The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual Part 2

"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 a.s.sistance of food, physic, and every comfort in your power. Tender a.s.siduity 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 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 pa.s.s 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 princ.i.p.al 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 cook as his friend--watch over her health[26-*] 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, b.u.t.terman'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.

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 circ.u.mstances.

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-*]

"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 cla.s.s is a _rara avis_ indeed!"

"G.o.d 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 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 _quaere_, 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 pa.s.sage 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, b.u.t.ter, 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 pomatum, 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), G.o.d 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 Mystery[30-*] they call."

MY RECEIPTS are the results of experiments carefully made, and accurately and circ.u.mstantially related;

The TIME requisite for dressing being stated;

The QUANt.i.tIES 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 gla.s.s, i.

e. a wine-pint divided into sixteen ounces, and the ounce into eight drachms. By a _wine-gla.s.s_ 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 gla.s.s 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 quant.i.ties 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 indefinite, that if the same dish be dressed by different persons, it will generally be so different, that n.o.body would imagine they had worked from the same directions, which will a.s.sist 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-*]