The Dinner Year-Book. Marion Harland
to the plan sketched for your day or week. I have sketched—that is all—not worked out a sum in which addition or subtraction would materially affect the sum-total. The framework is, I would fain hope, symmetrical. I expect you to build thereupon as convenience or discretion may dictate.
Touching Saucepans.
While it is true that the finest tools will not impart skill to the untrained workman, it is equally a matter of fact that the best artisan is he who cares most jealously for the quality and condition of his instruments as well as for the finish of his workmanship.
A visitor once asked permission to witness the operation of cooking a beefsteak in my kitchen, saying that her husband had spoken in terms of commendation of those he had eaten at my table. Like the good wife she was, she desired to “catch the trick,” whatever it might be, of preparing them to his liking. I willingly acceded to her request, and upon her return to the parlor her husband inquired eagerly: “Did you learn the secret?”
“Yes,” was the smiling answer. “You must buy me a gridiron!”
Up to that time, she then explained, fried steaks had been the rule in her house, and gridirons a thing unheard or unthought of.
A fried beefsteak being, as I have elsewhere stated, a culinary solecism, I have, perhaps, selected an extreme case as the test of my discourse upon the necessity of a supply of fitting utensils for the proper prosecution of home-cookery. Mrs. Whitney’s idea of the “art-kitchen,” so charmingly set forth in “We Girls,” may not be so chimerical (with limitations) as most practical housewives—practised in nothing more than in the exercise of patience—are apt to suppose. They tell us the tale—known already too sadly well to each of us—of the impossibility of inducing “girls” who are tractable and respectful in most things, to accept labor-saving machines, and the thousand-and-one ingenious contrivances for making cooking easier and even graceful; of the hard usage to which expensive implements are subjected in rude hands, the motive-power of which is the untilled brain, unrestrained by the conscienceless will; of how innovations are openly flouted, or secretly sneered at, “until,” say they, “we find it easier to let the cook have her own way down-stairs, and reconcile ourselves, as best we may, to obstinate stupidity and unmerciful breakages. As to art-kitchens”—a shrug and a groan—“we are thankful if our tenderest care can keep the upper stories free from the vandalism that rages below.”
Nevertheless, acknowledging, as I have, personally, reasons for doing—the truth of all these things—I make answer, “Have an art-kitchen for yourself!” First, give your cook, or maid-of-all-work, a fair trial. It is a duty you owe to humanity and to her to prove, conclusively, whether her careless or destructive habits be ingrain and wilful, or merely the result of ignorance and bad training. There are bad mistresses, let us remember—and more still who are indifferent or incompetent. If “our girl” has a heart or a conscience, let us find it. Make her understand the value and usefulness of the appliances you have furnished for her work, where and how they are to be kept, and set her the example of always looking for and putting them in their proper places. If they are misused, show your regret decidedly, but still kindly. Should all means of civilizing her taste up to your standard fail, make, as I have advised, an art-kitchen for your own use. Appropriate one corner of the room, where cooking is done, for your operations, and arrange there your pet tools. Have your scoop flour-sifter; your patent pie-lifter and oyster-broiler; your star-toaster; your pie-crimper, vegetable and nutmeg graters; gravy-strainer, colander, biscuit-cutter, skimmers, larding needles, wire, and perforated, and slit and fluted spoons; your weights and measures, and the tidy, serviceable tinned and enamelled saucepans, Scotch kettles, frying-pans, etc., that will retain tidiness and serviceable qualities so long in your care, and so soon come to grief in boorish clutches. Set all these, and as many others as you like and can afford to buy—always including the Dover egg-beater and its “Baby” (made for whipping one egg to more purpose than one egg, or anything else as small was ever whipped before)—in array upon walls and shelves,[A] and let the logic of daily events prove how far they will deprive work of the wearing vexations attendant upon long searches for the right article, and its wrong condition when found. Make your helpers—one and all—comprehend that these are your especial property, to be used—and kept clean—by no one else. Let them be looked down upon as the toys of a would-be-busy woman by the superior intellects about you, should they see fit thus to do, and provide such tools as are suited to coarser fingers for them to use. The chances are many to one that your dexterous manipulation of your instruments; the excellence of the products achieved by yourself and them; even the attractive neatness of the display and your corner, will win skeptics, first, to indulgence, then, admiration, then, to imitation. If you can afford the great luxury of a pastry or mixing-room, adjoining the kitchen, so much the better for you and your pious undertaking. But without regard to what may be the effect upon others, have your saucepans, of whatever designs and in whatever quantities you like—taking “saucepan” as a generic term for every description of mute helpers in the task of elevating cookery into a fine art, or, at the least, in redeeming it from the stigma of coarseness and vulgarity.
Have, also, as an indispensable adjunct of saucepans, appliances for cleansing them. There is nothing inherently degrading in dish-washing. Provide plenty of towels and hot water; a mop with a handle and a loop by which to hang it up when it has been squeezed and shaken after use; a soap-shaker—a neat wire cup, enclosing the soap, and furnished with a handle of tinned wire, and a dish-pan, with a partition running across the middle, that the soiled articles may be rinsed from grease in one of the compartments before they are purified thoroughly in the other. Have, also, at hand a can or box of washing soda, and a bottle of ammonia for taking off the grease more effectually; a cake of Indexical silver soap in a cup, with a brush, for restoring lustre to tins, Britannia or plated, or silver ware. Thus armed, the cleansing of your implements will be a matter of brief moment, and your work in the kitchen be, in no sense, a hindrance to the stated duties of the day, while your methods and occasional presence cannot fail to be a refining influence upon all except the very common and spiritually unclean. Ladyhood, if thorough, will assert itself, even behind a scullion’s apron.
JANUARY.
First Week. Sunday.
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Beef Soup.
Chicken smothered with Oysters. Celery Salad.
Mashed Potatoes. Cauliflower au gratin.
Stewed Tomatoes.
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Blanc Mange and Cream.
Sponge Cake.
Cocoa.
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Beef Soup.
3 lbs. of lean beef, with a marrow-bone.
½ lb. lean ham (or a ham-bone, if you have it).
1 turnip.
1 onion.
1 carrot.
¼ of a cabbage.
3 stalks of celery.
3 quarts of water—cold, of course.
Salt and pepper to taste.
Cut the