Chapter IX: Front Matter (9)

Make a good French dressing. Dip into it firm, crisp lettuce leaves. Have ready cold boiled tongue, cut as thin as writing paper. Lay a slice upon each leaf, and serve with heated and buttered crackers. You can substitute ham for the tongue.

Tomato aspic

Soak a half-box of gelatine in a half-pint of water for an hour. Bring to a boil the liquor drained from a quart can of tomatoes, and add to it a teaspoonful of onion juice, two teaspoonfuls of sugar, a bay leaf and a teaspoonful of minced parsley, with pepper and salt to taste. Simmer for twenty minutes, add the gelatine, stir until dissolved, and strain through flannel into a jelly mold. Serve when firm, garnished with lettuce and pour over all a mayonnaise dressing. This jelly—in culinary phrase, “aspic”—lends itself agreeably to many combinations of salad, being susceptible of countless variations.

Tomatoes with whipped cream

Carefully peel and halve ripe tomatoes and lay them on the ice for several hours. Transfer to a chilled platter, sprinkle with salt, garnish with lettuce leaves and put a great spoonful of whipped cream upon each tomato half.

Tomato and corn salad

Pour boiling water over large, smooth tomatoes to loosen the skins, and set on ice. When perfectly cold, gouge out the center of each tomato with a spoon, and fill the cavity with boiled corn cut from the cob and left to get perfectly cold; then mix with mayonnaise dressing. Arrange the tomatoes on a chilled platter lined with lettuce, and leave on ice until wanted. Pass more mayonnaise with the salad.

Tomato and peanut salad

Prepare the tomatoes as in the last recipe. Have ready a pint or more of roasted peanut meats, blanched by pouring boiling water over them, then skinned, and when cold pounded finely and mixed with mayonnaise dressing. Fill the tomatoes with this. Serve on lettuce leaves.

Iced tomato salad

(Contributed)

Cook a quart of raw tomatoes soft, strain and season with nutmeg, sugar, paprika, a pinch of grated lemon peel and salt. Freeze until firm; put a spoonful upon a crisp lettuce leaf in each plate, cover with mayonnaise and serve immediately. It is still prettier if you can freeze it in round apple-shaped molds.

Canned tomatoes may be used if you have not fresh.

Clam salad

(Contributed)

Remove the skins and black heads of cold clams. Marinade for ten minutes in a French dressing and serve on a bed of shredded lettuce.

Pear salad

(Contributed)

Peel and slice five sweet, ripe pears, sprinkle with fine sugar, and add a little maraschino or ginger syrup. Serve with a little cream. Or pare and slice enough ripe, sweet pears to make one pint; add one-half cupful of blanched and chopped almonds, one-fourth of a cupful of powdered sugar and the strained juice of two lemons. Serve in a cup of lettuce leaves made by placing together the stem end of two lettuce leaves taken from the inside of a head of lettuce.

Hot potato salad

(Contributed)

Put into a frying-pan one-fourth of a pound of bacon, cut into dice; when light brown take out and sauté in the fat a small onion cut fine. Add one-half as much vinegar as fat, a few grains of salt and cayenne and one-half as much hot stock as vinegar. Have ready the potatoes boiled in skins. Remove the skins and slice hot into the frying-pan enough to take up the liquid. Add the diced bacon, toss together and serve.

Asparagus and shrimp salad

(Contributed)

To one cupful of shrimps add two cupfuls of cold cooked asparagus tips, and toss lightly together. Season with salt and pepper. Make a dressing of the yolks of three hard-boiled eggs, rubbed through a sieve, and sufficient oil and vinegar to make the consistency of cream, using twice as much oil as vinegar. Pour over the asparagus and shrimps.

Asparagus salad

(Contributed)

Asparagus tips heaped on lettuce leaves and served with French, mayonnaise or boiled dressing, poured over all, make a very good salad.

Endive salad

(Contributed)

Use the well-blanched leaves only. Wipe these with a damp cloth. Pour over this a French dressing and serve with roasted game.

Sweetbreads and cucumber salad

(Contributed)

Marinate one pair of sweetbreads in French dressing. Chill thoroughly. Drain and mix with equal parts of sliced cucumber; cover with French dressing into which has been stirred whipped cream.

Spinach salad

(Contributed)

Select the young, tender leaves from the center of the stock; wash carefully, drain and chill and serve with French dressing.

Lenten salad

(Contributed)

Line the bottom of the salad-dish with crisp lettuce leaves. Fill the center of the dish with cold boiled or baked fish, cut into pieces, and pour over it a pint of mayonnaise dressing. Garnish with rings of hard-boiled eggs.

Apple and cress salad

(Contributed)

Pare and cut into small pieces four medium-sized apples. Pour over this a French dressing. Pick carefully the leaves from a bunch of cress. Arrange around the outside of the salad-dish and heap the apples in the center of the dish.

Strawberry salad

(Contributed)

Choose the heart from a nice head of lettuce, putting the stems together to form a cup. Put a few strawberries in the center and cover with powdered sugar and one teaspoonful of mayonnaise dressing.

Banana salad

(Contributed)

Sliced bananas, served in the same manner as the strawberries in the above recipe, make an excellent salad.

Veal salad

(Contributed)

Use equal parts of well-cooked cold veal cut into small pieces, and finely-chopped white cabbage. Marinate the veal for two hours. Drain and mix with the cabbage. Season with salt and pepper, and a little chopped pickle, and cover with mayonnaise dressing.

Cherry salad

(Contributed)

Stone a pint of large cherries, being careful not to bruise the fruit. Place a hazelnut in each cherry to preserve the form. Chill thoroughly, arrange in a salad dish on lettuce leaves and pour over all a cream mayonnaise dressing.

Peach salad

(Contributed)

Pare a quart of ripe yellow peaches, and cut into thin slices; slice very thin a half cupful of blanched almonds. Mix the fruit and nuts with two-thirds of a cupful of mayonnaise, to which has been added one-third of a cupful of whipped cream. Serve immediately on lettuce leaves.

Ham salad

(Contributed)

Mix equal portions of minced, well-cooked ham and English walnuts or almonds. Serve with mayonnaise on lettuce leaves.

Sweetbreads with celery salad

(Contributed)

Wash the sweetbreads thoroughly and let them stand in cold water half an hour. Boil in salted water twenty minutes and then put in cold water again for a few minutes, to harden. To one cupful of minced sweetbreads add one cupful of diced celery and one-half cupful of chopped nuts. Cover well with mayonnaise dressing to which some whipped cream has been added.

Green bean salad

(Contributed)

Select fresh string beans and boil until tender in salted water. Or use a good quality of canned string beans. Arrange on a dish and serve with mayonnaise dressing.

Pea salad

(Contributed)

Drain and press through a sieve a can of green peas. Dissolve one box of gelatine in one-fourth of a cup of cold water and stir over a hot fire until heated. Take from the fire and add one-fourth teaspoonful of onion juice, one-half teaspoonful of salt, and a dash of pepper. Serve very cold with the following dressing: Put into a double boiler the yolks of two eggs, two tablespoonfuls of stock and two tablespoonfuls of oil. Stir until thick, take from the fire and add slowly one tablespoonful of tarragon vinegar, one chopped olive and two teaspoonfuls of chopped parsley.

Nut salad

Blanch almond kernels, and when cold and crisp shred into shavings. Mix with these an equal quantity of English walnuts, broken into bits, and pecan kernels. Stir a good mayonnaise dressing into the mixture and heap within curled lettuce leaves.

LUNCHEON FRUITS, COOKED AND RAW

Stewed rhubarb

Select only good, firm stalks, and reject those that are withered. Lay them in cold water for an hour, and cut into half-inch pieces. Put them over the fire in a porcelain-lined saucepan and strew each layer plentifully with sugar. Pour in enough water to cover all, and bring very slowly to a boil. Let the rhubarb stew gently until it is very tender, then remove from the fire. When cold, serve with plain cake.

Rhubarb and raisins

For every cupful of raw rhubarb cut into inch lengths add a third as much of raisins seeded and cut in half. Cook until soft, as directed in last recipe.

Rhubarb and dates

Stone a quarter of a pound of dates, cover with hot water, and cook five minutes. Add three cupfuls of raw rhubarb, cut into inch lengths, and cook, closely covered, until the rhubarb is tender. Sweeten to taste and set aside to cool in a covered bowl, after which set on ice until needed.

Rhubarb and figs

Soak a quarter-pound of figs in warm water for two hours. Cut into small pieces and cook as previously directed with three cups of raw rhubarb, cut into inch lengths, until the rhubarb is tender. Eat cold.

This dish is cooling to the blood, gently laxative and pleasing to the taste.

Stewed gooseberries

Remove the tops and stems from one quart of gooseberries, wash and drain. Put them into a saucepan with barely enough boiling water to cover them. Let them stew until tender. Dissolve one cupful of sugar in one-half cupful of water and boil to a syrup, then mix it with the fruit and set away to cool.

Agate-nickel-steel ware is altogether the best in the market for stewing acid fruits. They should never be cooked in tin or in iron, and unless copper has just been cleaned with vinegar to remove all suspicion of verdigris, the use of it is dangerous. I can not say too much of the ware I have named. It is easily kept clean, durable and safe.

Hot green apple sauce

Utilize in this way early windfalls and unripe summer apples, proverbially dear to the heart of the small boy and harmful to his digestive organs.

Pare and slice thin with a silver knife or with a fruit-knife of Swedish bronze. The crude acid forms an instant and unpleasant combination with steel. As you slice, drop into cold water to keep the color. Cook in an agate-nickel-steel saucepan, with just enough boiling water to keep the apples from burning to the bottom. Fit on a close lid and do not open the pan for half an hour, lest the steam escape. Shake up, and sidewise, every ten minutes to insure uniform steaming. When the half-hour is up open the saucepan, and if the apples are soft rub quickly through a colander of the same ware with the saucepan. Beat in sugar to taste, also a lump of butter—about a tablespoonful to a quart of the stewed fruit; turn into a covered bowl and serve hot. Pass thin graham bread and butter with it.

It is wholesome, anti-bilious and palatable.

Cold apple sauce

Make in the same way of ripe, tart apples, a seasoning with mace or nutmeg to taste. When it has cooled set on ice until wanted.

Stewed apples

Pare and core a dozen tart, juicy apples. Put them into a saucepan with just enough cold water to cover them. Cook slowly until they are tender and clear. Then remove the apples to a bowl, and cover to keep hot; put the juice into a saucepan with a cupful of sugar, and boil for half an hour. Season with mace or nutmeg. Pour hot over the apples and set away covered until cold. Eat with cream.

Baked sweet apples

Wash and core, but do not pare them. Arrange in a deep pudding-dish; put a teaspoonful of sugar and the tiniest imaginable bit of salt into the cavities left by coring; pour in a half cupful of water for a large dishful of apples; cover closely and bake in a good oven forty minutes or until soft.

Eat ice-cold, with cream and sugar.

Stewed prunes

Wash dried prunes and soak them for at least five hours in cold water. Put them into a saucepan with enough water to cover them and simmer very gently for twenty minutes. Now add sufficient granulated sugar to sweeten liberally, and simmer until the prunes are tender. Take from the fire and set aside to cool. Eat with plain cake.

Steamed prunes

Soak as directed above. Place them in a covered roaster and steam steadily for two hours. Make a syrup in a separate vessel with the water left from the soaking. This recipe is especially suited to those who desire but little sugar in prunes, as but little sweetness can be added to the prunes in steaming.

Never boil prunes, as the flavor is thereby injured. When cooked as directed, if the syrup is not heavy enough to suit, remove the prunes from the syrup and boil the syrup down to the required consistency.

Stewed prunelles and sultanas

Prunelles are more than subacid, and need the modifying influence of sweeter fruits. Allow equal parts of prunelles and of the small sultana raisins. Wash the fruit in tepid water, and soak it in enough cold water to cover it for several hours, on the back of the range. Draw them forward where they will simmer gently until soft. Add sugar to taste, let the syrup boil up once, then set away to cool.

Dried apples and peaches

The prejudice against the dried apple of commerce is pronounced, and founded upon traditions we should have outlived. The kiln-dried fruit of to-day is a respectable edible and capable of excellent results. It is especially good if mixed with equal parts of dried peaches, soaked for three hours in just enough tepid water to cover the fruit (having been first washed); then put over the fire with the water in which they were soaked, and simmer tender. Rub through a colander, add sugar, cinnamon and cloves to taste, and let the mixture get perfectly cold.

Stewed cherries

None of our small fruits are more injured by transportation than these same luscious and ruddy lobes. If you must buy cherries which are brought from a distance and are, of necessity, several days old, cook them if you regard the welfare of the digestive organs of your family. The verse that tells us “cherries are ripe” would be more reassuring if it also informed us that they were recently picked.

Wash and pick over carefully; put over the fire in a “safe” saucepan, such as I have already indicated, with just enough water to prevent burning, cover closely and stew until soft, but not broken. Strain off the liquor; set aside the cherries in a covered bowl, add three tablespoonfuls of sugar to each pint of the juice, return to the fire; boil fast for half an hour and pour over the fruit. Keep covered until cold.

Raw cherries

To be eaten at their raw best they should be kept in the ice-box until needed. Then they may be served with their stems still on in a glass bowl with fragments of ice scattered among them.

Sugared cherries

Use large, firm cherries for this dish. Have in front of you a soup-plate containing the whites of three eggs mixed with five tablespoonfuls of cold water, another plate filled with sifted powdered sugar at your right, the bowl of cherries at your left. Dip each cherry in the water and white of egg, turn it over and over in the sugar and lay on a chilled platter to dry. When all are done sift more powdered sugar over the fruit and arrange carefully on a glass dish.

Glacé cherries

Select firm, sweet cherries from which the stems have not been removed. Into a perfectly clean porcelain-lined saucepan put a pound of granulated sugar and a gill of cold water, and boil to a syrup. Do not stir during the process of cooking. Try the syrup occasionally by dropping a little in cold water. When it changes to a brittle candy it is done. Remove the saucepan at once from the fire and set it in a pan of boiling water. Dip each cherry quickly in the hot syrup and lay on a waxed paper to dry. If the syrup shows signs of becoming too thick, add more boiling water to that in the outside pan. When all the cherries have been “dipped” stand them in a warm place to dry.

Pineapple and orange

Cut the top from a pineapple and carefully remove the inside, so that the shell may not be broken. Cut the pulp into bits, mix it with the pulp of three ripe oranges, also cut very small, and liberally sweeten the mixture. Smooth off the bottom of the pineapple shell so that it will stand upright, refill with the fruit pulp, put on the tip and set in the ice for three hours.

Creamed peaches

Lay large, ripe free-stone peaches on the ice for several hours, peel, cut them in half and remove the stones. Whip half a pint of cream light, with two tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar. Fill the hollows left by the stones to heaping with the whipped cream. Keep in the ice-box until time to serve the fruit.

Grapefruit and strawberries

Cut grapefruit in half and remove the tough fiber and part of the pulp. Chop this pulp and add it to mashed and sweetened strawberries. Refill the grapefruit rinds with the mixture, and set on the ice for an hour or two.

Strawberries and cream

Cap the berries, one at a time, using the tips of your fingers. The practice of holding capped berries in the hollow of the hand until one has as many as the space will accommodate, is unclean and unappetizing. Cap them deftly and quickly, letting each fall into a chilled bowl, and do this just before serving, keeping in a cool place until they are ready to go to table. Pass powdered sugar and cream, also ice-cold, with them.

Raspberries and cream

Follow the directions given in last recipe.

Bartlett pears and cream

Select sweet, ripe pears and lay them in the ice for two hours. Do not peel until just before they are needed. Pare deftly and quickly, slice, sprinkle with sugar, cover with cream and serve.

Bananas and cream

Bananas are very good treated as the pears were in the last recipe. It is a good plan to bury these in the ice until wanted for dessert. Then the hostess may, at the table, quickly peel and slice them into different saucers. Bananas thus prepared do not have time to become discolored from exposure to the air.

SWEET OMELETS

Apple sauce omelet (baked)

Beat the yolks of seven eggs light; stir into them five tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar and a cupful and a half of sweetened apple sauce. Beat long and hard, stir in the stiffened whites, beat for a minute longer and turn into a greased pudding-dish. Bake, covered, for about ten minutes, then uncover and brown. Serve at once with whipped cream. It is also good served with a hot sauce made by the following recipe:

Into a pint of boiling water stir a half-cupful of sugar, and when this dissolves add a teaspoonful of butter, the juice and the grated rind of a lemon and the stiffened white of an egg. Beat for a minute over the fire, but do not let the sauce boil.

Jam omelet

Beat the yolks of five eggs light with a heaping tablespoonful of powdered sugar. Into this stir a teaspoonful of corn-starch dissolved in three tablespoonfuls of milk, then the stiffened whites of the eggs. Cook in a frying-pan until set; spread with strawberry jam, fold and serve as dessert.

Omelet soufflé

Beat the yolks of five eggs very light, adding, gradually, four tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar. In another dish whip the whites to a standing froth. With a few long strokes blend the two; pour into a buttered bake-dish and bake quickly. Sift powdered sugar on the top at the end of two minutes, and very quickly, as the omelet will fall if the oven stands open even a few seconds. Serve at once in the bake-dish.

Orange omelet

(Contributed)

Beat the yolks of five eggs together until thick and lemon-colored. Add five tablespoonfuls of orange juice, the grated rind of one orange and five tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar. Then fold in lightly the beaten whites of four eggs. Put a little butter in an omelet pan, and when hot pour in the omelet mixture and spread in evenly. Let it cook through, but not harden. Fold the edges over and turn out upon a hot dish. Serve with a dressing of sliced oranges and powdered sugar.

Omelet with marmalade

(Contributed)

Beat the yolks of three eggs very light. Then fold in the whites beaten dry. Turn into an omelet pan in which one teaspoonful of butter has been melted. Spread the omelet evenly and cook over a slow fire to set the eggs. Then put in the oven until done. Spread one-half of the omelet with marmalade, fold and serve on hot platter.

Queen Mab omelets

Beat four eggs, the yolks as smooth as cream, the whites to a standing froth. Into the yolks whip three tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar. Mix all together, add a tablespoonful of thick cream, whip lightly and pour into buttered “nappies,” filling each half-way to the top. Set in a pan of boiling water in a quick oven and bake five minutes, covered. Turn out upon a hot platter, sift powdered sugar over them and serve at once.

FAMILIAR TALK

A commonsensible talk with the nominal mistress of the house

There is not that household in the land where servants are employed which is not measurably dependent upon them for peace of mind as well as for comfort of body. Every housewife who reads this will recall the sinking of heart, the damp depression of spirit, which has suddenly overtaken a cheerful mood when the kitchen barometer beckoned “storm” or “change.” Such an overtaking is not an affliction, but it sometimes comes dangerously near to sorrow. The independent maid of all work has it in her power to alter the family plans with a word, when that word is “going.” Should she elect to stay, her lowering brows and sharp or sullen speech abash a mistress who quails at little else. In wealthier households a domestic “strike” involves panic, disorder and suffering.

I know of a wet-nurse whose abandonment of her infant charge, without a word of warning, at ten o’clock one Saturday night, caused a long and terrible illness, resulting in infantile paralysis. A cook who had lived in one family for three years resented the arrival of unexpected guests, packed her trunk and left her mistress to get dinner. The lady was in delicate health and all unused to such work. She became overheated and exhausted, took a heavy cold, which ripened into pneumonia, and died three days after the cook’s desertion.

I need not multiply illustrations of the helplessness of American housewives in the face of such disasters, and the possibility that these may befall any one of us. We have no redress. The women who helped organize the “Protective League” know this. The law does not protect the employer. Public opinion gives her no support. The cook whose fit of temper cost a kind mistress her life was recommended to me within a month after an event that should have shocked the moral sense of every housewife in the community, and recommended by a friend of the murdered woman and of myself. When I exclaimed in surprise, I was told: “We can not be judges of our neighbors’ domestic affairs.”

There is no class spirit among us. For some reasons this is a matter of congratulation to us and the public. All that is needed to make the opening gulf between mistresses and maids impassible is organization on our part, which signifies open war. It is, nevertheless, I note in passing, patent that there should be a code of honor among us with regard to employment of those who have proved absolutely untrustworthy in other households.

We are not true to one another in this matter, and our employées, who are held together by the unwritten laws of a union, none the less strong because nameless and informal, know this as well as we do. The knowledge is one of the most potent weapons in their armory.

Let this pass for the present. I would direct your attention, my sister-worker in the home missionary field, to the brighter side of the vexed question.

After forty years’ careful study of this matter of domestic service—study carried on in other lands as well as in our own—I record thankfully my conviction that the domestics in well-regulated American homes are better cared for, better paid and more thoroughly appreciated than any other class of working women in this country or abroad. I record, likewise and confidently, that the proportion of faithful, valued and even belovéd domestics among us is much larger than that of indifferent or worthless. Most cheerfully and thankfully I add to this record that, personally, I have a list of honest, virtuous, willing workers, whose terms of service in my family varied from three to thirteen years, and who went from my house to homes of their own, bearing with them the cordial esteem of those they had served. Nor is my experience singular, even in these United States. It is so far from being exceptional that I deprecate, almost as an individual grievance, any attempt to organize those who should be our coworkers into a faction that considers us as “the opposition.” It is a putting asunder of those whom a mutual need should join together.

Backed by my two-score years of experiment and action, I dare believe that a leaf or two from my book of household happenings may be of service to younger women and novices in the profession which absorbs the major part of our time and strength.

To begin with—beware of discouragement during the early trial-days of the new maid. Be slow to say, even to yourself: “She will never suit me!” The first days and weeks of a strange “place” are a crucial test for her as for you, and she has not your sense of proportion, your discipline of emotion and your philosophical spirit to help her to endure the discomforts of new machinery.

Looking back upon my housewifely experiences, I am moved to the conclusion that the domestics who stayed with me longest and served me best were those who did not promise great things in their novitiate.

One—“a greenhorn, but six weeks in the country”—frankly owned that she knew nothing of American houses and ways. She was “willing to learn,” and—with a childish tremble of the chin—“didn’t mind how hard she worked if people were kind to her.” I think the quivering chin and the clouding of the “Irish blue” eyes moved me to give her a trial. She did not know a silver fork from a pepper cruet, or a tea-strainer from a colander, and distinguished the sideboard from the buffet by calling the one the “big,” the other the “little dresser.” She had been with me a month when I trusted her to prepare some melons for dessert, giving her careful and minute directions how to halve the nutmeg melons, take out the seeds and fill the cavities with cracked ice, while the watermelon—royal in proportions and the first fruits of our own vines—was to be washed, wiped, and kept in the ice-chest until it was wanted.

At dinner the “nutmegs” appeared whole; the watermelon had been cut across the middle and eviscerated—scraped down to the white lining of the rind—then filled with pounded ice. The succulent sweetness, the rosy lusciousness of the heart, had gone into the garbage can.

Nevertheless, I kept blue-eyed Margaret for eight years. She stands out in my grateful memory as the one and only maid I have ever had who washed dishes “in my way.” Never having learned any other, she mastered and maintained the proper method.

The best nursery-maid I ever knew, and who blessed my household for eleven years, objected diffidently at our first interview to giving a list of her qualifications for the situation. She “would rather a lady would find out for herself by a fair trial whether she would fit the place or not.” I engaged her because the quaint phrase took my fancy. She proved such a perfect fit that she continued to fill the place until she went to a snug home of her own.

What may be called the New Broom of Commerce has no misgivings as to her ability to fill any place, however important. Upon inquiry of the would-be employer as to the latter’s qualifications for that high position, the N. B. of C. may decline to accept her offer of an office which promises more work than “privileges.” But she could fill it—full—if she were willing to “take service” with the applicant.

One of the oddest incongruities of the new-broom problem is that we are always disposed to take it at its own valuation. With each fresh experiment we are confident that—at last!—we have what we have been looking for lo! these many years. She is a shrewd house-mother who reserves judgment until the first awkward week or the crucial first month has brought out the staying power or proved the lack of it.

Officious activity in unusual directions is a bad omen in the New Broom of Commerce. In sporting parlance, I at once “saw the finish” of one whom I found upon the second day of service with me washing a window in the cellar. She “couldn’t abide dirt nowhere,” she informed me, scrubbing vehemently at the dim panes. I had just passed through the kitchen where a grateful of fiery coals was heating the range plates to an angry glow. All the drafts were open; the boiler over the sink was at a bubbling roar; upon the tables was a litter of dirty plates and dishes; pots, pans and kettles filled the sink.

It is well to have a care of the corners, but the weightier matters of the law of cleanliness are usually in full sight.

I once knew a woman who, deliberately, and of purpose, changed servants every month. She said no new broom lasted more than four weeks, and when one became grubby and stumpy she got rid of it. Her house was the cleanest in town and her temper did not seem worse for friction.

Another woman who, strange to tell, lived to be ninety years old, “liked moving” and never lived two years in one and the same house. She maintained that she kept clear of rubbish by frequent flittings, and enjoyed rubbing out and beginning again. Personally, I should have preferred a clean, lively conflagration every three years or so, but she throve upon nomadism.

In minor details of housewifery, as in more important, make up your mind how you will manage the home and turn a deaf ear to gratuitous suggestions from people whose own households would be better conducted if their energies were concentrated.

Let one example suffice: A so-called reformer felt herself called in (or out of) the Gospel of Humanity, the other day, to inveigh in a parlor lecture upon the unkindness and general unchristianliness of the maid’s cap and apron which all would-be stylish mistresses insist upon. “Have I, a Christian woman in a republic,” cried the oratress, “the right to put the badge of servitude upon my sister woman, because, having less money than I have, she is obliged to earn her living? Do I not tend to degrade, instead of elevating her?

“Of a piece with the cap and apron is the black dress, now ‘the thing’ for girls in domestic service. Why should not Bridget and Dinah exercise their own right in dress as well as I?”

These questions have been put to me many times by women who think and act for themselves without regard to arbitrary conventionalities.

I am so well assured that most conventionalities have a substratum of common sense that I am slow to condemn any one of them.

I dispute, at the outset, the insinuation that black dress, white cap and apron are a badge of servitude. I know no more independent class of women than trained nurses, no more arbitrary men than railway officials. I should certainly never consider the distinctive garb of the Sisters of Charity—Protestant or Roman Catholic—as degrading. The idea of humiliation attached to the uniform of housemaid and child’s nurse in the mind of employees or employer is founded upon the conviction that domestic service demeans her who performs it. This is precisely the prejudice which sensible, philanthropic women are trying to beat down—a prejudice that has more to do with the complications of the servant question than all other influences combined. If I hesitate to ask a maid entering my service to wear the uniform of her calling, I intimate too broadly to be misunderstood that there is something in that service which would demean her were it generally known that she is in it.

I had one maid, years ago, who would not run around the corner to grocery or haberdasher’s without taking time to put on her Sunday coat and hat, and to lay off her apron. When I spoke to her of the absurdity and inconvenience of this, she confessed, blushingly, that the porter at the grocery was “keeping company with her,” and “it was nat’ral a gurrel should want to look her best when she was like to see him.”

“Ah,” I said, “doesn’t he know what your position is in my house? Has he never seen you in cap and apron?”

“Shure, mem! Every day when he fetches the groceries.”

“Then, if he is a sensible fellow, he will respect you all the more for not pretending to be what you are not. Since he knows what your business is, show him that you are not ashamed of it. You are as respectable in your place as he is in his—as I am in mine—always providing that you respect your service and yourself.”

Call the distinctive dress of your maid a “uniform,” not a livery. Point out to her the examples of trained nurses, of railway conductors, of the very porters who “keep company” with her; the policemen she admires afar off; the soldiers, whose brass buttons dazzle her imagination. Remind her that saleswomen in fashionable shops wear the black gown, white apron, deep linen collar and cuffs and pride themselves upon looking their best in them. Especially make her comprehend (if you can, for the ways of the untrained mind are past finding out), that she has an honorable calling and need not be ashamed to advertise it.

Congratulate yourself, above all, that a sensible fashion holds back Bridget and Dinah from the “exercise of their own taste in dress.” The modification of that taste wrought by the neat and modest costume prescribed by a majority of modern housewives may be in itself a good thing, sparing the eyes of spectators of her toilettes when she becomes “Mrs.” and independent, and the purse of the porter, or truckman, or mechanic, who will have to pay for them.

I have laid stress upon the advantages of long terms of service, to maid and to mistress. Like all other good things it has its perils and its abuses to be avoided.

Two-thirds of the scandals that poison the social atmosphere steal out, like pestilential fogs, through servants’ gossip. We discuss “the girl” in our bedchambers, and if so much stirred up by her works and ways as to forget what is due to our ladyhood, compare notes in the parlor as to these same works and ways. Being well-bred women, the traditions of our caste prevent us from making domestic grievances the staple of drawing-room conversation and the marrow of table-talk. The electroplated vulgarian never calls attention more emphatically to the absence of the “Sterling” stamp upon her breeding, than when she chatters habitually of the virtues and the faults of her household staff.

On the other hand, the most sophisticated of us would be amazed and confounded if she knew what a conspicuous part She plays in talk below stairs and on afternoons and evenings “out.”

Thackeray, prince of satirists, puts it cleverly:

“Some people ought to have mutes for servants in Vanity Fair—mutes who could not write. If you are guilty—tremble! That fellow behind your chair may be a Janissary with a bowstring in his plush breeches pocket. If you are not guilty, have a care of appearances, which are as ruinous as guilt.”

We should be neither shocked nor confounded that these things are so. If we are mildly surprised, it argues ignorance of human nature, and of the general likeness of one human creature to another, that proves the whole world kin. When mistresses in Parisian toilettes, clinking gold spoons against Dresden as they sip Bohea in boudoir or drawing-room, raise their eyebrows or laugh musically over the latest bit of social carrion in “our set”—Jeames or Abigail, who has caught a whiff at a door ajar, or through a keyhole, is the lesser sinner in serving up the story in the kitchen cabinet. The domestics are in, yet not of, the employer’s world, living for six and a half days of the week among people with whom they have no affinity by nature or education. Where we would talk of “things,” the lower classes discuss what they name “folks.” Their range of thought is pitifully narrow; the happenings in their social life are few and tame. What wonder if they retail what we say and do and are, as sayings, doings and characters appear to them?

What would be extraordinary, if it were not so common, is the opportunity gratuitously afforded in—we will say, guardedly—one family out of three for the collection of material for these sensations of the nether story. I speak by the card in asserting that the influence gained by the confidential maid over her well-born, well-mannered, well-educated mistress is greater than that possessed by any friend in the (alleged) superior’s proper circle of equals.

Without taxing memory I can tell off on my fingers ten gentlewomen, in every other sense of the word, whose intimate confidantes are hirelings who were strangers until they entered the employ of their respective mistresses(?). We need not cross the ocean to listen with incredulous horror to insinuations and open assertions as to the hold a gigantic Scotch gilly acquired over a royal widow. Our next-door neighbors on both sides and our acquaintances across the way are in like bondage.

I have in mind one of the best and most refined women I ever knew whose infatuation for her incomparable Jane was the laughing-stock of some, the surprise and grief of others. Jane disputed the dear soul’s will, oft and again; gave her more advice than she took, and, behind her back, ridiculed her unsparingly—as many of the mistress’s friends were aware. The dupe would resign the affection and society of one and all of her compeers sooner than part with Jane.

Another “just could not live without my Mary.” The remote suggestion throws her into a paroxysm of distress. Her own husband knows it to be necessary to warn her not to tell this and that business or family secret to Mary, knowing, the while, in his sad soul, the chances to be against her keeping her promise not to share it with her factotum.

Ellen is the bosom friend of a third; Bridget is the right hand, the counsellor and colleague of a fourth. A fifth confides to her second-rate associates that her faithful Fanny knows as much of family histories (and there are histories in the clan) as she does, and that she—the miscalled mistress—takes no step of importance without consulting her.

Perhaps one man in five hundred is under the thumb of his employee, and then because the underling has come into possession of some dangerous secret, or has a “business hold” upon him.

Have wives more need of sympathy? or are they less nice in the choice of intimates, and more reckless in confidences?

LUNCHEON CAKES

Huckleberry shortcake

Sift two heaping teaspoonfuls of baking-powder and one of salt into a quart and a pint of flour. Chop into this two tablespoonfuls of cottolene or other fat and two of butter. Beat two eggs light and add them to a pint of sweet milk. Make a hole in the flour, pour in the milk and egg, and mix with a wooden spoon. Turn out upon a pastry board and roll into two sheets, about a third of an inch in thickness. Line a greased biscuit-pan with one sheet, cover it three-quarters of an inch thick with huckleberries, strew these with granulated sugar, fit the upper sheet of dough on the pan and bake in a steady oven until done. Cut into squares and send to table. Split, and eat with butter and sugar.

Currant shortcake

Mash a quart of ripe red currants and stir into them two cups of granulated sugar. Cover and set aside for half an hour.

Make a dough as for quick biscuit, only using a tablespoonful more butter than usual. Roll into a large round biscuit about ten inches in diameter. Bake, and, as soon as done, split open, spread with butter and then with half the sweetened currants. Replace the top of the biscuit and pour the remainder of the currants and juice over and around the shortcake. Serve at once.

Hot strawberry shortcake

Mash a quart of berries, sweeten them with plenty of granulated sugar, and let them stand for an hour and a half.

Into a pint of flour sift a teaspoonful of baking-powder, and half a teaspoonful of salt. Chop into this one tablespoonful of butter until it is thoroughly incorporated. Add enough milk to make a dough that can be easily handled. Turn this upon a floured pastry-board, roll lightly into a huge biscuit as large as a pie-plate. Put into a greased pan and bake in a quick oven. When done, split open quickly, spread with butter, then thickly with the mashed berries, put the two halves together again, pour the remaining mashed berries over the entire cake, and serve very hot.

Cold strawberry shortcake

Cream two tablespoonfuls of butter with a cup of powdered sugar. Beat three eggs light, add to them a quarter of a cup of cream, and stir into the creamed butter and sugar. Beat long and hard before adding a cupful of flour sifted twice with a teaspoonful of baking-powder. Grease three jelly-cake tins, half-fill with the batter and bake in a quick oven. When cold, remove the cakes from the tins, spread each layer with halved strawberries, sprinkle with sugar and pile on a dish. Serve with an abundance of cream.

Scotch shortcake

(Contributed)

Cream a half-pound of fresh butter with a quarter-pound of sugar, and work into it with the hands a pound of flour. Knead long, then turn upon a pastry-board and press into a flat sheet half an inch thick. Cut into squares and bake until light-brown and crisp.

Orange shortcake

(Contributed)

Sift into one and one-half cupfuls of flour one-half cupful of corn-starch, one level teaspoonful of baking-powder and one-half teaspoonful of salt. Rub into this with the tips of the fingers one-third of a cup of butter and moisten with milk enough to make a soft dough. Divide the dough in halves and spread over the bottom of two tins. When done butter the cakes, sift over each powdered sugar, and put between them thin slices of peeled oranges.

German coffee cake (No. 1)

Two cupfuls of scalded milk, one cupful of water, one yeast-cake (one-cent size), one cupful of sugar, one-half cupful of butter, two eggs, a little salt.

Cream sugar and butter, add milk and yeast dissolved in the water, the salt and eggs, well-beaten. Thicken with enough flour to make a batter that can be stirred with a spoon. Beat well and set to rise for about three hours. When light, add enough flour to enable you to roll it out. Roll about an inch thick, and place in long, shallow pans. Set to rise. When light, drop over the top bits of butter about the size of a hickory-nut, and sprinkle generously with sugar and a little cinnamon. Bake about thirty minutes.

German coffee cake (No. 2)

To two cupfuls of soft bread sponge that has been allowed to rise, add one-half cupful of warm milk, a little salt, one-quarter cupful of melted shortening, two eggs, beaten with three-quarters of a cup of sugar. Add one-half grated nutmeg, some raisins or currants, and as much warmed flour as can be worked in with a spoon. Put it into a greased tin and let it rise. When very light, moisten the top with milk, sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon, and bake in a slow oven forty minutes. Cover with brown paper until almost done.

Potato cake

Two cupfuls of white sugar, one cupful of butter, four eggs, one-half cupful of milk, one cupful of potatoes, one teaspoonful, each, of cinnamon and cloves, one-half cup of chocolate, two cups of flour, two teaspoonfuls of baking-powder, one cup of almonds. Blanch and chop almonds; grate cold boiled potatoes; beat eggs separately, adding whites last. Bake in a shallow pan in a moderate oven, and cover with caramel frosting.

Huckleberry cake

Sift a scant quart of flour twice with two teaspoonfuls of baking-powder. Cream together one cupful of butter and two of sugar, add to them five beaten eggs, a cup and a half of milk, a half-teaspoonful, each, of powdered cinnamon and nutmeg and the prepared flour. Last of all, stir in a cupful of huckleberries thoroughly dredged with flour. Bake in greased muffin tins in a steady oven.

This excellent cake is better when twenty-four hours old than when freshly baked.

Apple cake

Cream together a half-cupful of butter and two cupfuls of sugar, and beat into them a half-cupful of milk and five whipped eggs. Last of all, add three cupfuls of flour into which have been sifted two small teaspoonfuls of baking-powder. Bake in layers. When cold, make the filling by heating in a double boiler a cupful of apple sauce, adding sugar to taste, and then beating in gradually the yolks of two eggs and the juice of a lemon. Cook, stirring, for a minute, and set aside until cold before spreading on the cake.

Springleys (No. 1)

(A German recipe.)

Beat one pound of granulated sugar for ten minutes with four eggs, leave for an hour, then add one tablespoonful of lemon extract, and one teaspoonful of hartshorn. Work in enough flour (about two pounds) to make it stiff enough to roll out. Powder the forms with flour before using, so as to prevent sticking. Cut apart and lay on a smooth slab until morning. Sprinkle anise seed in the bottom of the tins before putting cakes in. Bake in a quick oven and watch very closely in order to keep them from burning.

Springerlein (No. 2)

(An old German recipe.)

One cup of powdered sugar, rolled fine, sifted and warmed. Four large eggs. Grated rind of one lemon. One pound of flour thoroughly dried and sifted three times. One-half teaspoonful of baking-powder sifted thoroughly with the flour.

With a silver or wooden spoon stir the sugar and eggs steadily for one hour, stirring one way, add rind of lemon, flour and baking-powder, mix quickly into a loaf-shape without much handling. Set aside in a cool place for two hours. Flour your baking-board lightly—take a small piece of dough, which by this time must be stiff enough to cut with a knife, roll out to about a quarter of an inch thick. Put about two tablespoonfuls of flour in a small cheese-cloth bag and with this lightly dust the mold. Press the dough on the mold, lightly but firmly with the finger tips, then turn the mold over and carefully remove. With a cutter cut off surplus dough, put with remainder and proceed as before. Use as little flour as possible in rolling out. Put a cloth on the table, sprinkle it with anise-seed, lay the cakes on this and stand them for twelve hours in a cool room. Bake in a moderate oven in lightly-buttered pans. This recipe will make from sixty-five to seventy-five cakes.

Currant bun

Warm a cupful of cream in a double-boiler, take it from the fire and stir into it a cupful of melted butter, which has not been allowed to cook in melting. Beat three eggs very light, add them to the cream and butter, then stir in a cupful of sugar. Dissolve a half-cake of yeast in a couple of tablespoonfuls of water, sift a good quart of flour, make a hollow in it, stir into it the yeast and then, after adding to the other mixture, a teaspoonful, each, of powdered mace and cinnamon, put in the flour and the yeast. Beat all well for a few minutes, add a cupful of currants that have been washed, dried and dredged with flour, pour into a shallow baking-pan, let it rise for several hours, until it has doubled in size; bake one hour in a rather quick oven; sprinkle with fine sugar when done.

Cinnamon buns

Save a cupful of bread dough from the second rising. Cream a half-cupful of butter with a half-cupful of sugar, stir in a well-beaten egg and work these into the dough. Now add a half-teaspoonful of cinnamon, a teaspoonful of soda, dissolved in a little hot water and a half-cupful of cleaned currants, dredged with flour. Knead for several minutes, form into buns, set to rise for a half-hour, then bake.

Parkin

Mix together three pounds of oatmeal, a pound and a half of molasses, a half-pound of butter creamed with a half-pound of sugar, a dash of ginger and as much baking-soda as will lie upon a shilling, dissolved in a little boiling water. Mix thoroughly and bake in flat pans.

Grandmother’s apple cake

(From an old family recipe.)

Three cups of dried apples stewed slowly in two cups of molasses, then set aside to cool. Three cups of flour; two-thirds of a cup of butter; two cups of brown sugar; one-half cup of raisins; currants and grated lemon peel, mixed; eight teaspoonfuls of water, one level teaspoonful of soda dissolved in the water, three eggs, spices to taste.

This cake will keep for weeks. It is better when a few days old than when first made.

The apples should be carefully washed, first in warm, then in cold water, lying in this last for half an hour. Drain and toss in a towel before adding the molasses.

In the “old times” the quantity of cake made by this recipe lasted the children a month.

Bun loaf

(An English recipe.)

Cream together half a cupful of mixed butter and lard with a half-cupful of brown sugar; beat into this one egg and work both into a cupful of bread dough that has had its second rising. Work in, also, half a teaspoonful of cinnamon and quarter of a grated nutmeg, half a cupful of mixed raisins and currants, the raisins seeded and chopped, the currants washed and dried, and both dredged with flour, a tablespoonful of citron shredded and also dredged, and knead all well for three or four minutes. Make into a loaf, let it rise half an hour and bake in a moderate oven.

Fruit cake (No. 1)

One cupful of butter; one and a half cupfuls of powdered sugar; two cupfuls of flour; six eggs; half a pound, each, of raisins and currants; quarter-pound of citron; teaspoonful of cinnamon and nutmeg; half teaspoonful of ground cloves; three tablespoonfuls of brandy.

Cream butter and sugar, beat in the whipped yolks of the eggs, stir in the flour, the spice, the raisins, seeded and chopped; the currants, washed; the citron, shredded, and all the fruit, well dredged with flour, then the whites, beaten stiff, and the brandy. Bake about two hours in a steady oven.

Fruit cake (No. 2)

Seed and chop a quarter of a pound of raisins; stem and wash a quarter of a pound of currants; and mince three tablespoonfuls of citron. Mix all this fruit together and thoroughly dredge with flour.

Rub to a cream a generous cupful of powdered sugar and a half-cupful of butter, and beat into this five whipped eggs. Now add half a teaspoonful, each, of ground cinnamon, nutmeg and mace, and stir in a cupful of flour. Last of all, add the fruit, turn into a greased cake tin and bake steadily, not fast, until done. This will probably take from an hour to an hour and a half.

Fruit cake (No. 3)