The fact that legislation is active in securing the hygienic conditions of the wholesale milk supply cannot excuse individual indifference to either its actual value or suitable treatment. The inferiority of skim or separated milk to “whole milk” has been so emphasised that in many places a useful article is lying as a drug in the market. That skim milk is as useful as many “stocks” and much better than water for making porridge, maigre soups, sauces, for mixing bread and scones, has yet to be appreciated, and will only be so when the true economic use of food 314 is removed from its present haphazard position among the instinctive arts!
The constructive consistency of meat, fish, and vegetables must be clearly set out if we are to understand the effect upon them of heat. The primary methods of cooking and the standard proportions of ingredients may already be used with an intelligence that at least puts aside the recipe book; but the research that can produce a satisfactory system of catering and cooking has yet to invade the higher education of men and women. A suggestion of the scientific treatment of domestic matters too often presumes an elaboration of work rather than a reduction of it, and yet we all realise the labour-saving and economic return that has been the result of science applied to commercial industries. There must be a definite aim to simplify housekeeping and domestic work; the conditions of life have gone that made a women find scope for all her energy in administering the affairs of her house or in employing others to that end.
To the uninitiated the various culinary processes seem endless, and to arrive at a proper accomplishment of these is generally considered a matter of continuous practice. A better understanding of the matter readily shows that while many processes can only be perfected by repetition, there are even more that fall under science rather than art. Take, for example, the principles underlying the cooking of meat by stewing. This is surely a process where manipulation is nil. To make pastry 315 or bread we must have a certain practice in the manipulation to give the deftness (on which final success depends) in addition to any understanding of the principles involved; but with regard to stewing and many similar processes it should be possible to have one lesson made so explicit that the actual process was known for all time—the Irish stew of an artisan’s home or the dainty entrée of the “Ritz” being only an adaptation of given principles to different foods.
In order to reduce primary methods to such business-like proportions, it is necessary to consider them in their effect on different foods, having due regard to texture and to the effect of a moist or a dry heat. It would be a matter of interest to know how the established methods of cooking meat and fish all really conduce to one end, viz. to soften the fibres by steam formed from their own juices. The rules for most methods of cooking these foods lead to this assumption, though nominally based only on a means of retaining these juices in order to save a valuable part of the food. The actual part played by the liquid in which foods are cooked is possibly very small, but not to be ignored; the presence of salt in the water in which beef or potatoes is cooked makes an appreciable difference in the flavour and probably in the food value. The relation of the fat used in frying to the food fried in it is too often quite misunderstood, and a dyspeptic patient consequently is ordered “no fried food.”
To “fry in butter” sounds well, but it is 316 practically impossible; to sauté in butter at a temperature allowing some of the butter to enter the food, is quite a valuable method of cooking; but to raise the temperature to a point at which frying can be done is to char the butter. To fry properly, the food should be immersed in fat so hot that the outside of meat is immediately “set.” Then allow the heating of the juices inside the meat to perform the necessary cooking. The immersion of the cold food soon lowers the temperature of the fat and makes continued immersion possible. The best kind of fat for this purpose and the relative temperature at which different fats may be used needs more investigation. At present for ordinary kitchen use we have no more reliable test of temperature than to venture a bit of bread and judge by result. One thing we may accept—frying is not a greasy or rich method of cooking. The fat used is merely a means of excluding atmosphere and cooking food at a high temperature; it bears no more relation to the food itself than does the atmosphere of the oven in baking.
This question of temperatures and their relation to the kind of food, as also to the various cookery processes, needs careful handling; we want not alone a definite dogma established on a scientific basis, but we want the means to apply it brought within easy reach—reach of a limited purse and a limited intellectual capacity, for we are not all scholars. There is no reason why a thermometer should not become part of our kitchen equipment 317 just as readily as that old sand-glass which regulated the boiling of an egg, but, before it is the case, many other matters must fall into line. It is probable that a careful investigation of the best means of frying, boiling, stewing, &c. would effect a considerable revolution in our household pots and pans. Is it impossible to produce a pan in which a given quantity of fat or oil should be easily brought to, say, 400° Fahr., and yet be unable to exceed that temperature? It would so safeguard expense from burning that the most delightful frying medium, olive oil, would be readily used by many people.
The matter of watching, and waiting, and judging the exact minute for certain operations takes far more time than is generally supposed, and the gloom surrounding the average kitchen range increases the difficulty. The cook who understands the use of double pans for oven and range has done something to save both time and anxiety, but it is evident that much more might be done to render many cookery processes almost automatic. The science that controls the production of such commercial products as biscuits, tinned foods, pickles, and jam, and turns them out to a uniform standard, is at present remote from the household kitchen. Such scientific knowledge has been produced at a commercial value for commercial enterprise. We need our problems brought into universities and colleges; into the channels where research is made public; into the laboratories of schools, where, if no wonderful result may be proclaimed, 318 we have at least established a scientific method of approaching the work of kitchen, laundry, and storeroom. The ordinary teaching of the domestic subjects too often tends to magnify the difficulties in order to show how they may be overcome. The simplification of methods by classification would do much, and the evolution of possible devices for saving labour would do still more, to establish a favourable view of housekeeping. What is worth doing is worth doing well; but it is “doing” unnecessarily that spells drudgery.
Our attitude in considering household problems turns almost involuntarily to cooking, but the need for an intellectual grasp of matters domestic is equally potent in methods of cleaning. If the word “hygiene,” which we use so glibly, were really understood and appreciated, the modern house-builder and furnisher would quickly be sent to swell the ranks of the unemployed, and we should demand construction and fittings which would minimise the problems of dust and tarnish, provide suitable storage for food, and allow cleaning to be simple, straightforward, and efficient. The advent of the vacuum cleaner is less valuable in itself than in the establishment of a new principle for dealing with dust, and one that may eventually revolutionise our house-cleaning. We need a simple appliance of equal scientific value to reduce some at least of the labour entailed in “washing-up.” Pots and pans, plates and dishes may be economised in number by a careful 319 worker, but cleaned they must be, and the average “sink” of scullery or pantry is little removed from the pristine incompleteness of its first appearance. There is, in the cloisters of Gloucester Cathedral, a sink, evidently used by the monks of the sixteenth century, which is identical with those found in sculleries of to-day, and yet chemistry and physics have revolutionised our industries and produced all sorts of scientific methods for cleaning, lighting, and heating on a large scale. Perhaps when the same woman who takes a D.Sc. bestows some of her energy on the washing of dishes we shall get to something less primitive than washing each individual greasy plate with a mop or cloth. The only scientific treatment of “washing-up” used at present seems open to criticism, and is only suited to large establishments, but it should be possible to construct every sink with some sort of douche and general fittings suited to this work.
The question of the position of modern woman towards laundry-work seems to have resolved itself into one of income. If she can pay for the services of a steam laundry she does so. In the United Kingdom it is estimated that there are 30,000 public laundries, but we have yet to find one that can produce a list of charges within reasonable limits of a small income. In the homes that are run on incomes of £100 to £400 a-year, and where the laundry-work is done at the public laundry, the amount of “washing” must be small, or some other side of the expenditure must be seriously curtailed. Laundrying performed intelligently 320 and under suitable conditions is neither difficult nor unpleasant. To stand over a wash-tub rubbing each article by hand; to strain every muscle emptying that tub; to dry garments on a rail across a kitchen and iron them near a blazing fire is not intelligent, and can only be followed by women driven by custom to wash clothes at all. Perhaps in no section of household work are scientific methods within reach as in the laundry; the existence of the public laundry and the rivalry of different firms has produced an open market for appliances of all kinds, and the exhibition of laundry utensils, machines, &c., has become an annual event. Though many of the inventions are destined for the “power” and general scope of the public laundry, there are always a number of home appliances to be seen; many more would be adapted if there were more demand. Any real scope for these must rest in the first place with architect and house-builder. In the North of England it is usual to build a small “wash-house” to nearly every house, but the general construction of these wash-houses is such as to discourage any desire to use them. Only cold water is provided; the boiler is arranged as a detached unit; the possibility of a drying cupboard in connection with kitchen stove or hot-water cylinder is never considered, and the economical heating of irons is generally overlooked. The use of irons heated by gas, charcoal, and methylated spirit would be more general if these were more efficiently constructed and less expensive. The provision of electricity 321 at a cost within the reach of ordinary folk will simplify many things in laundry-work as in cooking and cleaning. Instruction is, to some extent, already available as to soaps, detergent solutions and bleaching agents. We need more appreciation of the part that may be played by the process of “steeping” and the minimum of handling with which clothes may be efficiently washed and finished. The profit and loss in the matter cannot be estimated only in labour, time, soap, and firing; the wear and tear of fabric in public laundries compared with home handling and the risk of infection involved must both be taken into account. If we make laundrying easy we do much to make a frequent change of garment possible to a section of the community inclined to economise in this direction, and we should probably make fashionable those household materials that may be consigned to a wash-tub, instead of paying a reluctant visit to the dry-cleaner—chintz, cretonne, and Bolton sheeting instead of serge, tapestry, and plush. We owe one debt of gratitude to the public laundry—it has raised a section of household work to the level of a skilled industry, though as yet there seems no system of apprenticeship that turns out the “complete” laundress.
For the limits of a short paper these matters have perhaps been treated somewhat discursively, but the object has been attained if, by the few illustrations selected, some attention has been drawn to the field of inquiry which lies open, and the urgent need for a definite application of scientific 322 minds to problems which, amid all the advances of this progressive age, seem to lag behind. The inclusion of housecraft as part of the curriculum of elementary and secondary schools may do much to rouse interest and overcome some difficulties of cooking, &c., but to any one familiar with these classes it is evident that their scope is very limited, if only for the reason that the teaching so often treats the work of housekeeping as an imitative art, based, for want of reliable scientific data, on rules and recipes that are practically organised tradition no more. In secondary schools, the introduction of laboratory work has opened up fresh possibilities of a more reasonable treatment of housecraft, for it is certain that, when teachers are properly equipped for their work, biology, physics, and chemistry (organic and inorganic) can be successfully taught along lines that bring within the scope of school science such matters as food and feeding, cooking and washing, fuels, heating, ventilation, and hygiene.