Common Sense in the Household 2

Common Sense in the Household 2

If you have not what our Yankee grandmothers termed a “faculty” for

housewifery—yet are obliged, as is the case with an immense majority

of American women, to conduct the affairs of a household, bills of

fare included—there is the more reason for earnest application to your

profession. If the natural taste be dull, lay to it more strength

of will—resolution born of a just sense of the importance of the

knowledge and dexterity you would acquire. Do not scoff at the word

“profession.” Call not that common and unclean which Providence has

designated as your life-work. I speak not now of the labors of the

culinary department alone; but, without naming the other duties which

you and you only can perform, I do insist that upon method, skill,

economy in the kitchen, depends so much of the well-being of the rest

of the household, that it may safely be styled the root—the foundation

of housewifery. I own it would be pleasanter in most cases, especially

to those who have cultivated a taste for intellectual pursuits, to

live above the heat and odor of this department. It must be very fine

to have an efficient aide-de-camp in the person of a French cook, or

a competent sub-manager, or an accomplished head-waiter who receives

your orders for the day in your boudoir or library, and executes the

same with zeal and discretion that leave you no room for anxiety or

regret. Such mistresses do not need cookery-books. The few—and it must

be borne in mind that in this country these are _very_ few—born in an

estate like this would not comprehend what I am now writing; would not

enter into the depths of that compassionate yearning which moves me

as I think of what I have known for myself in the earlier years of my

wedded life, what I have heard and seen in other households of honest

intentions brought to contempt; of ill-directed toil; of mortification,

and the heavy, wearing sense of inferiority that puts the novice at

such a woful disadvantage in a community of notable managers.

 

There is no use in enlarging upon this point. You and I might compare

experiences by the hour without exhausting our store.

 

“And then”—you sigh, with a sense of resentment upon you, however

amiable your disposition, for the provocation is dire—“cookery-books

and young housekeepers’ assistants, and all that sort of thing, are

such humbugs!—Dark lanterns at best—too often Will-o’-the-wisps.”

 

My dear, would you mind handing me the book which lies nearest you on

the table there? “Dickens?” Of course. You will usually find something

of his in every room in this house—almost as surely as you will a

Bible. It rests and refreshes one to pick him up at odd times, and

dip in anywhere. Hear the bride, Mrs. John Rokesmith, upon our common

grievance.

 

“She was under the constant necessity of referring for advice and

support to a sage volume, entitled ‘The Complete British Family

Housewife,’ which she would sit consulting, with her elbows upon the

table, and her temples in her hands, like some perplexed enchantress

poring over the Black Art. This, principally because the Complete

British Housewife, however sound a Briton at heart, was by no means

an expert Briton at expressing herself with clearness in the British

tongue, and sometimes might have issued her directions to equal purpose

in the Kamtchatkan language.”

 

Don’t interrupt me, my long-suffering sister! There is more of the same

sort to come.

 

“There was likewise a coolness on the part of ‘The Complete British

Housewife’ which Mrs. John Rokesmith found highly exasperating. She

would say, ‘Take a salamander,’ as if a general should command a

private to catch a Tartar. Or, she would casually issue the order,

‘Throw in a handful’ of something entirely unattainable. In these, the

housewife’s most glaring moments of unreason, Bella would shut her up

and knock her on the table, apostrophizing her with the compliment—‘O

you ARE a stupid old donkey! Where am I to get it, do you think?’”

 

When I took possession of my first real home, the prettily furnished

cottage to which I came as a bride, more full of hope and courage

than if I had been wiser, five good friends presented me with as many

cookery-books, each complete, and all by different compilers. One day’s

investigation of my _ménage_ convinced me that my lately-hired servants

knew no more about cookery than I did, or affected stupidity to develop

my capabilities or ignorance. Too proud to let them suspect the truth,

or to have it bruited abroad as a topic for pitying or contemptuous

gossip, I shut myself up with _my_ “Complete Housewives,” and inclined

seriously to the study of the same, comparing one with the other, and

seeking to shape a theory which should grow into practice in accordance

with the best authority. I don’t like to remember that time! The

question of disagreeing doctors, and the predicament of falling between

two stools, are trivial perplexities when compared with my strife and

failure.

 

Said the would-be studious countryman to whom a mischievous

acquaintance lent “Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary” as an entertaining

volume,—“I wrastled, and I wrastled, _and_ I wrastled with it, but I

couldn’t get up much of an int’rest.”

 

My wrestling begat naught save pitiable confusion, hopeless distress,

and a three-days’ sick headache, during which season I am not sure

that I did not darkly contemplate suicide as the only sure escape from

the meshes that girt me. At the height—or depth—of my despondency a

friend, one with a great heart and steady brain, came to my rescue. Her

cheerful laugh over my dilemma rings down to me now, through all these

years, refreshingly as it then saluted my ears.

 

“Bless your innocent little heart!” she cried, in her fresh, gay voice,

“Ninety-nine out of a hundred cookbooks are written by people who never

kept house, and the hundredth by a good cook who yet doesn’t know how

to express herself to the enlightenment of others. Compile a receipt

book for yourself. Make haste slowly. Learn one thing at a time, and

when you have mastered it, ‘make a note on it,’ as Captain Cuttle

says—never losing sight of the principle that you _must do it in order

to learn how_.”

 

Then she opened to me her own neatly-written “Manual”—the work of

years, recommending, as I seized it that I should commence my novitiate

with simple dishes.

 

This was the beginning of the hoard of practical receipts I now offer

for your inspection. For twenty years, I have steadily pursued this

work, gleaning here and sifting there, and levying such remorseless

contributions upon my friends, that I fear the sight of my paper and

pencil has long since become a bugbear. For the kindness and courtesy

which have been my invariable portion in this quest, I hereby return

hearty thanks. For the encouraging words and good wishes that have

ever answered the hint of my intention to collect what had proved so

valuable to me into a printed volume, I declare myself to be yet more

a debtor. I do not claim for my compend the proud pre-eminence of the

“Complete American Housewife.” It is no boastful system of “Cookery

Taught in Twelve Lessons.” And I should write myself down a knave or

a fool, were I to assert that a raw cook or ignorant mistress can,

by half-a-day’s study of my collection, equal Soyer or Blot, or even

approximate the art of a half-taught scullion.

 

We may as well start from the right point, if we hope to continue

friends. You must learn the rudiments of the art for yourself.

Practice, and practice alone, will teach you certain essentials. The

management of the ovens, the requisite thickness of boiling custards,

the right shade of brown upon bread and roasted meats—these and dozens

of other details are hints which cannot be imparted by written or

oral instructions. But, once learned, they are never forgotten, and

henceforward your fate is in your own hands. You are mistress of

yourself, though servants leave. Have faith in your own abilities.

You will be a better cook for the mental training you have received

at school and from books. Brains tell everywhere, to say nothing of

intelligent observation, just judgment, a faithful memory, and orderly

habits. Consider that you have a profession, as I said just now, and

resolve to understand it in all its branches. My book is designed to

help you. I believe it will, if for no other reason, because it has

been a faithful guide to myself—a reference beyond value in seasons

of doubt and need. I have brought every receipt to the test of common

sense and experience. Those which I have not tried myself were obtained

from trustworthy housewives—the best I know. I have enjoyed the task

heartily, and from first to last the persuasion has never left me that

I was engaged in a good cause. Throughout I have had you, my dear

sister, present before me, with the little plait between your brows,

the wistful look about eye and mouth that reveal to me, as words could

not, your desire to “do your best.”

 

“In a humble home, and in a humble way,” I hear you add, perhaps. You

“are not ambitious;” you “only want to help John, and to make him and

the children comfortable and happy.”

 

Heaven reward your honest, loyal endeavors! Would you mind if I were

to whisper a word in your ear I don’t care to have progressive people

hear?—although progress is a grand thing when it takes the right

direction. My dear, John and the children, and the humble home, make

your sphere for the present, you say. Be sure you fill it—_full_!

before you seek one wider and higher. There is no better receipt

between these covers than that. Leave the rest to God. Everybody knows

those four lines of George Herbert’s, which ought to be framed and hung

up in the work-room of every house:—

 

“A servant, with this clause,

Makes drudgery divine;

Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws

Makes that and th’ action fine.”

 

I wonder if the sainted poet knows—in that land where drudgery is one

of the rough places forever overpast, and work is unmingled blessing—to

how many sad and striving hearts those words have brought peace?

 

And by way of helping John, not only by saving money and preparing

palatable and wholesome dishes for his table, but by sparing the wife

he loves many needless steps and much hurtful care, will you heed a

homely hint or two relative to the practice of your art? Study method,

and economy of time and strength, no less than of materials. I take

it for granted that you are too intelligent to share in the vulgar

prejudice against labor-saving machines. A raisin-seeder costs a trifle

in comparison with the time and patience required to stone the fruit in

the old way. A _good_ egg-beater—the Dover, for instance—is a treasure.

So with farina-kettles, syllabub churns, apple-corers, potato-peelers

and slicers, clothes wringers and sprinklers, and the like. Most of

these are made of tin—are therefore cheap and easily kept clean. Let

each article have its own place in the closet and kitchen, to which

restore it so soon as you have done using it. Before undertaking the

preparation of any dish, read over the receipt carefully, unless you

are thoroughly familiar with the manufacture of it. Many excellent

housewives have a fashion of saying loftily, when asked how such things

are made—“I carry all my receipts in my head. I never wrote out one in my life.”