[i]

Harper’s Stereotype Edition.

CONTAINING
Receipts for Cookery,
AND
DIRECTIONS FOR CARVING.

ALSO,
THE ART OF COMPOSING THE MOST SIMPLE AND MOST HIGHLY FINISHED
BROTHS, GRAVIES, SOUPS, SAUCES, STORE SAUCES, AND FLAVOURING
ESSENCES; PASTRY, PRESERVES, PUDDINGS, PICKLES, &c.

WITH
A COMPLETE SYSTEM OF COOKERY
FOR CATHOLIC FAMILIES.

THE QUANTITY OF EACH ARTICLE IS ACCURATELY STATED BY WEIGHT AND
MEASURE; BEING THE RESULT OF ACTUAL EXPERIMENTS
INSTITUTED IN THE KITCHEN OF

WILLIAM KITCHINER, M.D.

ADAPTED TO THE AMERICAN PUBLIC
BY A MEDICAL GENTLEMAN.

FROM THE LAST LONDON EDITION.

New-York:
PRINTED BY J. & J. HARPER, 82 CLIFF-ST.

SOLD BY COLLINS AND HANNAY, COLLINS AND CO., G. AND C. AND H. CARVILL,
WILLIAM B. GILLEY, E. BLISS, O. A. ROORBACH, WHITE, GALLAHER, AND WHITE,
C. S. FRANCIS, WILLIAM BURGESS, JR., AND N. B. HOLMES;—PHILADELPHIA,
E. L. CAREY AND A. HART, AND JOHN GRIGG;—ALBANY, O. STEELE, AND W. C. LITTLE.

1830.

[ii]

SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW-YORK, ss.

BE IT REMEMBERED, That on the 20th day of November, A. D. 1829, in the fifty-fourth year of the independence of the United States of America, J. & J. HARPER, of the said district, have deposited in this office the title of a book, the right whereof they claim as Proprietors, in the words following, to wit:

“The Cook’s Oracle, and Housekeeper’s Manual, Containing Receipts for Cookery, and Directions for Carving; also the Art of Composing the most simple and most highly finished Broths, Gravies, Soups, Sauces, Store Sauces, and Flavouring Essences; Pastry, Preserves, Puddings, Pickles, &c. With a Complete System of Cookery for Catholic Families. The Quantity of each Article is accurately stated by Weight and Measure; being the Result of Actual Experiments instituted in the Kitchen of William Kitchiner, M.D. Adapted to the American Public by a Medical Gentleman.”

In conformity to the Act of Congress of the United States, entitled “An Act for the encouragement of Learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the time therein mentioned.” And also to an Act, entitled “An Act, supplementary to an Act, entitled an Act for the encouragement of Learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mentioned, and extending the benefits thereof to the arts of designing, engraving, and etching historical and other prints.”

FREDERICK I. BETTS,
Clerk of the Southern District of New-York.

[iii]

The publishers have now the pleasure of presenting to the American public, Dr. Kitchiner’s justly celebrated work, entitled “The Cook’s Oracle, and Housekeeper’s Manual,” with numerous and valuable improvements, by a medical gentleman of this city.

The work contains a store of valuable information, which, it is confidently believed, will not only prove highly advantageous to young and inexperienced housekeepers, but also to more experienced matrons—to all, indeed, who are desirous of enjoying, in the highest degree, the good things which Nature has so abundantly bestowed upon us.

The “Cook’s Oracle” has been adjudged, by connoisseurs in this country and in Great Britain, to contain the best possible instructions on the subject of serving up, beautifully and economically, the productions of the water, land, and air, in such a manner as to render them most pleasant to the eye, and agreeable to the palate.

Numerous notices, in commendation of the work, might be selected from respectable European journals; but the mere fact, that within twelve years, seventy thousand copies of it have been purchased by the English public, is sufficient evidence of its reception and merits.

New-York, December, 1829.

[iv]

The whole of this Work has, a seventh time, been carefully revised; but this last time I have found little to add, and little to alter.

I have bestowed as much attention on each of the 500 receipts as if the whole merit of the book was to be estimated entirely by the accuracy of my detail of one particular process.

The increasing demand for “The Cook’s Oracle,” amounting in 1824 to the extraordinary number of upwards of 45,000, has been stimulus enough to excite any man to submit to the most unremitting study; and the Editor has felt it as an imperative duty to exert himself to the utmost to render “The Cook’s Oracle” a faithful narrative of all that is known of the various subjects it professes to treat.

[v]

Among the multitudes of causes which concur to impair health and produce disease, the most general is the improper quality of our food: this most frequently arises from the injudicious manner in which it is prepared: yet strange, “passing strange,” this is the only one for which a remedy has not been sought; few persons bestow half so much attention on the preservation of their own health, as they daily devote to that of their dogs and horses.

The observations of the Guardians of Health respecting regimen, &c. have formed no more than a catalogue of those articles of food, which they have considered most proper for particular constitutions.

Some medical writers have, “in good set terms,” warned us against the pernicious effects of improper diet; but not one has been so kind as to take the trouble to direct us how to prepare food properly; excepting only the contributions of Count Rumford, who says, in pages 16 and 70 of his tenth Essay, “however low and vulgar this subject has hitherto generally been thought to be—in what Art or Science could improvements be made that would more powerfully contribute to increase the comforts and enjoyments of mankind? Would to God! that I could fix the public attention to this subject!”

The Editor has endeavoured to write the following[vi] receipts so plainly, that they may be as easily understood in the kitchen as he trusts they will be relished in the dining-room; and has been more ambitious to present to the Public a Work which will contribute to the daily comfort of all, than to seem elaborately scientific.

The practical part of the philosophy of the kitchen is certainly not the most agreeable; gastrology has to contend with its full share of those great impediments to all great improvements in scientific pursuits; the prejudices of the ignorant, and the misrepresentations of the envious.

The sagacity to comprehend and estimate the importance of any uncontemplated improvement, is confined to the very few on whom nature has bestowed a sufficient degree of perfection of the sense which is to measure it;—the candour to make a fair report of it, is still more uncommon; and the kindness to encourage it cannot often be expected from those whose most vital interest it is to prevent the developement of that by which their own importance, perhaps their only means of existence, may be for ever eclipsed: so, as Pope says, how many are

“Condemn’d in business or in arts to drudge,
Without a rival, or without a judge:
All fear, none aid you, and few understand.”

Improvements in Agriculture and the Breed of Cattle have been encouraged by premiums. Those who have obtained them, have been hailed as benefactors to society! but the Art of making use of these means of ameliorating Life and supporting a healthful Existence—Cookery—has been neglected!!

While the cultivators of the raw materials are distinguished and rewarded, the attempt to improve the pro[vii]cesses, without which neither vegetable nor animal substances are fit for the food of man (astonishing to say), has been ridiculed, as unworthy the attention of a rational being!!

The most usefulvii-* art—which the Editor has chosen to endeavour to illustrate, because nobody else has, and because he knew not how he could employ some leisure hours more beneficially for mankind, than to teach them to combine the “utile” with the “dulce,” and to increase their pleasures, without impairing their health, or impoverishing their fortune, has been for many years his favourite employment; and “The Art of Invigorating and Prolonging Life by Food, &c. &c.” and this Work, have insensibly become repositories for whatever observations he has made which he thought would make us “Live Happy, and Live Long!!!”

The Editor has considered the Art of Cookery, not merely as a mechanical operation, fit only for working cooks, but as the Analeptic part of the Art of Physic.

“How best the fickle fabric to support
Of mortal man; in healthful body how
A healthful mind the longest to maintain,”
(Armstrong,)

is an occupation neither unbecoming nor unworthy philosophers of the highest class: such only can comprehend its importance; which amounts to no less, than not only the enjoyment of the present moment, but the more precious advantage of improving and preserving health, and prolonging life, which depend on duly replenishing the daily[viii] waste of the human frame with materials pregnant with nutriment and easy of digestion.

If medicine be ranked among those arts which dignify their professors, cookery may lay claim to an equal, if not a superior, distinction; to prevent diseases is surely a more advantageous art to mankind than to cure them. “Physicians should be good cooks, at least in theory.”—Dr. Mandeville on Hypochondriasis, p. 316.

The learned Dr. Arbuthnot observes, in page 3 of the preface to his Essay on Aliment, that “the choice and measure of the materials of which our body is composed, what we take daily by pounds, is at least of as much importance as what we take seldom, and only by grains and spoonfuls.”

Those in whom the organ of taste is obtuse, or who have been brought up in the happy habit of being content with humble fare, whose health is so firm, that it needs no artificial adjustment; who, with the appetite of a cormorant, have the digestion of an ostrich, and eagerly devour whatever is set before them without asking any questions about what it is, or how it has been prepared—may perhaps imagine that the Editor has sometimes been rather over-much refining the business of the kitchen.

“Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.”

But as few are so fortunate as to be trained up to understand how well it is worth their while to cultivate such habits of Spartan forbearance, we cannot perform our duty in registering wholesome precepts, in a higher degree, than by disarming luxury of its sting, and making the refinements of Modern Cookery minister not merely to sensual[ix] gratification, but at the same time support the substantial excitement of “mens sana in corpore sano.”

Delicate and nervous invalids, who have unfortunately a sensitive palate, and have been accustomed to a luxurious variety of savoury sauces, and highly seasoned viands; those who, from the infirmity of age, are become incapable of correcting habits created by absurd indulgence in youth, are entitled to some consideration; and, for their sake, the Elements of Opsology are explained in the most intelligent manner; and I have assisted the memory of young cooks, by annexing to each dish the various sauces which usually accompany it, referring to their numbers in the work.

Some idle idiots have remarked to the Author, that “there were really so many references from one receipt to another, that it is exceedingly troublesome indeed; they are directed sometimes to turn to half a dozen numbers:” this is quite true. If the Author had not adopted this plan of reference, his book, to be equally explicit, must have been ten times as big; his object has been to give as much information as possible in as few pages, and for as few pence, as possible.

By reducing culinary operations to something like a certainty, invalids will no longer be entirely indebted to chance, whether they shall recover and live long, and comfortably, or speedily die of starvation in the midst of plenty.

These rules and orders for the regulation of the business of the kitchen have been extremely beneficial to the Editor’s own health and comfort. He hopes they will be equally so to others: they will help those who enjoy health to preserve it; teach those who have delicate and irritable stomachs how to keep them in good temper; and, with a[x] little discretion, enable them to indulge occasionally, not only with impunity, but with advantage, in all those alimentary pleasures which a rational epicure can desire.

There is no question more frequently asked, or which a medical man finds more difficulty in answering, to the satisfaction of himself and his patient, than—What do you wish me to eat?

The most judicious choice of aliment will avail nothing, unless the culinary preparation of it be equally judicious. How often is the skill of a pains-taking physician counteracted by want of corresponding attention to the preparation of food; and the poor patient, instead of deriving nourishment, is distressed by indigestion!

Parmentier, in his Code Pharmaceutique, has given a chapter on the preparation of food: some of the following receipts are offered as an humble attempt to form a sort of Appendix to the Pharmacopœia, and like pharmaceutic prescriptions, they are precisely adjusted by weight and measure. The author of a cookery book, first published in 1824, has claimed this act of industry of mine as his own original invention; the only notice I shall take of his pretensions is to say, that the first edition of “The Cook’s Oracle” appeared in 1817.

By ordering such receipts of the Cook’s Oracle as appear adapted to the case, the recovery of the patient and the credit of the physician, as far as relates to the administration of aliment, need no longer depend on the discretion of the cook. For instance: Mutton Broth, No. 490, or No. 564; Toast and Water, No. 463; Water Gruel, No. 572; Beef Tea, No. 563; and Portable Soup, No. 252. This concentrated Essence of Meat will be found a great[xi] acquisition to the comfort of the army, the navy, the traveller, and the invalid. By dissolving half an ounce of it in half a pint of hot water, you have in a few minutes half a pint of good Broth for three halfpence. The utility of such accurate and precise directions for preparing food, is to travellers incalculable; for, by translating the receipt, any person may prepare what is desired as perfectly as a good English cook.

He has also circumstantially detailed the easiest, least expensive, and most salubrious methods of preparing those highly finished soups, sauces, ragoûts, and piquante relishes, which the most ingenious “officers of the mouth” have invented for the amusement of thorough-bred “grands gourmands.”

It has been his aim to render food acceptable to the palate, without being expensive to the purse, or offensive to the stomach; nourishing without being inflammatory, and savoury without being surfeiting; constantly endeavouring to hold the balance equal, between the agreeable and the wholesome, the epicure and the economist.

He has not presumed to recommend one receipt that has not been previously and repeatedly proved in his own kitchen, which has not been approved by the most accomplished cooks; and has, moreover, been eaten with unanimous applause by a Committee of Taste, composed of some of the most illustrious gastropholists of this luxurious metropolis.

The Editor has been materially assisted by Mr. Henry Osborne, the excellent cook to the late Sir Joseph Banks; that worthy President of the Royal Society was so sensible of the importance of the subject the Editor was investi[xii]gating, that he sent his cook to assist him in his arduous task; and many of the receipts in this edition are much improved by his suggestions and corrections. See No. 560.

This is the only English Cookery Book which has been written from the real experiments of a housekeeper for the benefit of housekeepers; which the reader will soon perceive by the minute attention that has been employed to elucidate and improve the Art of Plain Cookery; detailing many particulars and precautions, which may at first appear frivolous, but which experience will prove to be essential: to teach a common cook how to provide, and to prepare, common food so frugally, and so perfectly, that the plain every-day family fare of the most economical housekeeper, may, with scarcely additional expense, or any additional trouble, be a satisfactory entertainment for an epicure or an invalid.

By an attentive consideration of “the Rudiments of Cookery,” and the respective receipts, the most ignorant novice in the business of the kitchen, may work with the utmost facility and certainty of success, and soon become a good cook.

Will all the other books of cookery that ever were printed do this? To give his readers an idea of the immense labour attendant upon this Work, it may be only necessary for the Author to state, that he has patiently pioneered through more than two hundred cookery books before he set about recording these results of his own experiments! The table of the most economical family may, by the help of this book, be entertained with as much elegance as that of a sovereign prince.

London, 1829.

[xiii]

RUDIMENTS OF COOKERY.

APPENDIX.

[xiv]

[15]

The following receipts are not a mere marrowless collection of shreds and patches, and cuttings and pastings, but a bonâ fide register of practical facts,—accumulated by a perseverance not to be subdued or evaporated by the igniferous terrors of a roasting fire in the dog-days,—in defiance of the odoriferous and calefacient repellents of roasting, boiling, frying, and broiling;—moreover, the author has submitted to a labour no preceding cookery-book-maker, perhaps, ever attempted to encounter,—having eaten each receipt before he set it down in his book.

They have all been heartily welcomed by a sufficiently well-educated palate, and a rather fastidious stomach:—perhaps this certificate of the reception of the respective preparations, will partly apologize for the book containing a smaller number of them than preceding writers on this gratifying subject have transcribed—for the amusement of “every man’s master,” the STOMACH.15-*

Numerous as are the receipts in former books, they vary little from each other, except in the name given to them; the processes of cookery are very few: I have endeavoured to describe each, in so plain and circumstantial a manner, as I hope will be easily understood, even by the amateur, who is unacquainted with the practical part of culinary concerns.

Old housekeepers may think I have been tediously minute on many points which may appear trifling: my predecessors seem to have considered the RUDIMENTS of COOKERY quite unworthy of attention. These little delicate distinctions constitute all the difference between a common and an elegant table, and are not trifles to the YOUNG HOUSEKEEPERS who must learn them either from the communication of others or blunder on till their own slowly accumulating and dear-bought experience teaches them.

[16]A wish to save time, trouble and money to inexperienced housekeepers and cooks, and to bring the enjoyments and indulgences of the opulent within reach of the middle ranks of society, were my motives for publishing this book. I could accomplish it only by supposing the reader (when he first opens it) to be as ignorant of cookery as I was, when I first thought of writing on the subject.

I have done my best to contribute to the comfort of my fellow-creatures: by a careful attention to the directions herein given, the most ignorant may easily learn to prepare food, not only in an agreeable and wholesome, but in an elegant and economical manner.

This task seems to have been left for me; and I have endeavoured to collect and communicate, in the clearest and most intelligible manner, the whole of the heretofore abstruse mysteries of the culinary art, which are herein, I hope, so plainly developed, that the most inexperienced student in the occult art of cookery, may work from my receipts with the utmost facility.

I was perfectly aware of the extreme difficulty of teaching those who are entirely unacquainted with the subject, and of explaining my ideas effectually, by mere receipts, to those who never shook hands with a stewpan.

In my anxiety to be readily understood, I have been under the necessity of occasionally repeating the same directions in different parts of the book; but I would rather be censured for repetition than for obscurity, and hope not to be accused of affectation, while my intention is perspicuity.

Our neighbours of France are so justly famous for their skill in the affairs of the kitchen, that the adage says, “As many Frenchmen as many cooks:” surrounded as they are by a profusion of the most delicious wines, and seducing liqueurs offering every temptation to render drunkenness delightful, yet a tippling Frenchman is a “rara avis.”

They know how so easily to keep life in sufficient repair by good eating, that they require little or no screwing up with liquid stimuli. This accounts for that “toujours gai,” and happy equilibrium of the animal spirits which they enjoy with more regularity than any people: their elastic stomachs, unimpaired by spirituous liquors, digest vigorously the food they sagaciously prepare and render easily assimilable, by cooking it sufficiently,—wisely contriving to get half the work of the stomach done by fire and water, till

“The tender morsels on the palate melt,
And all the force of cookery is felt.”

[17]

See Nos. 5 and 238, &c.

The cardinal virtues of cookery, “CLEANLINESS, FRUGALITY, NOURISHMENT, AND PALATABLENESS,” preside over each preparation; for I have not presumed to insert a single composition, without previously obtaining the “imprimatur” of an enlightened and indefatigable “COMMITTEE OF TASTE,” (composed of thorough-bred GRANDS GOURMANDS of the first magnitude,) whose cordial co-operation I cannot too highly praise; and here do I most gratefully record the unremitting zeal they manifested during their arduous progress of proving the respective recipes: they were so truly philosophically and disinterestedly regardless of the wear and tear of teeth and stomach, that their labour appeared a pleasure to them. Their laudable perseverance has enabled me to give the inexperienced amateur an unerring guide how to excite as much pleasure as possible on the palate, and occasion as little trouble as possible to the principal viscera, and has hardly been exceeded by those determined spirits who lately in the Polar expedition braved the other extreme of temperature, &c. in spite of whales, bears, icebergs, and starvation.

Every attention has been paid in directing the proportions of the following compositions; not merely to make them inviting to the appetite, but agreeable and useful to the stomach—nourishing without being inflammatory, and savoury without being surfeiting.

I have written for those who make nourishment the chief end of eating,17-* and do not desire to provoke appetite beyond[18] the powers and necessities of nature; proceeding, however, on the purest epicurean principles of indulging the palate as far as it can be done without injury or offence to the stomach, and forbidding18-* nothing but what is absolutely unfriendly to health.

——“That which is not good, is not delicious
To a well-govern’d and wise appetite.”—Milton.

This is by no means so difficult a task as some gloomy philosophers (uninitiated in culinary science) have tried to make the world believe; who seem to have delighted in persuading you, that every thing that is nice must be noxious, and that every thing that is nasty is wholesome.

“How charming is divine philosophy?
Not harsh, and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo’s lute,
And a perpetual feast of nectar’d sweets,
Where no crude surfeit reigns.”—Milton.

Worthy William Shakspeare declared he never found a philosopher who could endure the toothache patiently:—the Editor protests that he has not yet overtaken one who did not love a feast.

Those cynical slaves who are so silly as to suppose it unbecoming a wise man to indulge in the common comforts of life, should be answered in the words of the French philosopher. “Hey—what, do you philosophers eat dainties?”[19] said a gay Marquess. “Do you think,” replied Descartes, “that God made good things only for fools?”

Every individual, who is not perfectly imbecile and void of understanding, is an epicure in his own way. The epicures in boiling of potatoes are innumerable. The perfection of all enjoyment depends on the perfection of the faculties of the mind and body; therefore, the temperate man is the greatest epicure, and the only true voluptuary.

The pleasures of the table have been highly appreciated and carefully cultivated in all countries and in all ages;19-* and in spite of all the stoics, every one will allow they are the first and the last we enjoy, and those we taste the oftenest,—above a thousand times in a year, every year of our lives!

The stomach is the mainspring of our system. If it be not sufficiently wound up to warm the heart and support the circulation, the whole business of life will, in proportion, be ineffectively performed: we can neither think with precision, walk with vigour, sit down with comfort, nor sleep with tranquillity.

There would be no difficulty in proving that it influences (much more than people in general imagine) all our actions: the destiny of nations has often depended upon the more or less laborious digestion of a prime minister.19-† See a very curious anecdote in the memoirs of Count Zinzendorff in Dodsley’s Annual Register for 1762. 3d edition, p. 32.

The philosopher Pythagoras seems to have been extremely nice in eating; among his absolute injunctions to his disciples, he commands them to “abstain from beans.”

This ancient sage has been imitated by the learned who have discoursed on this subject since, who are liberal of their negative, and niggardly of their positive precepts—in the ratio, that it is easier to tell you not to do this, than to teach you how to do that.

Our great English moralist Dr. S. Johnson, his biographer Boswell tells us, “was a man of very nice discernment in the science of cookery,” and talked of good eating with uncommon satisfaction. “Some people,” said he, “have a foolish way of not minding, or pretending not to mind, what they eat; for my part, I mind my belly very studiously and very carefully, and I look upon it that he who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind any thing else.”

[20]The Dr. might have said, cannot mind any thing else. The energy of our BRAINS is sadly dependent on the behaviour of our BOWELS.20-* Those who say, ’Tis no matter what we eat or what we drink, may as well say, ’Tis no matter whether we eat, or whether we drink.

The following anecdotes I copy from Boswell’s life of Johnson.

Johnson.—“I could write a better book of cookery than has ever yet been written; it should be a book on philosophical principles. I would tell what is the best butcher’s meat, the proper seasons of different vegetables, and then, how to roast, and boil, and to compound.”

Dilly.—“Mrs. Glasse’s cookery, which is the best, was written by Dr. Hill.”

Johnson.—“Well, Sir—this shows how much better the subject of cookery20-† may be treated by a philosopher;20-‡ but[21] you shall see what a book of cookery I shall make, and shall agree with Mr. Dilly for the copyright.”

Miss Seward.—“That would be Hercules with the distaff indeed!”

Johnson.—“No, madam; women can spin very well, but they cannot make a good book of cookery.” See vol. iii. p. 311.

Mr. B. adds, “I never knew a man who relished good eating more than he did: when at table, he was totally absorbed in the business of the moment: nor would he, unless in very high company, say one word, or even pay the least attention to what was said by others, until he had satisfied his appetite.”

The peculiarities of his constitution were as great as those of his character: luxury and intemperance are relative terms, depending on other circumstances than mere quantity and quality. Nature gave him an excellent palate, and a craving appetite, and his intense application rendered large supplies of nourishment absolutely necessary to recruit his exhausted spirits.

The fact is, this great man had found out that animal and intellectual vigour,21-* are much more entirely dependent upon each other than is commonly understood; especially in those constitutions whose digestive and chylopoietic organs are capricious and easily put out of tune, or absorb the “pabulum vitæ” indolently and imperfectly: with such, it is only now and then that the “sensorium commune” vibrates with the full tone of accurately considerative, or creative energy. “His favourite dainties were, a leg of pork boiled till it dropped from the bone, a veal-pie, with plums and sugar, or the outside cut of a salt buttock of beef. With regard to drink, his liking was for the strongest, as it was not the flavour, but the effect that he desired.” Mr. Smale’s Account of Dr. Johnson’s Journey into Wales, 1816, p. 174.

Thus does the HEALTH always, and very often the LIFE of invalids, and those who have weak and infirm STOMACHS, depend upon the care and skill of the COOK. Our forefathers were so sensible of this, that in days of yore no man of consequence thought of making a day’s journey without taking his “Magister Coquorum” with him.

[22]The rarity of this talent in a high degree is so well understood, that besides very considerable pecuniary compensation, his majesty’s first and second cooks22-* are now esquires by their office. We have every reason to suppose they were persons of equal dignity heretofore.

In Dr. Pegge’s “Forme of Cury,” 8vo. London, 1780, we read, that when Cardinal Otto, the Pope’s legate, was at Oxford, A. D. 1248, his brother officiated as “Magister Coquinæ.”

This important post has always been held as a situation of high trust and confidence; and the “Magnus Coquus,” Anglicè, the Master Kitchener, has, time immemorial, been an officer of considerable dignity in the palaces of princes.

The cook in Plautus (pseudol) is called “Hominum servatorem,” the preserver of mankind; and by Mercier “un médecin qui guérit radicalement deux maladies mortelles, la faim et la soif.”

The Norman conqueror William bestowed several portions of land on these highly-favoured domestics, the “Coquorum Præpositus,” and “Coquus Regius;” a manor was bestowed on Robert Argyllon the “Grand Queux,” to be held by the following service. See that venerable record, the doomsday book.

“Robert Argyllon holdeth one carucate of land in Addington in the county of Surrey, by the service of making one mess in an earthen pot in the kitchen of our Lord the King, on the day of his coronation, called De la Groute,” i. e. a kind of plum-porridge, or water-gruel with plums in it. This dish is still served up at the royal table at coronations, by the Lord of the said manor of Addington.

At the coronation of King George IV., Court of Claims, July 12, 1820:

“The petition of the Archbishop of Canterbury, which was presented by Sir G. Nayler, claiming to perform the service of presenting a dish of De la Groute to the King at the banquet, was considered by the Court, and decided to be allowed.”

A good dinner is one of the greatest enjoyments of human life; and as the practice of cookery is attended with so many discouraging difficulties,22-† so many disgusting and disagree[23]able circumstances, and even dangers, we ought to have some regard for those who encounter them to procure us pleasure, and to reward their attention by rendering their situation every way as comfortable and agreeable as we can. He who preaches integrity to those in the kitchen, (see “Advice to Cooks,”) may be permitted to recommend liberality to those in the parlour; they are indeed the sources of each other. Depend upon it, “True self-love and social are the same;” “Do as you would be done by:” give those you are obliged to trust every inducement to be honest, and no temptation to play tricks.

When you consider that a good servant eats23-* no more than a bad one, how much waste is occasioned by provisions being dressed in a slovenly and unskilful manner, and how much a good cook (to whom the conduct of the kitchen is confided) can save you by careful management, no housekeeper will hardly deem it an unwise speculation (it is certainly an amiable experiment), to invite the honesty and industry of domestics, by setting them an example of liberality—at least, show them, that “According to their pains will be their gains.”

Avoid all approaches towards familiarity; which, to a proverb, is accompanied by contempt, and soon breaks the neck of obedience.

A lady gave us the following account of the progress of a favourite.

“The first year, she was an excellent servant; the second, a kind mistress; the third, an intolerable tyrant; at whose dismissal, every creature about my house rejoiced heartily.”

However, servants are more likely to be praised into good conduct, than scolded out of bad. Always commend them when they do right. To cherish the desire of pleasing in them, you must show them that you are pleased:[24]—

“Be to their faults a little blind,
And to their virtues very kind.”

By such conduct, ordinary servants may be converted into good ones: few are so hardened, as not to feel gratified when they are kindly and liberally treated.

It is a good maxim to select servants not younger than THIRTY:—before that age, however comfortable you may endeavour to make them, their want of experience, and the hope of something still better, prevents their being satisfied with their present state; after, they have had the benefit of experience: if they are tolerably comfortable, they will endeavour to deserve the smiles of even a moderately kind master, for fear they may change for the worse.

Life may indeed be very fairly divided into the seasons of HOPE and FEAR. In YOUTH, we hope every thing may be right: in AGE, we fear every thing will be wrong.

Do not discharge a good servant for a slight offence:—

“Bear and forbear, thus preached the stoic sages,
And in two words, include the sense of pages.”—Pope.

Human nature is the same in all stations: if you can convince your servants that you have a generous and considerate regard for their health and comfort, why should you imagine that they will be insensible to the good they receive?

Impose no commands but what are reasonable, nor reprove but with justice and temper: the best way to ensure which is, never to lecture them till at least one day after they have offended you.

If they have any particular hardship to endure in your service, let them see that you are concerned for the necessity of imposing it.

If they are sick, remember you are their patron as well as their master: remit their labour, and give them all the assistance of food, physic, and every comfort in your power. Tender assiduity about an invalid is half a cure; it is a balsam to the mind, which has a most powerful effect on the body, soothes the sharpest pains, and strengthens beyond the richest cordial.

Ye who think that to protect and encourage virtue is the best preventive from vice, reward your female servants liberally.

Charity should begin at home. Prevention is preferable to cure—but I have no objection to see your names ornamenting the lists of subscribers to foundling hospitals and[25] female penitentiaries.25-* Gentle reader, for a definition of the word “charity,” let me refer you to the 13th Chapter of St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians.

“To say nothing of the deleterious vapours and pestilential exhalations of the charcoal, which soon undermine the health of the heartiest, the glare of a scorching fire, and the smoke so baneful to the eyes and the complexion, are continual and inevitable dangers: and a cook must live in the midst of them, as a soldier on the field of battle surrounded by bullets, and bombs, and Congreve’s rockets; with this only difference, that for the first, every day is a fighting day, that her warfare is almost always without glory, and most praiseworthy achievements pass not only without reward, but frequently without thanks: for the most consummate cook is, alas! seldom noticed by the master, or heard of by the guests; who, while they are eagerly devouring his turtle, and drinking his wine, care very little who dressed the one, or sent the other.”—Almanach des Gourmands.

This observation applies especially to the SECOND COOK, or first kitchen maid, in large families, who have by far the hardest place in the house, and are worse paid, and truly verify the old adage, “the more work, the less wages.” If there is any thing right, the cook has the praise—when there is any thing wrong, as surely the kitchen maid has the blame. Be it known, then, to honest John Bull, that this humble domestic is expected by the cook to take the entire management of all ROASTS, BOILS, FISH, and VEGETABLES; i. e. the principal part of an Englishman’s dinner.

The master, who wishes to enjoy the rare luxury of a table regularly well served in the best style, must treat his[26] cook as his friend—watch over her health26-* with the tenderest care, and especially be sure her taste does not suffer from her stomach being deranged by bilious attacks.

Besides understanding the management of the spit, the stewpan, and the rolling-pin, a COMPLETE COOK must know how to go to market, write legibly, and keep accounts accurately.

In well-regulated private families the most convenient custom seems to be, that the cook keep a house-book, containing an account of the miscellaneous articles she purchases; and the butcher’s, baker’s, butterman’s, green-grocer’s, fishmonger’s, milkman’s, and washing bills are brought in every Monday; these it is the duty of the cook to examine, before she presents them to her employer every Tuesday morning to be discharged.

[27]The advantage of paying such bills weekly is incalculable: among others the constant check it affords against any excess beyond the sum allotted for defraying them, and the opportunity it gives of correcting increase of expense in one week by a prudent retrenchment in the next. “If you would live even with the world, calculate your expenses at half your income—if you would grow rich, at one-third.”

It is an excellent plan to have a table of rules for regulating the ordinary expenses of the family, in order to check any innovation or excess which otherwise might be introduced unawares, and derange the proposed distribution of the annual revenue.

To understand the economy of household affairs is not only essential to a woman’s proper and pleasant performance of the duties of a wife and a mother, but is indispensable to the comfort, respectability, and general welfare of all families, whatever be their circumstances.

The editor has employed some leisure hours in collecting practical hints for instructing inexperienced housekeepers in the useful

Art of providing comfortably for a family;

which is displayed so plainly and so particularly, that a young lady may learn the delectable arcana of domestic affairs, in as little time as is usually devoted to directing the position of her hands on a piano-forte, or of her feet in a quadrille—this will enable her to make the cage of matrimony as comfortable as the net of courtship was charming. For this purpose he has contrived a Housekeeper’s Leger, a plain and easy plan of keeping accurate accounts of the expenses of housekeeping, which, with only one hour’s attention in a week, will enable you to balance all such accounts with the utmost exactness; an acceptable acquisition to all who admit that order and economy are the basis of comfort and independence.

It is almost impossible for a cook in a large family, to attend to the business of the kitchen with any certainty of perfection, if employed in other household concerns. It is a service of such importance, and so difficult to perform even tolerably well, that it is sufficient to engross the entire attention of one person.

“If we take a review of the qualifications which are indispensable in that highly estimable domestic, a GOOD COOK, we shall find that very few deserve that name.”27-*[28]

“The majority of those who set up for professors of this art are of mean ability, selfish, and pilfering every thing they can; others are indolent and insolent. Those who really understand their business (which are by far the smallest number), are too often either ridiculously saucy, or insatiably thirsty; in a word, a good subject of this class is a rara avis indeed!”

“God sends meat,”—who sends cooks?28-* the proverb has long saved us the trouble of guessing. Vide Almanach des Gourmands, p. 83.

Of what value then is not this book, which will render every person of common sense a good cook in as little time as it can be read through attentively!

If the masters and mistresses of families will sometimes condescend to make an amusement of this art, they will escape numberless disappointments, &c. which those who will not, must occasionally inevitably suffer, to the detriment of both their health and their fortune.

I did not presume to offer any observations of my own, till I had read all that I could find written on the subject, and submitted (with no small pains) to a patient and attentive consideration of every preceding work, relating to culinary concerns, that I could meet with.

These books vary very little from each other; except in the preface, they are

“Like in all else as one egg to another.”

“Ab uno, disce omnes,” cutting and pasting have been much oftener employed than the pen and ink: any one who has occasion to refer to two or three of them, will find the receipts almost always “verbatim et literatim;” equally unintelligible to those who are ignorant, and useless to those who are acquainted with the business of the kitchen.

I have perused not fewer than 250 of these volumes.

During the Herculean labour of my tedious progress[29] through these books, few of which afford the germ of a single idea, I have often wished that the authors of them had been satisfied with giving us the results of their own practice and experience, instead of idly perpetuating the errors, prejudices, and plagiarisms of their predecessors; the strange, and unaccountable, and uselessly extravagant farragoes and heterogeneous compositions which fill their pages, are combinations no rational being would ever think of either dressing or eating; and without ascertaining the practicability of preparing the receipts, and their fitness for food when done, they should never have ventured to recommend them to others: the reader of them will often put the same quære, as Jeremy, in Congreve’s comedy of “Love for Love,” when Valentine observes, “There’s a page doubled down in Epictetus that is a feast for an emperor.—Jer. Was Epictetus a real cook, or did he only write receipts?”

Half of the modern cookery books are made up with pages cut out of obsolete works, such as the “Choice Manual of Secrets,” the “True Gentlewoman’s Delight,” &c. of as much use, in this age of refinement, as the following curious passage from “The Accomplished Lady’s Rich Closet of Rarities, or Ingenious Gentlewoman’s Delightful Companion,” 12mo. London, 1653, chapter 7, page 42; which I have inserted in a note,29-* to give the reader a notion of the barbarous manners of the 16th century, with the addition of the arts of the confectioner, the brewer, the baker, the distiller, the gardener, the clear-starcher, and the perfumer, and how to make pickles, puff paste, butter, blacking, &c. together with my Lady Bountiful’s sovereign remedy for an inward bruise, and other ever-failing nostrums,—Dr. Killemquick’s wonder-working essence, and fallible elixir, which cures all manner of incurable maladies directly minute, Mrs. Notable’s instructions how to make soft po[30]matum, that will soon make more hair grow upon thy head, “than Dobbin, thy thill-horse, hath upon his tail,” and many others equally invaluable!!!—the proper appellation for which would be “a dangerous budget of vulgar errors,” concluding with a bundle of extracts from “the Gardener’s Calendar,” and “the Publican’s Daily Companion.”

Thomas Carter, in the preface to his “City and Country Cook,” London, 1738, says, “What I have published is almost the only book, one or two excepted, which of late years has come into the world, that has been the result of the author’s own practice and experience; for though very few eminent practical cooks have ever cared to publish what they knew of the art, yet they have been prevailed on, for a small premium from a bookseller, to lend their names to performances in this art unworthy their owning.”

Robert May, in the introduction to his “Accomplished Cook,” 1665, says, “To all honest and well-intending persons of my profession, and others, this book cannot but be acceptable, as it plainly and profitably discovers the mystery of the whole art; for which, though I may be envied by some, that only value their private interests above posterity and the public good; yet (he adds), God and my own conscience would not permit me to bury these, my experiences, with my silver hairs in the grave.”

Those high and mighty masters and mistresses of the alimentary art, who call themselves “profess” cooks, are said to be very jealous and mysterious beings; and that if, in a long life of laborious stove-work, they have found out a few useful secrets, they seldom impart to the public the fruits of their experience; but sooner than divulge their discoveries for the benefit and comfort of their fellow-creatures, these silly, selfish beings will rather run the risk of a reprimand from their employers, and will sooner spoil a good dinner, than suffer their fellow-servants to see how they dress it!!!

The silly selfishness of short-sighted mortals, is never more extremely absurd than in their unprofitable parsimony of what is of no use to them, but would be of actual value to others, who, in return, would willingly repay them tenfold. However, I hope I may be permitted to quote, in defence of these culinary professors, a couple of lines of a favourite old song:

“If you search the world round, each profession, you’ll find,
Hath some snug little secrets, which the Mystery30-* they call.”

[31]

My receipts are the results of experiments carefully made, and accurately and circumstantially related;

The TIME requisite for dressing being stated;

The QUANTITIES of the various articles contained in each composition being carefully set down in NUMBER, WEIGHT, and MEASURE.

The WEIGHTS are avoirdupois; the MEASURE, Lyne’s graduated glass, i. e. a wine-pint divided into sixteen ounces, and the ounce into eight drachms. By a wine-glass is to be understood two ounces liquid measure; by a large or table-spoonful, half an ounce; by a small or tea-spoonful, a drachm, or half a quarter of an ounce, i. e. nearly equal to two drachms avoirdupois.

At some glass warehouses, you may get measures divided into tea and table-spoons. No cook should be without one, who wishes to be regular in her business.

This precision has never before been attempted in cookery books, but I found it indispensable from the impossibility of guessing the quantities intended by such obscure expressions as have been usually employed for this purpose in former works:—

For instance: a bit of this—a handful of that—a pinch of t’other—do ’em over with an egg—and a sprinkle of salt—a dust of flour—a shake of pepper—a squeeze of lemon,—or a dash of vinegar, &c. are the constant phrases. Season it to your palate, (meaning the cook’s,) is another form of speech: now, if she has any, (it is very unlikely that it is in unison with that of her employers,) by continually sipping piquante relishes, it becomes blunted and insensible, and loses the faculty of appreciating delicate flavours, so that every thing is done at random.

These culinary technicals are so very differently understood by the learned who write them, and the unlearned who read them, and their “rule of thumb” is so extremely indefi[32]nite, that if the same dish be dressed by different persons, it will generally be so different, that nobody would imagine they had worked from the same directions, which will assist a person who has not served a regular apprenticeship in the kitchen, no more than reading “Robinson Crusoe” would enable a sailor to steer safely from England to India.32-*

It is astonishing how cheap cookery books are held by practical cooks: when I applied to an experienced artist to recommend me some books that would give me a notion of the rudiments of cookery, he replied, with a smile, “You may read Don Quixote, or Peregrine Pickle, they are both very good books.”

Careless expressions in cookery are the more surprising, as the confectioner is regularly attentive, in the description of his preparations, to give the exact quantities, though his business, compared to cookery, is as unimportant as the ornamental is inferior to the useful.

The maker of blanc-mange, custards, &c. and the endless and useless collection of puerile playthings for the palate (of first and second childhood, for the vigour of manhood seeketh not to be sucking sugar, or sipping turtle), is scrupulously exact, even to a grain, in his ingredients; while cooks are unintelligibly indefinite, although they are intrusted with the administration of our FOOD, upon the proper quality and preparation of which, all our powers of body and mind depend; their energy being invariably in the ratio of the performance of the restorative process, i. e. the quantity, quality, and perfect digestion of what we eat and drink.

Unless the stomach be in good humour, every part of the machinery of life must vibrate with languor: can we then be too attentive to its adjustment?!!

[36]

In “the affairs of the mouth” the strictest punctuality is indispensable; the GASTRONOMER ought to be as accurate an observer of time, as the ASTRONOMER. The least delay produces fatal and irreparable misfortunes.

Almost all other ceremonies and civil duties may be put off for several hours without much inconvenience, and all may be postponed without absolute danger. A little delay may try the patience of those who are waiting; but the act itself will be equally perfect and equally valid. Procrastination sometimes is rather advantageous than prejudicial. It gives time for reflection, and may prevent our taking a step which would have made us miserable for life; the delay of a courier has prevented the conclusion of a convention, the signing of which might have occasioned the ruin of a nation.

If, from affairs the most important, we descend to our pleasures and amusements, we shall find new arguments in support of our assertions. The putting off of a rendezvous, or a ball, &c. will make them the more delightful. To hope is to enjoy.

“Man never is, but always to be blest.”

The anticipation of pleasure warms our imagination, and keeps those feelings alive, which possession too often extinguishes.

“’Tis expectation only makes us blest;
Enjoyment disappoints us at the best.”

Dr. Johnson has most sagaciously said; “Such is the state of life, that none are happy, but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing: when we have made it, the next wish is, immediately to change again.”

However singular our assertions may have at first appeared to those who have not considered the subject, we hope by this time we have made converts of our readers, and convinced the “Amateurs de Bonne Chère” of the truth and importance of our remarks; and that they will remember, that DINNER is the only act of the day which cannot be put off with impunity, for even FIVE MINUTES.

[37]In a well-regulated family, all the clocks and watches should agree; on this depends the fate of the dinner; what would be agreeable to the stomach, and restorative to the system, if served at FIVE o’clock, will be uneatable and innutritive and indigestible at A QUARTER PAST.

The dining-room should be furnished with a good-going clock; the space over the kitchen fire-place with another, vibrating in unison with the former, so placed, that the cook may keep one eye on the clock, and the other on the spit, &c. She will calculate to a minute the time required to roast a large capon or a little lark, and is equally attentive to the degree of heat of her stove, and the time her sauce remains on it, when to withdraw the bakings from the oven, the roast from the spit, and the stew from the pan.

With all our love of punctuality, the first consideration must still be, that the dinner “be well done, when ’t is done.”

It is a common fault with cooks who are anxious about time, to overdress every thing—the guests had better wait than the dinner—a little delay will improve their appetite; but if the dinner waits for the guests, it will be deteriorated every minute: the host who wishes to entertain his friends with food perfectly well dressed, while he most earnestly endeavours to impress on their minds the importance of being punctual to the appointed hour, will still allow his cook a quarter of an hour’s grace.

The old adage that “the eye is often bigger than the belly,” is often verified by the ridiculous vanity of those who wish to make an appearance above their fortune. Nothing can be more ruinous to real comfort than the too common custom of setting out a table, with a parade and a profusion, unsuited not only to the circumstances of the hosts, but to the number of the guests; or more fatal to true hospitality, than the multiplicity of dishes which luxury has made fashionable at the tables of the great, the wealthy, and the ostentatious, who are, often, neither great nor wealthy.

Such pompous preparation, instead of being a compliment to our guests, is nothing better than an indirect offence; it is a tacit insinuation, that it is absolutely necessary to provide such delicacies to bribe the depravity of their palates, when we desire the pleasure of their company; and that society now, must be purchased, at the same price Swift told Pope he was obliged to pay for it in Ireland. “I should hardly prevail to find one visiter, if I were not able to hire him with a bottle of wine.” Vide Swift’s letters to Pope, July 10th, 1732.

[38]When twice as much cooking is undertaken as there are servants, or conveniences in the kitchen to do it properly, dishes must be dressed long before the dinner hour, and stand by spoiling—the poor cook loses her credit, and the poor guests get indigestions. Why prepare for eight or ten friends, more than sufficient for twenty or thirty visiters? “Enough is as good as a feast,” and a prudent provider, who sensibly takes measure of the stomachic, instead of the SILLY ocular, appetite of his guests, may entertain his friends, three times as often, and ten times as well.

It is your SENSELESS SECOND COURSES—ridiculous variety of WINES, LIQUEURS, ICES,38-* DESSERTS, &c.—which are served up merely to feed the eye, or pamper palled appetite, that overcome the stomach and paralyze digestion, and seduce “children of a larger growth” to sacrifice the health and comfort of several days, for the baby-pleasure of tickling their tongue for a few minutes, with trifles and custards!!! &c. &c.

“Indigestion will sometimes overtake the most experienced epicure; when the gustatory nerves are in good humour, hunger and savoury viands will sometimes seduce the tongue of a ‘grand gourmand’ to betray the interests of his stomach in spite of his brains.

“On such an unfortunate occasion, when the stomach sends forth eructant38-† signals of distress, the peristaltic persuaders are as agreeable and effectual assistance as can be offered; and for delicate constitutions, and those that are impaired by age or intemperance, are a valuable panacea.

“They derive, and deserve this name, from the peculiar mildness of their operation. One or two very gently increase the action of the principal viscera, help them to do their work a little faster, and enable the stomach to serve with an ejectment whatever offends it, and move it into the bowels.

“Thus indigestion is easily and speedily removed, appetite restored, the mouths of the absorbing vessels being cleansed, nutrition is facilitated, and strength of body, and energy of mind, are the happy results.” See “Peptic Precepts,” from which we extract the following prescription—

[39]To make FORTY PERISTALTIC PERSUADERS,

“The DOSE OF THE PERSUADERS must be adapted to the constitutional peculiarity of the patient. When you wish to accelerate or augment the alvine exoneration, take two, three, or more, according to the effect you desire to produce. Two pills will do as much for one person, as five or six will for another: they will generally very regularly perform what you wish to-day, without interfering with what you hope will happen to-morrow; and are therefore as convenient an argument against constipation as any we are acquainted with.

“The most convenient opportunity to introduce them to the stomach, is early in the morning, when it is unoccupied, and has no particular business of digestion, &c. to attend to—i. e. at least half an hour before breakfast. Physic must never interrupt the stomach, when it is busy in digesting food.

“From two to four persuaders will generally produce one additional motion, within twelve hours. They may be taken at any time by the most delicate females, whose constitutions are so often distressed by constipation, and destroyed by the drastic purgatives they take to relieve it.”

The cloth39-* should be laid in the parlour, and all the paraphernalia of the dinner-table completely arranged, at least half an hour before dinner-time.

The cook’s labour will be lost, if the parlour-table be not ready for action, and the eaters ready for the eatables, which the least delay will irreparably injure: therefore, the GOURMAND will be punctual for the sake of gratifying his ruling passion; the INVALID, to avoid the danger of encountering an indigestion from eating ill-dressed food; and the RATIONAL EPICURE, who happily attends the banquet with “mens sana in corpore sano,” will keep the time not only for these strong reasons, but that he may not lose the advantage of being[40] introduced to the other guests. He considers not only what is on the table, but who are around it: his principal inducement to leave his own fireside, is the charm of agreeable and instructive society, and the opportunity of making connexions, which may augment the interest and enjoyment of existence.

It is the most pleasing part of the duty of the master of the feast (especially when the guests are not very numerous), to take advantage of these moments to introduce them to one another, naming them individually in an audible voice, and adroitly laying hold of those ties of acquaintanceship or profession which may exist between them.

This will much augment the pleasures of the festive board, to which it is indeed as indispensable a prelude, as an overture is to an opera: and the host will thus acquire an additional claim to the gratitude of his guests. We urge this point more strongly, because, from want of attention to it, we have seen more than once persons whom many kindred ties would have drawn closely together, pass an entire day without opening their lips to each other, because they were mutually ignorant of each other’s names, professions, and pursuits.

To put an end at once to all ceremony as to the order in which the guests are to sit, it will save much time and trouble, if the mistress of the mansion adopts the simple and elegant method of placing the name of each guest in the plate which is intended for him. This proceeding will be of course the result of consideration, and the host will place those together whom he thinks will harmonize best.

Le Journal des Dames informs us, that in several fashionable houses in Paris, a new arrangement has been introduced in placing the company at a dinner-table.

“The ladies first take their places, leaving intervals for the gentlemen; after being seated, each is desired to call on a gentleman to sit beside her; and thus the lady of the house is relieved from all embarrassment of étiquette as to rank and pretensions,” &c.

But, without doubt, says the Journalist, this method has its inconveniences.

“It may happen that a bashful beauty dare not name the object of her secret wishes; and an acute observer may determine, from a single glance, that the elected is not always the chosen.”

If the party is large, the founders of the feast may sit in the middle of the table, instead of at each end, thus they will enjoy the pleasure of attending equally to all their[41] friends; and being in some degree relieved from the occupation of carving, will have an opportunity of administering all those little attentions which contribute so much to the comfort of their guests.

If the GUESTS have any respect for their HOST, or prefer a well-dressed dinner to one that is spoiled, instead of coming half an hour after, they will take care to make their appearance a quarter of an hour before the time appointed.

The operations of the cook are governed by the clock; the moment the roasts, &c. are ready, they must go to the table, if they are to be eaten in perfection.

An invitation to come at FIVE o’clock seems to be generally understood to mean six; FIVE PRECISELY, half past five; and NOT LATER THAN FIVE (so that dinner may be on the table within five minutes after, allowing this for the variation of watches), FIVE O’CLOCK EXACTLY.

Be it known to all loyal subjects of the empire of good-living, that the COMMITTEE OF TASTE have unanimously resolved, that “an invitation to ETA. BETA. PI. must be in writing, and sent at least ten days before the banquet; and must be answered in writing (as soon as possible after it is received), within twenty-four hours at least,” especially if it be not accepted: then, in addition to the usual complimentary expressions of thanks, &c. the best possible reasons must be assigned for the non-acceptance, as a particular pre-engagement, or severe indisposition, &c. Before the bearer of it delivers it, he should ascertain if the person it is directed to is at home; if he is not, when he will be; and if he is not in town, to bring the summons back.

Nothing can be more disobliging than a refusal which is not grounded on some very strong and unavoidable cause,—except not coming at the appointed hour;—“according to the laws of conviviality, a certificate from a sheriff’s officer, a doctor, or an undertaker, are the only pleas which are admissible. The duties which invitation imposes do not fall only on the persons invited, but, like all other social duties, are reciprocal.

“As he who has accepted an invitation cannot disengage himself from it; the master of the feast cannot put off the entertainment on any pretence whatever. Urgent business, sickness, not even death itself, can dispense with the obligation which he is under of giving the entertainment for which he has sent out invitations, which have been accepted; for in the extreme cases of compulsory absence, or death, his place may be filled by his friend or executor.”—Vide le[42] Manuel des Amphitryons, 8vo. Paris, 1808; and Cours Gastronomique, 1809; to which the reader is referred for farther instructions.

It is the least punishment that a blundering, ill-bred booby can receive, who comes half an hour after the time he was bidden, to find the soup removed, and the fish cold: moreover, for such an offence, let him also be mulcted in a pecuniary penalty, to be applied to the FUND FOR THE BENEFIT OF DECAYED COOKS. This is the least punishment that can be inflicted on one whose silence, or violation of an engagement, tends to paralyze an entertainment, and to draw his friend into useless expense.

Boileau, the French satirist, has a shrewd observation on this subject. “I have always been punctual at the hour of dinner,” says the bard; “for I knew, that all those whom I kept waiting at that provoking interval, would employ those unpleasant moments to sum up all my faults.—Boileau is indeed a man of genius, a very honest man; but that dilatory and procrastinating way he has got into, would mar the virtues of an angel.”

There are some who seldom keep an appointment: we can assure them they as seldom “’scape without whipping,” and exciting those murmurs which inevitably proceed from the best-regulated stomachs, when they are empty, and impatient to be filled.

The most amiable animals when hungry become ill-tempered: our best friends employ the time they are kept waiting, in recollecting and repeating any real faults we have, and attributing to us a thousand imaginary ones.

Ill-bred beings, who indulge their own caprice, regardless how they wound the feelings of others, if they possess brilliant and useful talents, may occasionally be endured as convenient tools; but deceive themselves sadly, even though they possess all the wisdom, and all the wit in the world, if they fancy they can ever be esteemed as friends.

Wait for no one: as soon as the clock strikes, say grace, and begin the business of the day,

“And good digestion wait on appetite,
And health on both.”

Good manners have often made the fortune of many, who have had nothing else to recommend them:

[43]Ill manners have as often marred the hope of those who have had every thing else to advance them.

These regulations may appear a little rigorous to those phlegmatic philosophers,

“Who, past all pleasures, damn the joys of sense,
With rev’rend dulness and grave impotence,”

and are incapable of comprehending the importance (especially when many are invited) of a truly hospitable entertainment: but genuine connoisseurs in the science of good cheer will vote us thanks for our endeavours to initiate well-disposed amateurs.

Ceremony does not, in any thing, more commonly and completely triumph over comfort, than in the administration of “the honours of the table.”

Those who serve out the loaves and fishes seldom seem to understand that he is the best carver who fills the plates of the greatest number of guests, in the least portion of time.

To effect this, fill the plates and send them round, instead of asking each individual if they choose soup, fish, &c. or what particular part they prefer; for, as they cannot all be choosers, you will thus escape making any invidious distinctions.

A dexterous CARVER43-* (especially if he be possessed with that determined enemy to ceremony and sauce, a keen appetite,) will help half a dozen people in half the time one of your would-be-thought polite folks wastes in making civil faces, &c. to a single guest.

It would save a great deal of time, &c. if POULTRY, especially large turkeys and geese, were sent to table ready cut up. (No. 530.*)

Fish that is fried should be previously divided into such portions as are fit to help at table. (See No. 145.)

A prudent carver will cut fair,43-† observe an equitable[44] distribution of the dainties he is serving out, and regulate his helps, by the proportion which his dish bears to the number he has to divide it among, taking into this reckoning the quantum of appetite the several guests are presumed to possess.

“Study their genius, caprices, goût—
They, in return, may haply study you:
Some wish a pinion, some prefer a leg,
Some for a merry-thought, or sidesbone beg,
The wings of fowls, then slices of the round
The trail of woodcock, of codfish the sound.
Let strict impartiality preside,
Nor freak, nor favour, nor affection guide.”
From the Banquet.

The guest who wishes to ensure a hearty welcome, and frequent invitation to the board of hospitality, may calculate that the “easier he is pleased, the oftener he will be invited.” Instead of unblushingly demanding of the fair hostess that the prime “tit-bit” of every dish be put on your plate, receive (if not with pleasure, or even content) with the liveliest expressions of thankfulness whatever is presented to you, and forget not to praise the cook, and the same shall be reckoned unto you even as the praise of the mistress.

The invalid or the epicure, when he dines out, to save trouble to his friends, may carry with him a portable MAGAZINE OF TASTE. (See No. 462.)

“If he does not like his fare, he may console himself with the reflection, that he need not expose his mouth to the like mortification again: mercy to the feelings of the mistress of the mansion will forbid his then appearing otherwise than absolutely delighted with it, notwithstanding it may be his extreme antipathy.”

“If he likes it ever so little, he will find occasion to congratulate himself on the advantage his digestive organs will derive from his making a moderate dinner, and consolation from contemplating the double relish he is creating for the following meal, and anticipating the (to him) rare and delicious zest of (that best sauce) good appetite, and an unrestrained indulgence of his gormandizing fancies at the chop-house he frequents.”

“Never intrust a cook-teaser with the important office of CARVER, or place him within reach of a sauce-boat. These chop-house cormorants, who

[45]

‘Critique your wine, and analyze your meat,
Yet on plain pudding deign at home to eat,’

are, generally, tremendously officious in serving out the loaves and fishes of other people; for, under the notion of appearing exquisitely amiable, and killingly agreeable to the guests, they are ever on the watch to distribute themselves the dainties which it is the peculiar part of the master and mistress to serve out, and is to them the most pleasant part of the business of the banquet: the pleasure of helping their friends is the gratification, which is their reward for the trouble they have had in preparing the feast. Such gentry are the terror of all good housewives: to obtain their favourite cut they will so unmercifully mangle your joints, that a dainty dog would hardly get a meal from them after; which, managed by the considerative hands of an old housekeeper, would furnish a decent dinner for a large family.”—Vide “Almanach des Gourmands.”

I once heard a gentle hint on this subject, given to a blue-mould fancier, who by looking too long at a Stilton cheese, was at last completely overcome, by his eye exciting his appetite, till it became quite ungovernable; and unconscious of every thing but the mity object of his contemplation, he began to pick out, in no small portions, the primest parts his eye could select from the centre of the cheese.

The good-natured founder of the feast, highly amused at the ecstasies each morsel created in its passage over the palate of the enraptured gourmand, thus encouraged the perseverance of his guest—“Cut away, my dear sir, cut away, use no ceremony, I pray: I hope you will pick out all the best of my cheese. Don’t you think that THE RIND and the ROTTEN will do very well for my wife and family!!” There is another set of terribly free and easy folks, who are “fond of taking possession of the throne of domestic comfort,” and then, with all the impudence imaginable, simper out to the ousted master of the family, “Dear me, I am afraid I have taken your place!”

Half the trouble of WAITING AT TABLE may be saved by giving each guest two plates, two knives and forks, two pieces of bread, a spoon, a wine-glass, and a tumbler, and placing the wines and sauces, and the MAGAZINE OF TASTE, (No. 462,) &c. as a dormant, in the centre of the table; one neighbour may then help another.

Dinner-tables are seldom sufficiently lighted, or attended. An active waiter will have enough to do to attend upon half a dozen active eaters. There should be about half as many candles as there are guests, and their flame be about[46] eighteen inches above the table. Our foolish modern pompous candelabras seem intended to illuminate the ceiling, rather than to give light on the plates, &c.

Wax lights at dinner are much more elegant, and not so troublesome and so uncertain as lamps, nor so expensive; for to purchase a handsome lamp will cost you more than will furnish you with wax candles for several years.

On your first coming into a family, lose no time in immediately getting into the good graces of your fellow-servants, that you may learn from them the customs of the kitchen, and the various rules and orders of the house.

Take care to be on good terms with the servant who waits at table; make use of him as your sentinel, to inform you how your work has pleased in the parlour: by his report you may be enabled in some measure to rectify any mistake; but request the favour of an early interview with your master or mistress: depend as little as possible on second-hand opinions. Judge of your employers from YOUR OWN observations, and THEIR behaviour to you, not from any idle reports from the other servants, who, if your master or mistress inadvertently drop a word in your praise, will immediately take alarm, and fearing your being more in favour than themselves, will seldom stick at trifles to prevent it, by pretending to take a prodigious liking to you, and poisoning your mind in such a manner as to destroy all your confidence, &c. in your employers; and if they do not immediately succeed in worrying you away, will take care you have no comfort while you stay: be most cautious of those who profess most: not only beware of believing such honey-tongued[47] folks, but beware as much of betraying your suspicions of them, for that will set fire to the train at once, and of a doubtful friend make a determined enemy.

If you are a good cook, and strictly do your duty, you will soon become a favourite domestic; but never boast of the approbation of your employers; for, in proportion as they think you rise in their estimation, you will excite all the tricks, that envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness can suggest to your fellow-servants; every one of whom, if less sober, honest, or industrious, or less favoured than yourself, will be your enemy.

While we warn you against making others your enemies, take care that you do not yourself become your own and greatest enemy. “Favourites are never in greater danger of falling, than when in the greatest favour,” which often begets a careless inattention to the commands of their employers, and insolent overbearance to their equals, a gradual neglect of duty, and a corresponding forfeiture of that regard which can only be preserved by the means which created it.

“Those arts by which at first you gain it,
You still must practise to maintain it.”

If your employers are so pleased with your conduct as to treat you as a friend rather than a servant, do not let their kindness excite your self-conceit, so as to make you for a moment forget you are one. Condescension, even to a proverb, produces contempt in inconsiderate minds; and to such, the very means which benevolence takes to cherish attention to duty, becomes the cause of the evil it is intended to prevent.

To be an agreeable companion in the kitchen, without compromising your duty to your patrons in the parlour, requires no small portion of good sense and good nature: in a word, you must “do as you would be done by.”

Act for, and speak of, every body as if they were present.

We hope the culinary student who peruses these pages will be above adopting the common, mean, and ever unsuccessful way of “holding with the hare, and running with the hounds,” of currying favour with fellow-servants by flattering them, and ridiculing the mistress when in the kitchen, and then, prancing into the parlour and purring about her, and making opportunities to display all the little faults you can find (or invent) that will tell well against those in the kitchen; assuring them, on your return, that they were vraised, for whatever you heard them blamed, and so[48] excite them to run more extremely into any little error which you think will be most displeasing to their employers; watching an opportunity to pour your poisonous lies into their unsuspecting ears, when there is no third person to bear witness of your iniquity; making your victims believe, it is all out of your sincere regard for them; assuring them (as Betty says in the man of the world,) “That indeed you are no busybody that loves fending nor proving, but hate all tittling and tattling, and gossiping and backbiting,” &c. &c.

Depend upon it, if you hear your fellow-servants speak disrespectfully of a master or a mistress with whom they have lived some time, it is a sure sign that they have some sinister scheme against yourself; if they have not been well treated, why have they stayed?

“There is nothing more detestable than defamation. I have no scruple to rank a slanderer with a murderer or an assassin. Those who assault the reputation of their benefactors, and ‘rob you of that which nought enriches them,’ would destroy your life, if they could do it with equal impunity.”

“If you hope to gain the respect and esteem of others, and the approbation of your own heart, be respectful and faithful to your superiors, obliging and good-natured to your fellow-servants, and charitable to all.” You cannot be too careful to cultivate a meek and gentle disposition; you will find the benefit of it every day of your life: to promote peace and harmony around you, will not only render you a general favourite with your fellow-servants, but will make you happy in yourself.

“Let your character be remarkable for industry and moderation; your manners and deportment, for modesty and humility; your dress distinguished for simplicity, frugality, and neatness. A dressy servant is a disgrace to a house, and renders her employers as ridiculous as she does herself. If you outshine your companions in finery, you will inevitably excite their envy, and make them your enemies.”

The importance of these three rules must be evident, to all who will consider how much easier it is to return any thing when done with to its proper place, than it is to find it when mislaid; and it is as easy to put things in one place as in another.

Keep your kitchen and furniture as clean and neat as possible, which will then be an ornament to it, a comfort to[49] your fellow-servants, and a credit to yourself. Moreover, good housewifery is the best recommendation to a good husband, and engages men to honourable attachment to you; she who is a tidy servant gives promise of being a careful wife.

Giving away any thing without consent or privity of your master or mistress, is a liberty you must not take; charity and compassion for the wants of our fellow-creatures are very amiable virtues, but they are not to be indulged at the expense of your own honesty, and other people’s property.

When you find that there is any thing to spare, and that it is in danger of being spoiled by being kept too long, it is very commendable in you to ask leave to dispose of it while it is fit for Christians to eat: if such permission is refused, the sin does not lie at your door. But you must on no account bestow the least morsel in contradiction to the will of those to whom it belongs.

“Never think any part of your business too trifling to be well done.”

“Eagerly embrace every opportunity of learning any thing which may be useful to yourself, or of doing any thing which may benefit others.”

Do not throw yourself out of a good place for a slight affront. “Come when you are called, and do what you are bid.” Place yourself in your mistress’s situation, and consider what you would expect from her, if she were in yours; and serve, reverence, and obey her accordingly.

Although there may be “more places than parish-churches,” it is not very easy to find many more good ones.

Saucy answers are highly aggravating, and answer no good purpose.

Let your master or mistress scold ever so much, or be ever so unreasonable; as “a soft answer turneth away wrath,” “so will SILENCE be the best a servant can make”.

One rude answer, extorted perhaps by harsh words, or unmerited censure, has cost many a servant the loss of a good place, or the total forfeiture of a regard which had been growing for years.

“If your employers are hasty, and have scolded without reason, bear it patiently; they will soon see their error, and[50] not be happy till they make you amends. Muttering on leaving the room, or slamming the door after you, is as bad as an impertinent reply; it is, in fact, showing that you would be impertinent if you dared.”

“A faithful servant will not only never speak disrespectfully to her employers, but will not hear disrespectful words said of them.”

Apply direct to your employers, and beg of them to explain to you, as fully as possible, how they like their victuals dressed, whether much or little done.50-*

Of what complexion they wish the ROASTS, of a gold colour, or well browned, and if they like them frothed?

Do they like SOUPS and SAUCES thick or thin, or white or brown, clean or full in the mouth? What accompaniments they are partial to?

What flavours they fancy? especially of SPICE and HERBS:

“Namque coquus domini debet habere gulam.”—Martial.

It is impossible that the most accomplished cook can please their palates, till she has learned their particular taste: this, it will hardly be expected, she can hit exactly the first time; however, the hints we have here given, and in the 7th and 8th chapters of the Rudiments of Cookery, will very much facilitate the ascertainment of this main chance of getting into their favour.

Be extremely cautious of seasoning high: leave it to the eaters to add the piquante condiments, according to their own palate and fancy: for this purpose, “The Magazine of Taste,” or “Sauce-box,” (No. 462,) will be found an invaluable acquisition; its contents will instantaneously produce any flavour that may be desired.

“De gustibus non est disputandum.”

Tastes are as different as faces; and without a most attentive observation of the directions given by her employers, the most experienced cook will never be esteemed a profound palatician.

It will not go far to pacify the rage of a ravenous gourmand, who likes his chops broiled brown, (and done enough, so that they can appear at table decently, and not blush when they are cut,) to be told that some of the customers at Dolly’s chop-house choose to have them only half-done, and that this is the best way of eating them.

[51]We all think that is the best way which we relish best, and which agrees best with our stomach: in this, reason and fashion, all-powerful as they are on most occasions, yield to the imperative caprice of the palate.

“The Irishman loves Usquebaugh, the Scot loves ale call’d Blue-cap,
The Welchman he loves toasted cheese, and makes his mouth like a mouse-trap.”

Our Italian neighbours regale themselves with macaroni and parmesan, and eat some things which we call carrion.—Vide Ray’s Travels, p. 362 and 406.

While the Englishman boasts of his roast beef, plum pudding, and porter,

The Frenchman feeds on his favourite frog and soupe-maigre,

The Tartar feasts on horse-flesh,

The Chinaman on dogs,

The Greenlander preys on garbage and train oil; and each “blesses his stars, and thinks it luxury.” What at one time or place is considered as beautiful, fragrant, and savoury, at another is regarded as deformed and disgustful.51-*

“Ask a toad what is beauty, the supremely beautiful, the ΤΟ ΚΑΛΟΝ! He will tell you it is my wife,—with two large eyes projecting out of her little head, a broad and flat neck, yellow belly, and dark brown back. With a Guinea negro, it is a greasy black skin, hollow eyes, and a flat nose. Put the question to the devil, and he will tell you that BEAUTY is a pair of horns, four claws, and a tail.”—Voltaire’s Philos. Dict. 8vo. p. 32.

“Asafœtida was called by the ancients ‘FOOD FOR THE GODS.’ The Persians, Indians, and other Eastern people, now eat it in sauces, and call it by that name: the Germans call it devil’s dung.”—Vide Pomet on Drugs.

Garlic and clove, or allspice, combined in certain proportions, produce a flavour very similar to asafœtida.

The organ of taste is more rarely found in perfection, and is sooner spoiled by the operations of time, excessive use, &c. than either of our other senses.

There are as various degrees of sensibility of palate as there are of gradations of perfection in the eyes and ears of painters and musicians. After all the pains which the editor has taken to explain the harmony of subtle relishes, unless nature has given the organ of taste in a due degree, this book[52] will, alas! no more make an Osborne,52-* than it can a Reynolds, or an Arne, or a Shield.

Where nature has been most bountiful of this faculty, its sensibility is so easily blunted by a variety of unavoidable circumstances, that the tongue is very seldom in the highest condition for appreciating delicate flavours, or accurately estimating the relative force of the various materials the cook employs in the composition of an harmonious relish. Cooks express this refinement of combination by saying, a well-finished ragoût “tastes of every thing, and tastes of nothing:” (this is “kitchen gibberish” for a sauce in which the component parts are well proportioned.)

However delicately sensitive nature may have formed the organs of taste, it is only during those few happy moments that they are perfectly awake, and in perfect good humour, (alas! how very seldom they are,) that the most accomplished and experienced cook has a chance of working with any degree of certainty without the auxiliary tests of the balance and the measure: by the help of these, when you are once right, it is your own fault if you are ever otherwise.

The sense of taste depends much on the health of the individual, and is hardly ever for a single hour in the same state: such is the extremely intimate sympathy between the stomach and the tongue, that in proportion as the former is empty, the latter is acute and sensitive. This is the cause that “good appetite is the best sauce,” and that the dish we find savoury at luncheon, is insipid at dinner, and at supper quite tasteless.

To taste any thing in perfection, the tongue must be moistened, or the substance applied to it contain moisture; the nervous papillæ which constitute this sense are roused to still more lively sensibility by salt, sugar, aromatics, &c.

If the palate becomes dull by repeated tasting, one of the best ways of refreshing it, is to masticate an apple, or to wash your mouth well with milk.

The incessant exercise of tasting, which a cook is obliged to submit to during the education of her tongue, frequently impairs the very faculty she is trying to improve. “’Tis true ’tis pity and pity ’tis,” (says a grand gourmand) “’tis true, her too anxious perseverance to penetrate the mysteries of palatics may diminish the tact, exhaust the power, and destroy the index, without which all her labour is in vain.”

[53]Therefore, a sagacious cook, instead of idly and wantonly wasting the excitability of her palate, on the sensibility of which her reputation and fortune depends, when she has ascertained the relative strength of the flavour of the various ingredients she employs, will call in the balance and the measure to do the ordinary business, and endeavour to preserve her organ of taste with the utmost care, that it may be a faithful oracle to refer to on grand occasions, and new compositions.53-* Of these an ingenious cook may form as endless a variety, as a musician with his seven notes, or a painter with his colours: read chapters 7 and 8 of the Rudiments of Cookery.

Receive as the highest testimonies of your employers’ regard whatever observations they may make on your work: such admonitions are the most unequivocal proofs of their desire to make you thoroughly understand their taste, and their wish to retain you in their service, or they would not take the trouble to teach you.

Enter into all their plans of economy,53-† and endeavour to make the most of every thing, as well for your own honour as your master’s profit, and you will find that whatever care you take for his profit will be for your own: take care that the meat which is to make its appearance again in the parlour is handsomely cut with a sharp knife, and put on a clean dish: take care of the gravy (see No. 326) which is left, it will save many pounds of meat in making sauce for hashes, poultry, and many little dishes.

Many things may be redressed in a different form from that in which they were first served, and improve the appearance of the table without increasing the expense of it.

Cold fish, soles, cod, whitings, smelts, &c. may be cut into bits, and put into escallop shells, with cold oyster, lobster, or shrimp sauce, and bread crumbled, and put into a Dutch oven, and browned like scalloped oysters. (No. 182.)

[54]The best way TO WARM COLD MEAT is to sprinkle the joint over with a little salt, and put it in a Dutch oven, at some distance before a gentle fire, that it may warm gradually; watch it carefully, and keep turning it till it is quite hot and brown: it will take from twenty minutes to three quarters of an hour, according to its thickness; serve it up with gravy: this is much better than hashing it, and by doing it nicely a cook will get great credit. Poultry (No. 530*), FRIED FISH (see No. 145), &c. may be redressed in this way.

Take care of the liquor you have boiled poultry or meat in; in five minutes you may make it into EXCELLENT SOUP. See obs. to Nos. 555 and 229, No. 5, and the 7th chapter of the Rudiments of Cookery.

No good housewife has any pretensions to rational economy who boils animal food without converting the broth into some sort of soup.

However highly the uninitiated in the mystery of soup-making may elevate the external appendage of his olfactory organ at the mention of “POT LIQUOR,” if he tastes No. 5, or 218, 555, &c. he will be as delighted with it as a Frenchman is with “potage à la Camarani,” of which it is said “a single spoonful will lap the palate in Elysium; and while one drop of it remains on the tongue, each other sense is eclipsed by the voluptuous thrilling of the lingual nerves!!”

Broth of fragments.—When you dress a large dinner, you may make good broth, or portable soup (No. 252), at very small cost, by taking care of all the trimmings and parings of the meat, game, and poultry, you are going to use: wash them well, and put them into a stewpan, with as much cold water as will cover them; set your stewpan on a hot fire; when it boils, take off all the scum, and set it on again to simmer gently; put in two carrots, two turnips, a large onion, three blades of pounded mace, and a head of celery; some mushroom parings will be a great addition. Let it continue to simmer gently four or five hours; strain it through a sieve into a clean basin. This will save a great deal of expense in buying gravy-meat.

Have the DUST, &c. removed regularly once in a fortnight, and have your KITCHEN CHIMNEY swept once a month; many good dinners have been spoiled, and many houses burned down, by the soot falling: the best security against this, is for the cook to have a long birch-broom, and every morning brush down all the soot within reach of it. Give notice to your employers when the contents of your COAL-CELLAR are diminished to a chaldron.

[55]It will be to little purpose to procure good provisions, unless you have proper utensils55-* to prepare them in: the most expert artist cannot perform his work in a perfect manner without proper instruments; you cannot have neat work without nice tools, nor can you dress victuals well without an apparatus appropriate to the work required. See 1st page of chapter 7 of the Rudiments of Cookery.

In those houses where the cook enjoys the confidence of her employer so much as to be intrusted with the care of the store-room, which is not very common, she will keep an exact account of every thing as it comes in, and insist upon the weight and price being fixed to every article she purchases, and occasionally will (and it may not be amiss to jocosely drop a hint to those who supply them that she does) reweigh them, for her own satisfaction, as well as that of her employer, and will not trust the key of this room to any one; she will also keep an account of every thing she takes from it, and manage with as much consideration and frugality as if it was her own property she was using, endeavouring to disprove the adage, that “PLENTY makes waste,” and remembering that “wilful waste makes woful want.”

The honesty of a cook must be above all suspicion: she must obtain, and (in spite of the numberless temptations, &c. that daily offer to bend her from it) preserve a character of spotless integrity and useful industry,55-† remembering that it is the fair price of INDEPENDENCE, which all wish for, but none without it can hope for; only a fool or a madman will be so silly or so crazy as to expect to reap where he has been too idle to sow.

Very few modern-built town-houses have a proper place[56] to preserve provisions in. The best substitute is a HANGING SAFE, which you may contrive to suspend in an airy situation; and when you order meat, poultry, or fish, tell the tradesman when you intend to dress it: he will then have it in his power to serve you with provision that will do him credit, which the finest meat, &c. in the world will never do, unless it has been kept a proper time to be ripe and tender.

If you have a well-ventilated larder in a shady, dry situation, you may make still surer, by ordering in your meat and poultry such a time before you want it as will render it tender, which the finest meat cannot be, unless hung a proper time (see 2d chapter of the Rudiments of Cookery), according to the season, and nature of the meat, &c.; but always, as “les bons hommes de bouche de France” say, till it is “assez mortifiée.”

Permitting this process to proceed to a certain degree renders meat much more easy of solution in the stomach, and for those whose digestive faculties are delicate, it is of the utmost importance that it be attended to with the greatest nicety, for the most consummate skill in the culinary preparation of it will not compensate for the want of attention to this. (Read obs. to No. 68.) Meat that is thoroughly roasted, or boiled, eats much shorter and tenderer, and is in proportion more digestible, than that which is under-done.

You will be enabled to manage much better if your employers will make out a BILL OF FARE FOR THE WEEK on the Saturday before: for example, for a family of half a dozen—

It is an excellent plan to have certain things on certain days. When your butcher or poulterer knows what you will want, he has a better chance of doing his best for you; and never think of ordering BEEF FOR ROASTING except for Sunday.

When the weather or season56-* is very unfavourable for[57] keeping meat, &c. give him the choice of sending that which is in the best order for dressing; i. e. either ribs or sirloin of beef, or leg, loin, or neck of mutton, &c.

Meat in which you can detect the slightest trace of putrescency, has reached its highest degree of tenderness, and should be dressed without delay; but before this period, which in some kinds of meat is offensive, the due degree of inteneration may be ascertained, by its yielding readily to the pressure of the finger, and by its opposing little resistance to an attempt to bind the joint.

Although we strongly recommend that animal food should be hung up in the open air, till its fibres have lost some degree of their toughness; yet, let us be clearly understood also to warn you, that if kept till it loses its natural sweetness, it is as detrimental to health, as it is disagreeable to the smell and taste.

In very cold weather, bring your meat, poultry, &c. into the kitchen, early in the morning, if you roast, boil, or stew it ever so gently and ever so long; if it be frozen, it will continue tough and unchewable.

Without very watchful attention to this, the most skilful cook in the world will get no credit, be she ever so careful in the management of her spit or her stewpan.

The time meat should hang to be tender, depends on the heat and humidity of the air. If it is not kept long enough, it is hard and tough; if too long, it loses its flavour. It should be hung where it will have a thorough air, and be dried with a cloth, night and morning, to keep it from damp and mustiness.

Before you dress it, wash it well; if it is roasting beef, pare off the outside.

If you fear meat,57-* &c. will not keep till the time it is wanted, par-roast or par-boil it; it will then keep a couple of days longer, when it may be dressed in the usual way, only it will be done in rather less time.

[58]“In Germany, the method of keeping flesh in summer is to steep it in Rhenish wine with a little sea-salt; by which means it may be preserved a whole season.”—Boerhaave’s Academical Lectures, translated by J. Nathan, 8vo. 1763, p. 241.

The cook and the butcher as often lose their credit by meat being dressed too fresh, as the fishmonger does by fish that has been kept too long.

Dr. Franklin in his philosophical experiments tells us, that if game or poultry be killed by ELECTRICITY it will become tender in the twinkling of an eye, and if it be dressed immediately, will be delicately tender.

During the sultry SUMMER MONTHS, it is almost impossible to procure meat that is not either tough, or tainted. The former is as improper as the latter for the unbraced stomachs of relaxed valetudinarians, for whom, at this season, poultry, stews, &c., and vegetable soups, are the most suitable food, when the digestive organs are debilitated by the extreme heat, and profuse perspiration requires an increase of liquid to restore equilibrium in the constitution.

I have taken much more pains than any of my predecessors, to teach the young cook how to perform, in the best manner, the common business of her profession. Being well grounded in the RUDIMENTS of COOKERY, she will be able to execute the orders that are given her, with ease to herself, and satisfaction to her employers, and send up a delicious dinner, with half the usual expense and trouble.

I have endeavoured to lessen the labour of those who wish to be thoroughly acquainted with their profession; and an attentive perusal of the following pages will save them much of the irksome drudgery attending an apprenticeship at the stove: an ordeal so severe, that few pass it without irreparable injury to their health;58-* and many lose their lives before they learn their business.

To encourage the best performance of the machinery of mastication, the cook must take care that her dinner is not only well cooked, but that each dish be sent to table with its proper accompaniments, in the neatest and most elegant manner.

Remember, to excite the good opinion of the eye is the first step towards awakening the appetite.

[59]Decoration is much more rationally employed in rendering a wholesome, nutritious dish inviting, than in the elaborate embellishments which are crowded about trifles and custards.

Endeavour to avoid over-dressing roasts and boils, &c. and over-seasoning soups and sauces with salt, pepper, &c.; it is a fault which cannot be mended.

If your roasts, &c. are a little under-done, with the assistance of the stewpan, the gridiron, or the Dutch oven, you may soon rectify the mistake made with the spit or the pot.

If over-done, the best juices of the meat are evaporated; it will serve merely to distend the stomach, and if the sensation of hunger be removed, it is at the price of an indigestion.

The chief business of cookery is to render food easy of digestion, and to facilitate nutrition. This is most completely accomplished by plain cookery in perfection; i. e. neither over nor under-done.

With all your care, you will not get much credit by cooking to perfection, if more than one dish goes to table at a time.

To be eaten in perfection, the interval between meat being taken out of the stewpan and its being put into the mouth, must be as short as possible; but ceremony, that most formidable enemy to good cheer, too often decrees it otherwise, and the guests seldom get a bit of an “entremets” till it is half cold. (See No. 485.)

So much time is often lost in placing every thing in apple-pie order, that long before dinner is announced, all becomes lukewarm; and to complete the mortification of the grand gourmand, his meat is put on a sheet of ice in the shape of a plate, which instantly converts the gravy into jelly, and the fat into a something which puzzles his teeth and the roof of his mouth as much as if he had birdlime to masticate. A complete meat-screen will answer the purpose of a hot closet, plate-warmer, &c.—See Index.

It will save you infinite trouble and anxiety, if you can prevail on your employers to use the “SAUCE-BOX,” No. 462, hereinafter described in the chapter of Sauces. With the help of this “MAGAZINE OF TASTE,” every one in company may flavour their soup and sauce, and adjust the vibrations of their palate, exactly to their own fancy; but if the cook give a decidedly predominant and piquante goût to a dish, to tickle the tongues of two or three visiters, whose taste she knows, she may thereby make the dinner disgusting to all the other guests.

[60]Never undertake more work than you are quite certain you can do well. If you are ordered to prepare a larger dinner than you think you can send up with ease and neatness, or to dress any dish that you are not acquainted with, rather than run any risk in spoiling any thing (by one fault you may perhaps lose all your credit), request your employers to let you have some help. They may acquit you for pleading guilty of inability; but if you make an attempt, and fail, will vote it a capital offence.

If your mistress professes to understand cookery, your best way will be to follow her directions. If you wish to please her, let her have the praise of all that is right, and cheerfully bear the blame of any thing that is wrong; only advise that all NEW DISHES may be first tried when the family dine alone. When there is company, never attempt to dress any thing which you have not ascertained that you can do perfectly well.

Do not trust any part of your work to others without carefully overlooking them: whatever faults they commit, you will be censured for. If you have forgotten any article which is indispensable for the day’s dinner, request your employers to send one of the other servants for it. The cook must never quit her post till her work is entirely finished.

It requires the utmost skill and contrivance to have all things done as they should be, and all done together, at that critical moment when the dinner-bell sounds “to the banquet.”

“A feast must be without a fault;
And if ’t is not all right, ’t is naught.”

But

“Good nature will some failings overlook,
Forgive mischance, not errors of the cook;
As, if no salt is thrown about the dish,
Or nice crisp’d parsley scatter’d on the fish,
Shall we in passion from our dinner fly,
And hopes of pardon to the cook deny,
For things which Mrs. Glasse herself might oversee,
And all mankind commit as well as she?”
Vide King’s Art of Cookery.

Such is the endless variety of culinary preparations, that it would be as vain and fruitless a search as that for the philosopher’s stone, to expect to find a cook who is quite perfect in all the operations of the spit, the stewpan, and the rolling-pin: you will as soon find a watchmaker who can make, put together, and regulate every part of a watch.

“The universe cannot produce a cook who knows how to[61] do every branch of cookery well, be his genius as great as possible.”—Vide the Cook’s Cookery, 8vo. page 40.

The best rule for marketing is to pay READY MONEY for every thing, and to deal with the most respectable tradesmen in your neighbourhood.

If you leave it to their integrity to supply you with a good article, at the fair market price, you will be supplied with better provisions, and at as reasonable a rate as those bargain-hunters, who trot “around, around, around about” a market, till they are trapped to buy some unchewable old poultry, tough tup-mutton, stringy cow beef, or stale fish, at a very little less than the price of prime and proper food. With savings like these they toddle home in triumph, cackling all the way, like a goose that has got ankle-deep into good luck.

All the skill of the most accomplished cook will avail nothing, unless she is furnished with PRIME PROVISIONS. The best way to procure these is to deal with shops of established character: you may appear to pay, perhaps, ten per cent. more than you would, were you to deal with those who pretend to sell cheap, but you would be much more than in that proportion better served.

Every trade has its tricks and deceptions: those who follow them can deceive you if they please; and they are too apt to do so, if you provoke the exercise of their over-reaching talent.61-*

Challenge them to a game at “Catch who can,” by entirely relying on your own judgment; and you will soon find that nothing but very long experience can make you equal to the combat of marketing to the utmost advantage.

Before you go to market, look over your larder, and consider well what things are wanting, especially on a Saturday. No well-regulated family can suffer a disorderly caterer to be jumping in and out to the chandler’s shop on a Sunday morning.

Give your directions to your assistants, and begin your business early in the morning, or it will be impossible to have the dinner ready at the time it is ordered.

[62]To be half an hour after the time is such a frequent fault, that there is the more merit in being ready at the appointed hour. This is a difficult task, and in the best-regulated family you can only be sure of your time by proper arrangements.

With all our love of punctuality, we must not forget that the first consideration must still be, that the dinner “be well done when ’t is done.”

If any accident occurs to any part of the dinner, or if you are likely to be prevented sending the soup, &c. to the table at the moment it is expected, send up a message to your employers, stating the circumstance, and bespeak their patience for as many minutes as you think it will take to be ready. This is better than either keeping the company waiting without an apology, or dishing your dinner before it is done enough, or sending any thing to table which is disgusting to the stomachs of the guests at the first appearance of it.

Those who desire regularity in the service of their table, should have a DIAL, of about twelve inches diameter, placed over the kitchen fireplace, carefully regulated to keep time exactly with the clock in the hall or dining-parlour; with a frame on one side, containing A TASTE TABLE of the peculiarities of the master’s palate, and the particular rules and orders of his kitchen; and, on the other side, of the REWARDS given to those who attend to them, and for long and faithful service.

In small families, where a dinner is seldom given, a great deal of preparation is required, and the preceding day must be devoted to the business of the kitchen.

On these occasions a char-woman is often employed to do the dirty work. Ignorant persons often hinder you more than they help you. We advise a cook to be hired to assist to dress the dinner: this would be very little more expense, and the work got through with much more comfort in the kitchen and credit to the parlour.

When you have a very large entertainment to prepare, get your soups and sauces, forcemeats, &c. ready the day before, and read the 7th chapter of our Rudiments of Cookery. Many made dishes may also be prepared the day before they are to go to table; but do not dress them quite enough the first day, that they may not be over-done by warming up again.

Prepare every thing you can the day before the dinner, and order every thing else to be sent in early in the morning; if the tradesmen forget it, it will allow you time to send for it.

The pastry, jellies, &c. you may prepare while the broths are doing: then truss your game and poultry, and shape[63] your collops, cutlets, &c., and trim them neatly; cut away all flaps and gristles, &c. Nothing should appear on table but what has indisputable pretensions to be eaten!

Put your made dishes in plates, and arrange them upon the dresser in regular order. Next, see that your roasts and boils are all nicely trimmed, trussed, &c. and quite ready for the spit or the pot.

Have your vegetables neatly cut, pared, picked, and clean washed in the colander: provide a tin dish, with partitions, to hold your fine herbs: onions and shallots, parsley, thyme, tarragon, chervil, and burnet, minced very fine; and lemon-peel grated, or cut thin, and chopped very small: pepper and salt ready mixed, and your spice-box and salt-cellar always ready for action: that every thing you may want may be at hand for your stove-work, and not be scampering about the kitchen in a whirlpool of confusion, hunting after these trifles while the dinner is waiting.

In one drawer under your SPICE-BOX keep ready ground, in well-stopped bottles, the several spices separate; and also that mixture of them which is called “ragoût powder” (No. 457 or No. 460): in another, keep your dried and powdered sweet, savoury, and soup herbs, &c. and a set of weights and scales: you may have a third drawer, containing flavouring essences, &c. an invaluable auxiliary in finishing soups and sauces. (See the account of the “MAGAZINE OF TASTE,” or “SAUCE-BOX,” No. 462.)

Have also ready some THICKENING, made of the best white flour sifted, mixed with soft water with a wooden spoon till it is the consistence of thick batter, a bottle of plain BROWNING (No. 322), some strained lemon-juice, and some good glaze, or PORTABLE soup (No. 252).

“Nothing can be done in perfection which must be done in a hurry:”63-* therefore, if you wish the dinner to be sent up to please your master and mistress, and do credit to yourself, be punctual; take care that as soon as the clock strikes, the dinner-bell rings: this shows the establishment to be orderly, is extremely gratifying to the master and his guests, and is most praiseworthy in the attendants.

But remember, you cannot obtain this desirable reputation without good management in every respect. If you wish to ensure ease and independence in the latter part of your life, you must not be unwilling to pay the price for which only they can be obtained, and earn them by a diligent and[64] faithful64-* performance of the duties of your station in your young days, which, if you steadily persevere in, you may depend upon ultimately receiving the reward your services deserve.

All duties are reciprocal: and if you hope to receive favour, endeavour to deserve it by showing yourself fond of obliging, and grateful when obliged; such behaviour will win regard, and maintain it: enforce what is right, and excuse what is wrong.

Quiet, steady perseverance is the only spring which you can safely depend upon for infallibly promoting your progress on the road to independence.

If your employers do not immediately appear to be sensible of your endeavours to contribute your utmost to their comfort and interest, be not easily discouraged. Persevere, and do all in your power to MAKE YOURSELF USEFUL.

Endeavour to promote the comfort of every individual in the family; let it be manifest that you are desirous to do rather more than is required of you, than less than your duty: they merit little who perform merely what would be exacted. If you are desired to help in any business which may not strictly belong to your department, undertake it cheerfully, patiently, and conscientiously.

The foregoing advice has been written with an honest desire to augment the comfort of those in the kitchen, who will soon find that the ever-cheering reflection of having done their duty to the utmost of their ability, is in itself, with a Christian spirit, a never-failing source of comfort in all circumstances and situations, and that

“VIRTUE IS ITS OWN REWARD.”

[65]

To reduce our culinary operations to as exact a certainty as the nature of the processes would admit of, we have, wherever it was needful, given the quantities of each article.

The weights are avoirdupois.

The measure, the graduated glass of the apothecaries. This appeared the most accurate and convenient; the pint being divided into sixteen ounces, the ounce into eight drachms. A middling-sized tea-spoon will contain about a drachm; four such tea-spoons are equal to a middling-sized table-spoon, or half an ounce; four table-spoons to a common-sized wine-glass.

The specific gravities of the various substances being so extremely different, we cannot offer any auxiliary standards65-* for the weights, which we earnestly recommend the cook to employ, if she wishes to gain credit for accuracy and uniformity in her business: these she will find it necessary to have as small as the quarter of a drachm avoirdupois, which is equal to nearly seven grains troy.

Glass measures (divided into tea and table-spoons), containing from half an ounce to half a pint, may be procured; also, the double-headed pepper and spice boxes, with caps over the gratings. The superiority of these, by preserving the contents from the action of the air, must be sufficiently obvious to every one: the fine aromatic flavour of pepper is soon lost, from the bottles it is usually kept in not being well stopped. Peppers are seldom ground or pounded sufficiently fine. (See N.B. to 369.)

N.B. The trough nutmeg-graters are by far the best we have seen, especially for those who wish to grate fine, and fast.

[66]

This most simple of culinary processes is not often performed in perfection. It does not require quite so much nicety and attendance as roasting; to skim your pot well, and keep it really boiling (the slower the better) all the while, to know how long is required for doing the joint, &c., and to take it up at the critical moment when it is done enough, comprehends almost the whole art and mystery. This, however, demands a patient and perpetual vigilance, of which few persons are capable.

The cook must take especial care that the water really boils all the while she is cooking, or she will be deceived in the time; and make up a sufficient fire (a frugal cook will manage with much less fire for boiling than she uses for roasting) at first, to last all the time, without much mending or stirring.

When the pot is coming to a boil there will always, from[67] the cleanest meat and clearest water, rise a scum to the top of it, proceeding partly from the water; this must be carefully taken off as soon as it rises.

On this depends the good appearance of all boiled things.

When you have skimmed well, put in some cold water, which will throw up the rest of the scum.

The oftener it is skimmed, and the cleaner the top of the water is kept, the sweeter and the cleaner will be the meat.

If let alone, it soon boils down and sticks to the meat,67-* which, instead of looking delicately white and nice, will have that coarse and filthy appearance we have too often to complain of, and the butcher and poulterer be blamed for the carelessness of the cook in not skimming her pot.

Many put in milk, to make what they boil look white; but this does more harm than good: others wrap it up in a cloth; but these are needless precautions: if the scum be attentively removed, meat will have a much more delicate colour and finer flavour than it has when muffled up. This may give rather more trouble, but those who wish to excel in their art must only consider how the processes of it can be most perfectly performed: a cook, who has a proper pride and pleasure in her business, will make this her maxim on all occasions.

It is desirable that meat for boiling be of an equal thickness, or before thicker parts are done enough the thinner will be done too much.

Put your meat into cold67-† water, in the proportion of about a quart of water to a pound of meat: it should be covered with water during the whole of the process of boiling, but not drowned in it; the less water, provided the meat be covered with it, the more savoury will be the meat, and the better will be the broth.

The water should be heated gradually, according to the thickness, &c. of the article boiled. For instance, a leg of mutton of 10 pounds weight (No. 1,) should be placed over a moderate fire, which will gradually make the water hot, without causing it to boil for about forty minutes; if the water boils much sooner, the meat will be hardened, and shrink up as if it was scorched: by keeping the water a certain time heating without boiling, the fibres of the meat are[68] dilated, and it yields a quantity of scum, which must be taken off as soon as it rises.

“104. If a vessel containing water be placed over a steady fire, the water will grow continually hotter till it reaches the limit of boiling, after which the regular accessions of heat are wholly spent in converting it into steam.

“Water remains at the same pitch of temperature, however fiercely it boils. The only difference is, that with a strong fire it sooner comes to boil, and more quickly boils away, and is converted into steam.”—Buchanan on the Economy of Fuel, 1810.

The editor placed a thermometer in water in that state which cooks call gentle simmering; the heat was 212°, i. e. the same degree as the strongest boiling.

Two mutton chops were covered with cold water, and one boiled a gallop, and the other simmered very gently for three quarters of an hour: the chop which was slowly simmered was decidedly superior to that which was boiled; it was much tenderer, more juicy, and much higher flavoured. The liquor which boiled fast was in like proportion more savoury, and when cold had much more fat on its surface. This explains why quick boiling renders meat hard, &c., because its juices are extracted in a greater degree.

Reckon the time from its first coming to a boil.

The old rule of 15 minutes to a pound of meat, we think rather too little: the slower it boils, the tenderer, the plumper, and whiter it will be.

For those who choose their food thoroughly cooked (which all will who have any regard for their stomachs), twenty minutes to a pound for fresh, and rather more for salted meat, will not be found too much for gentle simmering by the side of the fire, allowing more or less time, according to the thickness of the joint, and the coldness of the weather: to know the state of which, let a thermometer be placed in the pantry; and when it falls below 40°, tell your cook to give rather more time in both roasting and boiling, always remembering, the slower it boils the better.

Without some practice it is difficult to teach any art; and cooks seem to suppose they must be right, if they put meat into a pot, and set it over the fire for a certain time, making no allowance whether it simmers without a bubble or boils a gallop.

Fresh-killed meat will take much longer time boiling than that which has been kept till it is what the butchers call ripe, and longer in cold than in warm weather: if it be frozen, it must be thawed before boiling as before roasting; if it be[69] fresh-killed, it will be tough and hard, if you stew it ever so long, and ever so gently. In cold weather, the night before the day you dress it, bring it into a place of which the temperature is not less than 45 degrees of Fahrenheit’s thermometer.

The size of the boiling-pots should be adapted to what they are to contain: the larger the saucepan the more room it takes upon the fire, and a larger quantity of water requires a proportionate increase of fire to boil it.

A little pot
Is soon hot.

In small families we recommend block tin saucepans, &c. as lightest and safest. If proper care is taken of them, and they are well dried after they are cleaned, they are by far the cheapest; the purchase of a new tin saucepan being little more than the expense of tinning a copper one.

Let the covers of your boiling-pots fit close, not only to prevent unnecessary evaporation of the water, but to prevent the escape of the nutritive matter, which must then remain either in the meat or in the broth; and the smoke is prevented from insinuating itself under the edge of the lid, and so giving the meat a bad taste. See observations on Saucepans, in chapter 7.

If you let meat or poultry remain in the water after it is done enough, it will become sodden, and lose its flavour.

Beef and mutton a little under-done (especially very large joints, which will make the better hash or broil,) is not a great fault; by some people it is preferred: but lamb, pork, and veal are uneatable if not thoroughly boiled; but do not over-do them.

A trivet or fish-drainer put on the bottom of the boiling-pot, raising the contents about an inch and a half from the bottom, will prevent that side of the meat which comes next the bottom from being done too much, and the lower part of the meat will be as delicately done as the other part; and this will enable you to take out the contents of the pot, without sticking a fork, &c. into it. If you have not a trivet, use four skewers, or a soup-plate laid the wrong side upwards.

Take care of the liquor you have boiled poultry or meat in; in five minutes you may make it into excellent soup. (See obs. to No. 555 and No. 229.)

The good housewife never boils a joint without converting the broth into some sort of soup (read No. 5, and chapter 7). If the liquor be too salt, only use half the quantity, and the[70] rest water. Wash salted meat well with cold water before you put it into the boiler.

An estimation of the LOSS OF WEIGHT which takes place in cooking animal food.—From Mr. Tilloch’s Philosophical Magazine.

“It is well known, that in whatever way the flesh of animals is prepared for food, a considerable diminution takes place in its weight. We do not recollect, however, to have any where seen a statement of the loss which meat sustains in the various culinary processes, although it is pretty obvious that a series of experiments on the subject would not be without their use in domestic economy.

“We shall here give the result of a series of experiments which were actually made on this subject in a public establishment; premising that, as they were not undertaken from mere curiosity, but, on the contrary, to serve a purpose of practical utility, absolute accuracy was not attended to. Considering, however, the large quantities of provisions which were actually examined, it is presumed that the results may be safely depended upon for any practical purpose. It would, no doubt, have been desirable to have known not only the whole diminution of weight, but also the parts which were separated from the meat in the form of aqueous vapour, jelly, fat, &c.; but the determination of these did not fall within the scope of the inquiry.

“Hence, the weight lost by beef in boiling was in this case about 26 1/2lbs. in 100lbs.

“The weight lost by beef in roasting appears to be 32 per cent.

“Weight lost by beef in baking 30 per cent.

[71]

“The shank-bones were estimated at 4 ounces each; therefore the loss by boiling was 55lbs. 8oz.

“The loss of weight in legs of mutton in boiling is 21 1/3 per cent.

“The loss of weight in shoulders of mutton by roasting, is about 31 1/3 per cent.

“Hence, loins of mutton lose by roasting about 35 1/2 per cent.

“The loss in necks of mutton by roasting is about 32 1/3 per cent.

“We shall only draw two practical inferences from the foregoing statement.—1st, In respect of economy, it is more profitable to boil meat than to roast it. 2dly, Whether we roast or boil meat, it loses by being cooked from one-fifth to one-third of its whole weight.”

The loss of roasting arises from the melting out of the fat, and evaporating the water; but the nutritious matters remain condensed in the cooked solid.

In boiling, the loss arises partly from the fat melted out, but chiefly from gelatine and osmazome being extracted and dissolved by the water in which the meat is boiled; there is, therefore, a real loss of nourishment, unless the broth be used; when this mode of cooking becomes the most economical.71-*[72]

These are to be sent up in boats, and never poured over the meat, &c.

The following observations were written expressly for this work by Mr. Turner, English and French bread and biscuit baker.

“Baking is one of the cheapest and most convenient ways of dressing a dinner in small families; and, I may say, that the oven is often the only kitchen a poor man has, if he wishes to enjoy a joint of meat at home with his family.

“I don’t mean to deny the superior excellence of roasting to baking; but some joints, when baked, so nearly approach to the same when roasted, that I have known them to be carried to the table, and eaten as such with great satisfaction.

“Legs and loins of pork, legs of mutton, fillets of veal, and many other joints, will bake to great advantage, if the meat be good; I mean well-fed, rather inclined to be fat: if the meat be poor, no baker can give satisfaction.

“When baking a poor joint of meat, before it has been half baked I have seen it start from the bone, and shrivel up scarcely to be believed.

“Besides those joints above mentioned, I shall enumerate a few baked dishes which I can particularly recommend.

“A pig, when sent to the baker prepared for baking, should have its ears and tail covered with buttered paper properly fastened on, and a bit of butter tied up in a piece of linen to baste the back with, otherwise it will be apt to blister: with a proper share of attention from the baker, I consider this way equal to a roasted one.

[73]“A goose prepared the same as for roasting, taking care to have it on a stand, and when half done to turn the other side upwards. A duck the same.

“A buttock of beef the following way is particularly fine. After it has been in salt about a week, to be well washed, and put into a brown earthen pan with a pint of water; cover the pan tight with two or three thicknesses of cap or foolscap paper: never cover any thing that is to be baked with brown paper, the pitch and tar that is in brown paper will give the meat a smoky, bad taste: give it four or five hours in a moderately heated oven.

“A ham (if not too old) put in soak for an hour, taken out and wiped, a crust made sufficient to cover it all over, and baked in a moderately heated oven, cuts fuller of gravy, and of a finer flavour, than a boiled one. I have been in the habit of baking small cod-fish, haddock, and mackerel, with a dust of flour, and some bits of butter put on them; eels, when large and stuffed; herrings and sprats, in a brown pan, with vinegar and a little spice, and tied over with paper. A hare, prepared the same as for roasting, with a few pieces of butter, and a little drop of milk put into the dish, and basted several times, will be found nearly equal to roasting; or cut it up, season it properly, put it into a jar or pan, and cover it over and bake it in a moderate oven for about three hours. In the same manner, I have been in the habit of baking legs and shins of beef, ox cheeks, &c. prepared with a seasoning of onions, turnips, &c.: they will take about four hours: let them stand till cold, to skim off the fat; then warm it up all together, or part, as you may want it.

“All these I have been in the habit of baking for the first families.

“The time each of the above articles should take depends much upon the state of the oven, and I do consider the baker a sufficient judge; if they are sent to him in time, he must be very neglectful if they are not ready at the time they are ordered.”

For receipts for making bread, French rolls, muffins, crumpets, Sally Lunn, &c., see the Appendix.

[74]

In all studies, it is the best practice to begin with the plainest and easiest parts; and so on, by degrees, to such as are more difficult: we, therefore, treated of plain boiling, and we now proceed to roasting: we shall then gradually unravel to our culinary students the art (and mystery, until developed in this work) of making, with the least trouble and expense, the most highly finished soups, sauces, and made-dishes.

Let the young cook never forget that cleanliness is the chief cardinal virtue of the kitchen; the first preparation for roasting is to take care that the spit be properly cleaned with sand and water; nothing else. When it has been well scoured with this, dry it with a clean cloth. If spits are wiped clean as soon as the meat is drawn from them, and while they are hot, a very little cleaning will be required. The less the spit is passed through the meat the better;74-* and, before you spit it, joint it properly, especially necks and loins, that the carver may separate them easily and neatly, and take especial care it be evenly balanced on the spit, that its motion may be regular, and the fire operate equally on each part of it; therefore, be provided with balancing-skewers and cookholds, and see it is properly jointed.

Roasting should be done by the radiant heat of a clear, glowing fire, otherwise it is in fact baked: the machines the economical grate-makers call ROASTERS, are, in plain English, ovens.

Count Rumford was certainly an exact economist of fuel, when he contrived these things; and those philosophers who try all questions “according to Cocker” may vote for baked victuals; but the rational epicure, who has been accustomed to enjoy beef well roasted, will soon be convinced that the[75] poet who wrote our national ballad at the end of this chapter, was not inspired by Sir Benjamin Thompson’s cookery.

All your attention in roasting will be thrown away, if you do not take care that your meat, especially beef, has been kept long enough to be tender. See “ADVICE TO COOKS,” and obs. to No. 68.

Make up the fire in time; let it be proportioned to the dinner to be dressed, and about three or four inches longer at each end than the thing to be roasted, or the ends of the meat cannot be done nice and brown.

A cook must be as particular to proportion her fire to the business she has to do, as a chemist: the degree of heat most desirable for dressing the different sorts of food ought to be attended to with the utmost precision.

The fire that is but just sufficient to receive the noble sirloin (No. 19), will parch up a lighter joint.

From half an hour to an hour before you begin to roast, prepare the fire by putting a few coals on, which will be sufficiently lighted by the time you wish to make use of your fire; between the bars, and on the top, put small or large coals, according to the bulk of the joint, and the time the fire is required to be strong; after which, throw the cinders (wetted) at the back.

Never put meat down to a burned-up fire, if you can possibly avoid it; but should the fire become fierce, place the spit at a considerable distance, and allow a little more time.

Preserve the fat,75-* by covering it with paper, for this purpose called “kitchen-paper,” and tie it on with fine twine; pins and skewers can by no means be allowed; they are so many taps to let out the gravy: besides, the paper often starts from them and catches fire, to the great injury of the meat.

If the thing to be roasted be thin and tender, the fire should be little and brisk: when you have a large joint to roast, make up a sound, strong fire, equally good in every part of the grate, or your meat cannot be equally roasted, nor have that uniform colour which constitutes the beauty of good roasting.

Give the fire a good stirring before you lay the joint down; examine it from time to time while the spit is going round; keep it clear at the bottom, and take care there are no smoky coals in the front, which will spoil the look and taste of the meat, and hinder it from roasting evenly.

[76]When the joint to be roasted is thicker at one end than the other, place the spit slanting, with the thickest part nearest the fire.

Do not put meat too near the fire at first; the larger the joint, the farther it must be kept from the fire: if once it gets scorched, the outside will become hard, and acquire a disagreeable, empyreumatic taste; and the fire being prevented from penetrating into it, the meat will appear done before it is little more than half-done, besides losing the pale brown colour, which it is the beauty of roasted meat to have.

From 14 to 10 inches is the usual distance at which meat is put from the grate, when first put down. It is extremely difficult to offer any thing like an accurate general rule for this, it depends so much upon the size of the fire, and of that of the thing to be roasted.

Till some culinary philosopher shall invent a thermometer to ascertain the heat of the fire, and a graduated spit-rack to regulate the distance from it, the process of roasting is attended by so many ever-varying circumstances, that it must remain among those which can only be performed well, by frequent practice and attentive observation.

If you wish your jack to go well, keep it as clean as possible, oil it, and then wipe it: if the oil is not wiped off again it will gather dust; to prevent this, as soon as you have done roasting, cover it up. Never leave the winders on while the jack is going round, unless you do it, as Swift says, “that it may fly off, and knock those troublesome servants on the head who will be crowding round your kitchen fire.”

Be very careful to place the dripping-pan at such a distance from the fire as just to catch the drippings: if it is too near, the ashes will fall into it, and spoil the drippings76-* (which we shall hereafter show will occasionally be found an excellent substitute for butter or lard). To clarify drippings, see (No. 83,) and pease and dripping soup (No. 229), savoury and salubrious, for only a penny per quart. If it is too far from the fire to catch them, you will not only lose your drippings, but the meat will be blackened and spoiled by the fœtid smoke, which will arise when the fat falls on the live cinders.

A large dripping-pan is convenient for several purposes. It should not be less than 28 inches long and 20 inches wide, and have a covered well on the side from the fire, to collect the drippings; this will preserve them in the most delicate[77] state: in a pan of the above size you may set fried fish, and various dishes, to keep hot.

This is one of Painter’s and Hawke’s contrivances, near Norfolk-street, Strand.

The time meat will take roasting will vary according to the time it has been kept, and the temperature of the weather; the same weight77-* will be twenty minutes or half an hour longer in cold weather,77-† than it will be in warm; and if fresh killed, than if it has been kept till it is tender.

A good meat-screen is a great saver of fuel. It should be on wheels, have a flat top, and not be less than about three feet and a half wide, and with shelves in it, about one foot deep; it will then answer all the purposes of a large Dutch oven, plate-warmer, hot hearth, &c. Some are made with a door behind: this is convenient, but the great heat they are exposed to soon shrinks the materials, and the currents of air through the cracks cannot be prevented, so they are better without the door. We have seen one, which had on the top of it a very convenient hot closet, which is a great acquisition in kitchens, where the dinner waits after it is dressed.

Every body knows the advantage of slow boiling. Slow roasting is equally important.

It is difficult to give any specific rule for time; but if your fire is made as before directed, your meat-screen sufficiently large to guard what you are dressing from currents of air, and the meat is not frosted, you cannot do better than follow the old general rule of allowing rather more than a quarter of an hour to the pound; a little more or less, according to the temperature of the weather, in proportion as the piece is thick or thin, the strength of the fire, the nearness of the meat to it, and the frequency with which you baste it; the more it is basted the less time it will take, as it keeps the meat soft and mellow on the outside, and the fire acts with more force upon it.

Reckon the time, not to the hour when dinner is ordered, but to the moment the roasts will be wanted. Supposing there are a dozen people to sip soup and eat fish first, you may allow them ten or fifteen minutes for the former, and about as long for the latter, more or less, according to the temptations the “BON GOUT” of these preceding courses has to attract their attention.

[78]When the joint is half done, remove the spit and dripping-pan back, and stir up your fire thoroughly, that it may burn clear and bright for the browning; when the steam from the meat draws towards the fire,78-* it is a sign of its being done enough; but you will be the best judge of that, from the time it has been down, the strength of the fire you have used, and the distance your spit has been from it.

Half an hour before your meat is done, make some gravy (see Receipt, No. 326); and just before you take it up, put it nearer the fire to brown it. If you wish to froth it, baste it, and dredge it with flour carefully: you cannot do this delicately nice without a very good light. The common fault seems to be using too much flour. The meat should have a fine light varnish of froth, not the appearance of being covered with a paste. Those who are particular about the froth use butter instead of drippings; (see receipt to roast a turkey, No. 57)—

“And send up what you roast with relish-giving froth,”

says Dr. King, and present such an agreeable appearance to the eye, that the palate may be prepossessed in its favour at first sight; therefore, have the whole course dished, before roasts are taken from the fire.

A good cook is as anxiously attentive to the appearance and colour of her roasts, as a court beauty is to her complexion at a birthday ball. If your meat does not brown so much, or so evenly as you wish, take two ounces of Glaze, i. e. portable soup, put four table-spoonfuls of water, and let it warm and dissolve gradually by the side of the fire. This will be done in about a quarter of an hour; put it on the meat equally all over with a paste-brush the last thing before it goes to table.

Though roasting is one of the most common, and is generally considered one of the most easy and simple processes of cookery, it requires more unremitting attention to perform it perfectly well than it does to make most made-dishes.

That made-dishes are the most difficult preparations, deserves to be reckoned among the culinary vulgar errors; in plain roasting and boiling it is not easy to repair a mistake once made; and all the discretion and attention of a steady, careful cook, must be unremittingly upon the alert.78-†[79]

A diligent attention to time, the distance of the meat from, and judicious management of, the fire, and frequent bastings,79-* are all the general rules we can prescribe. We shall deliver particular rules for particular things, as the several articles occur, and do our utmost endeavours to instruct our reader as completely as words can describe the process, and teach

“The management of common things so well,
That what was thought the meanest shall excel:
That cook’s to British palates most complete,
Whose sav’ry skill gives zest to common meat:
For what are soups, your ragoûts, and your sauce,
Compared to the fare of old England,
And old English roast beef!”

Some good housewives order very large joints to be rather under-done, as they then make a better hash or broil.

To make gravy for roast, see No. 326.

N.B. Roasts must not be put on, till the soup and fish are taken off the table.

[80]

Frying is often a convenient mode of cookery; it may be performed by a fire which will not do for roasting or boiling; and by the introduction of the pan between the meat and the fire, things get more equally dressed.

The Dutch oven or bonnet is another very convenient utensil for small things, and a very useful substitute for the jack, the gridiron, or frying-pan.

A frying-pan should be about four inches deep, with a perfectly flat and thick bottom, 12 inches long and 9 broad, with perpendicular sides, and must be half filled with fat: good frying is, in fact, boiling in fat. To make sure that the pan is quite clean, rub a little fat over it, and then make it warm, and wipe it out with a clean cloth.

Be very particular in frying, never to use any oil, butter, lard, or drippings, but what is quite clean, fresh, and free from salt. Any thing dirty spoils the look; any thing bad-tasted or stale, spoils the flavour; and salt prevents its browning.

Fine olive oil is the most delicate for frying; but the best oil is expensive, and bad oil spoils every thing that is dressed with it.

For general purposes, and especially for fish, clean fresh[81] lard is not near so expensive as oil or clarified butter, and does almost as well. Butter often burns before you are aware of it; and what you fry will get a dark and dirty appearance.

Cooks in large kitchens, where there is a great deal of frying, commonly use mutton or beef suet clarified (see No. 84): if from the kidney, all the better.

Dripping, if nicely clean and fresh, is almost as good as any thing; if not clean, it may be easily clarified (see No. 83). Whatever fat you use, after you have done frying, let it remain in the pan for a few minutes, and then pour it through a sieve into a clean basin; it will do three or four times as well as it did at first, i. e. if it has not burned: but, Mem. the fat you have fried fish in must not be used for any other purpose.

To know when the fat is of a proper heat, according to what you are to fry, is the great secret in frying.

To fry fish, parsley, potatoes, or any thing that is watery, your fire must be very clear, and the fat quite hot; which you may be pretty sure of, when it has done hissing, and is still. We cannot insist too strongly on this point: if the fat is not very hot, you cannot fry fish either to a good colour, or firm and crisp.

To be quite certain, throw a little bit of bread into the pan; if it fries crisp, the fat is ready; if it burns the bread, it is too hot.

The fire under the pan must be clear and sharp, otherwise the fat is so long before it becomes ready, and demands such attendance to prevent the accident of its catching fire,81-* that the patience of cooks is exhausted, and they frequently, from ignorance or impatience, throw in what they are going to fry before the fat is half hot enough. Whatever is so fried will be pale and sodden, and offend the palate and stomach not less than the eye.

Have a good light to fry by, that you may see when you have got the right colour: a lamp fixed on a stem, with a loaded foot, which has an arm that lengthens out, and slides up and down like a reading candlestick, is a most useful appendage to kitchen fireplaces, which are very seldom light enough for the nicer operations of cookery.

After all, if you do not thoroughly drain the fat from what[82] you have fried, especially from those things that are full dressed in bread crumbs,82-* or biscuit powder, &c., your cooking will do you no credit.

The dryness of fish depends much upon its having been fried in fat of a due degree of heat; it is then crisp and dry in a few minutes after it is taken out of the pan: when it is not, lay it on a soft cloth before the fire, turning it occasionally, till it is. This will sometimes take 15 minutes: therefore, always fry fish as long as this before you want them, for fear you may find this necessary.

To fry fish, see receipt to fry soles, (No. 145) which is the only circumstantial account of the process that has yet been printed. If the cook will study it with a little attention, she must soon become an accomplished frier.

Frying, though one of the most common of culinary operations, is one that is least commonly performed perfectly well.

“And as now there is nought on the fire that is spoiling,
We’ll give you just two or three hints upon broiling;
How oft you must turn a beefsteak, and how seldom
A good mutton chop, for to have ’em both well done;
And for skill in such cookery your credit ’t will fetch up,
If your broils are well-seasoned with good mushroom catchup.”

Cleanliness is extremely essential in this mode of cookery.

Keep your gridiron quite clean between the bars, and bright on the top: when it is hot, wipe it well with a linen cloth: just before you use it, rub the bars with clean mutton-suet, to prevent the meat from being marked by the gridiron.

Take care to prepare your fire in time, so that it may burn quite clear: a brisk and clear fire is indispensable, or you cannot give your meat that browning which constitutes the[83] perfection of this mode of cookery, and gives a relish to food it cannot receive any other way.

The chops or slices should be from half to three-quarters of an inch in thickness; if thicker, they will be done too much on the outside before the inside is done enough.

Be diligently attentive to watch the moment that any thing is done: never hasten any thing that is broiling, lest you make smoke and spoil it.

Let the bars of the gridiron be all hot through, but yet not burning hot upon the surface: this is the perfect and fine condition of the gridiron.

As the bars keep away as much heat as their breadth covers, it is absolutely necessary they should be thoroughly hot before the thing to be cooked be laid on them.

The bars of gridirons should be made concave, and terminate in a trough to catch the gravy and keep the fat from dropping into the fire and making a smoke, which will spoil the broil.

Upright gridirons are the best, as they can be used at any fire without fear of smoke; and the gravy is preserved in the trough under them.

N.B. Broils must be brought to table as hot as possible; set a dish to heat when you put your chops on the gridiron, from whence to the mouth their progress must be as quick as possible.

When the fire is not clear, the business of the gridiron may be done by the Dutch oven or bonnet.

There is nothing in which the difference between an elegant and an ordinary table is more seen than in the dressing of vegetables, more especially greens. They may be equally as fine at first, at one place as at another; but their look and taste are afterward very different, entirely from the careless way in which they have been cooked.

They are in greatest perfection when in greatest plenty, i. e. when in full season.

By season, I do not mean those early days, that luxury in the buyers, and avarice in the sellers, force the various vege[84]tables; but that time of the year in which by nature and common culture, and the mere operation of the sun and climate, they are in most plenty and perfection.

Potatoes and pease are seldom worth eating before midsummer; unripe vegetables are as insipid and unwholesome as unripe fruits.

As to the quality of vegetables, the middle size are preferred to the largest or the smallest; they are more tender, juicy, and full of flavour, just before they are quite full-grown. Freshness is their chief value and excellence, and I should as soon think of roasting an animal alive, as of boiling a vegetable after it is dead.

The eye easily discovers if they have been kept too long; they soon lose their beauty in all respects.

Roots, greens, salads, &c. and the various productions of the garden, when first gathered, are plump and firm, and have a fragrant freshness no art can give them again, when they have lost it by long keeping; though it will refresh them a little to put them into cold spring water for some time before they are dressed.

To boil them in soft water will preserve the colour best of such as are green; if you have only hard water, put to it a tea-spoonful of carbonate of potash.84-*

Take care to wash and cleanse them thoroughly from dust, dirt, and insects: this requires great attention. Pick off all the outside leaves, trim them nicely, and, if not quite fresh gathered and have become flaccid, it is absolutely necessary to restore their crispness before cooking them, or they will be tough and unpleasant: lay them in a pan of clean water, with a handful of salt in it, for an hour before you dress them.

“Most vegetables being more or less succulent, their full proportion of fluids is necessary for their retaining that state of crispness and plumpness which they have when growing. On being cut or gathered, the exhalation from their surface continues, while, from the open vessels of the cut surface, there is often great exudation or evaporation; and thus their natural moisture is diminished, the tender leaves become flaccid, and the thicker masses or roots lose their plumpness. This is not only less pleasant to the eye, but is a real injury to the nutritious powers of the vegetable; for in this flaccid and shrivelled state its fibres are less easily divided in chewing, and the water which exists in vegetable substances, in the form of their respective natural juices, is directly nutri[85]tious. The first care in the preservation of succulent vegetables, therefore, is to prevent them from losing their natural moisture.”—Suppl. to Edin. Encyclop. vol. iv. p. 335.

They should always be boiled in a sauce-pan by themselves, and have plenty of water; if meat is boiled with them in the same pot, they will spoil the look and taste of each other.

If you wish to have vegetables delicately clean, put on your pot, make it boil, put a little salt in it, and skim it perfectly clean before you put in the greens, &c.; which should not be put in till the water boils briskly: the quicker they boil, the greener they will be. When the vegetables sink, they are generally done enough, if the water has been kept constantly boiling. Take them up immediately, or they will lose their colour and goodness. Drain the water from them thoroughly before you send them to table.

This branch of cookery requires the most vigilant attention.

If vegetables are a minute or two too long over the fire, they lose all their beauty and flavour.

If not thoroughly boiled tender, they are tremendously indigestible, and much more troublesome during their residence in the stomach, than under-done meats.85-*

To preserve or give colour in cookery, many good dishes are spoiled; but the rational epicure who makes nourishment the main end of eating, will be content to sacrifice the shadow to enjoy the substance. Vide Obs. to No. 322.

Once for all, take care your vegetables are fresh: for as the fishmonger often suffers for the sins of the cook, so the cook often gets undeservedly blamed instead of the green-grocer.

Vegetables, in this metropolis, are often kept so long, that no art can make them either look or eat well.

Strong-scented vegetables should be kept apart; leeks, or celery, laid among cauliflowers, &c. will quickly spoil them.

“Succulent vegetables are best preserved in a cool, shady, and damp place.

“Potatoes, turnips, carrots, and similar roots, intended to be stored up, should never be cleaned from the earth adhering to them, till they are to be dressed.

“They must be protected from the action of the air and[86] frost, by laying them in heaps, burying them in sand or earth, &c., or covering them with straw or mats.

“The action of frost destroys the life of the vegetable, and it speedily rots.”—Suppl. to Edin. Encyclop. vol. iv. p. 335.

Mem.—When vegetables are quite fresh gathered, they will not require so much boiling, by at least a third of the time, as when they have been gathered the usual time those are that are brought to public markets.

This department of the business of the kitchen requires considerable experience, and depends more upon practice than any other. A very few moments, more or less, will thoroughly spoil fish;86-* which, to be eaten in perfection, must never be put on the table till the soup is taken off.

So many circumstances operate on this occasion, that it is almost impossible to write general rules.

There are decidedly different opinions, whether fish should be put into cold, tepid, or boiling water.

We believe, for some of the fame the Dutch cooks have acquired, they are a little indebted to their situation affording them a plentiful supply of fresh fish for little more than the trouble of catching it; and that the superior excellence of the fish in Holland, is because none are used, unless they are brought alive into the kitchen (mackerel excepted, which die the moment they are taken out of the water). The Dutch are as nice about this as Seneca says the Romans86-† were; who, complaining of the luxury of the times, says,[87] “They are come to that daintiness, that they will not eat a fish, unless upon the same day that it is taken, that it may taste of the sea, as they express it.”

On the Dutch flat coast, the fish are taken with nets: on our rocky coast, they are mostly caught by bait and hook, which instantly kills them. Fish are brought alive by land to the Dutch markets, in water casks with air-holes in the top. Salmon, and other fish, are thus preserved in rivers, in a well-hole in the fishing-boat.

All kinds of fish are best some time before they begin to spawn; and are unfit for food for some time after they have spawned.

Fish, like animals, are fittest for the table when they are just full grown; and what has been said in Chapter V. respecting vegetables, applies equally well to fish.

The most convenient utensil to boil fish in, is a turbot-kettle. This should be 24 inches long, 22 wide, and 9 deep. It is an excellent vessel to boil a ham in, &c. &c.

The good folks of this metropolis are so often disappointed by having fish which has been kept too long, that they are apt to run into the other extreme, and suppose that fish will not dress well unless it is absolutely alive. This is true of lobsters, &c. (No. 176), and may be of fresh-water fish, but certainly not of some sea-fish.

Several respectable fishmongers and experienced cooks have assured the editor, that they are often in danger of losing their credit by fish too fresh, and especially turbot and cod, which, like meat, require a certain time before they are in the best condition to be dressed. They recommend them to be put into cold water, salted in proportion of about a quarter of a pound of salt to a gallon of water. Sea-water is best to boil sea-fish in. It not only saves the expense of salt, but the flavour is better. Let them boil slowly till done; the sign of which is, that the skin of the fish rises up, and the eyes turn white.

It is the business of the fishmonger to clean them, &c. but the careful cook will always wash them again.

Garnish with slices of lemon, finely scraped horseradish, fried oysters (No. 183), smelts (No. 173), whitings (No. 153), or strips of soles, as directed in No. 145.

[88]The liver, roe, and chitterlings should be placed so that the carver may observe them, and invite the guests to partake of them.

N.B. Fish, like meat, requires more cooking in cold than in warm weather. If it becomes FROZEN,88-* it must be thawed by the means we have directed for meat, in the 2d chapter of the Rudiments of Cookery.

[Fish are plenty and good, and in great variety, in all the towns and cities on the extensive coast of the United States. Some of the interior towns are also supplied with fish peculiar to the lakes and rivers of this country. A.]

The melted butter (No. 256) for fish, should be thick enough to adhere to the fish, and, therefore, must be of the thickness of light batter, as it is to be diluted with essence of anchovy (No. 433), soy (No. 436), mushroom catchup (No. 439). Cayenne (No. 404), or Chili vinegar (No. 405), lemons or lemon-juice, or artificial lemon-juice, (see No. 407*), &c. which are expected at all well-served tables.

Cooks, who are jealous of the reputation of their taste, and housekeepers who value their health, will prepare these articles at home: there are quite as many reasons why they should, as there are for the preference usually given to home-baked bread and home-brewed beer, &c.

N.B. The liver of the fish pounded and mixed with butter, with a little lemon-juice, &c. is an elegant and inoffensive relish to fish (see No. 288). Mushroom sauce extempore (No. 307), or the soup of mock turtle (No. 247), will make an excellent fish sauce.

On the comparatively nutritive qualities of fish, see N.B. to No. 181.

[89]

The cook must pay continual attention to the condition of her stew-pans89-* and soup-kettles, &c. which should be examined every time they are used. The prudent housewife will carefully examine the condition of them herself at least once a month. Their covers also must be kept perfectly clean and well tinned, and the stew-pans not only on the inside, but about a couple of inches on the outside: many mischiefs arise from their getting out of repair; and if not kept nicely tinned, all your good work will be in vain; the broths and soups will look green and dirty, taste bitter and poisonous, and will be spoiled both for the eye and palate, and your credit will be lost.

The health, and even life of the family, depends upon this, and the cook may be sure her employers had rather pay the tinman’s bill than the doctor’s; therefore, attention to this cannot fail to engage the regard of the mistress, between whom and the cook it will be my utmost endeavour to promote perfect harmony.

If a servant has the misfortune to scorch or blister the tinning of her pan,89-† which will happen sometimes to the most careful cook, I advise her, by all means, immediately to acquaint her employers, who will thank her for candidly mentioning an accident; and censure her deservedly if she conceal it.

Take care to be properly provided with sieves and tammy cloths, spoons and ladles. Make it a rule without an exception, never to use them till they are well cleaned and thoroughly dried, nor any stewpans, &c. without first washing them out with boiling water, and rubbing them well with a dry cloth and a little bran, to clean them from grease, sand, &c., or any bad smell they may have got since they were last used: never neglect this.

Though we do not suppose our cook to be such a naughty[90] slut as to wilfully neglect her broth-pots, &c., yet we may recommend her to wash them immediately, and take care they are thoroughly dried at the fire, before they are put by, and to keep them in a dry place, for damp will rust and destroy them very soon: attend to this the first moment you can spare after the dinner is sent up.

Never put by any soup, gravy, &c. in metal utensils; in which never keep any thing longer than is absolutely necessary for the purposes of cookery; the acid, vegetables, fat, &c. employed in making soups, &c. are capable of dissolving such utensils; therefore stone or earthen vessels should be used for this purpose.

Stew-pans, soup-pots, and preserving pans, with thick and round bottoms (such as sauce-pans are made with), will wear twice as long, and are cleaned with half the trouble, as those whose sides are soldered to the bottom, of which sand and grease get into the joined part, and cookeys say that it is next to an impossibility to dislodge it, even if their nails are as long as Nebuchadnezzar’s. The Editor claims the credit bf having first suggested the importance of this construction of these utensils.

Take care that the lids fit as close as possible, that the broth, soup, and sauces, &c. may not waste by evaporation. They are good for nothing, unless they fit tight enough to keep the steam in and the smoke out.

Stew-pans and sauce-pans should be always bright on the upper rim, where the fire does not burn them; but to scour them all over is not only giving the cook needless trouble, but wearing out the vessels. See observations on sauce-pans in Chapter I.

Cultivate habits of regularity and cleanliness, &c. in all your business, which you will then get through easily and comfortably. I do not mean the restless spirit of Molidusta, “the Tidy One,” who is anon, anon, Sir, frisking about in a whirlpool of bustle and confusion, and is always dirty, under pretence of being always cleaning.

Lean, juicy beef, mutton, or veal, form the basis of broth; procure those pieces which afford the richest succulence, and as fresh killed as possible.90-*

Stale meat will make broth grouty and bad tasted, and fat meat is wasted. This only applies to those broths which are required to be perfectly clear: we shall show hereafter (in[91] No. 229), that fat and clarified drippings may be so combined with vegetable mucilage, as to afford, at the small cost of one penny per quart, a nourishing and palatable soup, fully adequate to satisfy appetite and support strength: this will open a new source to those benevolent housekeepers, who are disposed to relieve the poor, will show the industrious classes how much they have it in their power to assist themselves, and rescue them from being objects of charity dependent on the precarious bounty of others, by teaching them how they may obtain a cheap, abundant, salubrious, and agreeable aliment for themselves and families.

This soup has the advantage of being very easily and very soon made, with no more fuel than is necessary to warm a room. Those who have not tasted it, cannot imagine what a salubrious, savoury, and satisfying meal is produced by the judicious combination of cheap homely ingredients.

Scotch barley broth (No. 204) will furnish a good dinner of soup and meat for fivepence per head, pease soup (No. 221) will cost only sixpence per quart, ox-tail soup (No. 240) or the same portable soup (No. 252), for fivepence per quart, and (No. 224) an excellent gravy soup for fourpence halfpenny per quart, duck-giblet soup (No. 244) for threepence per quart, and fowls’ head soup in the same manner for still less (No. 239), will give you a good and plentiful dinner for six people for two shillings and twopence. See also shin of beef stewed (No. 493), and à-la-mode beef (No. 502).

[93]The above materials, wine, and mushroom catchup (No. 439), combined in various proportions, will make an endless variety93-* of excellent broths and soups, quite as pleasant to the palate, and as useful and agreeable to the stomach, as consuming pheasants and partridges, and the long list of inflammatory, piquante, and rare and costly articles, recommended by former cookery-book makers, whose elaborately compounded soups are like their made dishes; in which, though variety is aimed at, every thing has the same taste, and nothing its own.

The general fault of our soups seems to be the employment of an excess of spice, and too small a portion of roots and herbs.93-†

Besides the ingredients I have enumerated, many culinary scribes indiscriminately cram into almost every dish (in such inordinate quantities, one would suppose they were working for the asbestos palate of an Indian fire-eater) anchovies, garlic,93-‡ bay-leaves, and that hot, fiery spice, Cayenne93-§ pepper; this, which the French call (not undeservedly) piment enragé (No. 404), has, somehow or other, unaccountably acquired a character for being very wholesome; while the milder peppers and spices are cried down, as destroying the sensibility of the palate and stomach, &c., and being the source of a thousand mischiefs. We should just as soon recommend alcohol as being less intoxicating than wine.

The best thing that has been said in praise of peppers is, “that with all kinds of vegetables, as also with soups (especially vegetable soups) and fish, either black or Cayenne pepper may be taken freely: they are the most useful stimulants to old stomachs, and often supersede the cravings for[94] strong drinks; or diminish the quantity otherwise required.” See Sir A. Carlisle on Old Age, London, 1817. A certain portion of condiment is occasionally serviceable to excite and keep up the languid action of feeble and advanced life: we must increase the stimulus of our aliment as the inirritability of our system increases. We leave those who love these things to use them as they like; their flavours can be very extemporaneously produced by chilly-juice, or essence of Cayenne (No. 405), eschalot wine (No. 402), and essence of anchovy (No. 433).

There is no French dinner without soup, which is regarded as an indispensable overture; it is commonly followed by “le coup d’Après,” a glass of pure wine, which they consider so wholesome after soup, that their proverb says, the physician thereby loses a fee. Whether the glass of wine be so much more advantageous for the patient than it is for his doctor, we know not, but believe it an excellent plan to begin the banquet with a basin of good soup, which, by moderating the appetite for solid animal food, is certainly a salutiferous custom. Between the roasts and the entremets they introduce “le coup du Milieu” or a small glass of Jamaica rum, or essence of punch (see No. 471), or Curacao (No. 474).

The introduction of liqueurs is by no means a modern custom: our ancestors were very fond of a highly spiced stimulus of this sort, commonly called Ipocrasse, which generally made a part of the last course, or was taken immediately after dinner.

“Take a quarte of red wyne, an ounce of synamon, and halfe an ounce of gynger; a quarter of an ounce of greynes (probably of paradise) and long pepper, and halfe a pounde of sugar; and brose (bruise) all this (not too small), and then put them in a bage (bag) of wullen clothe, made, therefore, with the wynee; and lete it hange over a vessel, till the wynee be run thorowe.”—An extract from Arnold’s Chronicle.

It is a custom which almost universally prevails in the northern parts of Europe, to present a dram or glass of liqueur, before sitting down to dinner: this answers the double purpose of a whet to the appetite, and an announcement that dinner is on the point of being served up. Along with the dram, are presented on a waiter, little square pieces[95] of cheese, slices of cold tongue, dried tongue, and dried toast, accompanied with fresh caviar.

We again caution the cook to avoid over-seasoning, especially with predominant flavours, which, however agreeable they may be to some, are extremely disagreeable to others. See page 50.

Zest (No. 255), soy (No. 436), cavice, coratch, anchovy (No. 433), curry powder (No. 455), savoury ragoût powder (No. 457), soup herb powder (No. 459 and 460), browning (No. 322), catchups (No. 432), pickle liquor, beer, wine, and sweet herbs, and savoury spice (No. 460), are very convenient auxiliaries to finish soups, &c.

The proportion of wine (formerly sack, then claret, now Madeira or port) should not exceed a large wine-glassful to a quart of soup. This is as much as can be admitted, without the vinous flavour becoming remarkably predominant; though not only much larger quantities of wine (of which claret is incomparably the best, because it contains less spirit and more flavour, and English palates are less acquainted with it), but even véritable eau de vie is ordered in many books, and used by many (especially tavern cooks). So much are their soups overloaded with relish, that if you will eat enough of them they will certainly make you drunk, if they don’t make you sick: all this frequently arises from an old cook measuring the excitability of the eater’s palates by his own, which may be so blunted by incessant tasting, that to awaken it, requires wine instead of water, and Cayenne and garlic for black pepper and onion.

Old cooks are as fond of spice, as children are of sugar, and season soup, which is intended to constitute a principal part of a meal, as highly as sauce, of which only a spoonful may be relish enough for a plate of insipid viands. (See obs. to No. 355.) However, we fancy these large quantities of wine, &c. are oftener ordered in cookery books than used in the kitchen: practical cooks have the health of their employers too much at heart, and love “sauce à la langue” too well to overwine their soup, &c.

Truffles and morels95-* are also set down as a part of most receipts. These, in their green state, have a very rich high flavour, and are delicious additions to some dishes, or sent up as a stew by themselves when they are fresh and fine; but in this state they are not served up half a dozen times in a year at the first tables in the kingdom: when dried they become mere “chips in pottage,” and serve only to[96] soak up good gravy, from which they take more taste than they give.

The art of composing a rich soup is so to proportion the several ingredients one to another, that no particular taste be stronger than the rest, but to produce such a fine harmonious relish that the whole is delightful. This requires that judicious combination of the materials which constitutes the “chef d’œuvre” of culinary science.

In the first place, take care that the roots and herbs be perfectly well cleaned; proportion the water to the quantity of meat and other ingredients, generally a pound of meat to a quart of water for soups, and double that quantity for gravies. If they stew gently, little more water need be put in at first than is expected at the end; for when the pot is covered quite close, and the fire gentle, very little is wasted.

Gentle stewing is incomparably the best; the meat is more tender, and the soup better flavoured.

It is of the first importance that the cover of a soup-kettle should fit very close, or the broth will evaporate before you are aware of it. The most essential parts are soon evaporated by quick boiling, without any benefit, except to fatten the fortunate cook who inhales them. An evident proof that these exhalations96-* possess the most restorative qualities is, that THE COOK, who is in general the least eater, is, as generally, the fattest person in the family, from continually being surrounded by the quintessence of all the food she dresses; whereof she sends to HER MASTER only the fibres and calcinations, who is consequently thin, gouty, and the victim of diseases arising from insufficient nourishment.

It is not only the fibres of the meat which nourish us, but the juices they contain, and these are not only extracted but exhaled, if it be boiled fast in an open vessel. A succulent soup can never be made but in a well-closed vessel, which preserves the nutritive parts by preventing their dissipation. This is a fact of which every intelligent person will soon perceive the importance.

Place your soup-pot over a moderate fire, which will make[97] the water hot without causing it to boil for at least half an hour; if the water boils immediately, it will not penetrate the meat, and cleanse it from the clotted blood, and other matters which ought to go off in scum; the meat will be hardened all over by violent heat; will shrink up as if it was scorched, and give hardly any gravy: on the contrary, by keeping the water a certain time heating without boiling, the meat swells, becomes tender, its fibres are dilated, and it yields a quantity of scum, which must be taken off as soon as it appears.

It is not till after a good half hour’s hot infusion that we may mend the fire, and make the pot boil: still continue to remove the scum; and when no more appears, put in the vegetables, &c. and a little salt. These will cause more scum to rise, which must be taken off immediately; then cover the pot very closely, and place it at a proper distance from the fire, where it will boil very gently, and equally, and by no means fast.

By quick and strong boiling the volatile and finest parts of the ingredients are evaporated, and fly off with the steam, and the coarser parts are rendered soluble; so you lose the good, and get the bad.

Soups will generally take from three to six hours.

Prepare your broths and soups the evening before you want them. This will give you more time to attend to the rest of your dinner the next day; and when the soup is cold, the fat may be much more easily and completely removed from the surface of it. When you decant it, take care not to disturb the settlings at the bottom of the vessel, which are so fine that they will escape through a sieve, or even through a TAMIS, which is the best strainer, the soups appear smoother and finer, and it is much easier cleaned than any sieve. If you strain it while it is hot, pass it through a clean tamis or napkin, previously soaked in cold water; the coldness of this will coagulate the fat, and only suffer the pure broth to pass through.

The full flavour of the ingredients can only be extracted by very long and slow simmering; during which take care to prevent evaporation, by covering the pot as close as possible: the best stew-pot is a digester.

Clear soups must be perfectly transparent; thickened soups, about the consistence of rich cream; and remember that thickened soups require nearly double the quantity of seasoning. The piquance of spice, &c. is as much blunted by the flour and butter, as the spirit of rum is by the addition of sugar and acid: so they are less salubrious, without being[98] more savoury, from the additional quantity of spice, &c. that is smuggled into the stomach.

To thicken and give body to soups and sauces, the following materials are used: they must be gradually mixed with the soup till thoroughly incorporated with it; and it should have at least half an hour’s gentle simmering after: if it is at all lumpy, pass it through a tamis or a fine sieve. Bread raspings, bread, isinglass, potato mucilage (No. 448), flour, or fat skimmings and flour (see No. 248), or flour and butter, barley (see No. 204), rice, or oatmeal and water rubbed well together, (see No. 257, in which this subject is fully explained.)

To give that glutinous quality so much admired in mock turtle, see No. 198, and note under No. 247, No. 252, and N.B. to No. 481.

To their very rich gravies, &c. the French add the white meat of partridges, pigeons, or fowls, pounded to a pulp, and rubbed through a sieve. A piece of beef, which has been boiled to make broth, pounded in the like manner with a bit of butter and flour, see obs. to No. 485* and No. 503, and gradually incorporated with the gravy or soup, will be found a satisfactory substitute for these more expensive articles.

Meat from which broth has been made (No. 185, and No. 252), and all its juice has been extracted, is then excellently well prepared for POTTING, (see No. 503), and is quite as good, or better, than that which has been baked till it is dry;98-* indeed, if it be pounded, and seasoned in the usual manner, it will be an elegant and savoury luncheon, or supper, and costs nothing but the trouble of preparing it, which is very little, and a relish is procured for sandwiches, &c. (No. 504) of what heretofore has been by the poorest housekeeper considered the perquisite of the CAT.

Keep some spare broth lest your soup-liquor waste in boiling, and get too thick, and for gravy for your made dishes, various sauces, &c.; for many of which it is a much better basis than melted butter.

The soup of mock turtle, and the other thickened soups, (No. 247), will supply you with a thick gravy sauce for poultry, fish, ragoûts, &c.; and by a little management of this sort, you may generally contrive to have plenty of good gravies and good sauces with very little trouble or expense. See also Portable Soup (No. 252).

[99]If soup is too thin or too weak, take off the cover of your soup-pot, and let it boil till some of the watery part of it has evaporated, or else add some of the thickening materials we have before mentioned; and have at hand some plain browning: see No. 322, and the obs. thereon. This simple preparation is much better than any of the compounds bearing that name; as it colours sauce or soup without much interfering with its flavour, and is a much better way of colouring them than burning the surface of the meat.