Cracks and scaling-off are still oftener the result of sudden overheating and of allowing an empty vessel to stand over the fire. The teakettle boils dry, the soup seethes and simmers until bones and meat stick to the bottom of the pot. To complete the wreck, the ignorant or indifferent cook snatches off the misused utensil and runs with it to the sink, turning the cold-water faucet upon the heated metal. Yet the mistress marvels at the semi-yearly necessity of replenishing kitchen tools!
Never put away a vessel which is not both clean and dry. Wash with hot water, good soap, and household ammonia. Use mop and soap-shaker, if you would spare your hands and do justice to bottoms, seams and sides of pot and pan. Rinse off the suds, wipe and set, upside down, upon the range for thirty seconds to make assurance doubly sure.
Hang up everything that furnishes the semblance of a loop by which it may be suspended. And always in its own place, so that you could find each in the dark.
Cover the shelves of the crockery closet with strips of scalloped oilcloth that come for the purpose, and the shelves on which you keep metal pie-plates and pans with stout paper, pinked at the edges.
If you use tin milk-pans, have them seamless, scald daily with boiling water into which you have stirred a little baking soda, rinse with pure water and stand in the sun.
Wooden ware should be scrubbed with a clean, stiff brush and soda-and-water, rinsed well, wiped and dried near the fire or in the open window.
Buy three qualities of dish-towels—the finest for glass, silver and china; the second best for crockery used in kitchen work; the third for heavy kettles, griddles, etc., and have them washed every day. Even when no grease adheres to them they have a musty odor if used several times without washing.
Rub gridirons and griddles with dry salt before each using, wiping it off with a clean towel.
Never undertake to polish your stove until it is quite cold, and do not rekindle the fire too soon when the polishing is done.
Next to the range, or stove, the sink is the most important feature of the kitchen.