Tag: 1905

When ‘John’ Brings a Friend Home to Dinner

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This is the first article in April of the School for Housewives 1905 series published on Apr 2, 1905, and an article about how a housewife should stay calm when their husband brings a guest over for dinner unexpectedly.

School for Housewives – When ‘John’ Brings a Friend Home to Dinner

Imprimis – John has a right to expect this privilege. Your bachelor is a hospitable animal, and business customs foster the virtue. The very reprehensible habit of “treating” is an outgrowth of the instinct of hospitality. The merchant, being a man, comprehends that his customer and fellow-man will be more amenable to reason if his stomach be at peace with itself and the rest of the body. The stereotyped, “Suppose we step out and take something,” is a preliminary to negotiation and sale.

When the “something” includes luncheon, it is yet more assuasive to the inner man, which sets the pace for action in the outer man. Acceptance of a dinner almost seals an important bargain. Sometimes “the house” stands treat, if a customer or client be a particularly fine fish, richly worth the trouble demanding.

Apart from his business training, John, in his bachelorhood, liked to play the host. There is much in the disposition that prevails all over the world – to break bread amicably with one’s kind. I have though sometimes that it is a recognition – as a subtle as it is strong – of the universal brotherhood of man. We live by eating. Eating in friendly companionship acknowledges a common need and a friendly disposition to promote the common ground.

BE READY FOR HIS GUESTS

Be this as it many, it is certain that one element of the pleasure with which John has looked forward to having a home of his own was the anticipation of seeing his friends at his table. A glow of prideful proprietorship in that home warms his heart at the thought of saying to his old schoolfellow, Tom, or his business acquaintances, Dick and Harry, “Come around with me and take a family dinner, won’t you?” The glow permeates his whole being and pride becomes exultation if he can meet the civil demur of the proposed guest with “My wife is always glad to have me bring a friend home. You will take us as you find us, old man!”

It is your duty as his wife, the keeper of his house and the maker of his home, to prove his words true – every time.

Madame Recamier, whose beauty and charm were the marvel of her generation, was asked how she had become so graceful as never to betray awkwardness in the slightest motion. She replied: “By always acting in private as if the eyes of the court were upon me.”

The house that is always well ordered cannot be thrown into confusion by an unexpected guest after the morning’s work is done and matters have settled into the groove of daily routine. When your luncheon or dinner table is laid for John, it should be also ready for any guest he may bring with him. I was so happy as to be a listener the other day to an able paper upon “American Hospitality” read before and discussed by a woman’s club. In the course of the debate one plain-spoken member asked: “What of yesterday’s coffee stain and this noon’s grease spots upon the cloth when your impromptu guest comes in, and you can’t afford a clean cloth every day?” A practical housewife answered: “There should be neither stain nor spot. Cleanliness must be had at any price.”

Lest our young housewife should be discouraged by this dictum, let me drop a homely hint or two. Coffee and tea stains may be washed out after each meal while fresh, with the corner of a napkin and a little cold water. Have a bit of white chalk at hand for chance grease spots. Rub it well upon them, and leave thus until next day, when you can brush out chalk and grease together. Attention to these trifles will give John (and the chance guest) a clean tablecloth in all circumstances. Another hint: Have your damask ironed on both sides, and give it a “French wash” when one side is beginning to look grimy. Laundry bills are a serious item in the family expenses. As our plain-spoken woman says, “You cannot afford a clean cloth every day.”

The cloth laid, and smoothly, see to it that the table furniture is befitting the honored master of the home. Give him bright silver and glass and dainty china. The practice of spreading the family board with coarse napery, common crockery and plated silver, worn brassy at the edges, is, to put it candidly, a vulgarity, when there are stores of fine china, cut-glass and sterling silver in closet and sideboard reserved for “company.” The appointments for the table should be the same for John when he “comes marching home” solus, as when you are certain that he will being a visitor with him.

I do not deny that the dear fellow has a fatal facility for inviting Tom, and even Dick and Harry, on washing day, and even during housecleaning week.

One tactless householder, having given the invitation and received a ready acceptance, delivered himself of an afterthought on his way home:

“I say, old fellow, we are always glad to see you, you know; but I’m afraid you won’t have anything for dinner today but a confounded dressmaker.”

The most serious objection in Mary’s mind to the exercise of impromptu hospitality on John’s part is the risk of insufficient provision for the increased number. Housekeepers do not need to be reminded that, while what is enough for two will serve three, an adequate supply for three is not always enough for four. The small roast or a single fowl will suffice for five or six, because the caterer counts upon “left-overs.” But the small steak – quite enough for John, Mary and Bridget-Thekla – or the four English chops, or the bit of fish on Friday, with a couple of vegetables, a salad and a sweet, with a demitasse of coffee, which would suffice for the four, looks miserably insufficient – Mary would say “skimpy” – when a six-footer with a full-grown appetite joins the band of eaters.

All the same, put a cheerful courage on, gird up the loins of your ingenuity and face the situation womanfully.

I hope you have what I have elsewhere called “An Emergency Pantry.” While John conveys Tom or Dick or Harry to his (John’s) room to brush off the dust and wash his hands, open a can of soup. If it be mock turtle, add a glass of wine, the juice of half a lemon, a pinch of sugar and a small cup of boiling water. Your cook will warm it up in five minutes. If a chicken soup, beat a raw egg into a small cup of milk, add a tablespoonful of butter stirred in a frying pan to a “roux” with the same of flour, mix with the soup and boil up once. Set on olives and salted nuts, and a dish of bonbons to fill out empty spaces on the table. Add crackers and cheese to the salad course, and follow with pudding with nuts and raisins. If Bridget-Thekla be well trained, and you keep your head, the meal will not be ten minutes later on account of these additions. The guest must be made to believe that his coming involved no more work than the laying of an extra plate, knife, fork and tumbler.

Above all, and through all, and in spite of all, keep cool! Do not let the first, the second, the third and the fourth course be Roasted Hostess!

Our next talk will be upon “A SUBSTITUTE FOR THE TYRANT PORATO.”

Marion Harland

OTHER ARTICLES ALSO PUBLISHED…
Conveniences That Save Much Time
Good Recipes Tested and Recommended by Members
Housewives Council Gives Useful Hints
The Importance of Flowers for the Home-Table

Spring Housecleaning

KailaLeave a comment

This is the fourth article in March of the School for Housewives 1905 series published on Mar 26, 1905, and is a nice article on spring cleaning. One of my favourite things to do after winter is to go through my possessions and see what I can get rid of in order to make room for the new.

School for Housewives – Spring Housecleaning

An Expert’s Advise on the Most Important of Subjects

Readers will find in another section of this page – in the “Housemothers’ Exchange” – a helpful note from an experiences homemaker which might be headed “The Week Before Housecleaning.”

Referring to one branch of her subject, let me emphasize her exhortation to clean decks for action before settling down to business. Where rubbish comes from in orderly careful families is a mystery past finding out. TO quote from sapient George Sampson in “Our Mutual Friend” “We all know it’s there!” There in quantities that amaze and shame us! Things that are of no earthly – or unearthly – use to us now, and which are not likely to be of us to us ever hereafter – yet too good to throw away – all that is superfluous is rubbish! Give yourself the benefit of the doubt and let them go; the old coat which John has fattened out of; the stained gown you cannot clean or make over; battered toys; reports of patent offices and orphan asylums and quack medicines; letters whose end is to be burned sooner or later; broken plates and cracked tumblers and leaky kettles – extract them from pantry, wardrobe and attic before you begin to scrub and polish – and get them out of the house at once and for all time. Set abut housecleaning on Wednesday, when washing and ironing are out of the way, and begin in the attic – if, as our wise “Grandma” put it, you have one If should have been swept and dusted on Saturday. Scrub woodwork and windows before touching the floor, having first of all brushed down the walls with a peticoated broom. For paint, use a firm, not harsh, brush, sapolio and suds, afterward wiping with a dry cloth. Stir a little kerosene into the water used for the windows, beginning with the uppermost panes, cleaning one at a time and wiping it dry before proceeding to another. Polish with newspaper, rubbed soft between the hands. If properly applied it lends a luster nothing else imparts.

GUARD AGAINST FIRE

After the scouring is done, move boxes, barrel, and trunks invalided chairs and unused bedding into the middle of the garret. Have ready a gallon of gasoline into which were stirred two days ago three ounces of gum camphor, broken small. Keep this mixture in a can with a tight top. With a large syringe, used for this purpose alone, inject this into every crack, around baseboards of the floor. Spray the edges and tufts of mattresses, and do not overlook old furniture. Shut the place up and leave it for twenty-four hours before airing it. Enter, then, without a light, and let not so much as a match be struck in the room until the windows have been opened.

If you have no attic, observe the same precautions against moths and other insect life in cleaning the trunk room or closets where are stored articles not in frequent use. The odor of camphor will soon pass away, and that of gasoline almost as quickly as it evaporates. If there directions be faithfully followed, the danger of summer visitation from nocturnal marauders – “red rovers,” roaches and even mosquitos – will be greatly lessened. The powerful antiseptic kills their eggs with those of moths.

KEEP COMFORTABLE

Go about the work in hand diligently, by systematically, and do not make unwise haste to get it done. Take one room at a time, working steadily downward if you live in a cottage. If John be away all day, content yourself and co-laborers with a cold luncheon, enlivened by a cup of tea or chocolate, at noon. Contrive to have a hot breakfast for him before he goes away in the morning and a hot dinner at night. Make soup in advance for several days, warming it each evening, and study economy of labor in other culinary tasks. By finishing each room before you attack the next, you will never be turned out of your living rooms. A little ingenuity in this respect will life much of the odium from housecleaning justly dreaded by masculine mankind. The average John, having enacted the role of seeking dove for ix nights in returning from the waste of his working world to the domestic ark, is but human if her elect to pay raven on the seventh, and tries his luck abroad.

Set steadfastly before you the purpose of making your quarter comfortable in spite of the semi-annual upheaval and resist, as an unlawful temptation, the disposition to overtire yourself and disgust everybody about you by making a point of “finishing up” by Saturday night. The world will be none the worse if a room or two be left over for next Wednesday.

One part of the formidable job will require nice calculation and adroit management. I refer to the “treatment” of your hardwood floors. After forty years’ experience with these, I have come to the deliberate conclusion that the one and only satisfactory way to keep them in order is to put them into the hands of “the profession.” They must not be touched until the rest of the cleaning is done. Wash off the dust overnight, have your household astir betimes next morning, bed made, etc., s that they men engaged to “Treat” the floors may get at them early. If they understand their business, they will use a preparation warranted to dry hard in five or six hours. Of course, you will have the floors of the living rooms treated earliest in the day. If any must be done so late hat the furniture cannot be set back in place until the morrow, let it be drawing room and guest chamber. A draft of fresh air sweeping through the apartments facilitates the business. If there be any trace of “tackiness” about the floors do not relay rugs until the next day, and treat lightly upon the polished surface. A footprint is more easily removed from it than the pattern pressed into them by the underside of the heavy rugs.

From first to last study prayerfully to keep temper and nerves in hard. Make the inevitable endurable by a cheerful spirit. At the worst it is never so bad in the doing as in the dreading.

Our next week’s talk will be headed: “When John Brings a Friend Home to Dinner.”

Marion Harland

OTHER ARTICLES ALSO PUBLISHED…
Council-Table Talks with Up-To-Date Housewives
Housecleaning Hints

Kitchen Plenishing

KailaLeave a comment

This is the third article in March of the School for Housewives 1905 series published on Mar 19, 1905, and is a more extensive article on what sorts of tools a housewife would need in the kitchen. Some items such as the ham-boiler and fish kettle seem needless in many people’s modern kitchen today.

School for Housewives – Kitchen Plenishing

An expressive word that – “plenishing” – of old English and Scotch ancestory. It signifies something more than furnishing or supplying, carrying wit it a sense of fullness, completeness and fitness.

Your kitchen may be a mere cabinet as to size. Let it be well and fitly appointed. The spacious kitchens of our foremothers – who were many of them English born – were designed as general sitting rooms for the family. In a majority of old New England and Middle State farmsteads the kitchen was, within a generation, also the dining room. Nowadays, in unconscious imitation of the French – the best cooks in the world – it is a place where food is prepared, and its appointments are adapted strictly for that purpose. It is virtually a tool chest – a place where work of a specific kind is done. When the labor of the hour and day is over the workers go elsewhere for rest and recreation. We will, therefore, consider our plenishing with a single eye to business.

THE FLOOR AND WALLS

Beginning with the floor, let me say, after long experience in this regard, that of oiled hardwood floors, painted floors, stained floors, cocoa matted floors, carpeted floors, oilcloth floors, tiled floors and floors covered in linoleum, I give the decided preference to the last named. A good inlaid linoleum will outwear an oilcloth of the best grade by five years. Tiled floors are cold and slippery, requiring a covering of rugs to make them endurable. Linoleum, in a neat tiled pattern, looks almost as well and is far more comfortable for those who stand or walk upon them. I emphasize “inlaid linoleum,” because color and figure go clear through the fabric, and hold their own as long as a piece of it is left, whereas with oilcloth and cheaper grades of linoleum the figure wears off gradually until a dingy mottled surface is left, unpleasing to the sight and unmistakably shabby.

The inlaid linoleum is easily kept clean. When soiled, wipe off with a soft cloth wrung out in clean suds, wiping dry with another as you go on. New and then go over it with old flannel wrung out in warm water to which a little kerosene has been added.
Have the walls painted, if possible. Kalsomine or paper soils easily, absorbs steam and colors, and is difficult to clean. Of course, tiled walls are preferable to any other. The cost of these puts them beyond the reach of the average purse. The next best thing is hard paint, with “a zinc finish.” One notable housewife has covered her kitchen walls with floor oilcloth, laid on smoothly, and tacked at the bottom and top. In figure it matches the linoleum on the floor. The effect is harmonious.

ALWAYS WITH IRON AND TIN

I have spoken before in this series of the advantage of zinc-topped tables. If too expensive for your purse, buy the plain deal table from the furniture dealer, and a square of zinc from a stovebaker, and let John nail the cover on some evening. Thirty years ago, wearing of seeing one cook wearing her strength out in continual scrubbings of the tables, and a succession of cooks letting grease and stain sink in the wood, until a plane was necessary to get rid of the dirt, I evolved from my inner consciousness the scheme of covering kitchen table tops with zinc, and gained a great peace of spirit thereby. Nobody credits me with what I flattered myself was an original idea. But let that pass!

For over twenty years I have abjured iron pots and tin saucepans as relics of an age when time was a drug in the domestic market, if one may judge of the expenditure of that, to us, priceless treasure in cleansing and compounding by ancestral dames. I use, instead, ware as stout as iron, and as easily kept I order as common crockery. It is light, it is rustless, pleasant to the eye and costs less than the cumbrous “castings” over which the old-time cook groaned in lifting and scrubbing.

A ham-boiler is the largest utensil you will need to buy, if, as I assume, the family washing is not done in your kitchen. It is an oblong kettle, with a closely fitting top, and useful for boiling hams, legs of mutton, fowls, etc.

A fish kettle must be use for cooking fish, and for nothing else. Even the non-absorbent ware of which I speak will retain a faint suspicion of the peculiar odor of the finny tribe, let it be ever so faithfully scalded and rinsed. It gets into the joints and seams, and “Will not out.” This vessel is also oblong, and has a closed lid. There is a moveable grating upon which the fish lies, the water passing freely under it, rendering adhesion to the bottom impossible.

Of farina or rice double boilers you should have at least two sizes. They are indispensable for cooking cereals, milk, custards, blanc mange and everything else which “Catches” readily in cooking. If you can afford one holding three quarts, one two quarts, and a third that will contain one quart, to be used for individual portions, for the nursery or the sick room, get them all.

A soup kettle, with a cover and straight sides, is also a “must-have.” If, also I hope, you have a just sense of the importance of the stock pot in every well-regulated family, you should have a soup kettle of six quarts’ capacity. After each soup-making, cleanse thoroughly, air and sun, leaving it open, the cover lying beside it.

Saucepans are in almost infinite variety, and tempting to the housewifey eye. Those with straight sides are best, offering broad bottoms to the fire and heating more quickly and evenly than those with curving sides. You should have four, ranging from a quart to a gallon in capacity, all with covers.

As to teakettles, you can get along with one; but two are better, the second and smaller being convenient when the top of the range is crowded, and water must be boiled for tea or coffee.

Colanders come in graded sizes. One of moderate capacity is all you need. Be sure the holes are not so large as to let the rags and smaller bone of meat and the cores of tomatoes escape through them.

THE FRYING-PANS

A covered roaster is a desideratum, a sine qua non-in kitchen English, a must-have. In choosing one, bear in mind and in measurement the dimensions of your oven, buying one that will fit in easily, with room for the covered top.

A quart and a pint cup for measuring, mixing spoons in three sizes, a pudding mold with a close cover, soup strainer, vegetable press, three sizes of mixing bowls, four pie plates, and the same number of jelly cake tins, three of the last with straight sides; salt and pepper boxes, are among the smaller essentials of your plenishing.

A flourholder, with sifter attached; a box for bread, and another for cake; kneading board and rolling-pin, egg beater and syllabub churn, a large and small dishpan, a vegetable and a nutmeg greater, two breadpans, a soapstone griddle, a spatula for turning cakes, one large knife of good steel, and half a dozen smaller, with forks to match; a set of muffin tins, a colander, canisters for tea and coffee, for sugar and for salt, a butter jar, a coffee pot (the tea you will make upon the table), a couple of stout pitchers –

“Where will the growing number end?”

At a rough computation you can bring your plenishing within $50.

This does not include laundry appointments.

Marion Harland

OTHER ARTICLES ALSO PUBLISHED…
Housemothers in Council – Their Joys and Sorrows Told in Letters to the Corner
New Inventions in Kitchen Utensils
Recipes Which Our Friends Recommend

The Linens Which Should Fill the Linen Closet

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This is the second article in March of the School for Housewives 1905 series published on Mar 12, 1905, and is a longer article with advice to housewives on what types of linens they should keep in their homes.

School for Housewives – The Linens Which Should Fill the Linen Closet

Household Supplies Which Make the Latter-Day Housewife’s Lot a Happy One

From force of habit I had nearly written “Linen closet.” If your house is a suburban cottage, I hope you can boast of such a linen pantry as is my delight for seven months of the year. A tiny room, but large enough to allow one the privilege of turning freely from side to side when the door is closed. It is lighted by a window, through which the sunshine pours all day. Summer airs enter freely to sweeten piles of clean, smooth sheets, pillow cases, counterpanes, towels, and such “things” as a prospective bride, whose letter I published last week, writes she would fain be making up in the hours that would otherwise hang heavy upon her hands.

SHELVES FOR FLAT DWELLERS

If you are a flat-dweller, you content yourself with shelves, and in nine cases out of ten conceal their contents by a literary looking curtain. Other flat-dwellers are not deceived by the plausibly drapery. Most of them, if pressed to candor, would confess to as much and as lively interest in what they know – and you know that they know – is arranged “in beauteous order” upon the veiled shelves, as they would feel in rows of library bindings or artistically shabby “first editions.”

But to our linens-technically so-called. The fact that half of them are cotton does not modify the term. In our grandmother’s day the sheets used by gentlefolk were always linen. Two summers ago, on two hot June nights spent in a Colonial homestead in Delaware, I slept between linen cambric sheets eighty years old, trimmed with real lace, and sheer and fine as my best pocket handkerchief.

If you can afford it, have a few pairs of linen sheets. Our bride that is to be asked me for a list of “the commoner” housewifely properties requisite for her outfit. Let her watch the advertisements of linen sales in reputable department stores, and buy enough for a pair or two at a time, then make them up herself. She says she has abundance of time, and is eager for employment. Cut each sheet three yards long. Long sheets last far better than short. Stretching and straining and tight tucking in at head and foot in time wear the fabric, not to mention the discomfort of sheets that cannot be coaxed to cover one’s shoulders without uncovering one’s feet. Have a hem of equal width at top and bottom. That is another economical device, since they can be turned upside down at will, and made to wear evenly throughout. I do not advise hemstitched sheets to those who buy linen but seldom and wish to keep it long. The threads in the drawn work break sooner than in the plain hem. Hem by hand, rather than on the machine. The hem is neater and more durable. The machine needle cuts the threads the hand needle goes between them. Make your handsewed sheets elegant by embroidering your initials in one corner.

You must have cotton sheets for winter and for daily use. It is far cheaper to buy them in the piece than to get them ready made in the shops. Select what is known as a “close weave.” That is, an even thread of gold texture. Too little attention is given to this by purchasing housewives. Uneven weaving – where coarse threads break the web into roughness – injures the durability of the fabric. Heavy sheeting wears no better than one lighter in weight and finer in quality; is no more comfortable in winter, and the finer quality is incomparably pleasanter for the rest of the year.

Linen pillow-slips are more luxurious and more wholesome the year round. One who is accustomed to them find cotton heating to the cheeks and head. Buy the linen by the yard and hem or hemstitch them by hand. Here, again, the touch of daintiness is imparted by embroidered letter or initials or monogram.

HANDWORK IS BEST

Hem table cloths and napkins by hand always. It is cheaper here, also, to buy by the yard, but far less elegant. Except for the kitchen, buy “the set,” that is, tablecloth and napkins, woven in a pattern running all around the square or oblong. Breakfast and luncheon cloths and dollies “come” fringed on the four sides, from time to time, fashions varying in this respect as in others. “Whip” the raw edges where the fringe is joined to the linen to prevent raveling. Four long tablecloths for dinner, and three breakfast cloths, with napkins to match each, would be a fair beginning for two people. I take it for granted you have a fair supply of tray-cloths and center pieces for the table linens, together with luncheon squares. If you work initials upon napkins, set them in one corner, if upon tablecloths, near the outer edge of the central design, and in two places diagonally opposite to one another. They give a “style” to a damask nothing else imparts.

Be liberal in the matter of towels. Good housewives will tell you that “you cannot have too many.” If you do not mind work – and you intimate that you do not – get a good quality of wide huckaback and plain damask by the yard, cut into generous lengths; lay wide hems and hem stitch them neatly. Then work a small initial about four inches above the hem on one end. At a cost of 50 cents each you will thus secure towels you could not buy for $1 apiece.

You can buy chamoisine for dusters also by the yard. They are admirable in their way and not expensive. Yet many prefer cheesecloth for this purpose. They take up the dust readily, may be washed again and again, and last well. Stitch the hems with turkey red cotton, and outline a big “D” in the middle with the same, as a precaution against the misuse of them for dishcloths and floorwipers. The red is a flag of warning.

Carry the same principle of generous provision into the purchase of dish-towels. Have three qualities – one very stout for pots and kettles, a medium-weight for china, very fine for glass and silver. Hem and mark each kind with red cotton “K” for kitchen use, “C” for china, “G” for glass, and be conscientious in holding each to its work. Hem squares of the different qualities for dishcloths.

For facecloths for chambers and bathroom buy white Turkish toweling, cut into squares and hem with stout cotton very securely, as they will ravel with the using.

Next week’s “Talk” will be upon “Kitchen Plenishing.”

Marion Harland

OTHER ARTICLES ALSO PUBLISHED…
The Extra Linens
Household Talks with Members of the Housewives’ Council
Recipes Contributed by Readers
Setting the Table for a St. Patrick’s Day Dinner

An Afternoon “At Home”

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This is the first article in March of the School for Housewives 1905 series published on Mar 5, 1905, and is an interesting article about receiving visitors at home. I can only imagine the sorts of wonderfully decorated calling cards ladies in fancy homes would leave behind.

School for Housewives – An Afternoon “At Home”

If your time is worth anything, and you have any system with regard to exercise in the open air and other duties, you will find an “at home” day an economical measure. It is, moreover, a convenience to those who really wish to see and talk with you when they call, since they are thus assured that they will find you “in.” Lastly, it is a neat method of purging your visiting list of acquaintances who would rather be represented by printed pasteboard than by their persons.

Let your friends know that you stay at home one afternoon or evening, or both, of every week during a term of months for the express purpose of receiving them. The fact is a compliment in itself.

Write out the names of those you wish to hold upon your “calling list” and enclose to each in a small envelope your visiting card, engraved after this fashion:

MRS. JOHN BLANK,
103 W. TEMPLETON PLACE.
Tuesdays in Mach and April.
From 4 to 7 p.m.

Or “Tuesday afternoons in March.” Or “Tuesday afternoons and evenings in March and April,” as may suit your convenience. Send out cards at least one week before the date of the first “day.”

Upon the afternoons designated have your drawing room in dainty order, with a few flowers set here and there to add an air of modest festivity and of hospitable expectation. If your dining room adjoin the parlor, set out your refreshments there. If, as often happens, your apartments offer two reception rooms, one larger than the other, fit up the inner and smaller of the two as a tea room.

Tea is the feature of the preparations made for the physical refreshment of your guests. I hope you know how to make it.

First, and above all, have the water boiling. Not “just off the boil,” not already boiled, but actually boiling.

The only safe and the most convenient way is to make your tea on the table. To this end provide yourself with a brass, copper, or silver kettle, heated by a small spirit lamp. Pretty brass kettles range in price from $3.50 to $23. Some of them rest on a standard on the table, while others depend from a high crane set on the floor at the pourer’s right hand. These cranes are of iron, fashioned usually in the shape of the figure 5, and are ‘the thing’ for 5 o’clock tea.

Fill your kettle with hot water and light the lamp. Put into the teapot the requisite quantity of tea; when the water boils pour enough on the leaves to cover them, and put the kettle again over the lighted wick. Cover the teapot closely. At the end of five minutes the “steeping” process will be completed, and you may fill the pot with the still boiling water. After it has stood a minute longer the delicious drink is ready to be enjoyed.

One of the requisites in a good cup of tea is to have it very hot. This object should not be attained by allowing the pot to stand on the side of the range, or, after the manner of our grandmothers, on the hob, where it is almost sure to stew and be ruined, but by covering it while on the table with a “cosy.”

To make a cosy, cut two semi-circles of some thick, rich colored material, such as tricot, felt, plush, or velvet, and join there at the top and sides. Cut two half circles a little smaller than the others, of very heavy wadding, and still another pair of satin or sateen for the lining. Fit the wadding inside of this and quilt or tack the wadding to the lining to prevent its slipping. The seams at the sides and bottom should be finished with a silk cord fastened in loops at the tops and corners. When finished, the whole fits over the teapot lie a snug cap.

Do not make a toil of the weekly entertainment of your friends. Cover the table with a pretty white cloth, and arrange thereupon your choicest china and silver plates, cake basket and tea equipage, a pile of napkins, a bon-bon dish and two plates for sandwiches.

Marion Harland

OTHER ARTICLES ALSO PUBLISHED…
Dainty Dishes to Serve When Friends Gather at Your Tea
The Housemothers’ Exchange
Some of the Things That Help with Informal Teas

The Easiest Table Decorations to Make

KailaLeave a comment

This is the fourth article in February of the School for Housewives 1905 series published on Feb 26, 1905, and is a short article on table decor.

School for Housewives – The Easiest Table Decorations to Make

No matter at what season of the year you elect to give a luncheon, roses are always to be had, and trim a table in the prettiest and most varied of ways.

A white luncheon may be given, with the whitest of roses gracing the centre, or those with just the merest touch of shell-pink tinting them. Or if pink is to be the color, a “wealth of exquisite blossoms come in the softest shades of pink; white for a red luncheon come buds and blossoms that make the cheeriest of decorations.

In June rose-luncheons are really the only seasonable ones to give; and then you might give a rose-luncheon every few days and have it different, using tiny June roses one day, wild roses another, and moss-roses, tea-roses, fragrant yellow briar-roses, and the delicate old-fashioned tea-roses – gathered from your own flower-plot – for the different days.

If expense doesn’t have to be considered, china with rose-patterns is extremely effective; and, as it snows skillful shading and coloring, it blends with almost any color of roses.

White is used almost entirely for table-linen – lace sets being highest in favor; but occasionally you see a rose-luncheon with a centrepiece embroidered with roses in their natural color.

A pretty decoration of roses – like that illustrated – was a central vase of cut glass (in the fashionable Colonial pattern) filled with pink roses and ferns.

LUNCHEON FOR SIX

The luncheon was for six, and set at intervals around the table were six little vases, each with its roses and ferns. At each place was laid a rose, apparently dropped carelessly there.

Candlesticks add greatly to the genera effect of a table, and a great many women get shades and candles of three or four colors, changing them according to the color of the luncheon they are giving.

Pink shades make, perhaps, the softest, most becoming light; red and green shades the most striking, but both red and green should be set closest to the centre, so that their direct light may not fall on the guests seated. Both lights are too strong to be becoming if they are close.

American Beauties make a most imposing luncheon. One was given with a tall vase full of the long-stemmed beauties for a centrepiece, wile from the base, raying out to each place, was a rose – the blossom coming just to the “stay-plate,” or beside it. The effect was stunning, and after the luncheon the hostess picked up the one nearest her, and every guest followed suit.

Pink roses in the centre, with bunches of great, single violets at each lace – each bunch having its long violet pin struck through the stems – make a pretty color-scheme that is accentuated when all the guests pin the violets on, before the first course is served.

For a spring luncheon, daffodils and violets are charming; and daffodils and mignonette the most spring-like combination imaginable.

Marion Harland

Providing For “Pinch Time”

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This is the third article in February of the School for Housewives 1905 series published on Feb 19, 1905, and is an article on fruits and winter fare.

School for Housewives – Providing For “Pinch Time”

The Period between Seasons When There Is Little in the Market for Any but the Wealthy

The term was as well known in Old Virginia as the name of any other season. It signified the weeks separating the dead of winter from the first advance of spring. Housekeepers looked forward to it with dread born of experience. Hardy vegetables which “kept over” from autumn to spring were losing their freshness. Potatoes had a bilious tinge and a rank “tang” to the palate; turnips were pithy; beets were hard; apples began to wither, toughen and rot.

To cap the climax of discontent, appetite were jaded by the monotony of winter fare and cried out for tempting variety.

Like conditions prevail to this day although in a mitigated degree, in families where forced fruits and vegetables are not to be had for money, or where money cannot be hard for the purchase of them. Growing children crave sweets, and account that meal a failure where these do not follow beats, bread and butter and the invariable potato. The longing is a law of nature. The saccharine which, the child says, “takes the greasy taste out of his mouth,” changes in the stomach to a digestive acid, acting beneficently upon said fatty matter. It is when these work upon an empty and tried stomach that they are injuries. With young people and mature sweet-lovers in my eye, I shall, today, talk of certain inexpensive methods of preparing dried fruits for the table that may cheat pinch time of its severity and lessen the grip upon the housewife’s purse that adds bitterness to the season.

By selecting dried fruits, pass by barrels and kegs of apples cured in the evil old way, to wit, in the open air, exposed to dust and bacteria and mold, to bees, ants and wasps. Took often, as our disgusted memories will testify, the hurdles of drying fruit set in the hottest sunshine temped the ease-loving cat to a siesta and chickens to picking and stealing. Our mothers, mindful of these things, washed dried fruits in several waters before putting them to soak. One housekeeper, a notable member of what in the blunt speech of the day was known as “the nasty-particular school,” used to wash her “cured” apples, peaches and pears with soap, trusting to many rinsings to remove the taste left by the process.

We have changed all that. The least “particular” of country housekeepers dries her fruit under mosquito netting raised a foot or so above the hurdle, to allow a free passage of air. All the same, unless you have put up your own fruit, buy the evaporated, desiccated in kilns and so quickly that flavor and juices have not time to escape.

APPLE PREPARATIONS

A compote of dried applies will find instant favor with the youngsters as a sequel to a bread-and-butter and milk supper.

Wash a cup of evaporated apples, drain and soak for three hours in clean water enough to cover them. Stew tender at the end of that time in the water in which they were soaked. When cooked soft they should have absorbed all the liquid. Turn out; sweeten well and run through a colander or vegetable press. Set away until cold. A stick of cinnamon, cooked with the fruit, flavors it pleasantly.

A conserve of dried apples. The fruit is washed and soaked as in the preceding recipe. Drain dry, then put the liquid thus strained over the fire; bring to a boil and add a cupful of sugar to a pint of the juice, also a handful of sultana raisins, washed to two waters. Cook gently for an hour; let the syrup get almost cold; put in the apples and simmer half an hour, or until a straw will pierce them easily. Be careful not to let them break. Take out with a perforated spoon and put into a bowl. Boil the syrup hard one minute and pour over the fruit. Eat cold.

Dried apple and raisin pudding. Wash and soak the fruit as directed; cook tender as for the compote; lavishly sweeten; mash smooth and for each cupful allow half a cupful of seeded and halved raisins. Flavor with mace and cinnamon, and let the mixture get cold before adding a cupful of breadcrumbs soaked in one of milk, and two eggs beaten light. Lastly, stir in a half-teaspoonful of soda wet in a little boiling water. Beat all together very hard, and bake in a buttered dish. Send to table in the bake dish. Eat with hard sauce.

This pudding is nice boiled in a covered mold and turned out upon a hot platter.

OTHER DRIED FRUITS

A dried peach pudding is made in the same way, but the raisins are omitted.

A compote of dried pears and rice. Wash and soak the pears for four hours. Cook tender in the water in which they were soaked. Take out with a split spoon and lay in a bread platter. For each pint of the liquid left in the saucepan allow a cupful of sugar, and boil until it begins to thicken. Pour now over the pears; cover and let all stand together until lukewarm. Return to the fire and simmer for half an hour.

Having ready in a heated deep dish a mound of rice boiled so that each grain is separate from the rest; pour he hot fruit and syrup over it and send to table.

A charlotte of dried figs. Separate the figs from one another; wash them in three waters, rubbing each to make it pliant and lump. Soak for three hours in enough water to cover them well; stew in the same water until tender; add a cupful of sugar for each pound of figs and simmer slowly for half an hour. Turn out; cover closely, and when cool set on the ice or in a very cold place. When ready to serve them, put into a glass dish and heap high with whipped cream. They will be found delicious.

A prune charlotte. Sew a dozen and a half large prunes; when cold, remove the stones and chop fine. Whip a pint of cream very stiff with three tablespoonfuls of sugar, then whip the minced prunes into this. Line a glass dish with lady fingers, or thin slices of sponge cake, and fill the centre with the prune cream. Set in the ice box until time to serve.

A prune soufflé. Stone and chop eighteen stewed prunes. Beat the yolks of four eggs light with two tablespoonfuls of sugar. Cook together in a saucepan one tablespoonful of butter and two of flour, and when they are blended pour upon them a scant gill of hot milk. Cook, stirring, to a thick white sauce; beat this gradually into the yolks and sugar, and add the minced prunes. Beat hard for five minutes and set aside to cool. When cold add the stiffened whites of the four eggs, beat for a minute and turn into a buttered pudding dish. Bake in a hot oven for half an hour.

A FINE SAUCE

The sauce to be eaten with this pudding is made by heating the prune liquor, adding to it sugar and, when this is dissolved, a dash of lemon juice.

An Italian charlotte. Shell and boil Spanish chestnuts, remove the skins and rub the nuts through a colander. Sweeten to taste and neat to a soft paste with a little cream. Form the mixture into a pyramid in the centre of a chilled platter and heap sweetened whipped cream around it.

Marion Harland

A “Valentine High Tea”

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This is the second article in February of the School for Housewives 1905 series published on Feb 12, 1905, and is a fun article on a Valentine’s Day party. I do remember from past Valentine’s day parties that we also played the cake game where your “fortune” was told by what item was found in your piece.

School for Housewives – A “Valentine High Tea”

Plenty of Fun, Little Ceremony and Far Less Trouble than a Formal Dinner

A high tea is less than a dinner, a trifle more ceremonious than a general “At Home” with tea, sandwiches and cakes.

Our young mistress, with the help of a maid-of-all work, may accomplish successfully a little dinner of four, or at most six, “covers,” as the English put it. We say “four or six people at table.” The hostess may be a clever manager, her maid expect in her part. Nevertheless, the dinner is an “undertaking.” Some day we will talk it over, for such functions must needs be, once in a good many whiles.

For one-fourth of the expense and one-third of the work our housewife may entertain three times as many guests and win golden opinions of her ability as caterer and entertainer. She scores not one but several good points in seizing upon an “occasion” to be “improved” by the festive gathering.

A “Valentine High Tea” sounds note of good, gay cheer, predisposing the prospective guests to hilarity. The idea is not hackneyed; the fact that they are bidden by other young people insures freedom from strict conventionalities. For it goes without saying that the guests must all be youthful – comparatively – and single.

St. Valentine has no dealings with the wedded. Mating is his business, and he sticks to it. There must, also, be an equal number of young men and maidens – ten or twelve of each, if our flat or cottage will hold so many. The decorations of table and rooms must be spring flowers. These need not be elaborate, for daffodils and hyacinths are expensive. Married Mary is fortunate if, in anticipation of the “festa,” she has raised a dozen hyacinths in glasses from budding bulbs bought six weeks ago. This inflexible needles of pine and spruce, even the more graceful running calendar, and inadmissible; the rubber plant would be a vile solecism. She many, however, wreathe pictures and candelabra with the complaisant smilax.

Before the Valentine rush begins let her provide herself with several sizes and patterns of heart-shaped cake cutters and molds. The day before the affair let her make bounteous store of small cakes, cut and molded with these. For reasons I will show presently, a liberal proportion of these should be sponge, therefore butterless, hearts.

THE FUN OF SURPRISE-FORTUNES

When all are baked, have written ready upon slips of paper a given number of proper names, masculine and feminine; fold each neatly once across, not to take too much room; lay upon he underside of a heart, wash the inner edges of the cake with white of egg and fit another heart of the same size upon the first, inclosing the folded bit of paper. Have an equal number of masculine and feminine names thus hidden, keeping the sexes carefully separated as you go on. When each heart is “mated” and made fast to its companion, frost it all over, and let it dry. That there may be no confusion at the last, let the icing of one set of cakes by white, the other pink. When dry, heap those containing the men’s names in one dish, the women’s in another.

Split carefully and extract the kernels from as many English walnuts as there are gusts, tuck into each hollow nut a folded paper on which is written the date of a future year – “1906-1907-1910,” etc.; fit the sides together, lecture in place with mucilage or sealing wax and pile in a nut dish, wreathed with smilax. Another set of walnuts, similarly prepared, should contain couplets prophetic of the destiny of him or of her who may open it. These need not be wise. They will not be poetical. A little knack of stringing rhymes together and a keen sense of fun will make them amusing. When bashful Robert, who has found the name of “Elizabeth” between the two halves of his cookey, and learned from the open walnut that he will be married in 1906, is bidden by the second nut –

Brace your courage, sighing swain!
Eliza longs to heal your pain –

As Dr. Primrose said of the party at the parsonage – “here was not much wit, but there was a great deal of laughter, and that did almost as well.”

There are sharp edges to wit in which honest, happy funmaking is, happily, wanting.

Cut your sandwiches, also, into heart shapes. Recipes for a variety of these will be found in another column. Bonbons, fashioned into hearts, darts and arrows, are abundant at this season, and pink-and-white Cupids, that will swing airily from the central chandelier and balance themselves dizzily upon the pinnacle of ice cream “forms.” If you choose to order ices molded into hearts, any confectioner will supply them on Valentine’s Day.

A silver thimble, signifying bachelorhood or spinsterhood; a gold ring, foretelling matrimony; a dime, promising wealth, may be hidden in a large white fruit cake and cut for at random by the merrymakers.

SERVE REFRESHMENTS INFORMAL

Mrs. John’s fertile fancy will suggest twenty variations of and improvements upon he foregoing outline. Hearts may be interwoven in an intricate pattern upon the damask cloth with ivy or geranium leaves. A big bowl of salad may have a like device sketched upon the surface in the minced whites and powdered yolks of eggs.

Set the table in the dining room, but do not range chairs about it. Let the guests stand or sit where they like in parlor or drawing room, overflowing into the hall if crowded, the young men doing the waiting.

For beverages, have cafe au lait and milled chocolate. For formulas for these and for white fruit cake see recipe column.

Marion Harland

How to Lighten the Winter Bill of Fare, Which Most of Us Make Too Heavy in the Belief That We Are Generating Heat

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This is the first article in February of the School for Housewives 1905 series published on Feb 5, 1905, and is a longer article on foods that can be used to cook with during the winter months especially vegetables.

School for Housewives – How to Lighten the Winter Bill of Fare, Which Most of Us Make Too Heavy in the Belief That We Are Generating Heat

Some Plebeian Vegetables Which, When Properly Prepared, Will Give a Pleasing Variety to the Cold Weather Menu

When the days begin to lengthen,
then the cold begins to strengthen.

Then, too, in humiliating emulation of the of the Laplander who gorges himself with blubber and washes it down with train oil to keep up his supply of human carbon, we eat more meat than at any other season of the year. Beef, pork, and, in a less degree, mutton, generate heat, because they make blood. The quantity of that blood is a minor consideration with the average eater.

When feverish colds, feverish bilious attacks, undisguised pleurisy and unmistakable pneumonia lay the strong man low, and weaken the forces of delicate women and children, we pile the blame upon the broad shoulders of the weather and brace the system with beef tea and blood-rare steak. In order to keep well we have buckwheat cakes and sausage for breakfast, pork tenderloins for luncheon, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding for dinner.

I once heard a pig-headed man argue with hatred irrelevancy that it is flying in the face of Providence to use artificial means – glass houses and the like – to keep vegetables growing in winter.

“If God Almighty had meant us to eat them out of season, He would have made them grow all the year round,” was a clincher from which there was no appeal. It would have been worse than useless for his silenced opponent to ask why, if beasts of meat were made to serve man for food all winter long, the ground should be frozen into barrenness for six months of the year, obliging us to preserve food for them by artificial means.

SOME GOOD ARRANGEMENTS

In a later “Talk” I shall show how kind Nature, as if anticipating the deductions and practice of pig-headed men and their followers, has provided, in a measure, against the consequences of their blunders. We come now to reason together concerning the gentle influences upon blood and liver of such vegetables as are within our reach during the period when the “strengthened” cold does its cruel worst upon us.

Begin with what is perhaps the best-abused vegetable in the market and collar – cabbage. It is so cheap that the poorest may have to eat it every day. It keeps green and juicy from November to April, and while chemical analysis shows a result of 89 percent of water, it also set down “fats – next to nothing.” And fats are what we are trying to avoid.

Cabbage is an unmistakable plebeian, although some of its kindred – cauliflower, broccoli and Brussels sprouts – find welcome in refined circles. It tastes good – as most of us admit. It smells villainous in cooking, and it disagrees with tender stomachs.

To abate the nuisance of the odor and lessen unwholesomeness, cook in an open pot, covered with plenty of cold water, salted, and add, before the boil begins, half a teaspoonful of baking soda for a gallon of water. Then cook fast – always in two waters! Keep up the first boil for fifteen minutes, turn off every drop of water – “waster it into the sink,” as Bridget-Thekla would describe the process – return to the fire and fill up the pot with boiling water. Put in a teaspoonful of salt and a quarter teaspoonful of soda and cook, uncovered, twenty minutes longer. Turn into a colander and press with the back of a wooden spoon until no more of the 89 percent of water will run out. Transfer to a chopping tray, mince coarsely with a perfectly clean chopping-knife, put into a heated saucepan over the fire and stir in pepper, salt and a good lump of butter until you have a smoking hot mess – not disintegrated, yet well seasoned. Dish, and send around vinegar for those who like to qualify still farther the cabbage-taste.

This is the plain boiled cabbage which serves as a base for dishes, recipes for which are given elsewhere.

Onions – particularly the Spanish variety – while they contain 91 percent of water, and are, therefore, less nutritious than are generally supposed, owe their wholesomeness at this season largely to the portion of sulphur, which makes them smell, if not to heaven, to the topmost ceiling of a nine-story flat when cooked upon the first floor. Unless, indeed, our housewife takes the trouble to leave them in cold water for two hours before cooking, puts them over the fire in salted cold water with a half teaspoonful of soda to the gallon, and boils fast in an open vessel until tender, changing the water as with cabbage, for fresh boiling, at the end of fifteen minutes after ebullition begins. Drain, dish and cover with a white sauce.

TRY TO AVOID FATS

Celery may not make muscle and bone, but it is an excellent nerve bracer, either cold or cooked. Even when a fair-sized bunch costs 20 cents – and it is seldom more expensive – it is worth the price. Break off the outer and coarser stalks, scrape, cut into inch lengths, lay in cold water for an hour, drain, cook tender in boiling water, slightly salted; pour this off, cover the celery with a good white sauce and serve. The inner, crisp stalks are sent to the table raw, with bits of ice scattered over them.

Carrots are decidedly wholesome, containing sugar and mucilage and slightly medicinal mineral matter. They are cheap, and would be more popular if the average housewife knew how to cook them. (See Recipe Column.)

Beets carry a still larger percentage of sugar. The older they are the longer they should be boiled. Mrs. Whitney says: “For cooking old beets – all the time you have!” This is one of the good things that can hardly be overdone.

Parsnips are among the most nutritious of our winter vegetables, containing less water and more sugar than carrots. People who like them are very fond of them – those who “cannot abide” their peculiar, slightly aromatic sweetness never learn to like them.

Salsify, or oyster plant, is another friend who remains faithful to us from autumn until spring. It is nutritious, palatable and very slightly laxative. Of the various ways of preparing it for the table, I give one in the Recipe Column.

Marion Harland

Uses and Abuses of Canned Goods in the Household

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This is the fifth article in January of the School for Housewives 1905 series published on Jan 29, 1905, and is a revisiting of a topic that had been covered two years previously on the dangers of “canned goods” although I have yet to come across this previous “talk” in my research. Transcribed from the Sunday edition of The Washington Times.

School for Housewives – Uses and Abuses of Canned Goods in the Household

How to Make the Best of the Preserved Foods and Some Errors to be Guarded Against.

SOME of our readers may not have forgotten a lively discussion we had two years ago in this department concerning what we have all fallen into the habit of calling “canned goods.” In this course of our debate sundry unpleasant facts were evolved that moved me then, and ever since, to press upon housewives the importance of putting up fruits and vegetables for their own family use, when this is practicable. It was proceed upon the testimony of competent chemists that many of the “bleached” fruits and such vegetables as corn and asparagus owe color and “staying qualities” to certain acids and salts which are not conducive to the health of the eaters.

One of our staff of chemical experts announced that he found in three tablespoonfuls of preserved pears enough salicylic acid for a strong dose for an adult. From one canning establishment I received the formula for a powder warranted to preserve vegetables, etc., sent in ingenuous good faith. One of the principal ingredients was salicylic acid.

I am assured by several reputable canning firms that nothing of the kind is used in their works, in proof whereof they invite chemical analysis. I am the more willing to believe this because in mid-winter hundreds of families in the country and among the poorer classes of town residents are obliged to depend upon canned vegetables for variety in a diet of salted meats, cabbage, onions, and potatoes.

Next week I shall speak of the need of a winter fare of greenstuffs and fruits. Now, I propose to show how the reproach may be lifted in part from airtight esculents kept over from the fruiting season. We get very tired of them when served au naturel for days together. No matter how good they may be, they are an indifferent substitute for the things whose names they bear. Since we have them and must use them, if only for their antiscorbutic properties, let us study ways and means for making the best of them. The poorest of the tribe is a vast improvement upon the time when desiccation was the one method practiced for preservation, for winter use, of green vegetables, while preserving in syrup, vinegar, and spirits was resorted to for keeping fruits in palatable form for the table. Sweet corn was dried when nearly hard, and had to be soaked over night, then boiled for a long time before it could be eaten. After all, it was hardly an improvement upon the coarser hominy. Tomatoes, peaches, plums, cherries, and pears lost most of their distinctive flavor through long exposure to the sun and subsequent soaking and stewing.

While the demand for canned goods may not have lessened throughout the country, it is undeniable that there is a growing disrelish for them in the minds of people of dainty and cultured tastes, and this is not so much for the reason given in the discussion, viz., the belief that they are not wholesome, as because they are stale, flat, and “common,” if not unprofitable. People who can ill afford it, pay high prices for forced vegetables, rather than set before guests the content of cans purchased at the corner grocery.

Let us see if the cause of this growing dislike many be not in the nature of the thing preserved so much as in the cook’s determination to regard it as an end, not a means, a finished product, instead of semi-raw material. The wrong way to serve all potted provisions is to “dump” them from the can or jar into the saucepan, and from the saucepan into the platter or root-dish, with no attempt at seasoning or enrichment.

Must Have the Air.

It ought not to be necessary for me to repeat again and here as in invariable rule that canned meats, fruits, vegetables, soups, etc., should be turned out of the vessels in which they were preserved at least one hour before they are cooked, or sent to table, and left in open dishes to rid them of the close, airless smell which disgusts many with the entire class. One and all they need aerating – to be “oxygenated” before they are prepared for the service of man.

Get Them in Glass.

Tomatoes, when canned, are the least objectionable of the class. So far as I have pushed my researches for the presence of deleterious ingredients introduced by those who manipulate them for the market, they are comparatively – some brands entirely – free from salicylic acid and the like preservatives. Of course, with these, as with other vegetables, fruits, soups, and meats, there are brands and brands. Some turn out a superfluity of liquid, many unripe lumps and bits of skin mingled with the pulp. Note the name and address of the manufacturer and avoid the brand in future. The housewife who takes advantage of the height of the season, and puts up her own tomatoes, rejecting cores and hard pieces, and draining off half the juice, ill fare best on this score.

When you buy them, give the preference, if you can afford it, to tomatoes put up in glass. The natural acid sometimes forms an unholy alliance with the metals of the cans.

Were I to describe the scallops, croquettes, rissoles, puddings, bisques and other variations of lobster and salmon, which would tickle the palates of the eaters, and gratify the ambition of the hounsemother, I should present the best advertisement of “canned goods” ever spread before the American reading public. Were I to expatiate upon the ease with which the “tinny” taste can be eliminated from canned succotash, and how a can of corn and another of beans may be aired and combined into still better succotash; how canned asparagus, masked by cream sauce, and laid in state upon toast, almost recalls springtime, and when heated and dressed, while hot, with vinegar, melted butter and French mustard, then allowed to get ice-cold – is a delicious salad – there would not be room below this general “talk” for the recipes which are to illustrate this specifically.

The reader is confidently referred to this continuation of our subject for directions as to the “treatment” of some of the countless varieties of artificially preserved foods.

OTHER ARTICLES ALSO PUBLISHED…
Housewives Gather Around the Council Table
Marion Harland Recipes
A Paper-Doll House for a Little Invalid
A Russian Courtship
Window Kitchen Gardens