Category: School for Housewives

Colonial Cookery

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This is the third article in January of the School for Housewives 1909 series published on January 17, 1909, and is an article on colonial cookery.

Transcribed from the Sunday edition of the The Buffalo Sunday Morning News.

Colonial Cookery

I WAS conducted through an alleged “suite” of rooms the other day that ended in what should have been called “a light closet,” if it had not had at one side a tiny gas range that might have helped furnish a doll’s house.

“This,” said my hostess, proudly, “is my kitchenette! I had never heard the word before. No other would have fitted so well into the wee corner at sight of which I could not command my risible muscles. For that means the preparation of meat and drink for a family of four. So much—or so little—for the march of modern improvement in the housewifely world.

The whole kitchenette would have gone badly into the fireplace of a colonial kitchen. Those who have seen the domestic offices of lordly mansions in England and o this side of the Atlantic, visited now as antiquities, lived in as homes a century and a half ago, will testify that the above assertion is not an exaggeration of a fact. Even in thrifty New England, where space was not wasted as in the Southern and dwellings were more compact than in New Amsterdam and South Carolina, the huge fireplace filled nearly all of one end of a kitchen spacious by comparison with the rest of the house. The fireplace was wide, and it was deep. Massive andirons (we call them firedogs now) sprawled for a part on the hearth laid with great flat stones. Midway in the cavernous mouth of the chimney was fixed the crane, a stout, horizontal iron bar, hinged at one end, and fastened deep in the masonry. From this were suspended on pothooks and hangers, pots and kettles, big and little.

Two generations later school children knew their first copies in writing books as “pothooks and hangers,” with no thought of the origin of the words. They were solid verities, material agencies to our colonial dame. Crane and dependencies were of honest wrought iron. No “castings” for the cook of that day. Below the crane, whether it were dull or empty, burned a fire that never went out in winter, and smouldered for weeks together in summer under a blanket of ashes.

Before Stoves.

The cook stove and range were as yet in the imagination of the daring inventors. Everything was cooked over and in front of the open wood fire. Tea kettles clothes boilers, big-bellied pots, in which hams and “barons” of corned beef were boiled, and smaller “stew-pans” for vegetables, swung amicably side by side, in the red glare of deep beds of hickory embers.

In front of this substratum of living coals—so hot that the very ashes were alive—were ranged vessel in which baking was done. The semi-weekly baking of bread in the northern States was in the brick oven, built in the outer wall of the kitchen.

We see brick ovens still in colonial houses that have escaped the vandalism of improvement. They are usually closed by a blank wall within, leaving no token of their former work. From the outer wall protrudes the useless hump, like a wen upon the face of the “restored” homestead. Said restoration never goes so far as to open the mouth of the oven. It had an iron door in the days of its usefulness, and an iron floor laid upon a brick foundation.

On baking day the interior was filled with short billets of hickory or birch, the torch was applied and the door was closed. A narrow flue supplied a draught that converted the wood into coals. After they had heated the oven walls through and through, the coals were transferred to the fireplace, the floor and sides of the oven were swept clean and the loaves of bread were slid into the innermost recesses of the cave from a broad wooden shovel kept for that purpose.

It was my privilege as a girl to see, in the venerable homestead which was the birthplace of eight generations of our family, the identical shovel, black with age and hard as lignum vitae, from which had slidden brown and white loaves for 200 years. The dear great-aunt who then presided over the household took the Virginia guest into the spacious kitchen, lifted the latch of the iron door, and with her own hands showed me how the ancient utensil had done its part in the family baking.

“The oven was still in use when your father was a boy,” said the gentle voice. “Tell him that you saw it and the old shovel.”

When the fragrant loaves—light, hot and mellow brunette in complexion—were drawn from the recess, cake and gingerbread went in, and if the oven were a good specimen of its kind, there remained after the cakes were done heat enough for the weekly batch of pies.

The “Dutch Oven.”

I never saw the “brick oven” at the South. Bred was made daily there and in variety that still earns for southern “hot-breads” international reputation. It was baked in loaves, or as rolls, closely set together in the “Dutch oven.” Why the name, I do not know. It was a round or oval pot with a flat bottom and a tightly-fitting lid. Iron legs held it above the coals, among which frying pan and griddle loved to nestle, for baking and roasting required that air should pass between the coals and “oven.” A shovelful of coals covered the lid and kept the heat even.

“A spider” was a smaller pot of the same shape and furnished with three strong short legs. Johnny and hoe cakes were known also as “spider cake” when cooked in this. The hoe had no top. It was round and legless. To bring cakes and pones to perfection it was set in hot ashes—the live ashes of which I spoke just now—a mass of sparks dug out of the bowels of the fire that was never quenched for six months on a stretch.

Our colonial ancestors brought the turnspit with them from England. In some houses they were retained until the beginning of the 19th century. I talked last week with a gentlewoman of the old school, who had seen the “spit” in action in her father’s house.

“It demanded constant attention,” she said. “After the roast went on it was one person’s business to keep the ‘jack’ in gentle motion. But the properly-tended roast was perfect of its kind. A dripping-pan placed under I saved every drop of gravy.”

Where the spit was not available, large roasts were set before the fire in roasting-pots of corresponding dimensions. Coals were piled beneath and on the lid. The lid had to be removed for each basting and turning of turkey or joint.

The concoction of sweet dishes involved an amount of work the modern housewife would be horrified to contemplate.

Spices and pepper were ground involved an amount of work the modern housewife would be horrified to contemplate.

Nothing was bought ready made. Even flavoring essences were of home manufacture. Within my memory, the housewife who clung pertinaciously to the former ways as indubitably better than these, flavored blanc mange, jellies and cakes with lemon by rubbing the fresh peel upon lumps of loaf sugar, and with bitter almond by rubbing the sugar with green peach leaves. Rosewater flavoring was obtained by steeping rose petals in brandy. After the lump sugar was tinged to the proper degree of yellow or green, it was pounded in a mortar with a pestle, then sifted through lace or muslin to the powder suitable for cake-making.

Had “Longer Days.”

I shall, by and by, offer recipes in evidence of the truth that our foremothers had longer days than ours, hence more time to bestow upon the various processes of culinary operations.

One important branch of cookery in that far-off time when, according to my computation, there were 48 hours to the day, 14 days to the week, and 60 to the month—was putting up all manner of fruits and a few manners of vegetables for use when fruits and green vegetables were clean out of season.

I have recipes for pickles that call for an hour a day for a whole month; for preserves that could not have been brought to the requisite lucency and crispness by less than 12 hours’ skilled labor. Apples and peaches were pared, sliced and dried under the watchful eye of the mistress, turned twice a day, taken out with the young turkeys if the sun shone, and brought in should the skies threaten rain. Then they were put up in muslin bags and examined every Monday, lest worms and mould might attack them. Pears and peaches were pared, crushed and sun-dried into leather” and tomatoes stewed and strained and sunned into “honey.”

We have a way speaking of those departed dames as “thrifty and frugal!” To borrow an expressive nonsense word from Lewis Carroll, I fairly “chortled aloud” with wicked glee in poring over the time-sallowed manuscripts lent to me in the course of my explorations into the daily works and ways of our revered colonial housemother. Foodstuffs were cheaper then than now, it is true. But there was less money in circulation, and what was to be had was worth more than our currency.

Judge for yourself, my economical reader, as to the frugality of a bona-fide recipe, laid before me by the great-great-great-granddaughter of the chatelaine who administered domestic law in a dear colonial homestead on the Hudson River, over 160 years back of our extravagant times. I bring the spelling down to date:

A Stew of Pigeons.

“Take the pigeons, clean and flour them. Brown a quarter of a pound of butter in a stewing pan; put in your pigeons and, when they are brown on both sides, take them out, fling away your butter and wash your pan clean. Put your pigeons in again, with as much water as will cover them, two clovers, pepper, salt and one bay leaf. Let them stew slowly one hour and a half. Strain out the liquor and take the yolks of two eggs beaten up with a teaspoonful of vinegar. Mix in your liquor and thicken it. Put your pigeons in the dish and throw your sauce upon it. You must add to your sauce upon it. You must add to your sauce sweetbreads, mushrooms and roasted chestnuts. Boil these half an hour.”

The quantity of each of the articles last named is left to the discretion of the individual housewife or cook. Madame is more explicit in the next formula:

To Make Waffers (Waffles!)

“Half a pound of white flour, half a pound of fine sugar; then take a little water and boil and melt in it half a pound of good butter. Beat the yolks of two eggs well in a little lemon peel, orange water and a little lemon peel, shred small. Beat all these very well, butter your irons and bake them over a quick, clear wood fire. When the wafers are baked roll them up.”

Another authentic recipe is for

Pound Cake.

“One pound of flour, one pound of butter, washed in three waters, to get out the salt. Knead it well in the water, then squeeze out every drop of water in a clean linen cloth. Rub the butter then to a cream, with a pound of fine sugar flavored with lemon peel before it is pounded and sifted; beat into this a glass of brandy, a grated nutmeg and the same of mace, pounded fine and sifted. Now, whip the yolks of six eggs very light, and beat these into the butter and sugar and spice. At the last put in the whites whipped stiff and high by turns with a pound of sifted and sundried flour. Mix well and beat steadily for half an hour, always from the bottom of the batter.”

None of these were accounted “fancy dishes” by the thrifty dames aforesaid. They reel off the list of pounds of butter and quarter pounds thrown away as coolly as they call for mushrooms by the dozen and pairs of sweetbreads.

Next week we will record other and as startling instances of the “frugality” in time and material which, we were brought up to hold and believe as certain, was characteristic of our revered exemplars.

Marion Harland

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Planting Bulbs for Easter

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This is the second article in January of the School for Housewives 1909 series published on January 10, 1909, and is an article on planting.

Transcribed from the Sunday edition of the The Buffalo Sunday Morning News.

Planting Bulbs for Easter

It is a long look ahead for our amateur florist. Every anniversary falls into our lives like a surprise, no matter how long and how carefully we have prepare for it. Easier—the movable feast—seems to require less preparation at the hands of the housemother than the winter holidays.

Yet it behooves those of us who love flowers well enough to take the trouble to cultivate them to lay our plans now for filling our homes with beauty and fragrance on the most joyous festival of the year.

In our Easter talk (if it please the Lord of Life to keep us here and together until then) we will hold sweet converse as to the glorious promise symbolized in each opening bud. Today we address ourselves to homely details, without which we may not expect leaf or flower.

It sounds strange to the ears of country-bred readers to be told that it is not an easy matter to get heath for house plants in winter. For them there is always a corner of the barnyard where a few strokes of the spade will break through ice and snow down into loose soil, black, rich and warm. Our flat-dweller must buy earth for filling flower pots and jardinieres. It will be brought to her in a stout paper parcel, as if it where so much moist sugar. Even then the business of filling pots and boxes with dirt in the bathroom or kitchen is not a pleasant task. It is a relief in such circumstances to recollect that spring flowers may be brought into healthy bloom by substituting water for soil.

Easy to Grow.

Hyacinths take obligingly to this method of window gardening. If you have fruit jars that are not too wide at the mouth to support large-sized bulbs above the surface of the water, you need not go to the expense of hyacinth glasses. The latter are not costly, however, and make a better show in the window than the homelier substitute. Select some blubs of uniform size; fill the glasses with pure water and set the bulb in the mouth so that the bottom rests in the liquid. To submerge would rot it and ruin all. Be sure that the circle containing the foot-gterms is under water, and examine every few days to see that evaporation has not expose the same. When the bulbs are thus arranged set the glasses in the cellar, if you have one; if not, in a dark, rather cool closet.

All this while the water must be kept at the right level. Replenish the supply gingerly from above, stirring the blubs as little as possible, and with water suited to the temperature, of the place in which the plants are kept. Cold would check the growth temporarily.

Once in the sunlight, your nurselings require little more attention. See that water is added before the roots begin to dry out and turn the glasses daily, that the light may visit all parts of the plants impartially, and you will not have to wait long for satisfactory flowering.

Narcissus and jonquils may be brought to blossoming in water, but under different treatment. Have ready enough clean pebbles or broken bits of marble, picked up at a stonecutter’s, to half fill a wide, rather shallow bowl. Dispose the bulbs judiciously among these, so that they will not crowd one another, and that all will stand firmly upright. This done, pour in water until the root central circles are well covered. Lay a piece of lace set over the top of the bowl, fastening it at the bottom, that it may not dip into the yater. This will keep the inevitable dust from coasting and befouling it. Now, put the bowl away in the cellar or closet, as I have directed you to proceed with the hyacinths, and follow these directions exactly in further treatment until the sprouting bulbs are sufficiently advanced to be set in the window. When there they must have sunlight for several hours of each day. Reflected sunshine will not induce blossoming. Replenish the supply of water as it sink below the level in evaporating.

A Water Plant.

The Chinese sacred lily grows better in water than in earth. Indeed, the only experiment I ever made in cultivating them in the latter direction was unfortunate in result. I had brought the comparatively new plants to such beautiful perfection in water, that I reasoned in favor of setting them in the bosom of their mother earth. I knew that hyacinths, tulips, narcissus, freesias, jonquils, etc., accepted water as a makeshift for the nourishing soil. Why should the celestial bulbs be of a different mind? Therefore, I planted them in a box of rich garden mould; left them in the cellar for the prescribed four weeks, brought them by prudent stages into the light, and awaited developments in sanguine calmness. The leaves grew rapidly and rankly, and never a single bloom blessed my sight the season through. Next winter I meekly set the blubs between the pebbles, as of old, and took no risks.

If you can get a china jardinière—an oblong box made for the window garden—it will be more slightly than the bowl, and accommodate itself more gracefully to the dimensions and shape of the shelf which is the improvised conservatory of hundred of thousands of flower lovers.

For those who are poor (or rich) enough to command all the garden and forest mold they want, I add a few simple rules for the cultivation of Easter bulbs. Set those I have named in earth, instead of in water (always excepting the Chinese specimen!) Fill with soil that covers the bulb. Not too deep, as that will give the leaves unnecessary trouble in reaching the light. Half an inch of earth is sufficient to shield the upper part of the bulb from dust and draughts.

The upper stratum should be crumbled fine, and laid in loosely. Keep the pots in the cellar or dark closet until the shoots above the surface are from wo to three inches in height, then bring them gradually to the sunlight. During the weeks of seclusion, water sparingly—not oftener than once a week; and not then unless the earth is dry to the tip of the finger thrust three inches into the mold. The philosophy of this is clear—what you want to accomplish by darkness and quiet is vigorous root growth. The fibers which are to draw nutriment through the sap for the growing plant must strike deeply into the earth in order to extract it. If the surface be kept wet, the rootlets are attracted to the top of the earth, making what we know as “lateral roots,” which depend entirely upon frequent watering and get little sustenance from the soil below.

Calla lilies (which botanists tell us, are not lilies at all, but “Richardia Africana”) require larger pots than do the bulbous plan e have already spoken of. They, too, must be set in the dark until the roots have taken hold of the lower soil and the green blades appear above ground. I have seen them growing in artificial ponds, the bulbs having been set among stones. I think, however, that they must have a foundation of earth to bring them into vigorous growth. I have raised them successfully in flower pots and jardinieres. They hold their bloom longer than they hyacinths and jonquils and have a stately grace that peculiarly adapts them for Easer decorations.

Marion Harland

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Window Gardening and House Plants

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This is the first article in January of the School for Housewives 1909 series published on January 13, 1909.

For this article, Marion spends time on the topic of window gardening and specifically on her Wardian case. I had never heard of a Wardian case before and needed to look it up before continuing the article. As found on Wikipedia, a Wardian case is an early type of terrarium used to protect plants first invented by Dr. Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward (1791–1868) in the late 1820s.

Transcribed from the Sunday edition of the The Buffalo Sunday Morning News.

Window Gardening and House Plants

The author of “St. Cuthbert’s,” a charming story of Scotch-Canadian life, says:

“I do contend that the watering can and the spade and the pruning knife are a means of grace.”

My contention may not take that form, but I know, and am persuaded by actual and personal experience and by wide and close observation, that the care of green and growing things is a cure of ennui and a wholesome diversion of thought from the perplexities and vexations which make workaday life a weariness to flesh and spirit.

I hope each of my readers has made acquaintance at one time or another with “Picciola.” For those who have not read the book, in the original French or in translations I will say that it is a biography of a plant that sprang up between the stones in the courtyard of a prison, in which was confined a nobleman accused of conspiracy against the government. His study of the flower saved him from madness and suicide. Bunner tells of the mission to the “little sick child in the basement,” of

The pot of mignonette
In the attic window set.

The ministry of flowers is an exhaustless theme. It is appreciated in all its fullness and beauty by none who do not love to plant, tend and watch the making of these—God’s angels of healing and His teachers in the knowledge of the “real things” which have to do with the invisible and the eternal.

The owners of winter gardens and conservatories that are tended by salaried gardeners and visited by the nominal possessors are not learners in our school. I et hundred of letters of inquiry touching the cultivation of house plants, but they do not come from rich women or from girls who can afford to buy cut flowers whenever they like. My correspondents wish to know how to make house plants grow and bloom in living rooms in the dining room that looks out upon an apartment court; in the family parlor that has a sunny exposure, and, most pathetic of all, how to set a window shelf of ferns, palms, tradescantia and ivies n the sight of a shut-in, whose glimpses of the outer world of life and light are confined to the section—sometimes a mere slice—of wintry sky discernible through her window.

For my army of shut-ins, and for the housemother tied to the toilful routine of domestic tasks from year’s end to year’s end, I am telling the story of my own window gardening and the dear Wardian case, alias fernery, now in the 30th year of beneficent life.

It took me some years to find out the disabilities of house-plants—in other words, how not to do it. During one happy winter spent in my country house I had hyacinths in fragrant bloom before Easter, big fluffy globose chrysanthemums early in December and roses all winter. By inclosing a southern veranda with glass and running steam pipes and radiators into the improvised conservatory we secured these treasures and a glory of geranium bloom, which were the admiration of visitors and a continual joy to ourselves. The suburbanite may do this at a comparatively small outlay of money and time. A bay window that has a southern exposure, freedom from gas light and hot-air furnaces, together with loving and intelligent care, are all that are needed to insure success.

In the city the chief foe to budding and blossoming is the fine, impalpable black dust that coats our books, furniture, food and skins, the stuff we draw into our lungs with every breath, which changes new-fallen snow to gray and black within a day after it has left the sky.

Began with Greenery.

The impossibility of keeping my plants free from it, and the certainty that it clogs the forming buds into barrenness, first led me to confine my window-gardening to greenery alone. Ferns of all sorts thrive even in sunless windows. Geraniums grow and make leaves, but they do not blossom. I have brought freesias and hyacinths into flower, but the result was sickly miniatures of the real blooms that made my heart ache.

Early in the autumn I set—in a window that gets none but reflected sunshine for nine months of the year—a pot of asparagus fern. It took kindly to the situation, and by November—when the picture that heads this page was taken—it made a graceful loop upon itself (encouraged by me) of “lacy” foliations, the growth of which was a ceaseless joy. As I write, the loop is thick with verdure and tall shoots have darted up from the roots that rival the parent stock. Once a week the pot is set in the bath tub and water is run from both faucets up to the top of the pot, so that it gently overflows the surface of the earth. The whole plant is prayed from a watering pot until all the dust is washed off and the foliage drips with moisture. I then draw off the water, leaving the pot in the tub for half an hour. Beside the tall-looped fern stand a broad, low pot of asparagus vetch that was a wee plant when I brought it indoors. It is now a living fountain of delicate, feathery verdure and grows by the hour. Pots of other and broader-leaved ferns flank the asparagus varieties. All have the weekly bath, and should the earth become very dry, intermediate sprinklings. The rooms are steam-heated and lighted by electricity and lamps.

The Wardian case (named for the inventor) was a Christmas gift to me 30 years back. The frame is of black walnut; it is mounted upon stout and easy-running casters; the glass top is hinged. In the autumn the water-tight bottom is covered with broken pottery three inches deep. Upon this substratum are spread four inches of good mould. I get from the country a store of wildings, principally ferns; but partridge berries and other low-creeping plants work in well. They are set out in the earth, wood mosses are snugly packed about them to make them feel at home and they are left to grow.

All winter long they get the reflected sunlight. If the sun shone directly upon the glass it would be necessary to raise the top of the fernery, or to cover it with a cloth. The hot rays would scald the tender things within. In the center is a Jerusalem cherry three begemmed with scarlet fruit. It has held its own all winter, and gives a gorgeous touch of color to the jungle below—a jungle which has been preacher, companion and solace to me for months.

Each morning the cover is propped open for an hour, and the air is changed by five minutes’ vigorous fanning. Once a week the plants are sprayed with tepid water.

The beauties require no other care. And how they grow! Tradescantia runs riot over the moss; from roots of the hardy ferns I every day descry soft gray-green upstarts like shepherd’s crooks or bishop’s croziers, emulous to reach the light. Little anonymous shoots, that would be weeds in their native wood—each of which is a “picciola” to me—peep up daily from the kindly moss beds. Here and there a souvenir ivy, brought from storied places overseas, nestles and gleams contentedly—all growing toward the light!

At Christmas I had a simpler and much smaller fernery built upon the sample principle as the Wardian, as a gift to a small granddaughter, whose loving admiration for mine is almost painful to behold. It is made of four panes of glass set in a wooden frame; the bottom is of zinc; the cover is hinged. A cheap affair, but no casket of jewels could afford so much pure pleasure as the tiny girl extracts from it.

When summer comes the contents may be removed to some shady corner and left to rest until mid-October.

On very cold nights, if the room in which the fernery stand be a bed-chamber, and the windows must be left open, a thick rug thrown over the closed case will be all that is needed to guard the plants from injury.

May I suggest to one who would brighten the loneliness of the bedridden woman or crippled child the gift of an indoor garden, such as I have described? In the sickroom it may stand in summer as in winter. And the glass makes it absolutely harmless in cases where growing plants would be forbidden by physicians.

If I linger over the story of what my window gardens and the conservatory in petto are to me it is because I owe so much to both that I have a heart-thrill at the mention of either. The Wardian case is to me a garden of sweets, a cabinet of memories, a reliquary, such as our forbears used to stock with rare and precious mementos.

In the far corner lurks a bit of climbing vine I picked from the mossy wall of the garden about Dove Cote cottage, the home of Wordsworth in Grasmere. A trail of ivy sprang from a spray that had crept into the open window of the little church, under the chancel of which gentle George Herbert lies, awaiting the resurrection of the just and the crown of them who true many to righteousness. The spreading Jerusalem cherry tree is in the successor of one that grew in the same place that Christmas morning 30 years agone, when the fernery first greeted my enraptured sight. Tradescantia and variegated geraniums were taken from the Sunnybank greenhouse on the southern slope, overlooking the hill-girt lake, one bland day in October. Distant mountains and nearer hills were veiled in blue haziness—Bryant’s “smoky light.”

The sound of dropping nuts was head
Through all the woods was still.

and in a leafless apple tree a belated song sparrow was thrilling a farewell to summer. English Robert, who has tended my shrubs and flowers for ten years with paternal affection, selected and potted ivy, and silver geranium, and sundry other lowly garden darlings he warranted to thrive under glass. He had ready maiden-hair fern and mosses brought from the woods. It is always a wrench to the heartstrings to leave our country home for city quarters. The faithful fellow comprehends, as I can never tell him, the consolation wrapped up tenderly and packed away carefully in the great box he expresses to town by the train that takes me back to miles of brick and mortar.

My children smile and visitors marvel when I am detected hanging above the opened fernery and loitering about the window shelf, noting the appearance of new leaves, the budding of geraniums and cyclamen. These last are among the very few plants that bloom in the reflected sunshine. It was a triumph of faith over science when, in defiance of florist and botanist, I set a clump of tailing arbutus in the “Wardian” four years ago and coaxed it into bloom in early march. The scarlet globes on the cherry tree will give place to white flowers by and by.

On the windowsill stand two recent acquisitions—gifts from a dear kinswoman and fellow-flower lover in my far Southern home. They are an exotic evergreen—a Norfolk island pine, symmetrical and erect—and a North Carolina holly that bears tiny white flowers of delicate and exquisite fragrance.

I envy no millionaire his glasshouses and graperies while my miniature parterre smiles up into loving eyes.

Marion Harland

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The Picnic Basket

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This is the final article in August of the School for Housewives 1908 series published on August 30, 1908, and is an article on what to take on a picnic, especially sandwich fillings.

Transcribed from the Sunday edition of the The Buffalo Sunday Morning News.

The Picnic Basket

Where to have a picnic party, whom to ask to it and what to do at it are usually questions of minor importance or are answered by circumstances. The really vital point to be considered as, What shall be taken in the picnic basket?

Here again circumstance comes in and lends a hand. The connoisseur in picnics knows that one picnic bill of fare is not suitable to all. If the party is to be made up of healthy boys and girls, with robust appetites, substantial food is to be provided, and a plentiful supply is the chief object in view. More sophisticated young people demand greater delicacy and variety, and if older persons are included in the company their tastes are even more exacting. Plain boiled eggs, ham sandwiches and doughnuts will not full their requirements for an al fresco repast.

Another circumstance which determines the contents of the lunch basket is the locality of the picnic. If it is a spot to which one goes in carriages or by boat, and there is little or no walking to be done, a broad field of food is opened. I have been to picnic where salads, ice cream and sherbets were served as they would have been at a home reception. The ice cream was packed and transported in the back of a wagon to the picnic place, or carried in one end of a boat, and the salad stowed in a basket and intrusted to some one who would carry it steadily. Until one has tried this sort of thing one has little idea of what fields of experiment are open. The uninitiated make a great mistake when they confine their picnic provisions to the hackneyed old standbys every one has eaten for years.

As a matter of course, when there is a good deal of walking to be done to reach the lunching place, heavy baskets are undesirable. In any case, it is as well to study a certain amount of simplicity and in a measure to differentiate the picnic meal from the refreshments which would be served at an indoor party.

After all, the sandwich is the most useful vehicle in which one can take picnic food. Cold meats are unhandy, since they require a knife and fork. Even cold chicken demands a handling which results in greasy fingers and the need of soap and water. In the sandwich one may find a variety by the introduction of different sorts of filling, and the sandwich may be either dainty or substantial, as the inclination moves or the party desires.

The plain chicken, tongue or ham sandwich was our piece de resistance in my young picnic days, but many are the changes which have come since then in sandwiches as well as in other things. Sandwiches of minced meats or fish—chicken, ham, tongue, veal, lamb, beef, salt or fresh; of sardines, salmon, lobster, crab; of nuts; of cheese; of lettuce, cress, cucumbers and tomatoes; of jelly, jam, fruit—show me anything which cannot be made into a sandwich, with mayonnaise or without! With all these to draw from, what need is there of further novelty?

Yet variations still may be found. Granted the use of a fork and the possibility of transportation, and galantines or meat loaf, or meats or fish in aspic, may be served, to say nothing of salads of any sort. Then there is always the stuffed or deviled egg, with its never-waning popularity. The plain hard-boiled egg still holds its charm for some simple souls and will fill odd corners of the picnic basket.

Sweets are not usually much considered in filling the picnic basket or in emptying it afterward. The occupation of making the sandwiches, in the first place, and of eating them, in the second, is filling, and leaves little inclination for further exercise along either line. Ice cream one may always find room for, but I never found that there was much demand for other dessert than this, unless it might be a piece of cake or a little fruit. These are easily procured, and a box of candy to be taken at stray moments during the evening wll be well received.

What to drink at the picnic is of fully as much importance as what to eat, and unless one has unlimited carrying capacity for bottles of beverages, a good well or spring must be a sine qua non in the choice of a picnic place. Tramping or exercising out of doors is always thirsty work, and eating sandwiches is even more provocative of thirst. If there is a good spring, lemon juice and sugar may be carried in jars and diluted as occasion requires. Raspberry shrub, or raspberry vinegar, or currant shrub or any other of the good old syrups made at home are also excellent beverages for a picnic. Best of all, perhaps, are iced coffee and tea—when ice may be obtained. If not, it is a delight to build a fire, boil the kettle and either make your drinks fresh or heat those brought from home. The bottle of coffee may be uncorked, put into a pan or pot of boiling water and brought thus to the desired temperature.

Food alone is not the only requisite for the picnic basket. A tablecloth and napkins, either linen or paper, must be carried, a nest of wooden plates, such as are used for butter and the like by grocers, drinking cups or glasses, spoons—and perhaps—knives and forks. The necessity for these is determined by the character of the provisions carried. With sandwiches, cake and fruit they will not be needed, but will elaboration in the bill of fare additional utensils will be required.

I may add that when salads are part of the feast they may be taken in wooden or tin receptacles, ad the mayonnaise may be carried separately in a wide-mouthed bottle. Lettuce toughens when left too long in the dressing, and the salad will be improved if mixed just before it is to be eaten. Sandwiches must be put up in waxed paper, three or four together, while tissue paper may be used for wrapping the stuffed eggs, and the ends of the paper after being twisted may be fringed. No means to make the provisions present a dainty appearance should be neglected.

A Few Sandwich Fillings.

1. Cop fine a cup of cold boiled ham and two cups of coil boiled or roast chicken, make to a paste with mayonnaise dressing and spread on buttered white or graham bread.

Chicken and tongue sandwiches may be prepared by using the meat in the same proportions.

2. Rub cream cheese to a paste with sweet cream and spread it on white bread. Lay on each slice a leaf of lettuce which has been dipped in French dressing. Place over it a slice of buttered bread, either white or brown.

3. Prepare cheese as above directed and add to each cheese a half cupful of chopped nuts. Salt to taste. Or you may use minced watercress with the cheese instead of nuts.

4. Boil half a dozen eggs, putting them on in cold water. Cook for 15 minutes after the water reaches the boiling point. Rub the yolks to a powder and stir into them two teaspoonfuls of fish paste or potted ham or tongue, and reduce with melted butter to the consistency of soft cheese. Chop the whites fine; mix with this and spread all on thin bread and butter.

5. Lobster or crab sandwiches are very good and are made by mincing the meat fine and making it to a paste with mayonnaise. Spread on thin white buttered bread.

6. Plain egg sandwiches may be made by chopping hard-boiled eggs fine, the whites and the yolks together, softening with melted butter to a paste, seasoning with salt, pepper, onion juice and a little dry mustard, and spreading on bread. Sardine sandwiches may be made like the lobster or crab sandwiches.

7. Delicious sweet sandwiches are prepared by mixing good jam with cream cheese, softening to a paste with cream and spreading on thin white bread. Jelly sandwiches may be made in the same way, or the jelly may be spread on buttered bread.

Marion Harland

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Appetizing Jellied Soups for Hot Days

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This is the final article in July of the School for Housewives 1907 series published on July 28, 1907, and is an article on jellied soups.

The thought of jellied soups gives me the willies, in fact, there is a line in this article that states, “it is prudent not to enter into details of the manufacture,” i.e. making gelatine is gross. hahaha.

Transcribed from the Sunday edition of the Boston Sunday Post.

Appetizing Jellied Soups for Hot Days

IMPRIMIS: Never resort to the cheap trick of using gelatin to cover lack of skill and the failure to combine the right elements to secure consistency. I have before me recipes for making mint jelly, for jellied bouillon, and, strangest of all, for the manufacture of fruit jellies to be kept over from season to season—all of which call for sparkling gelatine in varying quantities.

Gelatine is excellent in its place. That is, as a substitute for the calf’s feet from which our granddames were wont to evolve jellies that, in clarity and flavor, are not equaled by the finest products that have gelatine as the basic idea.

It is superfluous to tell the least sophisticated of our housewifely readers that this same gelatine is an animal product. It is prudent not to enter into details of the manufacture. Like many another popular article of human food, it is best received on faith by the consuming one asking no questions for the diaphragm’s sake.

Being an animal bi-product, it decomposes too readily to be compounded into jellies that are to be stored for use in the months to come.

We do not can or pot jellied soup in the private family. I have, it is true, poured it hot into air-tight jars and kept it good for some weeks. I doubt not it could be preserved for several months if properly made and kept sealed from the air and in a dark closet.

What we are considering today is the preparation of jellied soups to be eaten in lieu of hot in the “good old summer-time,” when the cooler a thing is the more it tempts the palate.

Soup-jelly should be strong. It must have gathered unto itself the best elements of the meat and vegetables that go into it. They must cook long and slowly until the residuum in the strainer is tasteless and no more nutritious than the same bulk of bleached cotton would be.

There is no short cut to excellence in the work of preparation. Unless the busy house-mother has learned the art of dove-tailing the tasks of the day, so as to carry on several processes at once, bestowing the requisite amount of time and attention upon each in its turn, she would better not essay the composition until she has a leisure forenoon.

Jellied Bouillon.

Two pounds of lean beef. The coarser parts of the meat will do as well as choice cuts, but there must be not a particle of fat upon it. One pound of lean veal. Mince it fine. Two pounds each of beef and of veal bones, cracked faithfully by the butcher.
A bunch of soup herbs, including parsley.
Two teaspoonfuls of onion juice. Chop the onion and squeeze through cheesecloth. If the pulp be added it will cloud the soup.
Three teaspoonfuls of kitchen bouquet.
White pepper and salt to taste.
One gallon of cold water.

Put meat, bones and vegetables with the water into a deep pot; cover closely and set at the side of the range, where it will not reach the boiling point under an hour’s time. Simmer thus for four hours, never allowing it to boil hard, yet keeping it at boiling heat all the time. At the end of the second hour pour in a cupful of cold water to throw up the scum; cover and set the pot back in place when you have skimmed it. Should the water sink to less than half the original quantity while the soup is in cooking, replenish from the boiling kettle.

When the soup has cooked four hours and you have reduced the liquid to two quarts, remove from the fire, season as directed above, cover again tightly and set in a cool place until the morrow. It should be a firm jelly, clinging to meat and bones. Scrape off the fat carefully. A greasy bouillon is nearly disgusting. Set over the fire and warm quickly to a boil.

As this is merely to rid bones and meat of jelly, do not keep it up more than five minutes. Drop in a lump of ice as big as an egg to check the bubble, transfer the pot to the table and let it alone for ten minutes.

Meanwhile, line a colander with white flannel which has been scalded and then rinsed in two waters. Pour the soup in to the colander, taking care not to disturb the dregs of meat and bones. Put again over the fire, drop in the white of an egg and the crushed shell, bring to a fast boil and strain again through the flannel, which should be perfectly clean. Do not squeeze the cloth at any time.

Finally, having satisfied yourself by tasting that the seasoning is right, set away the bouillon in a cool place.

When quite cold put on ice.

I have been thus explicit in giving the details of the process, because they are substantially the same in making jellied soups of whatsoever kind. The manufacture is by no means as tedious and difficult as might appear to the casual reader. While the soup is boiling, other work may go on without interruption, the bouillon taking care of itself, and demanding no thought beyond an occasional glance to make sure it is not cooking too fast.

Jellied bouillon is in great request at women’s luncheons and in the sick-room. An invalid will relish and digest a few spoonsful of iced jellied soup who would turn away in revulsion from hot liquids.

Jellied Chicken Soup.

Clean and dress a large fowl. It should weigh from four to five pounds when cleaned. Sever each joint from the rest and cut the breast into four pieces. Crack a knuckle of veal from which most of the meat has been stripped. (Veal is especially useful in making jellied soups because it contains much gelatinous matter.) Put the pieces of fowl and the veal bone into a pot; add two teaspoonfuls of onion juice and three stalks of celery cut into inch lengths, and cover with a gallon of cold water.

Cover closely and set where it will not boil under an hour, yet will heat steadily. Cook slowly for four hours, or until the flesh of the fowl slips from the bones. The toughest meat may be made tender by slow and prolonged cooking. The liquid should be reduced to two quarts.

Set the pot away, covered tightly, until the contents are a cold jelly. Heat to a boil to loosen the jelly from the bones, and strain as directed in the foregoing recipe. Clear with a cracked egg shell and the white of an egg as with beef bouillon.

Jellied Chicken and Sago Soup.

Make as for jellied chicken soup, but when the meat has boiled from the bones, stir into the hot soup four tablespoonfuls of sago that have soaked for three hours in a cupful of cold water. Add now a quart of boiling water and simmer for another hour. Leave the soup until cold. Skim then, and re-heat to the boiling point. Strain through double cheesecloth without squeezing, season to taste with white pepper and celery salt and set away to cool and to jelly.

A palatable and nourishing dish for invalids.

Jellied Veal and Celery Soup.

Crack a knuckle of veal into bits to get at the marrow. Put it over the fire, with six stalks of white celery cut into inch lengths; cover with a gallon of cold water and cook slowly for four—perhaps five—hours, replenishing the liquid with boiling water should it boll away too fast. When the meat is done to white rags, season with white pepper and salt, a little minced parsley, two teaspoonfuls of onion juice and a teaspoonful of kitchen bouquet. Set away for ten hours, skim and heat to liquefy the jelly, and strain without squeezing.

Serve ice cold in bouillon cups.

The recipes given herewith are susceptible of numberless variations at the hands of the ingenious cook. The general principles of slow and regular cooking; an abundance of raw, sound meat and a judicious proportion of such materials as contain gelatine, together with wise seasoning, hold good with all.

Marion Harland

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Learning to Cook and Proper Utensils

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This is the third article in July of the School for Housewives 1907 series published on July 21, 1907, and is an educating article on cooking.

Transcribed from the Sunday edition of the Boston Sunday Post.

Learning to Cook and Proper Utensils

A KNOWLEDGE of cookery does not come by nature, although many persons seem to think it does, if one may judge from the little trouble they take to prepare themselves for the work. Neither is it a “knack” that can be picked up at will and requires no preliminary instruction. Any one who wishes skill in the practice of cooking has to work for it as for any other profession. The great advantage of it over many other kinds of work is that even a little attention and labor will produce good results, and that such results appear at an early stage of the study.

Cookery has been called an exact science, and in a way this is true. But it is not like chemistry in its exactness—rather like agriculture, which, after the best efforts have been made, must in a great degree depend for success upon the weather. So in cookery perfect work in preparation may sometimes be spoiled by the eccentricities of the oven or the fluctuations of the fire.

Barring such accidents as these, however, one may be fairly sure of good effects, if one goes about the task in the right way. A few things even the “born cook” must know to start with, or there will be a failure.

Of course, the ideal method of learning cookery is by the practical direction of a skilful teacher—not by attendance at a cooking school, but by work in a kitchen, where, in the good old style inculcated by the immortal Mr. Squeers, we “spell it first and then go and do it.”

In other words, if one have a good cook book, and a competent cook at one’s elbow to give a few needed directions and corrections, one can learn more quickly by experience than in any other way.

DETAILS ARE IMPORTANT

If this cannot be attained, and if there is no motherly soul at hand to give counsel, the cooking school may be resorted to. I have known persons who declared they had derived great good from cooking lessons, but my observation inclines me to think that the gain was made when the pupils had had some preliminary instruction.

If one understands the rudiments, the “frills” can be acquired at a cooking lesson; but unless one enters a class for beginners at a regular cooking school, it is hard to attain familiarity with the first things of the kitchen.

The tyro in cookery who must make her own way with little or no aid except that which she can derive from a cook book should resolve from the first not to despise the day of small things.

There should be no high-flying attempts at elaborate dishes; and I may add that this advise is worth heeding even by those who know a little something of the outlines of cookery. When a familiarity with simple dishes is once gained the more involved processes will follow more or less as a matter of course, but they should be avoided for a good while.

A man once said that if a woman knew how to sweep a floor, to broil a beefsteak, and to make a loaf of bread, she would have no difficulty in getting a husband. He might have added, “or in keeping one.”

Even with this high aim in view, however, it is not well for the beginner to start too rashly upon a career as a bread maker. The broiling of the steak, a knowledge of how to cook plain vegetables, to roast a piece of meat, to make toast, tea and coffee, even to boil eggs, will all serve as beginning better than any process where judgment has to be used, as is essential in making bread, biscuit or cake or anything else in which the thickening qualities of the flour or other uncertain quantities have to be considered.

I have often wondered why it is that the young girl learns to make cake before she attempts anything else. Perhaps it is on the same principle as that which moves her to acquire a knowledge of embroidery before she can darn stockings and to play the piano before she can make her bed or sweep her room!

When I had daughters of my own who had to learn to cook, I gave them instruction in cookery and kitchen economy as I would have done in a language or a science.

THE RUDIMENTS

They were taught how to broil steak and chops, how to mix bread and biscuit. They were enlightened as to the difference between the consistency of dough for bread, for cake, or batter for griddle cakes and waffles.

They were taught that there were two kinds of frying—one, the process conducted in shallow fat, which is described by the French as to “saute” (pronounced so-tay), and is employed in frying sausage, pan fish, cutlets and the like; the other, the frying in deep fat, in which the object is immersed, and which is suitable for doughnuts, crullers, croquettes, fritters, potatoes and so forth. They learned that the heat in the latter case must be such that a bit of bread dropped into the fat would brown in a minute, and that food cooked in this mode was different thing from articles left to soak in lukewarm grease.

Also they learned that bread to rise to the correct degree must increase to double its bulk; that if eggs and milk were cooked together more than just the right length of time they would curdle; that to make a white sauce—the model of nearly all sauces—a tablespoonful each of butter and flour must be allowed to half a pint of milk; that the oven for roasting meat must be kept at a high temperature for ten or fifteen minutes after the roast goes in, so that the outside may be seared and the juices retained; that soups must always cook slowly; that the toughest meat can be made tender by long, deliberate cookery, and a score of other things which, while they were not sufficient to produce experienced cooks, were yet superstructure could be reared. I would advise every woman with daughters at home to go and do likewise.

“GO SLOW”

But there are housekeepers who have already homes of their own, or who are entering upon them, and are unequipped with the rudiments. If they have to learn these for themselves, I can only repeat, the advice I gave a few minutes back— “Go slow!” Provide yourself with a good cook book, and begin with simple dishes.

Believe the words of a veteran housekeeper when I say that your John would rather have for his dinner a well-baked potato, a perfectly broiled steak and a satisfactory cup of coffee than all the fancy and made dishes that you can perpetrate—unless these are done with the skill that bespeaks practice as well as enterprise.

Often I am asked concerning the utensils required for the cook, and I never hear the query without recollecting the dishes I have eaten that were prepared with the simplest utensils, and were yet good because the cook knew how to handle them.

One might as well expect French to be won by the purchase of a dictionary and a phrase book as cookery to be gained by an outfit of utensils. Certain articles are, of course, indispensable. A gridiron, a frying pan, baking tins, a covered roaster, mixing bowls and spoons, a grater and a vegetable press, a skimmer and a strainer, measuring cups and flour sifters, egg beaters and paring knives—but the list of these you will find in your cook book or can obtain from any housekeeper or from a salesman in a house-furnishing shop.

Having secured your utensils let me give you one bit of advice about them. Never begin to cook until you have gathered to you everything you are going to use in the preparation of the dish you have undertaken.

DELAYS ARE PERILOUS

The inexperienced cook wastes time and imperils the product of her hands by having to stop at critical moments to run to the pantry for this or that essential.

If you are making a batch of biscuit, have ready your mixing bowl and flour sifter, your spoon, measuring cup and rolling pin, your biscuit board and tins. Bring together all the materials, too: your flour and shortening and salt and milk and baking powder.

Having these and your recipe, recall to mind all you have heard about cookery being exact.

Remember that the famous French cooks are careful to weigh even the vegetables they use in their soup and leave nothing to chance. Presence of mind and happy guessing may be admirable in some emergencies, but they are out of place in the category of the inexperienced cook.

Be sure of your recipe, then go ahead! Follow directions and take no liberties. Nice customs may courtesy to great kings and queens, but a woman must be pretty sure of her dominion in her kitchen before she departs from the customs dictated by her superiors in knowledge and experience.

One of these days you, too, shall arrive, but, until then, “follow the man from Cook’s!”

Marion Harland

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Proper Care of Sink and Refrigerator

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This is the second article in July of the School for Housewives 1907 series published on July 14, 1907, and is an educating article about keeping sink and fridge clean.

Transcribed from the Sunday edition of the Boston Sunday Post.

Proper Care of Sink and Refrigerator

THE kitchen sink cannot be made slightly by any device. It cannot be draped; and to draw a screen before it is to subject the priestess of the domain to countless inconveniences when she must have light and room for operations. The basin may be of porcelain, and the row of faucets above it of shining nickel. The whole construction is unmistakably and irredeemably ugly.

It is, nevertheless, the criterion of the housewife’s or cook’s “management.”

“Show me your sink, and I will describe your cook!” is a homely old saying.

If it be littered with tea leaves and coffee grounds; if it be “whisk-clean” save for a greasy gloss on bottom and sides, while in the far corner the blackened whisk conceals a disgusting deposit of refuse and of coagulated fats—you need not inquire verbally into the management of that mistress’ housewifery or into that cook’s fidelity to the duties of her calling.

Keep a sink sieve hanging above the sink and use it whenever anything that contains sediment is poured out. The stationary grating in the bottom of the basin is too coarse to keep back the substances which clog the pipes.

Beware of Grease.

The vilest of these in all its works and ways is, of course, grease, invisible to the careless eye when hot, but afterward working out the mischievous fruits of neglect. It coagulates upon the sides of the drain, and if not “cut,” becomes as hard and as impervious to water as wax. Nine-tenths of the disastrous stoppages in the pipes that flood the kitchen floor with all manner of uncleanness and involve the expense of the costly plumber and his equally costly assistant, are the direct result of a collection of oil matter that should never have found its way into the sink at all—or if this had happened, ought not to have been suffered to stiffen into a mass.

In consideration of this truth, the duty of flushing the sink daily with caustic alkalies cannot be too strongly enforced upon cook and housewife. Have ever on hand chlorides—or, better still, and more easily procured— washing soda, which disintegrates the accumulation of grease. Plain folk say “cuts” it, and the term is more emphatic than the polysyllable.

Scald the sink every other day flushing the pipes by letting the hot water run when at its hottest and for ten minutes at a time. Before the flushing begins, lay a lump of washing soda over the grating and run the water directly upon it.

Summer Expedients.

In summer, substitute, twice a week, a lump of unslaked lime for the soda. If a handful of borax be thrown into the sink at night directly over the grating and left there until morning, it will tend to dissuade water bugs from creeping through the pipe and sweeten the first dash of water turned out of the faucet on the morrow.

Beside the can of borax set above the sink should stand the bottle of household ammonia. The combined cost of an abundant stock of the two would not equal in a year what a plumber “and man” would charge for three hours’ work—“and time.”

(By the way, why must a plumber invariably bring a helper along when one man could do all the work? Must the species always hunt in couples?)

I mentioned “water bugs” in a casual, airy manner just now, that was altogether disproportioned to the part they play in bathroom, kitchen, and sink, not to speak of pantry and refrigerator. They are cousin-german to the cockroach.

There is a covert pun in that compound word. For our water bug was brought to our shores in the holds of German vessels. Ever since that unhappy hour he has been a “stowaway” of the most detestable type. To cap the climax of odiousness, he and his kinsman inflict upon the memory a sesquipedalian title. The cockroach is “Blatta (or Periplaneta) Orientails.” The imported variety is “Blatta Germanica.”

A naturalist thus describes the pest of sink and larder:

“Nocturnal in habits and very troublesome in houses, where they multiply in great rapidity, infesting kitchens and pantries and attacking provisions of all kinds. They have a very offensive smell.”

He might have added that an ill-kept sink is their favorite resort.

Borax comes into deserved prominence in the list of our helpers in the mission of freeing our premises of the loathly things. Strew it thickly over shelves and blow it into cracks. Or—mix it with molasses and cornmeal into a paste, work in tartar emetic, or red lead, and set tiny plates of the delicacy in the sink and on the shelves overnight. Or (again!) pour a little oil of pennyroyal down the pipe at night and wet a cloth in hot water, drop a little of the oil upon it and wipe off the woodwork of the sink with it.

Old-fashioned Southern housemothers knew not the “water bug” even by name. The native cockroach we have had from time immemorial. They (the aforesaid mothers) used to boil poke weed root in water, and mix the strong decoction with an equal quantity of black molasses. This was spread on bread and laid in the tracks of the nocturnal prowlers. They ate it ravenously and departed to other hunting grounds—if there be a future state for the Blatta tribe.

In our germ-mad generation, it is surprising that in the howl against cold storage foods, so little has been made of the peril to health by unclean refrigerators. The confined air is, of itself, unwholesome, imparting a “close taste” to butter and meats, easily recognized, yet rarely analyzed. The chill of the ice arrests decay, but it does not prevent the growth of mould.

Did you ever look at a section of mould through a microscope? You would see it pretty forest or jungle of divers color. Like non-edible toadstools, it is fair to see, and, like them, it is poisonous to human stomach. If the sink be a faithful witness to the housewifery of owner or caretaker, the refrigerator is a yet more correct reporter. It should be absolutely odorless.

How to Keep Food.

Meats that give forth a goodly smell should be kept in a meat safe in the cellar. Fragrant fruits must never be set in the same compartment with other foods. If milk and butter are kept in the refrigerator, give them a shelf to themselves, and, unless the butter be perfectly fresh, keep it away from the milk.

In summer the shelves should be cleared dally and the contents sorted under the of the mistress. The corners must be scrubbed faithfully with a cloth wrung out in boiling water and baking soda, that nothing may accumulate there. Then the doors must be left open until the shrives are entirely dry. To shut up humidity in the chilled interior is to make a dark cave of it.

It is an excellent plan to lay a lump of dry, clean charcoal upon each shelf, exchanging it for fresh once a week. It absorbs musty smells and tends to keep the refrigerator dry inside.

Charcoal is an invaluable sweetener.

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Marketing for Us Two

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This is the first article in July of the School for Housewives 1907 series published on July 7, 1907, and is an educating article on how to keep a house for two people.

Transcribed from the Sunday edition of the Boston Sunday Post.

Marketing for Us Two

IN A paper written by Christine Terhune Herrick upon a kindred subject some years ago we read:

“The tradition is current among housekeepers that there is great economy in buying’ supplies in large quantities. The learned of them will dilate upon the amount that will be saved by getting flour, sugar and potatoes by the barrel, butter by the tub and coffee by the bag. They prove to you that you may put money into your pocket by purchasing a crate of eggs at a time and pickling them for winter use. They buy meat in the piece, as it were, and tell you triumphantly how much they can thus save on a pound over the retail price.”

This introduction to a most pertinent article has recurred often to my mind lately in reading the many letters recoiled by the Exchange relative to the scheme of bringing the marketing for a family of two people within a certain limit—in most cases, within $4 per week.

At least half of the housewives who aver that they have accomplished the feat mention, with a of modest exultation, that they lay in supplies by the quantity. The aforenamed tradition is too firmly lodged in the cranium of the American woman of domestic affairs to be dislodged by one or by a dozen treatises.

Yet our papers teem with stones of “How we lived in Italy, France, England or in Scotland”—the last-mentioned country being a recognized school in thrift and comfortable frugality. We read them, and wonder with great admiration at the moderate sums disbursed by native and adopted caterers for their families and for ours. We tell, amusedly, when we come home how we bought half a chicken in a Florentine market, and eggs by the pound almost everywhere; how our cook brought home, daily, exactly as much of each kind of food as would last us for twenty-four hours, and repeat the complacent remark I have told of once before in the column, of a man who had been a Paris householder for years—“A mouse could not make a breakfast on what is left-over in our cupboard each night.”

TAKE LESSONS FROM FRANCE

The French, we observe, incidentally, as we talk of these things, are the wisest and the daintiest economists in the world.

We learn much and rapidly of them in other lines. We copy their dress, their speech, their dishes and their manner of serving tables; we read their literature and admire their pictures. We remain dull to the practical philosophy of buying food in small quantities for small—and for large—families.

Yet we have object lessons at home which should have opened our eyes to the unwisdom of wholesale purchasing. Plenty and waste may not march together in our minds or in our practice. Every housekeeper who reads this can call up, without an effort, illustrations from her own experience of the association of the two in the thought and action of hirelings of whatever nationality.

Have I ever told here of my friend who checked her cook’s movement in the direction of the garbage pail, with—

“But, Ann! there are six or seven whole, sound potatoes among those peelings?”

The woman stared: “Yis, mem, but, sure, there’s a barrel of ’em in the cellar!”

I have said that we are slow to learn the lesson. I well recollect—and not without shame—the smile of amused contempt with which, as a young matron, I heard another woman as young and foolish as myself tell of a millionaire’s wife who “never bought flour and sugar by the barrel, because it made servants careless in the use of them.”

We thought her mean then. I comprehend now one reason why her husband became a millionaire.

Another prime advantage in buying perishables in small quantities is so well put by Mrs. Herrick that I crave permission to quote again from her paper:

“There is an avoidance of useless labor in the system—that is, in purchasing by what may be called ‘limited retail.’ No unpleasant hours are spent in picking over apples, potatoes and winter vegetables. The housewife has not to count upon a certain amount of loss from rotting and withering. Her grocer bears that loss. His shop is her pantry, to which she goes to get vegetables by the quart or half the corn-meal or Graham flour when she gets two or three pounds at a time. If a freshly opened package of oatmeal be musty, she sends it back to him forthwith. The coffee in her small canister cannot lose strength, for it is constantly used and constantly renewed. Butter never grows rancid; eggs never become stale on her hands.”

In buying meat for “us two,” study out the small cuts. The butcher will face you down, if he sees that he can, that two ribs are the least number which may be formed into a roast. We all know “his tricks and his manners” in that direction. The meat that goes with a single rib, ho assures you, “is nothing more than a thick steak.”

Stand fast in your lot (which is not his!) and make him take out the solitary rib, roll the “steak” and skewer it into a four-pound roast. It will be comely to the eye and serve you two for two—maybe three—meals, to say nothing of the pint of soup-stock based upon the trimmings.

Be sure he sends the one rib home! If you do not get it, he will sell it to another customer who inquires for material for soup-stock. It is false shame that holds you back from insisting upon getting all you have bought.

Your transatlantic sister has no such scruples. The honest tradesman, until he has been trained by you and other sensible marketers, is unwilling to sell four chops, or a single veal cutlet, or two pork tenderloins. Since they are all you need for one meal, why buy more?

The fishmonger displays the same amazed reluctance to weigh half a pound of smelts or to measure a pint of oysters. A fair degree of moral courage is needed to carry out your principle not to buy what you do not want merely because grocer, huckster and butcher do not dissemble their surprise at your “small ways.” Keep steadily in mind the truth that you have as good a right to look out for your own interests as he has to guard his.

That is a pretty story told by Mary Lamb’s biographer of her reception of three unexpected guests who happened to call just as she and “the gentle Charles,” her brother, were sitting down to dine upon a tiny roast of mutton. Mary divided it into five chops.

“Just one apiece!” she said, cheerily, “and we will make out for the rest with bread and cheese.”

Rise superior to the weakness of mortification when a chance visitor discovers that you purchase food as yon receive grace from heaven—by the day. Economy is not, of necessity, stinginess, nor is a just sense of proportion in considering ways and means parsimony.

Marion Harland

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Preparing for a Fourth of July Picnic

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This is the last article in June of the School for Housewives 1907 series published on June 9, 1907, and is a fun little article on picnic and the Fourth of July.

Transcribed from the Sunday edition of The Washington Times.

Preparing for a Fourth of July Picnic

IMPRIMIS: A box party at theater or opera conveys the impression of luxury and especially privileges to a favored foe; a box picnic is but a variation of the basket picnic, well known as the simplest form of the summer all-day outing. It is particularly adapted to the Fourth of July outings, which are becoming each year a more favored method of pawing our national holiday.

The box has sundry advantages over the hamper as a means of transporting provisions for the merry excursionists. For weeks in advance of the holiday, there should be a hoarding up of the paper boxes that drift into the house from grocer, florist, shoe merchant, and haberdasher. Select those of medium size, and apportion to each the contents suited to dimensions and shape.

Provide yourself with plenty of tissue paper, also the waxed paper used by confectioners and bakers for wrapping dainties that may ooze or grease. Lay in a stock of light, strong wrapping paper, twine, and the wooden handles that make the carriage of parcels less awkward business than when they are merely tied up with a string.

Boxes Better Than Baskets.

A box is less unwieldy because more compact than a basket; the sight of a party thus laden attracts less attention on train or boat than if every man, woman, and child bore a hamper—a walking advertisement of the day’s business. The box is light and easily tucked under the seat or bestowed in the rack overhead while the passengers are in the train. If they do not wish to be cumbered with empty boxes on the return trip, a bonfire on the camping ground disposes of impedimenta, including wrapping paper, Japanese napkins and the wooden plates, which have saved the picnickers the burden of china platters and plates.

A procession of tired excursionists, bearing disheveled hampers, emptied of edibles, yet which must be carried carefully lest the crockery within jingles itself to pieces, is a dispiriting feature of the return townward when the day’s fun is clean over.

In buying napkins have the thought of “the day we celebrate” in mind. If you can find those that are stamped with the Stars and Stripes or other national emblems get them. Lay in an abundance of narrow ribbons, striped with red, white and blue, for tying up sandwiches and rolls. These and other simple devices for lending a patriotic flavor to the festivities are well worth the exercise of ingenuity and expenditure of time.

Use Wooden Plates.

You may buy wooden plates, such as we used by grocers for sending butter to customers, at an absurdly low price. Also deeper and smaller wooden trenchers, which you will find useful in bestowing your goods in the boxes. All are so cheap that you will not grudge cremating them when they have had their day.

Set aside the largest boxes for sandwiches rolls, and biscuits. The next size should be appropriated by cakes and fruit. Have separate compartments for each. Sandwiches impart odors to plain bread and butter, and cake lends fragrance to its neighbors.

Cut fresh bread as thin as a sharp knife will shave it—having buttered it on the loaf, and roll each slice up neatly, tying it with narrow ribbon. This is “nice” work, requiring deft fingers and a keen blade. Warm the butter slightly for spreading bread. Sandwiches are clumsy when butter is laid on the slices in lumps. Pare the crust from the bread to be rolled or used for sandwiches. When the rolled bread is ready, envelope each ribbon-bound parcel in waxed paper and pack them in the box already lined with tissue paper. If this be done at once, the bread will be soft when the box is opened.

Open long French rolls on one side and scrape out two-thirds of the crumb. Fill the cavities with minced tongue, ham or chicken; close the roll and bind into place with narrow ribbon. Pack the several kinds in separate boxes, marking them “ham,” or “tongue” or “chicken.” It will save confusion in unpacking and serving. Oblong sandwiches are more easily handled in eating than square or triangular. They also pack to better advantage. Wrap each in waxed paper as soon as it is tied up, and lay in the box. Pack securely, but do not crush.

Packing Loaf Cakes.

Cut loaf cakes and lay the slices closely together in the paper-lined box. When it is full, cover by folding the waxed paper about it to exclude the air. Do not wrap the slices separately. Put up cookies, etc., in like manner.

Salads should be prepared at home, and made quite ready for the dressing. If you have a tin biscuit box, line it with several thicknesses of waxed paper; on this lay an interlining of cheesecloth or old muslin. In the box thus prepared pack lettuce or chicken and celery cut up, but not seasoned. It will remain fresh in the hottest weather if you will sprinkle it very lightly with water before fitting on the lid. The dressing—mayonnaise or French—should be put up in a wide-mouthed bottle, securely corked and wrapped in raw cotton. Give it a small box to itself.

Bottles are ticklish articles to carry, and moreover, heavy. Yet there must be beverages at a July picnic. Cold tea and coffee, and ginger ale will add seriously to the weight of the outfit. If you must take them, distribute the bottles among the several boxes and assign them to the stronger members of the party. Pare and slice the lemons at home, and pack with sugar in fruit jars with screw tops and rubbers. Water and ice (if you can procure the latter in the neighborhood of the camping ground) may be added when you are ready to serve the lemonade. Since tumblers are another must-be, get a dozen or so of the cheapest you can find. Then no tears are shed if they come to grief.

You will be surprised when everything is put up to see how much has been packed into a few boxes. The larger cases should be done up separately, each enveloped in paper, tied with twine, and fitted up with a handle. Two or three smaller boxes may be strapped together.

When the joyous company board train or boat, they may be mistaken for town cousins who are bearing gifts to the old homestead on the holiday. They will not look like fruit, candy, and peanut peddlers, bound for a day’s business in the rural districts.

The small silver needed for the luncheon should go into the breast pocket of paterfamilias, or into “mother’s” shopping bag. A dozen teaspoons take little room. Forks and tablespoons will not be required, unless the former are needed for salad.

I append a few recipes for sandwiches that may be a welcome variation upon the stock “chicken, tongue, and ham.”

Cheese Jelly Sandwiches.

Beat the yolks of two eggs light, add a saltspoonful of salt, the same of white pepper and of French mustard. Mix well and stir into mixture a cup of hot milk, to which has been added a pinch of soda. Stir over the fire, in a double boiler, for five or until it heats throughout evenly and thickens into a custard. Have ready a tablespoonful of gelatine, which has soaked tor two hours in a cupful of cold water. Take the custard from the range and beat in the gelatine alternately with a great spoonful of cream. Set in boiling water, and, when it is hot, add a cupful (scant) of grated cheese. When you have a smooth paste, turn out to cool in a deep plate. Do this the day before it is to be used. Slice and lay between buttered slices of bread.

Cream Cheese and Nut Sandwiches.

Work the cheese to a paste with cream and butter, and mix with an equal quantity of sorted pecans, chopped fine. Butter thin slices of graham bread and spread with the mixture.

Egg and Anchovy Sandwiches.

Boil six eggs hard and throw them into cold water. Leave them there for two hours. Take out the yolks and rub to a powder with a silver spoon. Moisten with a dressing made of a tea spoonful of lemon juice rubbed to an emulsion with three tablespoonfuls of salad oil, half a teaspoonful of French mustard and a dash of salt and pepper. Make into a lumpless compound, adding, finally, two teaspoonfuls of anchovy paste.

Whole wheat bread is best for this filling.

Cream Cheese and Olive Sandwiches.

Rub a Philadelphia cream cheese to a paste with two tablespoonfuls of mayonnaise dressing. Add one-third as much chopped olives, and beat all light. This filling is especially nice when spread upon round slices of Boston brown bread.

Lettuce Sandwiches.

Slice white bread thin, when you have cut off the crust and buttered the cut end of the loaf. Lay in between every two slices a leaf of crisp lettuce, dipped in mayonnaise dressing.

If you take these to the picnic, let it be in sections. Butter and pack the bread at home, take the lettuce in one box, the dressing in another, and put them together on the grounds.

Lettuce and Tomato Sandwiches.

Prepare as in the last recipe, adding to the lettuce leaf a slice of raw and peeled tomato.

Pressed Loaf Sandwiches.

A new and appetizing pressed sandwich may be made by removing the crusts from a loaf of bread, either brown or white, and cutting it in four equal-sized pieces. Spread each slice thickly with butter, red peppers sliced in lengthwise strips and plenty of cream or Neufchatel cheese. Now reshape the loaf by putting the slices together again. Wrap in a heavy dry towel, then in a wet one and put between two boards, on which three or four heavy flatirons are placed. Let the loaf remain weighted from six to ten hours; this will compress it into a sold mass three or four inches high, which may be sliced like cake. To pack, wrap whole in waxed paper and cut at the picnic.

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More Summer Vegetables and How to Cook Them

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This is the fourth article in June of the School for Housewives 1907 series published on June 23, 1907, and is the second talk on cooking less well-known vegetables in summer time.

Transcribed from the Sunday edition of the Boston Sunday Post.

More Summer Vegetables and How to Cook Them

NEXT-TO-EVERYBODY has some idea how to fry eggplant. Therefore, I omit the recipe for preparing the delicious vegetable in that way. Comparatively few cooks know how good it may be made if handled in obedience to the directions which follow this preamble.

Parboil the eggplant for ten minutes if it be of medium size. Put it over the fire in cold, salted water and keep it there for ten minutes after the boil is reached. Plunge then into ice water and leave it to get cold and firm. It is well to parboil and cool it the day before it is to be cooked, as it will then be cold to the heart. When this has been done, cut the eggplant in half, lengthwise, and scrape out the heart, leaving a crust an inch thick. Mince the pulp and mix to a forcemeat with minced chicken, or veal or duck, fine crumbs, well seasoned, melted butter and a dash of onion juice. With this forcemeat fill both halves of the eggplant, put them together in the original shape and bind securely with soft cotton lamp wick or tape. Lay in your covered roaster, pour a cupful of good stock about it, cover closely and bake. Baste with the stock every ten minutes. It should be done in about forty-five minutes, unless it is very large.

Transfer to a dish, remove the strings carefully not to separate the halves, and keep hot while you thicken the gravy left in the pan with browned flour rolled in butter. Boil up and pour over and about the eggplant.

Eggplant a la Creole.

Prepare as directed in the preceding recipe until you are ready to stuff it. Then make the forcemeat of the pulp, a chopped sweet pepper, one young okra pod minced, four or five ripe tomatoes, cut up small, and a cupful of fine crumbs. Add a great spoonful of melted butter, pepper and salt to taste, not omitting a little sugar to correct the acid of the tomato. It is well to parboil the pepper if it be large, before adding it to the stuffing.

Fill the hollowed halves with the mixture, bind as in the last recipe, and lay in the pan.

Pour a rich tomato sauce about it and baste with butter and water. Keep the top of the roaster on while the eggplant is cooking, and it will not shrivel.

Serve as with the stuffed eggplant above described and pour the tomato sauce about the base.

Scalloped Eggplant.

Peel, cut into strips as long as your finger and nearly as wide. Lay these in ice-cold water well salted, and leave in a cold place for an hour. Then boil until they are clear and tender, but not broken. Drain all the water off in a colander, and arrange the strips in a buttered bake dish. Butter, pepper and salt, strew with fine crumbs, season these in like manner; then another layer of eggplant, and so on until the dish is full. The last layer should be thicker than the rest, and soaked with cream. Bake, covered, half an hour, then brown.

A Scallop of Mushrooms.

Select mushrooms of medium and uniform size. Skin them without cutting off the stems. Lay enough to cover the bottom of the dish, stems uppermost, in a pudding dish. Dust with salt and pepper, and pour into the gills a little melted butter. Then strew very lightly with fine cracker crumbs, and arrange a second layer upon the first. Season and butter, cover with crumbs, soak the crumbs in cream; dot with butter and bake, covered, for twenty minutes, and brown very delicately. Serve at once. There is no more delicious preparation of mushrooms than this.

Sweet Peppers a la Creole.

Cut a slit in the side of each pepper and extract the seeds, touching the inside as little as possible. The pungency lies chiefly in the seeds. Lay the emptied peppers in boiling water for ten minutes. Prop the slits open with a bit of wood to let the water reach the inside. At the end of the ten minutes drain the peppers and cover with ice-cold water, leaving them in it until they are perfectly cold. Wipe and stuff with a forcemeat of any kind of meat that you have on hand, preferably poultry, veal or lamb. Add to the meat a raw tomato skinned and chopped, and one-third as much fine crumbs as you have meat. Season with salt, melted butter and a very little sugar to soften the acid of the tomato. Wet well with gravy. Tie the filled peppers into shape with soft thread and set upright in the covered roaster; pour a cupful of gravy about them, and bake, covered, for twenty minutes, then five more, uncovered. Serve upon a heated platter, pouring the thickened gravy over and about them.

You may, if you like, substitute fish, picked free of bones and skin, for the meat.

Or, mushrooms, skinned, parboiled and cut small—not chopped.

Or, and perhaps best of all, sweetbreads, blanched, then stewed for ten minutes in the gravy that is to be poured about the peppers. This last-named dish is exceedingly dainty.

Swiss Chard.

An excellent vegetable, so lately introduced into our country that the name is unfamiliar to most of our housewives. It is not very unlike spinach in general appearance, although it belongs to a different family of esculents.

Pick over carefully, stripping the leaves from the stalks, and lay them in cold water for an hour. Drain, without drying, and put the leaves into the inner vessel of a double boiler. Fill the outer with cold water, and bring to a quick boil, keeping the inner vessel closed. This will steam the chard in the juice extracted from the leaves.

I may observe here that spinach, steamed in the same way, with no water except that which clings to the leaves after washing, is quite another vegetable from that which is generally served on our tables under the name.

When the chard is tender and broken, drain, pressing in the colander. Turn now into a wooden bowl and chop, or run it through the vegetable press. Set over the fire in a saucepan, stir in a teaspoonful of sugar, a tablespoonful of butter, salt and pepper to taste and beat to a creamy mass. When piping hot, serve in a deep dish, with sippets of toast arranged upon it.

Vegetable Marrow.

Another esculent popular for a century among our English cousins, but which needs a formal introduction to the rank and file of our native cooks. It is akin to the squash family, with a smooth richness of flavor and flesh all its own. Having cultivated it successfully in my garden for ten years, I can certify that it takes kindly to American soil and climate and is easily brought to perfection.

Pare away the rind, cut into squares or strips and lay in cold water for half an hour. Drain and put over the fire in plenty of salted boiling water. Cook until clear and tender, but not until the pieces lose form. Drain off the water, pour in a good drawn butter, set the saucepan at the side of the range for ten minutes to let the sauce sink into the marrow, and serve.

Cold vegetable marrow, cooked as above directed, maybe wrought into an excellent pudding to be eaten with meat. Run through the vegetable press, beat in a spoonful of melted butter, season with pepper and salt, and add two well-beaten eggs. Turn into a buttered bake dish when you have beaten all the ingredients together for a minute; bake, covered, for fifteen minutes in a quick oven, and brown lightly.

Green Corn Pudding.

Grate, or slice with a sharp knife, the kernels from twelve ears of corn. If the corn be hard, grate it. If immature, it will lose nearly all its substance under the grater. The knife will slice it to better advantage. Season with pepper and salt, and stir in a tablespoonful of sugar and two tablespoonfuls of melted butter. Beat light the yolks of four eggs and whip the whites stiff. Stir the yolks into a scant quart of milk and into this the seasoned corn. Finally, fold in the frothed whites, pour the mixture into a buttered pudding dish and bake, covered, half an hour, then brown.

Green Corn Gumbo.

Put two tablespoonfuls of butter into a saucepan, and when it hisses, add three onions of fair size, sliced thin. Brown slightly, and put into the sizzling pan six tomatoes, peeled and sliced, two sweet peppers that have been parboiled and minced, two okra pods, also sliced thin, and the grains from six ears of corn. Add a generous cupful of stock—chicken, if you have it—salt, pepper and a teaspoonful of sugar. Cook, covered, forty-five minutes, steadily but not hard.

Just before dishing, stir in two teaspoonsful of “file” (sassafras powder), boil up and serve.

If you wish to use this as a soup, double the quantity of stock. The dish described here is to accompany meat or fish.

You may convert this into a curry gumbo by the addition of a heaping teaspoonful of curry powder.

The “file” may be had of first-class city grocers .It gives smoothness, and yet piquancy, to the gumbo.

Cucumbers a la Syrie.

Half well-grown young cucumbers lengthwise and scrape out the seeds. Leave in salt and water for half an hour, wipe and till with cold meat—beef or veal, or mutton—seasoned well and mixed with one-third the quantity of fine crumbs. Moisten with gravy. Bind the sides of the cucumbers in place with soft twine; lay in your covered roaster; pour a cupful of gravy about them and bake, covered, for half an hour. Uncover, and brown slightly. Untie the strings, lay the cucumbers in a heated platter, and pour the gravy about them.

I made the acquaintance of this dish in northern Syria, eating it first almost in the shadow of the cedars of Lebanon, and improved the friendship many times afterward. It is singularly pleasant to the palate, and more digestible than raw cucumbers.

Okra Gumbo.
(A Louisiana Dish.)

Wash and scrape lightly a dozen young okra pods. Lay in cold water while you peel and slice six tomatoes; chop a peeled onion; seed and scald a large a sweet pepper, and chop it. Put the okras then into a saucepan, cover with boiling water and cook for ten minutes. While they are cooking, heat two tablespoonfuls of butter in a frying pan, add the onions and pepper, and cook for one minute’s simmer. Turn into a saucepan with the tomatoes, and cook gently for half an hour. Slice the okras, add to the rest and cook fifteen minutes more. Season with salt, and stir in a teaspoonful of “file” five minutes before dishing.

Line the dish with thin, buttered toast.

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