money purchasers every advantage, the while they are civil, send the purchased articles home, make out their own bills, and take care their customers are not worried to death, as they are at the Stores by supercilious youths, who make the place a rendezvous, and simper with girls who have been sent to do shopping, and combine it with large instalments of flirtation. No, I must say I have not one good word for the Stores; and, furthermore, I detest them because, living as I do a little way out of town, I am persecuted on my return journeys with enormous parcels, of all sorts and descriptions, that jam one’s elbows, fall down incontinently on one’s best bonnet, and are pushed under one’s feet, until the twenty minutes’ travel are rendered purgatorial by people who will shop at the Stores, and are in consequence turned completely for the nonce into beasts of burden, all to save a very problematic shilling or two; but as cabs to and from the station have to be added to the fare to town, I venture to state they would be far better served by a local grocer, or by either Whiteley or Shoolbred, whose prices are the same as at the Stores, and whose carts come to one’s door. But these little points are just where the ordinary woman’s finance comes utterly to an end. She can readily comprehend that sugar at 2d. a pound is cheaper than sugar at 3d.; but tell her to add to the cost of this the fare to town, wear and tear of temper, gloves, and clothes, odd cabs, and the necessary luncheon, and she is floored at once. She recognises the 2d. as against the 3d. immediately, but she cannot grasp the rest; besides which, at the Stores she sees one hundred and one things that she buys simply because they are cheap, and not because she requires them in the very least; so if Angelina values her peace of mind let her eschew the Stores, and, instead, talk to her nearest grocer on the subject, and see what can be done with him before she goes elsewhere.