Tag: 1909

The Business Guest

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This is the third article in March of the School for Housewives 1909 series published on March 21, 1909, and is an article on what to do when a housewife’s husband brings home a surpirse business guest.

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

The Business Guest

JOHN MILTON was not happy in his married life. From what his biographers hint, rather than assert, we gather that Mistress Mary Powell, “a simple and apparently stupid country girl, accustomed to dance with king’s officers at home,” soon wearied of the quiet, humdrum life she led with her poet-husband, and after provoking him to stern rebuke for her follies, she ran away to her old home, under pretense of visiting her parents, and flatly refused to return to John’s household drudgery until such time as pleased her caprice. When she did come back, we are told plainly that she was more of a hindrance than a help to the student; also that she crowded his house with her own friends and kindred and paid scant attention to his erudite associates.

It may well be, then, that recollections of his own unsatisfied desires by the very force of contrast helped him to paint the picture of the first garden party of which he have any record. Espying the majestic angel through the vista of trees, and divining that he would shortly visit him, he ordered his spouse to get ready a luncheon worthy of Eden and the celestial stranger. Eve’s ready promise too—

“Haste, and from each bough and brake,
Each plant and juiciest gourd, to pluck such choice
To entertain our angel guest, as he,
Beholding, shall confess that here on earth
God hath dispensed His bounties as in heaven—”

has stood for over two centuries as a model example for the housewife whose husband, without or with warning, brings home a Business Guest to partake of her hospitality.

A more authentic instance of early and gracious hospitality in like circumstances is the beautiful story of Abraham’s entertainment of the three men who appeared to him as he sat in his tent door under the oak of Mamre in the heat of the day. After seating them in the grateful shade and offering water to wash their tired and dusty feet, he sped him to Sarah and bade her with patriarchal imperiousness:

“Make ready quickly” (the original means in modern English: “And be quick about it!”) “three measure of meal, knead it, and make cakes upon the hearth.”

“Pot-Luck.”

Sarah, we know, was a bit—and not a little bit—of a virago on her own account, yet she obeyed her lord’s behest with as cheerful alacrity as the chief wife of the Beduin sheik at whose door we alighted when noon was high over the plains of Jericho ten years ago—and made haste to prepare coffee and unleavened bread, honey in a lordly dish and the “leben” our translators have done into “butter” in the narrative of Sisera’s flight and death.

Oriental hospitality is as punctilious in claims upon householder and tent dweller now as when the apostle to the Gentiles admonished the converts not to be unmindful to entertain strangers, adding for their encouragement: “Some have thus entertained angels unawares.”

If the housewifely reader be disposed to cavil at the length of this preamble, I hasten to remind her that few of the minor happenings of domestic life vex her righteous soul more sorely than when John brings home a business friend to dinner, or to spend the night. It so often falls out, in the natural perversity of “things,” that the guest who is not a friend and barely an acquaintance appears upon the scene at the most inopportune season for the family comfort, that reminiscence adds gloom to anticipation. The fact that John—the very embodiment of gentle considerateness of her convenience and happiness—“couldn’t get out” of asking the man from Chicago or Atlanta or Montreal to take “pot-luck” with his family does not abate the nuisance. You may be morally certain in the depths of your conscience that John had some irrefutable reason for imposing the alien element into the peaceful domestic brew. For he loves his home and enjoys an uninterrupted evening in the bosom of his family as much as most men enjoy their clubs. I doubt if the best wife who ever loved and respected her husband as the wisest of men fully appreciated the business expediency of asking “a man” home to dinner, even though his wife may not quite approve of the politic measure.

In our gossip of Eden and Mamre we made clear the point that the angels who dropped in unexpectedly were Business Guests. Also, that the choicest dainties of Paradise and the quick loaves and the roast veal were made ready and pressed upon the strangers before the hosts had an inking of the purport of the business. I did not say this in jest. There are lessons to be learned from every page of Holy Writ. The Martha of the twentieth century may sit at shrewish Sarah’s feet and learn of her here.

I know (nobody better!) what a jar to the orderly routine of the day is the unlooked-for apparition of the aforesaid “man.” I recall dreadful moments when he was three men. Do not smile when I say that the thought of the three who “looked in” upon Abraham, resting after a hot day’s work—perchance dozing—in the tent door, came to me with healing in its wings. I would not be outdone in philosophic composure by Sarah!

Coming to close quarters with the trial—here is where “The Emergency Shelf,” of which we talked together last year, is a stay and a solace. Without stopping to pry into the occult causes of the coincident appearance of the Business Guest with the infrequent assignment of cold corned beef to the place of honor of the menu, if the meal be luncheon or supper, or the second day’s appearance of the roast (warmed up, or down?) which you and the cook decided would just “do” for the family proper, or the more mysterious fact that the most important “man” for whom John would have you and the home show at their best, inevitably shows up on washing or ironing day—let us reason together regarding the manner in which the infliction should be met. Before we attack the “shelf,” put yourself in John’s place from the moment he informs you through the telephone that he has asked a business friend from out of town to dine or sup or lunch with him. The telephone booth being soundless and discreet, he deprecates the necessity confidentially, and hopes—anxiously—that it won’t throw you out in the least. If he have the habit of talking over business with you he hands a hurried abstract of the imperative circumstances which have urged him to this step without consulting you. He knows from past experiences how nobly you rise to the situation etc., etc., et cetera.

Putting yourself in his place, justify all that he says of yourself. Bid him bring his Man along and to rest confidently in the persuasion that you will do your best at such short notice.

Cold corned beef is—cold corned beef! Nevertheless, it may be made a shade less plebeian by the accompanying sauce of grated horseradish beaten to a cream with a little white of egg and the slices may be lapped symmetrically over one another on the dish and furnished with celery tops or parsley. Baked potatoes—preferably sweet—go well with the meat, and require no preparation beyond washing and wiping. Baked cream toast is another good impromptu dish. Begin the luncheon with sardines. Serve with them brown bread cut thin and buttered and pass sliced lemon with the sardines. The meat and vegetable and the dish of steaming hot cream toast come next. Then cake and homemade canned fruit from the “shelf.” Hot, creamy cocoa should go around with the cake. If you have time and opportunity to get lettuce for a salad, you give a touch of elegance to the meal without much expense. Season with a French dressing and pass heated crackers and cheese with it. It should immediately precede the sweets.

This schedule is designed as a suggestion of what may be done at short notice to alter the character of a luncheon. It is not likely in this age of telephones and well-trained husbands that you will not have an hour’s notice of the addition to your family group. Should the business guest be picked up on the way uptown and introduced to you unceremoniously, meet the shock with a smiling face, and make up by a cordial welcome for ant deficiencies in the menu.

DON’T APOLOGIZE!

Excuses and and flurries accentuate blemishes and do not engender charitable judgment. On the contrary, the stranger is led to the conviction that you are careless of John’s everyday comfort. Stand fast by the rule which every bride should make at the outset of housewifely life, namely, that what is good enough for her husband is good enough for ant other man. The clean and smooth tablecloth should be a matter of principle; shining silver and unnicked china, bright glass and clean napkins are the honest due of the man whose labor supplies the means to keep the house “going.” Study for him little niceties of table appointments and daintiness of personal appearance.

An Honored Guest.

“I have been married forty years,” I heard a white-haired lover-husband say. “In all that time I have never seen my wife sit down to a meal in a slovenly dress or with unkempt hair. And I have never been ashamed to set an accidental visitor at the table she has spread for me and the children. Such things make a man respect a woman, you will say? Yea! and they keep up the average of his self-respect. The boys and I must live up to what she believes us to be. Since she prepares for us as for honored guests, she must not be disappointed in us.”

He was not a sentimental man in the usual acceptation of the word. He was sensible and appreciative of the position his wife assigned him in his own house.

One brief word as o your attitude toward the Business Guest. Never let him feel himself to be an interloper. You may think to yourself that he might have gone to a hotel instead of deranging your plans for the day by accepting the invitation John could not help extending to him. While he is within your doors, it is your sacred duty to treat him as if he were there by your especial and cordial wish. You owe it to yourself, to your husband and to the holy name of Hospitality.

Marion Harland

OTHER ARTICLES ALSO PUBLISHED…
Meals for a Week
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With a Chafing Dish

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This is the second article in March of the School for Housewives 1909 series published on March 14, 1909, and is an article on the chafing dish for Lenten cooking.

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

With a Chafing Dish

“DO NOT leave Paris without visiting M. Frederic Delair. To watch him as he prepares, on half a dozen chafing dishes, the pressed duck to which he has given an international reputation, is an experience you cannot afford to miss. And to eat it after he has cooked it is a gastronomic event.”

With the admonition in our minds, we left our hotel one August evening after a wearying round of last sightseeing that disposed us for rest rather than for new “experiences” of any kind. Had we not been hungry as well as tired, I doubt if even the fear of losing the spectacle of M. Frederic and the international gastronomic exploit would have tempted us forth.

We took a couple of motor cars for the party. The absurdly low rates at which the tourist may ride through foreign city and country are a lure to the expenditure of all one’s loose cash in riotous motoring; one is ashamed to recall after one returns to his native land and home cab and hack fares. In ten minutes after leaving the Normandie we alighted, cooled by the rapid spin through street and boulevard, at a modest restaurant in a quiet corner that did not look “fashionable.”

“Frederic Delair, Sr.,” was on the sign above the door. Generations of seniors and juniors may have served the public and filled their own pockets at the same “old stand.” The sensible Parisian does not move uptown as soon as he has made his fortune in a particular locality.

The interior of the famous eating house was no more pretentious than the façade. Several long, low-browed rooms opening out of one another were neatly furnished with tables set with the exquisite taste that belongs to the humblest French café. The linen was glossy, the silver shone and the glass sparkled. Flowers graced every broad and filled jardinieres were set in the windows. Early as it was, but one table capable of accommodating our company of five was unoccupied. Groups of well-dressed, well-mannered guests had taken possession of every room, and we were at once struck by the general air of expectancy that pervaded the assembly. It was no ordinary and conventional bite and sup that had drawn us hither.

The August Chef.

Down the middle of each room was a row of service tables, presided over by “garcons,” spick and span in attire, irreproachable in clean-shaven faces and in coiffure. We had hardly settled ourselves to our satisfaction when a man walked slowly down the length of the suite of rooms in the aisle next the service tables. His movements were so deliberate that we had time to comment in idle amusement upon the incongruity of his appearance with the smartly dressed officials before we noted that he addressed some remark in passing to the occupants of the various tables. He may have been 55 years of age; a full beard, which left his upper lip bare, was lightly grizzled; he wore a long frock coat, sagging open from eh waist down; a wisp of cravat was white; his build was stocky, and he stooped very slightly in walking. He might have posed as Edward Eggleston’s Hoosier Schoolmaster, or he might have been the Parson Poundtext of 50 years agone, just off the circuit of a dozen Tennessee counties. Not until he halted at our corner table and “hoped that mesdames and messieurs would enjoy the dinner that would presently be served to them,” enunciating the formula in gentle, persuasive tones in French that had a plaintive cadence, did it down upon us that he was connected with the café. A major-domo, perhaps, or a superannuated head butler, kept for form’s sake, we concluded among ourselves.

Amused curiosity gave way to amazement, as, with the mien of a master, he took his stand by the central service table and accepted the glittering carver handed to him by an obsequious waiter. At the same instant six men appeared in the kitchen door, bearing as many lordly platters, each containing a pair of roast ducks, plump, smoking hot and savory. In a trice these were set beside six chafing dishes we had not observed before. Each chafing dish was flanked by an odd construction of bright metal surmounted by a wheel. Five assistants seized carvers, and with the precision of machines, the ducks were stripped down to the carcasses. I never saw such swift carvers elsewhere. The sliced breasts and the disjointed wings and legs were laid upon hot dishes; all that remained—bones and stuffing—went into the hoppers of the queer machines, and the shining wheels revolved as if moved by one man’s hand and will. From the tunnels at the bottom of the presses began to flow into vessels set to receive it a rich, ruddy liquid—the very essence of the juicy, flavorous meat. This was turned into the deep “blazers” of the chafing dishes, seasoned, and thickened with the same marvelous speed and dexterity that had characterized the preceding maneuvers, and the double burners below the dishes were lighted. Between the lazing lamps and the door were glass screens hinged to protect the flame from chance draughts. When the bubble began, the sliced meat was laid in the unctuous gravy; a few minutes sufficed to heat it through, and pressed duck was served and distributed to the waiting and watching crowd.

As soon as the ceremony began, every man and woman there had turned about to face the high priest and his satellites. It fell out that the portion assigned to us in the corner was that prepared by the hands of the august chef. To say that e partook of it reverently would hardly be an exaggeration. Not a word had been spoken by him or his lieutenants while the swift work went forward to complete perfection.

Anywhere else the performance might have been ridiculous. Scene, actors and accessories made it almost solemn.

The French cook is an artist born. To Frederic Delair, Sr., the task laid to his skilled hands was as important as the rendition of a great musical opus to the maestro who plays upon men’s heart-strings as upon a well-tuned harp. If I had never comprehended until that night what has made his nation the banner cooks of the world, I would have learned the secret through the pantomime enacted in our sight.

The Lenten Chafing Dish.

As I have written once and again, we take cookery too lightly. If we do what is set before us, with our might, it is muscle and not spirit that performs the work. One and all, we might become humble learners in the Academy of the Fine Arts presided over by the grey-bearded genius who looked like a frontier circuit-rider, and felt himself to be a king among men.

An American author who has gained for herself an enviable reputation as a past-mistress in the manipulation of the utensils she praises, writes of the chafing dish:

“There are still a few people who have so little appreciation of cookery as a fine art that they are bored by the sight of the workings of this utensil. These persons are, happily, in a small minority. Nearly every one feels a keen interest in watching the preparation of the dish that is soon to gratify his palate, and the hostess who presides over the chafing dish is usually flattered (or fluttered) by finding herself the center of observation.”

In another chapter of the valuable little handbook of the chafing dish from which I take these hints she goes on to say:

“The housekeeper of either sex who cooks on a chafing dish should be careful to have all the ingredients at hand before beginning operations. Many a good dish has been injured, if not actually spoiled, because the cook has had to wait at the last moment while some one hunted for the pepper, or measured the milk, or rushed for the lemon squeezer. Most of the measuring should be done in advance, and each ingredient should be put in place by the hand of the one who is to do the cooking.”

I congratulate the members of the Exchange in advance upon the fact that the few recipes, which are all I have room for here, are extracted by special permission of the author from the dainty and practical handbook to which I have referred just now. I purposely select dishes suitable for Lenten luncheons and suppers.

Fresh Cod with Anchovy.

Flake cold boiled cod, and to two cups of this allow two hard-boiled eggs, minced fine, a tablespoonful of anchovy paste and a cupful of white sauce. When this last is cooked smooth and thick stir in the anchovy and the eggs, and then the fish. Toss up from the bottom, that the taste of the anchovy may get all through the fish.

Shad Roes, Sautes.

Prepare the roes by boiling ten minutes in salted water to which has been added a teaspoonful of vinegar. This may be done in the lower compartment of the chafing dish. When the roes are done lay them in cold water for five or ten minutes to blanch them; then dip them in flour. Put two tablespoonfuls of butter into the blazer and lay in the roes. They will cook more evenly and quickly if you will cut each into two or three pieces.

When they are done, take them out, melt a little more butter in the blazer, and serve this with each portion of the roes. Pass sliced lemon with this dish.

Panned Oysters.

Melt two tablespoonfuls of butter in the blazer, and when it hisses lay in it twenty good-sized oysters which have been drained and dried between two towels. As soon as the edges curl, dust with pepper and salt and serve at once on toast.

Oysters a la Poulette.

Thirty oysters, one pint of cream, one tablespoonful of butter, one tablespoonful of flour, one-half teaspoonful of salt, saltspoonful of white pepper, three grates of nutmeg.

Put in the butter, and when it simmers, add the four; stir smooth, and mix in the cream, stirring constantly. Boil up once and put in the oysters. Cook about four minutes. Hen they plump nicely, season and serve on buttered toast or on toasted and buttered crackers.

Panned Oysters a la Newburg.

Cook the oysters as directed in the last recipe, and when they “ruffle” or “curl” stir in two tablespoonfuls of sherry in two tablespoonfuls of sherry or madeira. Cook one minute longer and serve on toast.

Little Pigs in Blankets.

Drain large, plump oysters and wrap about each a very thin slice of corned pork or fat bacon, skewering them together with a stout straw or a wooden toothpick. Lay in the heated blazer and cook until the pork heated blazer and cook until the pork or bacon is clear and crisped.

Eggs with Black Butter.

Three tablespoonfuls of butter, half a teaspoonful of vinegar, salt and pepper to taste; three or four eggs as you have room for them in the blazer.

Cook the butter in the blazer until it is a dark brown—almost black. Break in the eggs then, one at a time, and carefully, lest they should run. Baste with the butter until they are done, adding the vinegar just before you take them up, and sprinkle with pepper and salt.

Marion Harland

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Family Meals for a Week
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Ways and Ways of Doing Things

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This is the first article in March of the School for Housewives 1909 series published on March 7, 1909, and is an article on how much easier life gets for the maid if she employs a business-like mindset to her work.

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

Ways and Ways of Doing Things

“SHE is quiet and methodical.”

This was but one clause in the eminently satisfactory certificate given to Serena by her former employer.

One delightful Milesian used to call it “a stiff ticket.” I have never been sure that she was far wrong.

The aforesaid employer was “declining housekeeping”—which I believe to be a purely American phrase—and going to a hotel to live. There were but herself and husband “in family,” and where was the sense of keeping up a regular household for two old people?

This, likewise, I remark, is a sentiment and expression of American coinage.

But as to Serena, who had applied for the vacant place of waitress and chambermaid in my house. She was warranted willing, honest, neat and obliging. She had lived for 14 months in these capacities with the writer of the “stiff ticket,” who would not give her up now save for the declination I have named. Yet my yes returned once and again to the five words I have quoted on this page.

“Quiet and methodical.” No other employer with whom I have ever had similar dealings had used the phrase. It impressed me the more favorably that memory instantly conjured up the vision of the last incumbent of the office for which Serena had offered herself. Martha had not been noisy, it is true, but—methodical? At the idea I smiled broadly, and raising my eyes from the certificate, I saw the flicker of a responsive, yet a respectful gleam cross the face of my companion. She could not have divined the source of my amusement, but she saw that I smiled in a friendly fashion and reflected the light. I have bethought myself sometimes that that brief sympathetic flicker was a key to Serena’s innermost self. Nothing escapes the eyes that never stare inquisitively, and action follows perception.

A Willing Soul.

I engaged her on the spot. She has been an inmate of my house now for five years, and in all that time I have not had occasion to reprove her once for negligence or for any fault of manner of speech.

When, one morning last week, she forgot to put the salt on the breakfast table, a chuckle of delight ran around the board.

“The first time we ever caught her napping!” ejaculated a grinning lad.

And another, as the maid hastened to repair the omission: “Why, Martha, in all the two years she was with us, never set the table once without forgetting something. Don’t you recollect the morning we counted 10 articles she had to put in place after we sat down to breakfast?”

The tale was literally true, and she had believed, like a willing and honest soul (for she was that!) that the table was properly laid. From the time she left her bed with the sun and sought it long after the god of day had withdrawn his face from our side of the world, the girl was in a hurry. She swept with quick swirls of the broom that would have left a stream of mare’s tails in her wake had she been the old woman that brushed cobwebs from the sky; she scrubbed hard, irregularly and painfully, overlooking a corner here and there in her anxiety “to get through with the job.” That was a frequent sating with her. Every task was a “job,” and her eyes were always fixed upon another just ahead of her. Details were as nothing in her sight. “Consequentimentally”—as Mrs. Plornish says in “Little Dorritt”—Martha had what the boys called “the best forgettery” upon record in our domestic archives. It was absolutely phenomenal. And strange to say—for the girl, as I have said, meant to do right abashed her. She rectified them without a blush or murmur of apology. They were all in the day’s work.

Why did I keep her for two years? Partly because she was neat in person, quick of apprehension, willing, industrious and honest; partly because, as I shall show presently, her “ways” were so much like those of an immense number of other women. “Method, system and businesslike” are words which have no place in their working vocabulary. When at last Martha became the wife of a mechanic and departed to another city to miskeep a house of her own, we were sorry to part with her personality.

And, up to the last, her desire to preform her duties properly was so apparent that we were lenient in judgement.

Serena talks little in our hearing at any time. When about her work she never speaks except to answer questions. She does not “take life hard.” On the contrary, she is uniformly cheerful, and the children love to be with her. The secret of her success as a housemaid may be condense into one sentence: She knows what she means to do, and she thinks of nothing else while she has the task in hand. For the time she is a well-regulated machine, warranted to keep in order and to turn out certain results. Each hour has its appointed duty, and she drives steadily on until the next hour brings the next duty. The observant eyes have a cool brain behind them.

To sum up the case, she runs her housework as a man runs his business. I should not dare assert it were this a fancy sketch.

The world is likely to be turned upside down by the frenzied efforts of “pioneers” in the mission of raising women citizens to the level of men. Without trenching upon the field of controversy, may I say a few direct, plain words to my fellow housemothers with regard to what we have actually in hand and not what may or may not be?

Business Methods in the Home.

To begin with an unpalatable truth: As housekeepers we are, as a rule, unbusinesslike. When men say this we retort that a house cannot be run like a store or shop or office. Sometimes the husbands believe us. Oftener they are silenced, not convinced. The boldest and most compassionate of them dare not attempt to point out the flaws in his souse’s system of daily toil. I would better say “her lack of system.” When I have hinted at the possibility of performing the multifarious tasks incumbent upon wife, mother and caterer, according to rule and measure, I am assured that it is impracticable. I would not attempt to say how many thousand times that hateful adage.
“Man’s work is from sun to sun,
But woman’s work is never done,”
has been flung at me in the course of arguments upon the vexed subject.

There is no stranger feature in the whole question than that factory girls and clerk after they are married never think of applying to domestic labors the habits of punctuality and precision they learned in their former spheres. Yet the woman who brings energy, will and ingenuity to bear in the resolve to regulate her household by fixed laws, assigning to each hour its task and finishing each before the next is brought forward, finds to her amazement that she secure for herself what the rhyme I quote intimates can never be hers, to wit, leisure.

To illustrate, by a return to the true story of my maids, Martha never had “a moment to herself,” as she put it. Serena secures an hour in each afternoon for a bath and dressing for the evening, and has five evening per week on an average in her quiet room for her own sewing and reading.

I know—no one better!—how many and vexatious and inevitable are the interruptions which are hindrances in the “just one day” of the housemother’s life. Our husbands, sons and brothers have the same in number, if not exactly in kind. These are “circumstances” which we are to expect and to conquer. In planning what is to be done today allow for these. As your husband would say, “leave a margin,” or perhaps he will phrase it, “Set it down to profit and loss.” But hold fast to your schedule—when you have made it.

Did you ever talk to the manager of a successful hotel? Or ask to be conducted through the kitchen of the same establishment? You will learn much that will set you thinking, if you will do these things. I did. There is no reason why your house may not be “run” with the like regard for order and punctuality on a miniature scale. I have the pleasure of visiting homes where the experiment has been made, and successfully. Would it not be wise for each “progressive woman” to introduce “business methods” into her own home before essaying to lend a hand in making national, State and township laws? It may be capital practice for what lies before the sex in the future of the country. It should be easier to manage Bridget, Dinah and Thekla than to manipulate their masculine counterparts in primary meetings and at the polls. Lift the reproach of “unbusinesslike ways” from women. Put it out of the power of satirists to ask:

“If thou hast run with footmen and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses? And if in the land of peace wherein thou trustedst, they wearied thee, then what wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?”

Marion Harland

OTHER ARTICLES ALSO PUBLISHED…
Family Meals for a Week
The Housemothers’ Exchange

Hot Cakes

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This is the final article in February of the School for Housewives 1909 series published on February 28, 1909, and is an article on hot cakes.

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

Hot Cakes

AN EMINENT English physician—the late Dr. Milner Fothergill—wrote to me of an article I had published, advising light and simple breakfasts for American families:

“You are on the right track. More power to your elbow! The almost in evitable feature of your national breakfast—buckwheat cakes—is an outrage of natural laws.”

I felt, then, that he was too sweeping in his condemnation. There is an old song that expresses the sentiment of the average “native” on this head:

Do you ask what I love best of all things to eat?
Let them come every day, or come without warning—
There is nothing in all the wide world so sweet
As sausage and cakes on a cold, frosty morning.

The rhymester hit the nail on the head in the last line. “The outrage” is most digestible and most toothsome in the keenest winter weather. The “cold, frosty morning” goes as naturally with the buckwheats as the sausage, and the addendum of maple syrup, which completes a satisfactory meal. Canny housemothers adapt diet to weather. Hot cakes belong to frost and snow, as ices and jellied tongue and crisp salads to the dog days. To the failure to accommodate food to the thermometric conditions is due much of the reproach under which this one of our national dishes lies. At the right season, and made in the right way, hot cakes never come amiss. Nobody denies their popularity. I suppose the proverb, “It goes off like hot cakes,” must be of American birth. We borrowed the germ from the aboriginal Indian. He pounded maize upon a flat stone, mixed it with water to a pulp, and baked it upon another flat stone heated in the embers. The hungry settler who chanced to be his compulsory or voluntary guest, eating of the hot corn cake, pronounced it very good, and improved upon it to the evolution of johnny cake and griddles.

That is the name they go by in Yankeeland to this day. At the South the are “batter cakes,” probably in contradistinction to the firmer dough of “pone” and “ashcake.” South of Mason and Dixon’s line they are but one of the numberless “hot breads” which furnish the breakfast table with the regularity of sunrise. It may be remarked in passing that in defiance of dietetic dicta dyspepsia is not so common a disease at the South as in New England. I do not account for the phenomenon; I merely record the fact.

It Stuck to their Ribs.

An intelligent widow, left as a young woman to bring up six children upon painfully narrow means, tabulated the results of gastronomic experiments upon the digestion and consequent growth of her brood. She writes, when they are all men and women:

“I found that a hearty winter breakfast of buckwheat or rice cakes and molasses satisfied them for the forenoon as nothing else did. As the oldest boy phrased it: ‘It stuck to their ribs longer.’ You will comprehend what he meant. It kept them from being hungry in school and while at work. They were sturdy and active and spent much time in the open air. That may account for the fact that buckwheats and molasses never disagreed with them. I was careful that the batter should be light, and the cakes were cooked with as little grease as possible.”

Had she made the experiment later in life, she would have learned that the cakes may be baked and not fried. The gain to the average digestion effected by the use of the soapstone griddle is inestimable.

The dietetic disadvantages of hot cakes lies chiefly in the frying process. Even when the griddle is at the precise degree of heat requisite to cook them through and brown them quickly some of the fat will strike into the heart of the batter and more clings to the surface of the cakes. The soapstone abolishes the evil. It should be cleaned thoroughly with hot suds, rinsed in two waters, dried and then rubbed with plenty of salt.

“But does madame know how much salt it do take?” asked one novice in the use of the utensil. To which I replied that salt is cheap, and bade her beware that not a drop of grease ever touched the griddle. If this admonition be obeyed there is no smell of hot fat in halls and other rooms than the kitchen—nor, indeed, there! The cakes leave the soapstone brown and firm and so free from oily matter that they do not grease the hot napkin enveloping them when served.

That they are far more wholesome than when fried goes without saying.

Old-Fashioned Buckwheat Cakes.

One quart of the best buckwheat flour, four tablespoonfuls of yeast, one teaspoonful of salt, one good handful of Indian meal, two tablespoonfuls of good molasses (not syrup) enough warm (not hot) water to make the ingredients into a thin batter.

Beat long and hard; much of the excellence of the cakes depends upon them beating. The old-fashioned cook beat the batter for ten minutes. Cover, set in a moderately warm place to rise, where there is no danger of a sudden chill during the night. In the morning it should be a spongy mass, nearly as white as cream and full of bubbles. Should it have a sour smell, beat in a very little soda dissolved in warm water. Mix at night in a great stone or agate-ironware pot, and leave some of the risen batter in the bottom—about half a pint—to serve as a sponge for the next night, instead of using a fresh supply of yeast. If the weather be cold, you may do this nightly for a week. Don’t try it for a longer time, for fear of mustiness. Add the usual quantity of flour, meal, salt and molasses every night, the old batter taking the place of yeast.

Some New England foremothers put into the batter two-thirds buckwheat flour and one-third oatmeal, and left out the cornmeal. To my way of thinking (and taste) the Indian meal makes the makes more porous and palatable.

Old Virginia Flapjacks.

One quart of buttermilk.
Two eggs, beaten light without separating whites and yolks.
Two tablespoonfuls of the best molasses.
One tablespoonful of melted shortening.
One tablespoonful of salt.
One teaspoonful of soda, sifted three times with the meal and flour.
Half a cupful of flour.
Two cupfuls of Indian meal or enough to make a good batter.
Sift together meal, flour, soda and salt. Do this three times. Stir the beaten eggs into the buttermilk with shortening and molasses. Put the sifted meal and flour into a great bowl; make a hollow in the middle and pour in milk, eggs, etc., stirring vigorously all the time. The batter should be a trifle thicker than that for flannel cakes. Bake at once.

Flannel Cakes.

One quart of sweet milk.
Three tablespoonfuls of yeast (or half a yeast cake dissolved in warm water.)
One tablespoonful of melted butter or other shortening.
Two eggs, the yolks and whites beaten separately.
One teaspoonful of salt.
About two cups of sifted flour—enough for a good batter.
Make a sponge of yeast, milk and salted flour overnight and cover. Leave in a sheltered corner to rise. In the morning add the beaten eggs and the butter. Some think these excellent cakes improved by the addition of a tablespoonful of molasses beaten in with the eggs and butter. They take on a richer brown if this be added.

Marion Harland

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Fish, Flesh or Fowl

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This is the third article in February of the School for Housewives 1909 series published on February 21, 1909, and is an article on xx

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

Fish, Flesh or Fowl

THAT we of the Anglo-Saxon race—Britons and Americans alike—eat more meat than any other nation is a fact established beyond the reach of dispute. It would be waste of time, space, ink, paper and nervous force to enter upon a survey of the reasons why it would be well for us, physically, mentally—and vegetarians say morally—to eat but half as much flesh foods as we now consume. I doubt if all the lectures, essays and private arguments on the subject with which we have been pelted within a quarter century have lowered the income of one butcher in these United States. A thoughtful minority of readers who are willing to be learners, acknowledging that a heavy meal of beefsteak, fried potatoes and buckwheat cakes is not the best preparation hygienic science could devise for the day’s work, especially for the brain toiler, have modified the morning bill of fare. Fruit, cereals, made more nourishing by cream; broiled English bacon, toast, tea and coffee are stereotyped menus in thousands of homes. In as many fish is eaten more freely as a substitute for grosser meats. In like proportion eggs has assumed higher values, and command in consequence fabulous prices.

This complexion of dietetic opinion has done more than reverence for churchly ordinance to turn the attention of buyers and consumers to Lenten observances. I quoted here years ago the illustration of two points of view from flesh foods for the period enjoined by more than one communion of Christians:

“You are keeping Lent, I see, William,” said a Presbyterian master to his coachman as the former stopped at the door of the cottage in which the man’s family was at dinner.

The table was simply spread with salt codfish and potatoes.

“Ah, well,” pursued the employer, thoughtfully, “I believe it would be well for all of us if we abstained from eating meat four days in the week as the spring comes on.”

William pulled at his forelock.

“Yes sir! But, if you please, sir, you’re meaning that it would be better for the body. We think it is better for the soul.”

“It’s difficult to separate the two,” said the other, pleasantly, and went his way.

The Semi-Vegetarian.

He was right. While the two hold together we shall never show how much religious melancholia is the offspring of indigestion, nor how much easier it is for one whose stomach gives him no trouble to be a saint than it is for the confirmed dyspeptic to be a tolerably decent citizen and family man.

Granted, then, that we do eat more meat than is wholesome for us all the year around, and particularly in springtime, when the digestive organs are jaded by caring for much fiber and salted fats for four months on a stretch, what shall we buy and eat in place of beef, mutton, pork, veal and poultry?

The semi-vegetarian is quick to reply with a list of seafoods. “Full of phosphates, tender of tissue and with no coarse blood corpuscles to clog the stomach! Look at the hardy Norsemen and the islanders who subsist almost entirely upon fish and bivalves! Fevers and kidney complications are unknown, etc., etc., etc!”

The thorough vegetarian holds, as one wrote to me the other day, that “a fish suffers as much in the killing as a warm-blooded creature.”—while anther “thanks God nightly that nothing He has made has died that she might live.” This real simon pure and thorough-paced vegetarian, is ready with a substitute for meat, fish and crustaceans.

The Abused Organs.

“Nuts!” he proclaims, “solve the food problem to the demonstration.” Eaten with salt, or with sugar, or plain as they came from the tree; ground into protose, in imitation of Hamburg steaks; moulded into croquettes and fried in vegetable oil or butter; pounded fine and blended with milk and butter into a puree—there is, he affirms, practically no end to the varieties and uses of them—the food God made to grow for the service of man. In desserts, they are of acknowledged worth the world over. The gourmand, surfelted by the beastly profusion of roasts, entrees, games and gravies, resort to nuts and raisins, to walnuts and wine, to restore tone to the abused organs. It is a natural taste—that for this staff of life. What child does not take to a nut tree as naturally and eagerly as a squirrel?

Beans, peas and cereals of all kinds vary his dietary, but nuts are the staple.

Fish, eggs, milk, nuts and green esculents—we have here the menu for our reformed dietary for 40 days to come. As a woman who has lived long and seen much of the planet upon which we live, I may ask humbly, respectfully, what is to be done for those of us who cannot drink milk regularly without growing bilious; those who dislike eggs and cannot digest them; the respectable minority to whom fish is generally rank poison; and the greater number of men and women, and especially children, with whom nuts disagree violently, when eaten in abundance?

That all these exceptions (if you choose to call them so) do exist, and some of them in force, I constantly affirm. There may be healthy human beings who cannot digest meat and to whom the taste is disagreeable. I sat out a dinner party next to one such once upon a time. There were 12 courses—all well cooked—and she dined upon a boiled potato and a water ice. But, then, she was an extremist who maintained that milk and its by-products, butter, are “animal matter.”

Let It Alone.

If this sound flippant, believe that it is written in very sober perplexity, as the Lenten season draws on apace. If church and hygiene concur in prescribing fish as part of daily food, in the place of flesh, with eggs as the alternative, it is the bounded duty of those whose digestive idiosyncrasies revolt at the suggestion to fight against aversion, based upon experience, and learn to eat fish and eggs? We have become uncomfortably familiar with the words “ptomaine poison” within the last few years. Stories of fish, kept in cold storage from September until April, then vended as “fresh,” have made us shy of marketed salmon, cold and halibut. Even if we can be sure that our breakfast eggs are not of the crated variety, we tire of the ovates after 50 or 60 repetitions.

I wish some of staff of physicians and nurses would let us have their honest verdict upon the nut craze. I have not exaggerated the claims made by vegetarians of a certain type, on behalf of these substitutes for flesh foods. In reading the argument adduced in support of said claims, I have been led to collect statistics from mothers and housewives relative to the wholesomeness of nuts. I am surprised to find how many report evil effects from free use of the “substitutes.” With some systems they induce constipation; several women agree in declaring that they have headaches always after parking heartily of them, and six mothers report that eating nuts produces what are sometimes called “cold sores,” and by some known as “fever blisters,” on the lips. I have known for a long time that I cannot indulge in Brazil nuts and English walnuts without suffering from an irritating rash, and that the outbreak of “fever blisters” about the lips is a warning signal that no more of the oily nutriment must be eaten for awhile. Raw chestnuts are notoriously unwholesome.

What is the conclusion of the whole matter? One thing is clear: It is presumptuous and irrational to ordain a fixed dietary for human creatures. The homely adage that “one man’s meat is another man’s bane” is as true as if it had been recorded in the Scriptures. In the same family, as mothers will testify, there are as many varieties of likings as there are children. I do not believe in pampering foolish fancies in ordering our bills of fare. Boys and girls should be trained to partake of what is set before them, asking no questions for civility’s sake. But, when a certain article of food disagrees with child or adult once and again, it is absolutely wrong—a sin against nature and health—for that person to eat it. Something in you wars against that particular combination of ingredients. Let it alone! Be it fish, flesh, fowl, eggs, or even “the one perfect food—milk!” Some imperfection in the individual makeup is antagonistic. Follow the teachings of Mother Nature, when you have assured yourself that it is she who is speaking, and not caprice.

Marion Harland

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The Box from Home

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This is the second article in February of the School for Housewives 1909 series published on February 14, 1909, and is an article on sending a box of goodies to children attending boarding school.

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

The Box from Home

THAT was that I was trying to get off by express from a country railway station. It was addressed to a certain great preparatory academy at L—–, a rural town, but so widely advertised by the list of graduates who have distinguished themselves in universities to which the “rep” was the vestibule, that I was confounded at hearing that the express office at which I applied had no branch there. While I parleyed with the agent, endeavoring to convince him with a woman’s logic that, since I was positive I was right, he must be wrong, a man whom I knew slightly as a commute on the railway to New York, stopped and lifted his hat to me with:

“Pardon me! but can I be of any help to you? I could not avoid overhearing part of your conversation.”

I explained and he lent an attentive ear.

“I am on my way to P—–.” Naming a two a few miles from L—–. “If you will permit me to take charge of that box and see that it is transferred to the local delivery line at P—–, it will give me real pleasure to do you the trifling service.”

“But,” I began, “that would be asking a great deal from a busy man—”

He interrupted me, but courteously:

“It will be my pleasure, as I said. For I have not forgotten hat I, too, was a boy once,” glancing with a kind smile at the address on the case, “and what it was to me to get a box from home.”

I have never packed one since without recalling the smile in the kindly eyes and the softened tone that told of fond and grateful memories.

While I write of the incident there float back to me, as if 45 yeas were less than that number of days, the words of a letter received by me the middle of January, 1864. My favorite brother was in the Southern army, and was now a prisoner of war in a Federal fortress. Though the courtesy of his nominal warders I was permitted to send him a great case at the holidays. Nothing was “contraband” at that season of good will to men.

“I wish you could have seen the opening of that box!” he wrote. “The roast turkey, the ham, the fried chicken, the cakes—with all the delicious et ceteras, set out a royal feast. We shut our eyes (but not our mouths!) and ‘made believe,’ as the children do, that we were at home.”

The “Ground Swell.”

Those of our readers who are not good sailors will comprehend what is meant by the “ground swell” succeeding a storm. Voyagers who are never sick at sea—and, as the manner of such is, boast ostentatiously of the immunity—succumb to the long, slow roll of the sullen billows. The ground swell of subsiding excitement that follows the joyousness of the holidays is to many the dreariest period of the year. To the schoolboy and schoolgirl the routine of study is drudgery until they get used again to the pressure and pull of the harness. The month preceding vacation was all aglow with anticipation. January is like flat champagne. Hearts and spirits obey the universal natural law of rise and depression.

How many mothers remind themselves of the general operation of this law? Jack writes home that he is “in the dumps,” and Mary that she is homesick, and the trend of all the letters bearing the date of “January, 1909,” betrays the settled conviction of boy and girl that dolls are stuffed with sawdust and “all the world is hollow! hollow! hollow!” The ground swell is in full action.

Now is the nick of time for the box from home.

In preparing for Christmas the mothers who have had experience along this dark-blue line have held back a few things, which, but for that wise forethought, would have gone into the array of holiday gifts that made glad the hearts of children. Let her bring them out now from their hiding places and make them bear their part in the blessed work of “making believe.”

I digress here to observe that those who have put the habit behind them with other childish things lose much of the flavor and sweetness of everyday life.

The lose much who do not read Lewis Carroll’s inimitable “Alice” books. They lose more, and they will go on losing, who cannot appreciate the delicate, delicious humor of the works. Nobody who has been with our darling Alice “Through the Looking Glass” will ever forget Humpty-Dumpty’s arguments in favor of the “un-birthday presents,” as opposed to that bestowed on the anniversary. According to him, “there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents.”

“Certainly!” said Alice.

Then—“there’s a knockdown argument for you!”

My readers are more stupid than I could be made to believe if they fail to apply the “knock-downer” for themselves in connection with this, my un-anniversary lay sermon.

The case you fill for the “un-birthday” and “un-holiday” surprise should have a lingering fragrance of the festive season. Some wants were left unsatisfied, as you may know. I doubt if the boy has a pincushion on the dressing bureau he may share with a roommate. I would be willing to wager that he has not a shoebag to hang on the inside of his closet door, or a framed photograph of his country home. A cake with his initials on top will bring up a glow of self-importance that will strengthen his resolution to live up to the ideal the old mother sets up for him in her heart. A pocket edition of an author you know to be a favorite with him will go with him on trolley car and train, and when summer days come will be a companion in forest rambles.

Mary is not superior to enjoyment of home-made “goodies.” We have no better word for bonbons, fruits, cookies, nuts, candied cherries and plums, beaten biscuits, wee jars of pickles and jams, fancy cheeses—that go into the composition of a Saturday supper in a dormitory, with one’s dear particular group of cronies to help dispose of it.

The box from home may keep the “dumpish” boy off the streets for more than one night. It will put a different complexion upon the world Mary has discovered to be hollow all through.

If you have no bairns of your very own, or if yours have passed their school days, or if they are still in the nursery, do a little make-believe on your own account. The year is still new and the need of each human creature for comfort and cheer is ever old and never distant from each one of us. Bethink yourself who dwell in luxury and love among your own people of the lonely lad who is trying to “keep straight” in a sixth-rate boarding house upon a wage of $10 per week; doing his very best to be honest and clean and diligent in business for the sake of the old mother who lives 1000 miles away, or for the dearer sake of her who died last winter.

Brace up the sinking heart of the girl from a village you know of in New Jersey or in Michigan, who is fighting the world single-handed. God help her! in in the wilderness of a city of 1,000,000 souls (so-called), not one of which cares for hers. Bestir your wits and energies to send her a box from home. She may have no home now, but beguile her into believing that she has by the beautiful appropriateness of what she will draw from the depths of the fairy coffer. Things which her mother might thought of; useful trifles that she may keep about her every day and handle gratefully; books of cheer wet and dreary evenings when she is too tired to sew or knit or even to sleep. Not trashy, sensational fiction or goody-goody books, but healthful stories with more laughter than tears in them. And do not forget “sweeties” of the right kind, done up in tissue paper and tied with bright ribbons, such as everybody used at Christmas and next-t-nobody uses between times. In short, such a box as the girl would have had on a birthday from the homestead in that far-off State had not poverty pulled it down over her head and beaten her forth to struggle for bread and shelter.

Marion Harland

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For Sweet Charity’s Sake

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This is the first article in February of the School for Housewives 1909 series published on February 7, 1909, and is an article on hosting a St. Valentine chairty fair.

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

For Sweet Charity’s Sake

From time immemorial the fancy fair, the benevolent bazar — in fact, eleemosynary entertainments of what-soever kind—have been the favorite butt of the satirical and the stingy! We are told of worthless articles which are sold at big prices; of “no change” systems; of the shameless expenditure of time and labor for that which satisfies nobody; of the humbuggery of the whole business—until a certain unsavoriness clings to the very name of anything done for “sweet charity’s” sake, if it takes the shape of buying and selling.

Therefore, when I intimate that a pleasant “function” may be arranged in anticipation of St. Valentine’s Day that will bring innocent enjoyment to the participants and customers, and net a neat sum for some deserving object, I foresee dissent and demur on the part of those I would interest. Let us reason together a bit concerning the prejudice we cannot ignore. I grant that it would not “pay” in any sense of the word for such a busy woman as, say, myself, to spend evenings in stuffing pincushions and embroidering sofa pillows, and mornings making cakes and pastries, I could better afford to donate ten, twenty, fifty dollars to the “cause” than engage in labors so expensive, in view of money value of time. Men usually condemn fairs and bazars upon this principle. Business and professional husbands and father estimate the worth of women’s work by the value of their own, whereas the hours, bestowed by the average housewife and the daughter at home upon charity work represent neither dollars nor cents. What the things manufactured by their nimble fingers will bring into the church, club or association is so much clear gain.

So much for the pecuniary side of the question. The moral and social advantages of the function are not slightly esteemed, even by those who assist in the church supper or the fair projected by the young people of the neighborhood in behalf of a local charity. It is much, as pastors and pastors’ wives will tell you, to bring all classes of the church together upon an equal footing; to level, for the time, the fences built by folly and lucre between neighborhood cliques, and to unite all in a common interest. It is a step in the direction of the millennium of universal brotherhood.

Am I didactic? Forget all except that I would have those who love their fellow-men engage in the beautiful enterprise of working for others and forgetfulness of the petty claims of personal dignity and fancied self-consequence. It is a good way to begin the year.

“Hearts Are Trumps.”

Now for our valentine party.

It goes without saying that “hearts are trumps,” for this once, at least. Set your lively wits to work to devise novel ways and means of illustrating the idea. Provide a generous supply of what were known in my fancy-fair days as “bachelors’ pincushions.” They are heart-shaped. Cut two pieces of cardboard into the right form; cover each with thin muslin, basted smoothly over the cards; then with silk, velvet, cotton, satin or morocco. Baste or glue upon the shapes; lay a thickness of cotton batting between the two sides of the heart, and bind or stitch the edges neatly together.

If you have skill with the brush or pen, you may decorate the outer covering with devices suitable to the season. Stick pins closely around the whole heart, and the cushion is ready for the bachelor’s pocket or desk or dressing table. They are really useful, being far more convenient for reference in a “hurry call” for a pin than a paper or “book” holding the tiny indispensables to human comfort.

Heart-shaped shaving cases, calendars, matching holders, workbags, fancy shopping bags, needle books and “housewives” (our foremothers called them “huzzifs”), centerpieces and dollies—the line of possibilities for the managers of the fancy tables is limitless.

As to the supper, imagination and ingenuity have here as wide a range. Salads of lettuce and celery hearts may be disposed of in the desired heart-shape upon chilled platters; it is easy to procure heart-shaped moulds for jellies and lees; small tarts are cut in the same form while cookies and crullers lend themselves readily to it.

In the matter of decoration, my young workers need little instruction from me. Wreaths, of evergreen are twisted into hears; chains of smaller hearts depend from the wall garlands. It is even feasible to have the small supper tables set about the hall for the convenience of select parties of feasters, cut into the popular form. They are of cheap deal and any carpenter can hew out the wedge-shaped “nick” and round the double curve to produce the desired effect—a rude semblance of the conventional idea of the all-important organ.

Right thankful am I that this season there is no talk of “leap year” such as vexed my matronly soul last February! I believe in legitimate transactions in hearts, but I would have them constructed in the good old-fashioned way. For four years we are tolerable safe from indecorous invasion of masculine rights in the matter of proposals and the feminine prerogative of acceptance or rejection.

St. Valentine Cookies.

Cream together two cupfuls of fine sugar and one of butter. Beat three eggs light, yolks and whites separately, and add the beaten yolks to the creamed butter and sugar; next, an even teaspoonful of ground mace, and half as much cloves. Sift twice, and together, a pint of flour and an even teaspoonful of baking powder. Add this to the mixture you already have, alternately with the stiffened whites. The dough should be just soft enough to roll into a sheet a quarter of an inch thick. Cut into heart shapes; stick a bit of citron, like a tiny heart, in the middle of each, and bake in a steady, brisk oven.

Almond Cookies.

Warm the butter very slightly. Cream light a cupful of butter with two cupfuls of powdered sugar. Beat two eggs without separating yolks and whites. They should be smooth and light. Whip these into the sugar and butter with half a teaspoonful of grated nutmeg. Sift together twice a heaping pint of flour and a teaspoonful of baking powder. Add to the rest of the ingredients, and lastly, when all are well incorporated, half a cupful of almonds, blanched and minced very fine. Moisten them with rosewater as you chop, to present them from oiling.

Roll out light and quickly into a sheet a quarter-inch thick, cut into hearts, put a split almond on the top of each, and sift coarse granulated sugar over them before they go into the oven.

Ginger Cookies.

Rub a cupful of sugar to a cream with a scant cupful of butter; beat into this a cupful of nice molasses and one of milk. Beat for a whole minute before adding a teaspoonful, each of ground ginger and of cinnamon. Sift an even teaspoonful of baking soda twice with three cupfuls of flour and mix all together, beating with long, upward strokes. The dough should not be too stiff to roll out easily into a thin sheet. Stick a raisin in the center of each cake.

Although there are no eggs in these cookies, they are delicious when properly made.

Marion Harland

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Second Paper on Colonial Cookery

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This is the fourth article in January of the School for Housewives 1909 series published on January 24, 1909, and is a continuation of the previous article on colonial cookery.

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

Second Paper on Colonial Cookery

The “spider” and the “hoe,” described in our former chapter on the colonial kitchen, had short, thick handles, by which they were lifted on and from the fire. The handle of the frying-pan was from three to four feet in length. There was not an inch too much of it when pancakes were to grace the family board.

The traditional feat of tossing a pancake up the chimney with dexterity that made it turn a somersault in the transit and alight unerringly in the middle of the pan may be an overstrained version of the fact that pancakes were tossed high and straight by accomplished cooks. If the daughter of a housewifely mother in training for managing a home of her own did not win the reputation accorded by a western traveler to the locomotive on a certain railway, of “jumping higher and lighting truer than any other in the State, the more refined phraseology of her eulogists meant the same thing. “She beats all for tossing a pancake,” conferred the degree of “past mistress of cookery.”

Here is one recipe for the vaunted delicacy.

Old-Time Pancakes.

“Beat six eggs light; whites and yolks must be separate. Beat the yolks 10 minutes by clock, then strain. The whites must stand alone. Mix the beaten yolks with a pint and a half of sweet milk that has not been skimmed. Warm milk from the cow is best. Then stir in a quarter of a pound of melted butter. Sift a scant cup of flour with a little salt; stir the flour, one handful at a time, into the egg and milk by turns, with a great spoonful of the stiff whites.

“You must have the frying pan clean and on the fire with a quarter of a pound of butter heaped in it. It must not burn, but it should hiss around the edges. Put in enough batter to cover the whole bottom of the pan, but the pancake should not be too thick.”

“Fry over hot, clear coals, toss the minute the lower side is done. Sprinkle with sugar with which you have mixed a little cinnamon. Or, if you prefer, roll the pancakes up plain and eat with a sweet butter sauce.”

“Mem. It is customary to have pancakes on Shrove Tuesday.”

You will complain that the formula the eighteenth century matron had time to write and to follow is elaborate by comparison with the terms of our modern recipes. What, then, will you say to our next selection?”

To Make Oyster “Pye.”

“Take a quart of large oysters and boil them in their own liquor, with onion, a little thyme, winter savory and sweet marjoram. Season with whole peppers and a blade of mace. When they have stewed a little take them off the fire and let them stand until they are almost cold. Then take the yolk of an egg, beat it up in a little of the liquor, and take some parsley, thyme and a little lemon peel, 12 of the oysters, a little salt, pepper, and a blade of mace and two good spoonfuls of grated white bread. Mince all very small, mix it with egg, and make it into lumps as big as oysters. Then make a good short crust, and put it in the patty-pan. Then put in the parboiled oysters, the lumps of ‘forced’ (sic) meat and the marrow of marrow bones, the yolks of 10 hard-boiled eggs, whole. Then cover your ‘pye,’ and just as it goes into the oven put in liquor the oysters were stewed in. It will take an hour’s baking. Then take off the lid. Have ready half a pound of butter, half a pint of gravy, the yolk of a hard egg, bruised and dissolved in the gravy, and a little lemon peel shred very small. Put it over the fire and make it very hot. Then squeeze in the juice of half a lemon, and pour it all over the ‘pye.’

“Lay on the lid again, and serve very hot.”

Without stopping to inquire how much oyster flavor remained in the “pye” by the time all the ingredients were in, pass we on to a formula that is simplicity itself when contrasted with the last:

To Make Butter Chicken.

“Take two chickens, picked very clean, and boil them with a blade of mace and a little salt. Take them off and cut them in pieces and put them into a toss-up pan with a little parsley. Shred a little parsley, a little lemon peel, a bit of butter, a little of the liquor the chicken was boiled in. Toss up all together with four spoonfuls of cream. Put in a little salt. Put it into your dish and some juice of lemon. Garnish the dish with sliced lemon, then serve it up hot.”

Crab Soup.

A recipe for crab soup was given to me, with the assurance that the original was found in a scrap book which bore upon a tattered fly-leaf the name of “Martha Washington.”

“Boil one dozen large, fresh crabs. They must be lively when they go into the pot. Let them get cold and pick out the meat with a fork or awl. Cut into bits a pound of corned pork and boil very fast half an hour. (Mem.—Smoked bacon will not do.) Take the pot from the fire and set in very cold water to cool. Skim off the fat as it congeals on the top and throw away. Put the liquor the pork was boiled in back over the fire. As soon as it is hot put the crab meat into this and stew slowly half an hour. Meanwhile whip the yolks of six eggs very smooth, pour upon them, stirring all the time, a pint of fresh milk which has not been skimmed, heated scalding hot. Put this into a clean stew pan, stir in the crab meat and the liquor in which they were cooked. At the last stir in a spoonful of green parsley chopped very small. Serve very hot.”

We heave a sigh of relief that onions, heard-boiled eggs and “lemon peel shred small” do not smother the taste of the sea food in this formula.

Writers of New England folk tales have made us familiar with the name of “tansey pudding.” One of them speaks of it as “a delicate dainty.” Could it have been what our North river chatelaine registers under the head of “a tansey”?

To Make a Tansey.

“Take the yolks of 18 eggs, the whites of four, and half a pint of cream, half a pint of the juice of spinage (sic) and tansey, together with a spoonful of grated bread and a grated nutmeg. Put in a little salt and sweeten it to your taste. Then beat it well together and put it in the dish and strew loaf sugar over it. Garnish it with oranges cut in quarters and serve it up hot.”

Presumably the dish was put into the Dutch oven after the loaf sugar (pulverised in the mortar and sifted through coarse net) was strewed on top. Please note that the write hints at nothing of the kind, or so much as approaches the fire in imagination until she enjoins that the “tansey” be served up hot.

Alas for the tyro in housewifery who was her contemporary, if she tried to lean practical cookery from the manuscript manuals of her elders!

Eggs were not 50 cents per dozen 150 years agone, yet 18 for one dish of “tansey” and a dozen for the next recipe on our list must have kept Dame Partlet and her pullets busy.

To Make Puffert.

“Take 12 eggs, one pint of milk, three-quarters of a pound of butter, one pound of sugar, one pound of currants, four pounds of flour, three spoonfuls of yeast, 12 cloves and one nutmeg. Mix well together; let it stand to rise. Then bake it. The milk and butter must be warm.”

Again, alas for the learner who could not read between the lines how long “it” was to rise; when the eggs were to go in; how the flour should be incorporated with the fruit; if this last were to be dredged, and if cloves were put in whole.

The cook-book maker of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries sets, in fancy, the unskilled worker before her, and, if she understands her trade, instructs her reader as if the learner were ignorant of the successive processes of compounding and cooking. Our very great-grandmother took too much for granted. Hence we find her store of practical recipes—which she called “receipts”—broken reeds, when we would fain depend upon her garnered wisdom. Her books are amusing reading. And other lessons than those that have to do with the preparation of rare and racy dishes are to be gathered from the study of them and of the times to which they belong.

Lessons of contentment with the lives we stigmatize as artificial and unhealthy, fast and crowded. If those were “good old times,” ours are better. If spinning was fine exercise for the growing girl, tennis, golf and other outdoor games are more healthful.

Solomon kept a very far look ahead in these as in major and minor masters of his day and ours.

“Say not though, ‘What is the cause that the former days were better than these?’ For thou dost not inquire wisely concerning us.”

Marion Harland

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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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