that should not want for the beautiful effects, with the contents of that pail—tub—bucket—of what the peoples here call the svill,” pointing to a mass of dinner débris set just without a side door.
“Monsieur,” I rejoined, with a grimace that matched his, “moi, je n’aime pas le svill!”
He was right, without doubt, in the implication that very much is thrown away as refuse which could be reproduced upon the table to the satisfaction and advantage of host and guest. Perhaps my imagination was more to blame than he for my unlucky recollection of his countrywoman’s recommendation of a mayonnaise to a doubting guest:
“You need not fear to partake, madame. The fish has been preserved from putrefaction by a process of vinegar and charcoal!”
It is a substantial comfort to the Anglo-Saxon stomach for its owner to know what he is eating. Call it prejudice, if you like, but it may have something to do with making one “true clear through,” as my Yankee girl puts it.
“But such poetic repasts!” sighs my travelled acquaintance. “Such heavenly garnishes, and flowers everywhere, and the loveliest side-dishes, and everything so exquisitely served! When I think of them, I abominate our great, vulgar joints and stiff dinner-tables!”
Yet Mrs. Nouveau Riche dawdles all the forenoon over a piece of tasteless embroidery, and gives the afternoon to gossip; while Bridget or Dinah prepares dinner, and serves it in accordance with her peculiar ideas of right and fitness.
“Train American servants?” she says, in a transport of contemptuous incredulity at my suggestion that here is good missionary ground, “I have had enough of that! Just as soon as I teach them the rudiments of decent cookery they carry off their knowledge to somebody else, trade for double wages from my neighbor upon what they have gained from me!”
“But,” I remark, argumentatively, “do you not see, my dear lady, that so surely as ‘ten times one is ten,’ if all your neighbors were, in like manner, to instruct the servants who come to them and desert, so soon as they are taught their trade, the great work of securing wholesome and palatable cookery and tasteful serving would soon be an accomplished fact in your community? and, by the natural spread of the leaven, the race of incompetent cooks and clumsy waiters would before long become extinct? Would it not be worth while for housekeepers to co-operate in the attempt to secure excellence in these departments instead of ‘getting along somehow’ with ‘the materials’—i.e., servants—‘this country affords?’ Why not compel the country—wrong-headed abstraction that it is!—to afford us what we want? Would not the demand, thus enforced and persisted in, create a supply?”
“Not in my day,” she retorts, illogically. “I don’t care to wear myself out for the benefit of posterity.”
I do not gainsay the latter remark. If she had any desire that the days to come should be better than these, she would see to it that her daughters are rendered comparatively independent of the ungrateful caprices of the coming Celt or Teuton, or the ambitious vagaries of “the Nation’s Ward,” by a practical knowledge of housewifery. Perhaps she is deterred from undertaking their instruction by the forecast shadow of their desertion of the maternal abode for homes of their own.
The prettiest thing that has ever been said of the informal “talks” I had with you, my Reader, in former days, was the too-flattering remark of a Syracuse (N. Y.) editor, that they were “like a breath of fresh air blowing across the ‘heated term’ of the cook.”
I quote it, partly that I may thank the author, principally that I may borrow the illustration. The heavenly airs that really temper the torrid heats of the kitchen are loving thoughts of those for whom the house-mother makes the home. There is a wealth of meaning in the homely old saying about “putting one’s name in the pot.” It is one thing, I submit to the advocates of co-operative housekeeping, whether big John’s and little John’s and Mamie’s and Susie’s and Tommy’s meals are prepared according to the prescriptions of a salaried chef, in the mammoth boilers, steamers and bakers of an “establishment” along with the sustenance of fifty other families, or whether the tender mother, in her “order of the day,” remembers that while Papa likes smart, tingling dashes of cayenne, garlic, and curry, the baby-tongues of her brood would cry out at the same; that Mamie has an aversion to a dish much liked by her brothers and sisters; that Susie is delicate, and cannot digest the strong meat that is the gift of flesh and brains to the rest. So Papa gets his spiced ragoût under a tiny cover—hot-and-hot—and the plainer “stew,” which was its base, nourishes the bairns. Mamie is not forced to fast while the rest feast, and by pale Susie’s plate is set the savory “surprise,” which is the visible expression of loving kindness, always wise and unforgetting.
You remember the legend that tells how Elizabeth of Hungary, having been forbidden by her lord to carry food to the poor, was met one day by him outside the castle walls, as she was bearing a lapful of meat and bread to her pensioners. Louis demanding sternly what she carried in her robe, she was obliged to show him the forbidden burden. “Whereupon,” says the chronicler, “the food was miraculously changed, for his eyes, to a lapful of roses, red-and-white, and, his mind disabused of suspicion, he graciously bade her pass on whithersoever she would.”
I have bethought me many times of the legend when I have seen upon very modest tables such proofs of thoughtful recollection of the peculiar tastes and needs of the flock to which the home caterer ministered as made my heart warm and eyes fill, and threw, to my imagination, chaplets lovelier than Elizabeth’s roses around the platter and bowl. This is the true poetry of serving, and the loving appreciation of it is the reward, rich and all-sufficient, of thought, care, and toil.
A few words more before we proceed, in due order, to business. This volume is not an amendment to “General Receipts, No. 1 of the Common-Sense Series.” Still less is it intended as a substitute for it. I have carefully avoided the repetition, in this volume, of a single receipt which appeared in that. This is designed to be the second story in the edifice of domestic economy, the materials of which I have accumulated since the first was completed. As money makes money, and a snow-ball gathers snow, so receipts, new, valuable, and curious, flowed in upon me after “No. 1” was given to the world. Some of the earliest to reach me were so good that I began a fresh compilation by the time that book was fairly off the press.
Let me say here what you may find useful in your own researches and collections. My best ally in the classification and preservation of the materials for this undertaking has been the “The Household Treasury,” published by Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger, Philadelphia, and arranged by a lady of that city. It is a pretty volume of blank pages, a certain number of which are devoted to each department of cookery, beginning with soups, and running through the various kinds of sweets, pickles, etc. Each is introduced by a handsome vignette and appropriate motto, with a title at the top of every page. The paper is excellent and distinctly ruled. I wish I could put a copy into the hands of every housekeeper who believes in system of details, and development of her individual capabilities. It has so far simplified and lightened the task of preparing “Breakfast, Luncheon and Tea” for my public, that I cannot withhold this recommendation of it to others.
Yet if “General Receipts” was written con amore, its successor has been, in a still higher degree, a work of love and delight. There were times during the preparation of the trial volume when I could not feel quite sure of my audience. There has not been a moment, since I began that which I now offer for your acceptance, in the which I have not been conscious of your full sympathy; have not tasted, in anticipation, your enjoyment of that which I have taken such pleasure in making ready.
Do not think me sentimental when I ask that the Maltese cross, marking, as in the former work, such receipts as I have tested and proved for myself to be reliable, may be to you,
