Half a pound of black resin, same quantity of red sealing-wax, quarter oz. bees’ wax, melted in an earthen or iron pot; when it froths up, before all is melted and likely to boil over, stir it with a tallow candle, which will settle the froth till all is melted and fit for use. Red wax, 10d. per lb. may be bought at Mr. Dew’s Blackmore-street, Clare-market.
N.B. This cement is of very great use in preserving things that you wish to keep a long time, which without its help would soon spoil, from the clumsy and ineffectual manner in which the bottles are corked.
[101-*] See, in pages [91], [92], A CATALOGUE OF THE INGREDIENTS now used in soups, sauces, &c.
[102-*] “It is the duty of a good sauce,” says the editor of the Almanach des Gourmands (vol. v. page 6), “to insinuate itself all round and about the maxillary gland, and imperceptibly awaken into activity each ramification of the organs of taste: if not sufficiently savoury, it cannot produce this effect, and if too piquante, it will paralyze, instead of exciting, those delicious titillations of tongue and vibrations of palate, that only the most accomplished philosophers of the mouth can produce on the highly-educated palates of thrice happy grands gourmands.”
[102-†] To save time and trouble is the most valuable frugality: and if the mistress of a family will condescend to devote a little time to the profitable and pleasant employment of preparing some of the STORE SAUCES, especially Nos. [322]. [402]. [404]. [413]. [429]. [433]. [439]. [454]; these, both epicures and economists will avail themselves of the advantage now given them, of preparing at home.
By the help of these, many dishes may be dressed in half the usual time, and with half the trouble and expense, and flavoured and finished with much more certainty than by the common methods.
A small portion of the time which young ladies sacrifice to torturing the strings of their piano-forte, employed in obtaining domestic accomplishments, might not make them worse wives, or less agreeable companions to their husbands. This was the opinion 200 years ago.
“To speak, then, of the knowledge which belongs unto our British housewife, I hold the most principal to be a perfect skill in COOKERY: she that is utterly ignorant therein, may not, by the lawes of strict justice, challenge the freedom of marriage, because indeede she can perform but half her vow: she may love and obey, but she cannot cherish and keepe her husband.”—G. Markham’s English Housewife, 4to. 1637, p. 62.
We hope our fair readers will forgive us, for telling them that economy in a wife, is the most certain charm to ensure the affection and industry of a husband.
[103-*] Though some of these people seem at last to have found out, that an Englishman’s head may be as full of gravy as a Frenchman’s, and willing to give the preference to native talent, retain an Englishman or woman as prime minister of their kitchen; still they seem ashamed to confess it, and commonly insist as a “sine quâ non,” that their English domestics should understand the “parlez vous;” and notwithstanding they are perfectly initiated in all the minutiæ of the philosophy of the mouth, consider them uneligible, if they cannot scribble a bill of fare in pretty good bad French.