Chapter XXXIX

IDEAS AND SUGGESTIONS ON SEVERAL SUBJECTS.

MRS. LENNOX came in to call on Mrs. Welles later the same day. Her Maggie had been with her now several days, and she could judge how far she was likely to be of use to her. Molly had been anxious to know the result of the experiment, for she felt deeply interested in her neighbor, and that if Maggie should prove more a trial than comfort she might perhaps have contributed by her advice to that result. After a little conversation about Mrs. Welles’s visit and her long acquaintance with Molly, the latter asked how she got on with the new inmate.

“For the first three or four days it seemed a failure, but I am hopeful now of better things; she is strong, seems willing, and I think is trying to do. At all events I almost think if she never gets beyond the point of washing dishes, taking up ashes, making fires, preparing vegetables and washing I shall be the gainer, for that drudgery left me no time for the lighter work to be properly done.”

“Oh, but if she does those things willingly, and as you tell her, she will not stop there, I think; Mrs. Framley was speaking of her sister, and says she is of thoroughly good stock, and that is a great deal. The good-for-nothing girls one meets with usually come from thriftless stock.”

“Well, I’m going to hope for the best, and as I’m not expecting too many of the cardinal virtues for a few dollars a month, perhaps I may not be disappointed; and now, my dear Mrs. Bishop, I am going to ask you to give me a few recipes of economical dishes for a family like ours. Until I talked with you, I only knew of pot-pie and Irish stew, both badly made, and though I have a cookery-book which you tell me is excellent, I never made anything come quite right out of it.”

“In justice to the cooking-book, and indeed to latter day cooking-books in general, I think, perhaps, if you’ll forgive me, that may have been because you did not know enough of the elements of cooking.”

“I certainly did not, and although I know little now, I feel so very much wiser than I did a month ago that I look back in wonder. There’s another reason why I could not use my cookery-book,—it always wanted something I had not in the house by way of flavoring; then I shut up the book and cooked in my own old way.”

“One of your American worthies, ‘Josiah Allen’s wife,’ I think, says: ‘It’s the flavorin’ as does it,’” said Mrs. Welles; “and I think fifty cents expended in flavorings a very good investment, from an economical point of view.”

“Yes, if one lives in New York one can buy all sorts of sweet herbs, and dry them. At the same time I don’t think Mr. Lennox likes them.”

“I have known many people who thought they did not like them because they had never had them properly used, or at least when properly used they enjoyed the dish without knowing that it contained herbs at all; in the same way I have known people who used Worcestershire sauce in everything, and who would even ruin clear soup by pouring it in, vow and protest they could never touch anything that had the faintest suspicion of garlic; Worcestershire sauce has more than a suspicion of garlic. I know others who will eat no pickles but Crosse & Blackwell’s, which likewise owe the subtle difference between them and all others equally to the effect of garlic; so carefully used however that only by making pickles with and without that suspicion of the malodorous herb can you see why many other pickles lack ‘just something.’”

“Well—I’m willing to be instructed, so willing that if I’d time and money I would go to New York and go through a course at a cooking-school.”

“Ah! If every young wife did that, what years of work and vexation she would save herself; it is such up-hill work teaching one’s self from books; it’s like trying to play a piece of music without having learned to count time; after months, if you knew the notes, you might, by your ear, make something out of it; but think of the toil! So it is with recipes,—without the key, how can any one cook? to be told what goes into a pot, and to ‘stew it gently’ so long, and you don’t know what gentle stewing is! You are told to put your meat in the oven and bake it ‘beautifully brown,’ and you don’t know that to brown beautifully your oven must be just so hot when it goes in, and that if you have water in your pan, it will steam, not bake; and so on.”

Molly smiled; Mrs. Welles was on her hobby.

“Yes, that’s all true, and I only wish I had the first year of my married life to go over again, before a family came in the way of my doing what I would like.”

“To revert to the question of flavorings,” put in Molly. “I found all I wanted at the grocery; they put up sweet herbs of all kinds now very nicely, in paper boxes, a box of thyme _leaves_ (be sure and get the _leaves_ rather than the powdered herb) or marjoram leaves cost but five cents each. Now while parsley is so plentiful and cheap I shall buy ten cents’ worth and dry it for winter.”

“I did not know parsley would dry and retain its flavor.”

“It will not if done as we dry other herbs; it must be quickly done by heat; if put in a cool oven with the door open, or in a plate-warmer, it will dry in a few hours; then it can be rubbed fine and put in a tin box. I think a box of lemon thyme, one of savory, one of marjoram, one of sage, with five cents’ worth of bay leaves,—twenty cents in all,—will give you all the herb flavorings generally called for, and last a year if you like them as sparingly used as I should use them. Spices most people have, I would almost say ‘unluckily,’ remembering how sadly too much spice mars much of our American cooking; but I will give you several recipes, and if you have difficulty with them let me know. I think perhaps when the cold weather comes in we might do a little economy together.”

“How?”

“By buying meat in large quantities, beef by the quarter, mutton by the half sheep; my family is too small to make such a way of buying wise, but you have several mouths to feed, and none would go to waste.”

Mrs. Lennox looked dubious and said:

“I used to think about it. Mr. Lennox suggested he should buy a quarter of beef, as he knew some one who did so all through the winter and found it profitable, but a lady who had also tried the plan told me there was no profit in it, for there was so much waste,—so much coarse meat that she could make no use of.”

“In that case there would be no real economy, but there need be no waste, and should be none, and no one need eat coarse food. I mean, properly prepared no part of beef need be coarse; if a piece of brisket or flank were served up as a roast, or the leg broiled, that would indeed be coarse; but each cooked in its appropriate way, they would be far from being so.”

“But the fat,—there is so much of it!”

“But what more useful than beef fat, or more wholesome? It is next to butter, I think.”

“That is true; but my friend, I know, could not use it, and said she was so thankful to see the last of that beef.”

“The only objection usually urged against it, and I think a very reasonable one, is that the family must eat beef or mutton, whichever is in the house, constantly till it is gone; but I do not see even that necessity, for in cold weather the meat will keep so well that some change can be had, and then in winter, even for my small use, I would not fear to buy half a sheep; I could make it keep a month, unless the weather broke; then I would manage to preserve it; but if _I_ had mutton and you had beef, we could certainly change sometimes; though half a sheep used during a month would not necessitate monotony, for one could have many things between.”

“What would you do with mutton fat?”

“That, I grant, is not so available; but there is less of it, and I should try it out and make soup. The actual saving is considerable, especially in mutton. It is rare to get chops under twenty cents a pound; leg fourteen, if you buy them separately, which is the frequent way, while the half sheep can be bought in Washington Market for ten or eleven cents a pound; the latter is an outside price (a butcher would buy for less) for prime mutton, while beef hind quarter would be for buyers like ourselves thirteen or fourteen cents a pound, unless there is some temporary rise in the market, when of course one need not buy; but that is the average price in New York.”

“How do you know all this?” asked Mrs. Lennox in amazement. “I mean, how do you know what the prices are now?”

Molly laughed. “In this particular instance I made special inquiry or asked Mrs. Welles to do so; but I keep pretty well up in such matters by the Saturday editions of some of the evening papers, although I usually add a couple of cents a pound to the quotations for prime meats to allow for any difference there may be. I do it, however, only from curiosity, for I could not buy my own meat so, even if my family were large, for Mr. Bishop is not experienced enough to buy and send it out.”

“Nor is Mr. Lennox, but he has a friend who has bought so for years, and who also, when game and poultry are cheap, and I believe they often are as cheap as meat, sends that home to his wife too; and Mr. Lennox enjoys going with him, and once in a while has sent us home turkeys when they have been very low in price.”

“Then I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll write out several recipes to use up the parts of the beef that you will not broil or roast, so that you will not be forced to eat beef exclusively in order to get rid of it before it spoils. I will do the same with the mutton.”

“But, my dear Mrs. Bishop, how can I possibly trouble you so far? What can I do for you in return?”

“I know something you can easily do. Let me have part of your beef or mutton when you get it; we’ll take turns about the prime parts,—I have as much use for coarse ones sometimes; and ask Mr. Lennox once in a while when he is buying meat with his friend and game is cheap, to send me out some. In New York prairie hens and partridges are sometimes a dollar a pair; then they are cheaper than meat to those fond of them as we are. Yet Mrs. Framley says she never knew them less than two dollars a pair here. Then the writing will not be much trouble to me, for while Mrs. Welles is here I intend to get some recipes from her; the one copy will do for both of us.”

“I’m afraid I’m getting all the good of that arrangement.”

“No, it’s a case of give and take between us. You learn cooking from me, I learn something as valuable from you.”

“You are kind enough to say so.”

After Mrs. Lennox had gone, Mrs. Welles asked what Molly meant by saying she was learning something just as valuable.

“Mrs. Lennox has the best-trained children I ever knew. They are full of fun and frolic, yet cheerfully obedient to her, and as the subject is likely to interest me, I have observed them very closely, and asked her whether they were unusually amiable or whether it was due to training. She told me she did not do much training, nor were the children specially amiable; and it is true there seems less _small_ restriction in her family than in most others where the children are ‘regular pickles.’”

“How does she manage them?”

“I hardly think she knows herself. She says she makes few rules, and those the children hardly know of; they only know there are a few things they dare not do; but I notice they never ask her for a thing twice, and that is because she says she never denied anything she knew she might be induced to grant; so they know pleading or worrying is thrown away, and four happier children you never saw. I asked her once if her babies were as good as they are when older. She said two were no trouble; her first was a restless one for the first three months and the last was sick; but she will not believe that well babies would be cross or restless if properly managed, and she gave me her experience with the first one. Of course I know nothing from experience; I can only observe and read and think, and I, too, hope to have a good baby if it is a well one.”

“Dear me! I should not have thought Mrs. Lennox was a woman to have strongly-formed ideas on the subject.”

“No, I don’t believe she thinks so herself. I don’t even know that she has formulated her ideas. She may have acted only on instinct, but the result is charming; if you were to see her children you would say so.”