pan. Always keep your cook well supplied with soap, washing mops and coarse linen dish rags. I have noticed that if you hem the latter, servants are not so apt to throw them away. Insist on having each utensil cleaned immediately after being used. Have shelves and proper places to put each article, hooks to hang the spoons on, etc. If you cannot have an oilcloth on your kitchen floor, have it oiled and then it may be easily and quickly wiped over every morning. Once a week, have the kitchen and every article in it thoroughly cleaned. First clean the pipe of the stove, as the dust, soot and ashes fly over the kitchen and soil everything. Then take the stove to pieces, as far as practicable, cleaning each part, especially the bottom, as neglect of this will prevent the bread from baking well at the bottom. After the stove is thoroughly swept out,—oven and all, apply stove polish. I consider "Crumbs of Comfort" the best preparation for this purpose. It comes in small pieces, each one of which is sufficient to clean the stove once, and is thus less apt to be wasted or thrown away by servants than stove polish that comes in a mass. Next remove everything from the kitchen safe and shelves, which must be scoured before replacing the utensils belonging to them, and these too must first be scoured, scalded, and wiped dry. Then wash the windows, and lastly the floor, scouring the latter unless it is oiled, in which case, have it merely wiped over.
Never let a servant take up ashes in a wooden vessel. Keep a sheet-iron pan or scuttle for the purpose. At night, always have the water buckets filled with water and also the kettles, setting the latter on the stove or range, in case of sickness or any emergency during the night. Have kindling wood at hand also, so that a fire may be quickly made, if needed.
Sometimes a discoloration is observable in iron kettles or other iron vessels. This may be avoided by filling them with hay before using them. Pour water over the hay, set the vessel on the fire and let it remain till the water boils. After this, scour in sand and ashes—then wash in hot soap-suds, after which process, there will be no danger of discoloration.
Household Measures.
Wheat Flour. 1 lb. is 1 quart.
Indian Meal. 1 lb. 2 oz. are 1 quart.
Butter, when soft, 1 lb. is 1 pint.
Loaf sugar, broken, 1 lb. is 1 quart.
White sugar, powdered, 1 lb. 1 oz. are 1 quart.
Best brown sugar, 1 lb. 2 oz. are 1 quart.
Ten eggs are 1 lb.
Flour. 8 quarts are 1 peck.
Flour. 4 pecks are 1 bushel.
16 large tablespoonfuls are ½ pint.
8 large tablespoonfuls are 1 gill.
2 gills are ½ pint.
A common sized tumbler holds ½ pint.
A tablespoonful is ½ oz.
60 drops are equal to a teaspoonful.
4 teaspoonfuls are equal to 1 tablespoonful.
YEAST.
Boil one quart of Irish potatoes in three quarts of water. When done, take out the potatoes, one by one, on a fork, peel and mash them fine, in a tray, with a large iron spoon, leaving the boiling water on the stove during the process. Throw in this water a handful of hops, which must scald, not boil, as it turns the tea very dark to let the hops boil.
Add to the mashed potatoes a heaping teacupful of powdered white sugar and half a teacupful of salt; then slowly stir in the strained hop tea, so that there will be no lumps. When milk-warm add a teacupful of yeast and pour into glass fruit jars, or large, clear glass bottles, to ferment, being careful not to close them tightly. Set in a warm place in winter, a cool one in summer. In six hours it will be ready for use, and at the end of that time the jar or bottle must be securely closed. Keep in a cold room in winter, and in the refrigerator in summer. This yeast will keep two weeks in winter and one week in summer. Bread made from it is always sweet.—Mrs. S. T.
Irish Potato Yeast.
1 quart of potatoes, boiled and mashed fine.
1 teaspoonful of salt.
½ teacup of sugar.
Put two cups of flour in a bowl, and pour over it three cups of strong hop-water, scalding hot, and stir it briskly.
Then put all the ingredients in a jar together, and when cool enough, add a cup of yeast, or leaven.
Set it by the fire to rise.
It will be ready for use in five or six hours.—Mrs. E.
Another Recipe for Yeast.
12 large potatoes, boiled and mashed fine.
1 teacup of brown sugar.
1 teacup of salt.
1 gallon of hop tea.
Mix the ingredients well, and when milk-warm, add a pint of yeast. Set it in a warm place to rise. Put one teacupful of this yeast, when risen, to two quarts of flour.—Mrs. Dr. S.
Yeast that Never Fails.
Boil twelve potatoes in four quarts of water till reduced to three quarts.
Then take out and mash the potatoes, and throw into the water three handfuls of hops.
When the hops have boiled to a good tea, strain the water over the potatoes, a small quantity at a time, mixing them well together.
Add one teacup of brown sugar.
1 teacup of salt.
1 tablespoonful of ground ginger.
When milk-warm, add yeast of the same sort to make it rise.
Put it in bottles, or a jug, leaving it uncorked for a day.
Set it in a cool place.
Put two large tablespoonfuls of it to a quart of flour, and when making up, boil a potato and mix with it.
This yeast never sours, and is good as long as it lasts.—Mrs. A. F.
Alum Yeast.
On one pint of flour pour enough boiling water to make a thick batter, stirring it until perfectly smooth, and then let it stand till milk-warm.
Then add a teaspoonful of powdered alum.
1 teaspoonful of salt.
1 tablespoonful of sugar.
Half a teacup of yeast.
After it ferments, add enough meal to make it a stiff dough.
Let it stand till it works, and then spread it in the shade to dry.
To a quart of flour put a tablespoonful of crumbs.—Mrs. P.
Leaven.
2 tablespoonfuls of flour.
