The complete servant / Being a practical guide to the peculiar duties and business of all descriptions of servants, from the housekeeper to the servant of all-work, and from the land steward to the foot-boy. With useful receipts and tables

by servant Samuel Adams; Sarah Adams

Other cheap articles for fattening, are oatmeal and treacle; barley-meal and milk; boiled oats, and ground malt.

Corn before being given to fowls should always be crushed and soaked in water. The food will thus go further, and it will help digestion. Hens fed thus have been known to lay during the whole of the winter months.

TO DETERMINE THE ECONOMY OF A COW.

The annual product of a good fair dairy cow, during several months after calving, either in summer or winter, if duly fed and kept in the latter season, will be an average of seven pounds of butter per week, and from five to three gallons of milk per day. Afterwards, a weekly average of three or four pounds of butter from barely half the quantity of milk. It depends on the constitution of the cow, how nearly she may be milked to the time of her calving, some giving good milk until within a week or two of that period, others requiring to be dried 8 or 9 weeks previously. I have heard (says Mr. Lawrence) of 20 lbs. of butter, and even 22 lbs. made from the milk of one long-horned cow in seven days; but I have never been fortunate enough to obtain one that would produce more than 12 lbs. per week, although I have had a Yorkshire cow which milked 7 gallons per day, yet never made 5 lbs. of butter in one week. On the average 3 gallons of good milk will make 1 lb. of butter.

TO MAKE SALT BUTTER FRESH.

To every pound of salt butter put a quart of new milk, and a little arnotto. Churn it an hour, then take it out and treat it as fresh butter, by washing it with water, and add the usual quantity of salt. The butter gains about three ounces in the pound.

SUBSTITUTE FOR MILK AND CREAM.

Beat up the whole of a fresh egg, in a basin, then pour boiling tea over it gradually, to prevent its curdling. It is difficult, from the taste, to distinguish the composition from rich cream.

TO PRESERVE EGGS.

Apply with a brush a solution of gum-arabic to the shells, or immerse the eggs therein; let them dry, and afterwards pack them in dry charcoal dust. This prevents their being affected by any alterations of temperature.