feasts, it is a world to see what great provision is made of all maner
of delicat meats, from everie quarter of the countrie.... They will
seldome regard anie thing that the butcher usuallie killeth, but reject
the same as not worthie to come in place. In such cases all gelisses
of all coleurs mixed with a varitie in the representation of sundrie
floures, herbs, trees, formes of beasts, fish, foules and fruits,
and there unto marchpaine wrought with no small curiositie, tarts of
diverse hewes and sundrie denominations, conserves of old fruits foren
and homebred, suckets, codinacs, marmilats, marchpaine, sugerbread,
gingerbread, florentines, wild foule, venison of all sorts, and sundrie
outlandish confections altogither seasoned with sugar ... doo generalie
beare the swaie, beside infinit devises of our owne not possible for me
to remember. Of the potato and such venerous roots as are brought out
of Spaine, Portingale, and the Indies to furnish our bankets, I speake
not.”
“The artificer and husbandman make greatest accompt of such meat as
they may soonest come by, and have it quickliest readie.... Their food
also consisteth principallie in beefe and such meat as the butcher
selleth, that is to saie, mutton, veale, lambe, porke, etc., ...
beside souse, brawne, bacon, fruit, pies of fruit, foules of sundrie
sorts, cheese, butter, eggs, etc.... To conclude, both the artificer
and the husbandman are sufficientlie liberall and verie friendlie at
their tables, and when they meet they are so merie without malice and
plaine, without inward Italian or French craft and subtiltie, that it
would doo a man good to be in companie among them.
“With us the nobilitie, gentrie and students doo ordinarilie go to
dinner at eleven before noone, and to supper at five, or betweene
five and six at after-noone. The merchants dine and sup seldome
before twelve at noone, and six at night, especiallie in London. The
husbandmen dine also at high noone as they call it, and sup at seven
or eight.... As for the poorest sort they generallie dine and sup when
they may, so that to talke of their order of repast it were but a
needlesse matter.”
“The bread through out the land,” continues Holinshed, “is made of such
graine as the soil yeeldeth, neverthelesse the gentilitie commonlie
provide themselves sufficientlie of wheat for their owne tables,
whilst their houshold and poore neighbours in some shires are inforced
to content themselves with rie, or baricie, yea and in time of dearth
manie with bread made either of beans, or peason, or otes, or of
altogether and some acornes among.... There be much more ground eared
now almost in everie place than hath beene of late yeares, yet such
a price of come continueth in each towne and market without any just
cause (except it be that landlords doo get licenses to carie come out
of the land onelie to keepe up the prices for their owne private games
and ruine of the commonwealth), that the artificer and poore laboring
man is not able to reach unto it, but is driven to content himselfe
with horsse corne--I mean beanes, peason, otes, tarres, and lintels.”
* * * * *
Books had been written for women and their tasks within--the “Babees
Booke,” Tusser’s[5] “Hundrethe Good Pointes of Huswifry,” “The Good
Husive’s Handmaid”--the last two in the sixteenth century; these and
others of their kidney. A woman who thought, spoke, and wrote in
several tongues was greatly filling the throne of England in those
later times.
Cook- and receipt-books in the following century, that is in the
seventeenth, continued to discover women, and to realize moreover
that to them division of labor had delegated the household and its
businesses. There were “Jewels” and “Closets of Delights” before we
find an odd little volume putting out in 1655 a second edition. It
shows upon its title-page the survival from earlier conditions of the
confusion of duties of physician and cook--a fact made apparent in the
preface copied in the foregoing “forme of cury” of King Richard--and
perhaps intimates the housewife should perform the services of both.
It makes, as well, a distinct appeal to women as readers and users
of books. Again it evidences the growth of the Commons. In full it
introduces itself in this wise:
“The Ladies Cabinet enlarged and opened: containing Many Rare Secrets
and Rich Ornaments, of several kindes, and different uses. Comprized
under three general Heads, viz. of 1 Preserving, Conserving, Candying,
etc. 2 Physick and Chirurgery. 3 Cooking and Housewifery. Whereunto
is added Sundry Experiments and choice Extractions of Waters, Oyls,
etc. Collected and practised by the late Right Honorable and Learned
Chymist, the Lord Ruthuen.”
The preface, after an inscription “To the Industrious improvers of
Nature by Art; especially the vertuous Ladies and Gentlewomen of the
Land,” begins:
“Courteous Ladies, etc. The first Edition of this--(cal it what you
please) having received a kind entertainment from your Ladiships hands,
for reasons best known to yourselves, notwithstanding the disorderly
and confused jumbling together of things of different kinds, hath made
me (who am not a little concerned therein) to bethink myself of some
way, how to encourage and requite your Ladiships Pains and Patience
(vertues, indeed, of absolute necessity in such brave employments;
there being nothing excellent that is not withal difficult) in
the profitable spending of your vacant minutes.” This labored and
high-flying mode of address continues to the preface’s end.... “I shall
thus leave you at liberty as Lovers in Gardens, to follow your own
fancies. Take what you like, and delight in your choice, and leave what
you list to him, whose labour is not lost if anything please.”
In turning the leaves of the book one comes upon such naïve discourse
as this:
“To make the face white and fair.
“Wash thy face with Rosemary boiled in white wine, and thou shalt be
fair; then take Erigan and stamp it, and take the juyce thereof, and
put it all together and wash thy face therewith. Proved.”
It was undoubtedly the success of “The Ladies Cabinet” and its cousins
german that led to the publication of a fourth edition in 1658 of
another compilation, which, according to the preface, was to go “like
the good Samaritane giving comfort to all it met.” The title was “The
Queens Closet opened: Incomparable Secrets in Physick, Chyrurgery,
Preserving, Candying, and Cookery, As they were presented unto the
Queen By the most Experienced Persons of our times.... Transcribed
from the true Copies of her Majesties own Receipt Books, by W. M. one
of her late Servants.” It is curious to recall that this book was
published during the Cromwell Protectorate--1658 is the year of the
death of Oliver--and that the queen alluded to in the title--whose
portrait, engraved by the elder William Faithorne, forms the
frontispiece--was Henrietta Maria, widow of Charles I., and at that
time an exile in France.
During this century, which saw such publications as Rose’s “School for
the Officers of the Mouth,” and “Nature Unembowelled,” a woman, Hannah
Wolley, appears as author of “The Cook’s Guide.” All such compilations
have enduring human value, but we actually gain quite as much of this
oldest of arts from such records as those the indefatigable Pepys left
in his Diary. At that time men of our race did not disdain a knowledge
of cookery. Izaak Walton, “an excellent angler, and now with God,”
dresses chub and trout in his meadow-sweet pages. Even Thomas Fuller,
amid his solacing and delightful “Worthies,” thinks of the housewife,
and gives a receipt for metheglin.
And a hundred years later Dr. Johnson’s friend, the Rev. Richard
Warner, in his “Personal Recollections,” did not hesitate to expand
upon what he thought the origin of mince pies. Warner’s Johnsonian
weight in telling his fantasy recalls Goldsmith’s quip about the
Doctor’s little fish talking like whales, and also Johnson’s criticism
upon his own “too big words and too many of them.”
Warner wrote, “In the early ages of our country, when its present
widely spread internal trade and retail business were yet in their
infancy, and none of the modern facilities were afforded to the cook
to supply herself ‘on the spur of the moment,’ ... it was the practice
of all prudent housewives, to lay in, at the conclusion of every year
(from some contiguous periodical fair), a stock sufficient for the
ensuing annual consumption, of ... every sweet composition for the
table--such as raisins, currants, citrons, and ‘spices of the best.’
“The ample cupboard ... within the wainscot of the dining parlour
itself ... formed the safe depository of these precious stores.
“‘When merry Christmas-tide came round’ ... the goodly litter of the
cupboard, thus various in kind and aspect, was carefully swept into one
common receptacle; the mingled mass enveloped in pastry and enclosed
within the duly heated oven, from whence ... perfect in form, colour,
odour, flavour and temperament, it smoked, the glory of the hospitable
Christmas board, hailed from every quarter by the honourable and
imperishable denomination of the Mince-Pye.”
In the eighteenth century women themselves, following Hannah Wolley,
began cook-book compiling. So great was their success that we find Mrs.
Elizabeth Moxon’s “English Housewifry” going into its ninth edition
in the London market of 1764. All through history there have been
surprises coming to prejudiced minds out of the despised and Nazarene.
It was so about this matter of cook-books--small in itself, great in
its far-reaching results to the health and development of the human
race.
Women had been taught the alphabet. But the dogmatism of Dr. Johnson
voiced the judgment of many of our forebears: a dominant power is
always hard in its estimate of the capacities it controls. “Women can
spin very well,” said the great Cham, “but they can not make a good
book of cookery.” He was talking to “the swan of Lichfield,” little
Anna Seward, when he said this, and also to a London publisher. The
book they were speaking of had been put forth by the now famous Mrs.
Hannah Glasse, said to be the wife of a London attorney.
The doctor--possibly with an eye to business, a publisher being
present--was describing a volume he had in mind to make, “a book upon
philosophical principles,” “a better book of cookery than has ever yet
been written.” “Then,” wisely said the dogmatic doctor, “as you can
not make bad meat good, I would tell what is the best butcher’s meat,
the best beef, the best pieces; how to choose young fowls; the proper
seasons of different vegetables; and then how to roast and boil and
compound.” This was the plan of a poet, essayist, lexicographer, and
the leading man of letters of his day. His cook-book was never written.
But good Mrs. Glasse had also with large spirit aimed at teaching
the ignorant, possibly those of a kind least often thought of by
instructors in her art. She had, forsooth, caught her hare outside
her book, even if she never found him in its page. “If I have not
wrote in the high polite style,” she says, with a heart helpful toward
the misunderstood and oppressed, and possibly with the pages of some
pretentious chef in mind, “I hope I shall be forgiven; for my intention
is to instruct the lower sort, and therefore must treat them in their
own way. For example, when I bid them lard a fowl, if I should bid them
lard with large lardoons, they would not know what I meant; but when I
say they must lard with little pieces of bacon, they know what I mean.
So in many other things in Cookery the great cooks have such a high way
of expressing themselves, that the poor girls are at a loss to know
what they mean.”
Mrs. Glasse’s book was published in 1747--while Dr. Johnson had still
thirty-seven years in which to “boast of the niceness of his palate,”
and spill his food upon his waistcoat. “Whenever,” says Macaulay, “he
was so fortunate as to have near him a hare that had been kept too
long, or a meat pie made with rancid butter, he gorged himself with
such violence that his veins swelled and the moisture broke out on his
forehead.” But within forty-eight years of the December his poor body
was borne from the house behind Fleet Street to its resting-place in
Westminster Abbey, a thin volume, “The Frugal Housewife,” written by
our American Lydia Maria Child, had passed to its ninth London edition,
in that day sales being more often than in our own a testimony of
merit. This prevailing of justice over prejudice is “too good for any
but very honest people,” as Izaak Walton said of roast pike. Dogmatism
is always eating its own words.
Since the master in literature, Dr. Johnson, planned his cook-book
many cooking men have dipped ink in behalf of instruction in their
art. Such names as Farley, Carême, and Soyer have been written,
if not in marble or bronze, at least in sugar of the last caramel
degree--unappreciated excellencies mainly because of the inattention of
the public to what nourishes it, and lack of the knowledge that the one
who introduces an inexpensive, palatable, and digestible dish benefits
his fellow-men.
The names of these club cooks and royal cooks are not so often referred
to as that of the large and human-hearted Mrs. Glasse. A key to their
impulse toward book-making must, however, have been that offered by
Master Farley, chief cook at the London Tavern, who wrote in 1791, a
hundred and fourteen years ago: “Cookery, like every other Art, has
been moving forward to perfection by slow Degrees.... And although
there are so many Books of this Kind already published, that one
would hardly think there could be Occasion for another, yet we flatter
ourselves, that the Readers of this Work will find, from a candid
Perusal, and an impartial Comparison, that our Pretensions to the
Favour of the Public are not ill-founded.”
Such considerations as those of Master Farley seem to lead to the
present great output. But nowadays our social conditions and our
intricate and involved household arrangements demand a specialization
of duties. The average old cook-book has become insufficient. It has
evolved into household-directing as well as cook-directing books,
comprehending the whole subject of esoteric economies. This is a
curious enlargement; and one cause, and result, of it is that the men
and women of our domestic corps are better trained, better equipped
with a logical, systematized, scientific knowledge, that they are in a
degree specialists--in a measure as the engineer of an ocean greyhound
is a specialist, or the professor of mathematics, or the writer of
novels is a specialist. And specialists should have the dignity of
special treatment. In this movement, it is to be hoped, is the wiping
out of the social stigma under which domestic service has so long lain
in our country, and a beginning of the independence of the domestic
laborer--that he or she shall possess himself or herself equally with
others--as other free-born people possess themselves, that is.
And closely allied with this specialization another notable thing
has come about. Science with its microscope has finally taught what
religion with its manifold precepts of humility and humanity has failed
for centuries to accomplish, thus evidencing that true science and
true religion reach one and the same end. There are no menial duties,
science clearly enunciates: the so-called drudgery is often the most
important of work, especially when the worker brings to his task a
large knowledge of its worth in preserving and sweetening human life,
and perfectness as the sole and satisfactory aim. Only the careless,
thriftless workers, the inefficient and possessed with no zeal for
perfection of execution, only these are the menials according to the
genuine teachings of our day--and the ignorant, unlifted worker’s work
is menial (using the word again in its modern English and not its old
Norman-French usage) whatever his employment.
In verse this was said long ago, as the imagination is always
forestalling practical knowledge, and George Herbert, of the
seventeenth century, foreran our science in his “Elixir:”
“All may of thee partake:
Nothing can be so mean,
Which with this tincture _for thy sake_
Will not grow bright and clean.
“A servant with this clause
Makes drudgery divine;
Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws,
Makes that and th’ action fine.
“This is the famous stone
That turneth all to gold:
For that which God doth touch and own
Cannot for less be told.”
Present-day, up-to-date books on housekeeping stand for the fact that
in our households, whatever the estimates of the past and of other
social conditions, all work is dignified--none is menial. For besides
intelligent knowledge and execution, what in reality, they ask, gives
dignity to labor? Weight and importance of that particular task to
our fellow-beings? What then shall we say of the duties of cook? of
housemaid? of chambermaid? of the handy man, or of the modest maid
of all work? For upon the efficient performance of the supposedly
humblest domestic servitor depends each life of the family. Such
interdependence brings the employed very close to the employer, and no
bond could knit the varied elements of a household more closely, none
should knit it more humanly.
The human, then, are the first of the relations that exist between
employer and employee, that “God hath made of one blood all nations
of the earth.” It is a truth not often enough in the minds of the
parties to a domestic-service compact. And besides this gospel of Paul
are two catch-phrases, not so illuminated but equally humane, which
sprang from the ameliorating spirit of the last century--“Put yourself
in his place,” and “Everybody is as good as I.” These form the best
bed-rock for all relations between master and servant. There is need
of emphasizing this point in our books on affairs of the house, for a
majority of our notably rich are new to riches and new to knowledge,
and as employers have not learned the limitation of every child of
indulgence and also polite manners in early life.
It is after all a difference of environment that makes the difference
between mistress and maid, between master and man. The human being
is as plastic as clay--is clay in the hands of circumstance. If his
support of wife and children depended upon obsequiousness of bearing,
the master might, like the butler, approximate Uriah Heep. If the
mistress’s love of delicacy and color had not been cultivated by
association with taste from childhood, her finery might be as vulgar
as the maid’s which provokes her satire. It is after all a question of
surroundings and education. And in this country, where Aladdin-fortunes
spring into being by the rubbing of a lamp--where families of, for
example, many centuries of the downtrodden life of European peasant
jump from direst poverty to untold wealth--environment has often no
opportunity to form the folk of gentle breeding. Many instances are not
lacking where those who wait are more gently bred than those who are
waited upon.
In their larger discourse, then, up-to-date household books stand for
the very essence of democracy and human-heartedness--which is also the
very essence of aristocracy. After the old manner which Master Farley
described, our women seem to have given their books to the public with
the faith that they contain much other books have not touched--to stand
for an absolutely equable humanity, for kindness and enduring courtesy
between those who employ and those who are employed, the poor rich and
the rich poor, the householders and the houseworkers--to state the
relations between master and man and mistress and maid more explicitly
than they have before been stated, and thus to help toward a more
perfect organization of the forces that carry on our households--to
direct with scientific and economic prevision the food of the house
members; to emphasize in all departments of the house thoroughgoing
sanitation and scientific cleanliness.
Of questions of the household--of housekeeping and home-making--our
American women have been supposed somewhat careless. Possibly this
judgment over the sea has been builded upon our women’s vivacity,
and a subtle intellectual force they possess, and also from their
interest in affairs at large, and again from their careful and cleanly
attention to their person--“they keep their teeth too clean,” says a
much-read French author. Noting such characteristics, foreigners have
jumped to the conclusion that American women are not skilled in works
within doors. In almost every European country this is common report.
“We German women are such devoted housekeepers,” said the wife of an
eminent Deutscher, “and you American women know so little about such
things!” “Bless your heart!” I exclaimed--or if not just that then its
German equivalent--thinking of the perfectly kept homes from the rocks
and pines of Maine to the California surf; “you German women with your
little haushaltungen, heating your rooms with porcelain stoves, and
your frequent reversion in meals to the simplicity of wurst and beer,
have no conception of the size and complexity of American households
and the executive capabilities necessary to keep them in orderly work.
Yours is mere doll’s housekeeping--no furnaces, no hot water, no
electricity, no elevators, no telephone, and no elaborate menus.”
Our American women are model housekeepers and home-makers, as thousands
of homes testify, but the interests of the mistresses of these houses
are broader, their lives are commonly more projected into the outer
world of organized philanthropy and art than women’s lives abroad,
and the apparent non-intrusion of domestic affairs leads foreigners
to misinterpret their interest and their zeal. It is the consummate
executive who can set aside most personal cares and take on others
efficiently. Moreover, it is not here as where a learned professor
declared: “Die erste Tugend eines Weibes ist die Sparsamkeit.”
To have a home in which daily duties move without noise and as like
a clock as its human machinery will permit, and to have a table of
simplicity and excellence, is worth a pleasure-giving ambition and
a womanly ambition. It is to bring, in current critical phrase,
three-fourths of the comfort of life to those whose lives are joined to
the mistress of such a household--the loaf-giver who spends her brains
for each ordered day and meal. Moreover, and greatest of all, to plan
and carry on so excellent an establishment is far-reaching upon all
men. It is the very essence of morality--is duty--_i.e._, service--and
law.
The French aver that men of the larger capacity have for food
a particularly keen enjoyment. Possibly this holds good for
Frenchmen--for the author of Monte Cristo, or for a Brillat-Savarin,
of whose taste the following story is told: “Halting one day at Sens,
when on his way to Lyons, Savarin sent, according to his invariable
custom, for the cook, and asked what he could have for dinner. ‘Little
enough,’ was the reply. ‘But let us see,’ retorted Savarin; ‘let us go
into the kitchen and talk the matter over.’ There he found four turkeys
roasting. ‘Why!’ exclaimed he, ‘you told me you had nothing in the
house! let me have one of those turkeys.’ ‘Impossible!’ said the cook;
‘they are all bespoken by a gentleman up-stairs.’ ‘He must have a large
party to dine with him, then?’ ‘No; he dines by himself.’ ‘Indeed!’
said the gastronome; ‘I should like much to be acquainted with the man
who orders four turkeys for his own eating.’ The cook was sure the
gentleman would be glad of his acquaintance, and Savarin, on going to
pay his respects to the stranger, found him to be no other than his
own son. ‘What! you rascal! four turkeys all to yourself!’ ‘Yes, sir,’
said Savarin, junior; ‘you know that when we have a turkey at home you
always reserve for yourself the pope’s nose; I was resolved to regale
myself for once in my life; and here I am, ready to begin, although I
did not expect the honour of your company.’”