“But I see,” said she, “you refrain from a word of commendation for my trimmings. They don’t suit your taste, I know, my friend, and pray don’t think that they are in exact accordance with my own. Let me tell you a secret. Every bow, band, strap, fold, and frill hides a piece set in or a hole mended.”
In the midst of a large company, there was not a lady that appeared more genteelly or better dressed than our friend. If there were more like this modestly independent and industrious girl, we should hear very little of the talk, so common nowadays, that young men are unable to marry, because the young ladies are so extravagant.
XLII.
ACCURATE WEIGHTS AND MEASURES IN COOKING.
YOUNG housekeepers very often complain that, notwithstanding their most earnest efforts to work in strict accordance with given rules or receipts, their failures are more frequent than their successes. They admit that sometimes their work proves satisfactory, but ask, “Why should it not always be so?”
The difference in the results of their various trials can only be attributed to the method and accuracy, or to the haste and carelessness, with which their labor is performed. Unless there was some fault in the materials, some difference in the quality, arising from change between the successive trials, or the oven and fire were not properly regulated, there can be no reason for the failure, except the fact that the receipts and rules were not always strictly followed.
“But,” say they, “we used to see our mothers throw the materials together, apparently without thought, and we have often seen others set about the work of making cake, pies, or bread with such an easy, nonchalant air that, to our inexperienced eyes, it was perfectly marvelous that any good results could possibly follow; yet the article would come from the oven in all respects perfect. Time after time we have seen this done, and the work always blessed with a satisfactory termination; but if we attempt that mode of labor, the most disastrous and mortifying consequences are sure to rise up against us. Why is this?”
Simply because you are attempting to walk before you have learned to creep, and naturally get some sore falls by the premature attempt. It is only when accustomed to this labor by long years of constant practice, so that it is done almost by instinct, that any one should venture to deviate from strict observance of well-established rules. But there are very few, comparatively, of the most accomplished and mature housekeepers who attempt this free-and-easy way of cooking; or if, in some emergency requiring haste, they are driven to it, they will assure you that they seldom succeed so perfectly as they would have done had they weighed and measured with their usual care and precision. Occasionally we find a few natural-born cooks, with “a law unto themselves,” just as we find persons who have a natural gift for dress-making and millinery, whose work, performed instinctively, equals any French modiste’s. But such cases are rare, and, we are inclined to think, undesirable, except for one’s own ease. Where there are young girls about, either in the family or among friends, who may be obliged to look to you for instruction, you would find it very difficult and embarrassing, had you that gift, to attempt to teach or put into words anything which you are able to do so entirely by intuition. Even in your own mind, you would find yourself at a loss how to frame a definite rule or receipt for doing it. Your hands seem to perform it independently of your head. Let some of these gifted ones attempt to write out a receipt which a beginner could easily follow, and they would make much more awkward work of it than you do in your efforts to work without a definite rule.
“But even when we do proceed in exact accordance with the receipts, we often fail.”
Are you sure you are exact? We think not. It requires some little experience to be able to weigh and measure correctly, and we have often noticed that it is the lack of this experience which causes failure in most young housekeepers. If it lacks “only a little” of being full weight, or is “only a little” too much, are you not very likely to say, “O, it’s quite near enough; such slight difference can’t matter, and I am in a hurry”?
“Only a little thing” has done much harm in almost every department of life,—a mischief that is often irremediable. If there is only a little too much flour, your bread or cake will be solid; not heavy, perhaps, but lacking that light, tender state which is so desirable. Or, if only a little less than the proper measure is used, it will “fall” from the crust, and come upon your table flat and sodden.