When you roast a breast of veal, remember your sweet-heart the butler loves a sweet-bread; therefore set it aside till evening; you can say, the cat or the dog has run away with it, or you found it tainted or fly-blown; and besides, it looks as well at the table without it.
When you make the company wait long for dinner, and the meat be over-done, which is generally the case, you may lawfully lay the fault upon your lady, who hurried you to send up dinner, that you was forced to send it up too much boiled or roasted.
If your dinner miscarries in almost every dish, how could you help it? You were teazed by the footmen coming into the kitchen; and to prove it true, take occasion to be angry, and throw a ladle-full of broth on one or two of their liveries; besides Friday and Childermas-day are two cross days in the week, and it is impossible to have good luck on either of them; therefore on those two days you have a lawful excuse.
When you are in haste to take down your dishes, tip them in such a manner, that a dozen will fall together upon the dresser, just ready for your hand.
To save time and trouble, cut your apples and onions with the same knife; well-bred gentry love the taste of an onion in every thing they eat.
Lump three or four pounds of butter together with your hand; then dash it against the wall just over the dresser, so as to have it ready to pull by pieces as you have occasion for it.
If you have a silver sauce-pan for the kitchen use, let me advise you to batter it well, and keep it always black; this will be for your master’s honour; for it shews there has been constant good house-keeping: and make room for the sauce-pan by wriggling it on the coals, &c.
In the same manner, if you are allowed a large silver spoon for the kitchen, let half the bowl of it be worn out with continual scraping and stirring; and often say merrily, this spoon owes my master no service.
When you send up a mess of broth, water-gruel, or the like, to your master in a morning, do not forget, with your thumb and two fingers, to put salt on the side of the plate; for if you make use of a spoon, or the end of a knife, there may be danger that the salt would fall, and that would be a sign of ill luck. Only remember to lick your thumb and fingers clean, before you offer to touch the salt.
In this satire, much useful instruction is conveyed, and many faults exposed which could not be so well noticed in any other form. A valuable servant will, of course, not lay herself open to the Dean’s irony.