For any ordinary amount of cooking, an open grate is admirable, though it do not furnish that convenient stove-pipe whereon lady boarders can smooth out their ribbons, &c.; but it is accessible, and draws the culinary odors speedily out of the room. At least it is admirable from fall to the middle of December, when you find that it draws the heat, as well as the odors, up chimney; then you will get a "Fairy" stove of the smallest size, with a portable oven, and fairly go into winter quarters. But by the grate one may boil, broil, and toast, if not roast; for I used with delight to cook apples on the cool corners, giving them a turn between sentences as I read or wrote. They seemed to have a higher flavor, being seasoned with thoughts; but it was not equally sure if the thoughts were better for being seasoned with apple. However, one must not count herself so recherché as Schiller, who could only write when his desk was full of rotten apples.
Still the grate has no oven, and the chief difficulty is in bread. One starts bravely on the baker's article, but such is the excess of yeast that the bitterness becomes intolerable. Then one begins to perambulate the city, and thinks she has a prize in this or that brand,—is enamored of Brigham's Graham biscuits, hot twice a week, or of Parker's rolls,—but soon eats through novelty to the core, and that is always hops. Thus one goes from baker to baker, but it is only a hopping from hops to hops. I see with malicious joy that the exportation tariff is to be removed from hops.
As to crackers, they are of course no more available than pine splints, though the Graham variety is the best. Aerated bread is probably the most healthful, but this is pitiable to live on; it tastes like salted flannel.
Finally, let me confess to the use of a friendly oven near by, and from this came every week the indispensable Graham cakes, which are the despair of all the cooks. Of course, on this point it is impossible, without seeing their experiment, to say why it failed; but all the given conditions being met, if the cakes were tough, there was probably too much meal; if soggy, too little. Also the latest improvement is not to cut them in diamonds, but to roll them into various forms. After scalding, the dough is just too soft to be handled easily; it is then to be dropped into meal upon the board, separating it in small quantities with a spoon or knife, and rolling lightly in the meal into small biscuits, rolls, or any form desired. But do not work in any of the meal. Possibly some of the failures come from disregard of this; for the meal which is added after, being unscalded, is not light, and would only clog the cakes. And, in eating, the biscuits should be broken, never sliced. They are in their prime when hot, quite as much as Ward Beecher's famous apple-pie; but, unlike that, may be freshened afterward by dipping in cold water and heating in a quick oven just before wanted. In other words, they may be regenerated by immersion.
As to the system of this minute household,—if any should be curious to know,—it was to have breakfast-dishes despatched, with the dinner vegetables pared, at half past nine, a. m.; dinner out of hand by two, p. m.; bread and butter and Cochituate precisely at six, p. m.
In one of Mr. and Mrs. Hall's "Memories of Authors," mention is made of a little Miss Spence, who, with rather limited arrangements in two rooms, used to give literary tea-parties, and was shrewdly suspected of keeping her butter in a wash-bowl. I did not follow any such underhanded proceeding. I kept my butter on the balcony. All-out-doors was my refrigerator; and if one will look abroad some cool, glittering night, he may yet see my oyster-pail hung by a star, or swinging on the horns of a new moon.
Perhaps it is fair to mention, however, that on one glittering night the mercury fell below zero, and the windows all froze hard down, and there was the butter locked on the outer side! And oh! it is such a trying calamity to be frozen in from one's butter! But after this experience the housekeeper shrewdly watches for these episodes of weather, and takes the jar in of a night. So it is that eternal vigilance is the price even of butter.
Still it seemed that, with careful and economizing mind, on six feet by thirteen it was not only possible to live, but to take table-boarders. Certainly nothing could be gayer, unless to ramble delightfully forever in one of those orange-colored ambrotype-saloons, drawn by milk-white oxen; or to quarter like Gavroche of Les Miserables among the ribs of the plaster elephant in the Bastile; or more pensively to abide in the crannied boat-cabin of the Peggotys, watching the tide sweep out and in.
This must be the weird, barbaric side of the before-named brick and mortar flat of five rooms.
Pope, the tragedian, said that he knew of but one crime a man could commit,—peppering a rump steak. It is an argument for boarding one's self that all these comfortable crimes thus become feasible. One may even butter her bread on three sides with impunity; or eat tamarinds at every meal, running the risk of her own grimaces; or take her stewed cherries with curious, undivided interest as to whether a sweet or sour one will come next (dried cherries are a great consolation); and, being allowed to help herself, can the better bring all the edibles to an end at once upon her plate,—an indication of Providence that the proper feast is finished. Wonderfully independent all this! Life with the genuine bachelor flavor. As L. remarked, even the small broom in the corner had a sturdy little way of standing alone.