MISCELLANEOUS ADVICE, AND SUPPLEMENTARY RECEIPTS.
_Weights and Measures._
It is a good plan to have a particular measure cup kept for the
purpose, and after once weighing all those receipts that are given
by weight, to _measure_ the quantity by this cup, and then write the
measures in your receipt book, and keep the cup only for this purpose.
The following is some guide in judging of the relative proportion
between measures and weights.
A quart of flour, or of sifted loaf sugar, or of softened butter, each
weigh about a pound. The flour, if sifted, must be heaped.
A pint equals eight ounces.
A half a pint equals four ounces.
One gill equals two ounces.
Half a gill equals one ounce.
A quart of brown sugar, or of Indian meal, equals a pound and two
ounces of the same.
One great spoonful of flour, loaf sugar, or of melted butter, equals a
quarter of an ounce of the same. It should be a little heaped.
Four spoonfuls equal an ounce, or half a gill.
Eight spoonfuls equal one gill.
Sixteen spoonfuls equal half a pint.
Spoons differ so much in size that this is an uncertain guide.
A medium-sized teaspoon holds sixty drops of water.
Ten eggs usually weigh a pound.
Four gills make a pint.
Two pints make a quart.
Four quarts make a gallon.
Eight quarts make a peck.
Four pecks make a bushel.
_Avoirdupois Weight._
Sixteen drachms make an ounce.
Sixteen ounces make a pound.
Twenty-eight pounds make a quarter.
Four quarters make a hundred.
Twenty hundred make a ton.
_Apothecaries’ Weight._
Twenty grains make a scruple.
Three scruples make a drachm.
Eight drachms make an ounce.
Twelve ounces make a pound.
_On Purchasing Wood._
Wood that is straight and solid makes more in a load, and is the most
profitable.
A cord of small crooked sticks does not contain half the wood there is
in a load of solid logs.
The best wood for fires is the hickory, hard maple, white ash, black
birch, yellow birch, beech, yellow oak, and locust. The best are placed
first.
The following are inferior in quality. Elm, soft maple, white birch,
pepperage, and pine.
The following are not fit to burn, either because they snap, or will
not burn. Chestnut, butternut, cedar, sassafras, red oak, and buckeye.
Any person can learn to distinguish each kind by a little attention and
instruction.
Wood is bought by measurement. A cord of wood is 8 feet long, 4 feet
wide, and 4 feet high.
To know the amount of a load, multiply the length by the breadth, and
the product by the height, and you have the number of square feet. If
it is 128 feet, it is a cord.
_Items of Advice._
If you keep an account of your stores, and the dates when they are
bought, you can know exactly how fast they are used, and when they are
wasted, or stolen.
Stale bread is improved by steaming it half an hour or more.
Grate up dry cheese, and cheese crusts, moisten it with wine or brandy,
and keep it in a jar for use. It is better than at first.
Boil old earthenware soaked with grease in hot lye, and it will cleanse
it.
Wheat should always be washed before grinding.
When you clean house, begin with the highest rooms first, so that clean
rooms be not soiled when done.
Repair house linen, turn sheets, and wash bedclothes in summer.
Clean house in the fall instead of spring, and you get rid of all the
filth made by flies. But when you burn bituminous coal, spring is the
proper time for house cleaning.
Keep coarse mats on the kitchen table for keeping it clean.
Use a coarse apron and gloves for cleaning grates. Have coal cinders
sifted, and save the coarse part to burn again.
Buy your wood in August and September, when it usually is cheapest and
plenty.
Have the backs of your chimneys kept clean by sweeping.
Never try a new dish for company.
To purify water, put common charcoal pounded in a common flower-pot,
and fine sand over it, and let the water trickle through. Or, take an
old sieve, and fill it with sand and pounded charcoal, and strain the
water, and then cool it with ice.
Keep a receipt book for yourself, and write in it the improvements of
your own experience.
Keep bits of potter’s clay in the house, to use for a paste to extract
grease from carpets, floors, and broadcloths.
Dry bran around grapes and other fruit preserves it.
All fat should be tried up once a week, for cooking, or soap grease.
Good fat saves butter.
When a stove-pipe or other iron is cracked, make a cement with ashes,
salt, and water, and it will stop the opening.
_Faded colors_ often are improved by strong salt and water.
_Sal volatile_, or spirits of hartshorn, will restore colors taken out
by acids.
_Eggs_ are preserved longer by packing them close, standing on their
small ends. Another way is to pack them in fine salt, small end down.
Another way is to pack them, small end down, and then pour on them a
mixture of four quarts of cold water, four quarts of unslacked lime,
two ounces of salt, and two ounces of cream-tartar. This will serve for
nine dozen eggs. Try all these ways.
_Rancid butter_ is said, by good judges, to be restored thus:--Put
fifteen drops of chloride of lime to a pint of water, and work the
butter in it till every particle has come in contact with the water.
Then work it over in fair cold water.
_Indelible Ink_ is thus prepared:--Buy three drachms of nitrate of
silver, and put it in a vial with two spoonfuls of water. Let it stand
a few days, then color it with a little ink, and add a tablespoonful
of brandy. The preparation is made of strong pearlash water, stiffened
with gum-arabic, and colored with red wafers.
_Buy cheap red wafers_, and scatter them about, and cockroaches will
eat them and be destroyed. The roots of _black hellebore_ scattered in
their haunts is an infallible remedy.
_Cold cream_ for sore lips, is made by mixing two ounces of oil of
almonds, one ounce of spermaceti, one drachm of white wax, and melting
them together, adding rose water to perfume them.
_Jelly-bags_ should be made of flannel, and _pudding cloths_ of thick
linen, with strings sewed on to them.
_Rose leaves_ should be gathered and preserved by crowding them into a
jar with brandy, to use for cooking.
_Potato starch_ is made by grating peeled potatoes, and rubbing them in
water. Then pour off the water, after stirring it, and dry what sinks
to the bottom.
_Orange_ and _lemon peel_ can be saved thus:--Dry it in an oven, pound
it, and then bottle it close.
_Orange_ or _lemon water_ is prepared thus:--Pound the fresh skins in a
mortar, pour in boiling water, cover close, and when cold bottle close.
Or use wine or brandy.
_Cologne water_ is made thus:--Buy at the apothecary’s one drachm each
of oil of lavender, oil of lemon, oil of rosemary, and oil of cinnamon.
Add two drachms of oil of bergamot. Mix in a vial, and add a pint of
alcohol.
When _Pearlash_ or _Saleratus_ becomes damp, dissolve it in as much
water as will just entirely dissolve it, and no more. A tablespoonful
of this equals a teaspoonful of the solid. Keep it corked in a junk
bottle.
The following is a very useful receipt for children who go to school
where blackboards are used.
_To make nice Crayons for Blackboards._
These directions are given by Prof. Turner, of the American Asylum for
the Deaf and Dumb, as follows:
“Take 5 pounds of Paris white, 1 pound of Wheat flour, wet with water,
and knead it well; make it so stiff that it will not stick to the
table, but not so stiff as to crumble and fall to pieces when it is
rolled under the hand.
“To _roll_ out the crayons to the proper size, two boards are needed,
_one_ to roll them _on_; the _other_ to roll them _with_. The first
should be a smooth pine board three feet long and nine inches wide. The
other should also be pine, a foot long and nine inches wide, having
nailed on the under side near each edge a slip of wood one-third of
an inch thick, in order to raise it so much above the under board as
that the crayon, when brought to its proper size, may lie between them
without being flattened.
“The mass is rolled into a ball, and slices are cut from one side of
it about one-third of an inch thick: these slices are again cut into
strips about four inches long and one-third of an inch wide, and
rolled separately between these boards until smooth and round.
“Near at hand should be another board 3 feet long and 4 inches wide,
across which each crayon, as it is made, should be laid, so that the
ends may project on each side--the crayons should be laid in close
contact, and straight. When the board is filled, the ends should all
be trimmed off so as to make the crayons as long as the width of the
board. It is then laid in the sun, if in hot weather, or if in winter,
near a stove or fireplace, where the crayons may dry gradually, which
will require twelve hours. When thoroughly dry they are fit for use.
“An experienced hand will make 150 in an hour.” Young boys can make
them and sell to their companions.
SOME EXCELLENT CHEAP DISHES.
_Stewed Beef._
Take a shank or hock of beef, with all the meat belonging to it, and
put it into a pot full of water early in the morning and throw in a
tablespoonful of salt. Let it simmer _very_ slowly, till the beef is
soft, and cleaves from the bone, and the water is reduced to about two
quarts. Then peel some potatoes, and cut them in quarters, and throw in
with two teaspoonfuls of black pepper, two of sweet marjoram, and two
of thyme, or summer savory. Add some _celery flavor or sauce_, and more
salt if it requires it. Stew until the potatoes are cooked enough, but
not till they are mashed. Then take dry bread, and throw in, breaking
it into small pieces, and when soaked, take up the whole and serve it,
and everybody will say it is about the best dish they ever tasted.
Those who love onions slice in three or four with the potatoes. Rice
can be put in instead of bread.
_Tomato Beef._
Stew a shank or hock of beef as above, except you put in nine or ten
peeled tomatoes instead of potatoes and sweet herbs, and also leave out
the bread. Some would add a little chopped onion. This is excellent and
a very healthful mode of preparing beef, especially if it is tough.
_A good Way to use Cold Rice._
Heat the rice in milk, add a well-beaten egg or two, a little salt,
butter, and sugar, let it boil up once, and then grate on nutmeg.
_To prepare Good Toast._
Toast the bread very quick, dip each slice in boiling water as soon as
you have toasted it, and then lay thin bits of butter over. Cover and
keep hot as you proceed. A _tin bonnet_ is very useful for this. Make
milk toast in the same way, keeping the milk at nearly boiling heat. It
is better to spread the butter thin on to the toast after it is dipped
in hot milk, than to melt it in it.
_A Good Pudding._
Line a buttered dish with slices of wheat bread, first dipped in milk.
Fill the dish with sliced apple, and add sugar and spice. Cover with
slices of bread soaked in milk, cover close with a plate, and bake
three hours.
_Loaf Pudding._
When bread is too stale, put a loaf in a pudding-bag and boil it in
salted water an hour and a half, and eat it with hard pudding sauce.
_A Plain Lemon Pudding._
Nine spoonfuls of grated apple, one grated lemon, (peel and pulp,) half
a cup of butter, and three eggs. Mix and bake, with or without a crust,
about an hour. Cream improves it.
_An Excellent Indian Pudding without Eggs._
Take seven heaping spoonfuls of Indian meal, half a teaspoonful of
salt, two spoonfuls of butter or sweet lard, a teacup of molasses, and
two teaspoonfuls of ginger or cinnamon, to the taste. Pour into these
a quart of milk while boiling hot. Mix well, and put it in a buttered
dish. Just as you set it in the oven stir in a teacup of cold water,
which will produce the same effect as eggs. Bake three quarters of an
hour, in a dish that will not spread it out thin.
_Pork and Potato Balls._
Take one-third chopped salt pork or ham, either raw or cooked, and
two-thirds of cold cooked potatoes chopped fine. Mix them up with egg,
_a little_ salt and pepper, and then make into balls and fry, or merely
cook in a skillet.
Chop cold potatoes fine, and then add some pork fat and a little
pepper, salt, and water, and warm slowly, and it is very good.
_Oyster Pie._
Make a crust by working flour into mashed boiled potatoes with a little
salt. Line a deep dish with it, invert a small teacup in the middle to
hold the juice in and to hold up the upper crust. Put in the oysters
with a little pepper and butter, and dredge in some flour. Cover with
crust, make a large slit on the top, and bake an hour.
_Green Corn Patties (like Oysters)._
Twelve ears of sweet corn grated. (Yellow corn will do, but not so
well.)
One teaspoonful of salt and one of pepper.
One egg beaten into two tablespoonfuls of flour.
Mix, make into small cakes, and fry brown in butter or sweet lard.
_Ohio Wedding Cake (Mrs. K.)._
Two pounds of flour.
One pound of butter.
One pound of sugar--brown is best.
Two pounds of currants or one of raisins.
Ten eggs.
Two teacups of molasses.
One gill of wine, and one of brandy.
One gill of cream, spice and citron to the taste.
Mix the butter and sugar, add the molasses, then the beaten yolks of
eggs, then the flour, then the spice, wine, and cream, then the whites
of the eggs in a stiff froth. Put in the fruit in the manner previously
directed, and the citron with it at the same time. This is a very fine
cake.
_Best Way of making Corn Cakes of all Sorts._
There is often a sharp and strong taste to corn meal, which is remedied
by wetting it up the day before it is used. The best kind of corn cakes
are made by wetting up a large quantity of Indian meal with milk, and
letting it stand for several days. Take a quantity of it, and first
make it as thin as you want, either for griddle cakes, or drop cakes,
or thicker cakes. Add salt and a spoonful of melted butter or lard
for every quart, also sugar to your taste. A little always improves
all corn cakes. Then dissolve soda or salaratus, a teaspoonful for
each quart. If it is very sour it will want more, and _tasting_ is the
surest guide. Just as you are ready to bake, stir in enough salaratus
to sweeten it, and stir quickly and only long enough to mix it well,
and then _bake immediately_ in buttered tins.
Domestics often use too much salaratus, which is bad for the stomach,
and the housekeeper should ascertain by trial the right quantity, and
then direct to have it _carefully measured_ every time. Corn cakes,
made as above, just thick enough to form into round cakes half an inch
thick and baked on a griddle, are excellent.
_Molasses Candy._
As all children are fond of this article, the following directions may
be acceptable. Boil the molasses (maple is the best) till it will, if
dropped in cold water, become crisp. Then, for each quart, put into it
an even teaspoonful of salaratus dissolved in a little warm water, and
stir it till well mixed. This makes it tender and crisp. Take a part
and cool it in a buttered pan, to work white and draw into sticks. Into
the remainder stir roasted corn, either pounded or whole, or peanuts or
almonds, or walnuts or hazelnuts.
_Whole Popped_ corn made into cakes with candy is excellent. Roasted
corn pounded and mixed with half the quantity of maple sugar is good,
and some eat it thus in milk.
_To make Simple Cerate._
Melt together equal quantities of white wax and spermaceti, and then
add an equal quantity of sweet oil, or a little more.
Never use rancid oil.
_Best Remedy for Burns._
Pound and sift _wood soot_, and mix it with sweet lard, and apply it,
spread on linen rags. It will ease a burn quicker than anything. If
the skin is off, the great thing is to keep it covered close from the
air. If the burns are large and bad, give salts or cream tartar as a
cathartic.
_Ginger Tea._
Pour half a pint of boiling water on to a teaspoonful of ginger; add
sugar and milk to the taste.
_Indian Bannock._
Take one pint of Indian meal, and stir into it a pint of sour milk,
half a teaspoonful of salt, a spoonful of molasses, and a spoonful
of melted butter. Beat two eggs and add, and then stir in a pint of
wheat flour. Then thin it with milk to the consistency of drop cakes,
and when ready to bake, stir in a heaping teaspoonful of salaratus
dissolved in hot water. Pour into square buttered tins an inch thick,
and bake fifteen minutes.
_Egg and Bread._
Put bread crumbs into a sauce pan, with cream, salt, and pepper, and a
little grated nutmeg. When the bread has absorbed the cream, break in
eight eggs and fry it like an omelet, or bake it in buttered tins, or
muffin rings.
_Floating Island._
Beat the whites of eggs till _very_ stiff, then put in one
tablespoonful of some acid jelly for each white, and beat it a good
while. Boil rich sweetened milk, and put it in a glass dish, and _when
cold_, put the jelly and eggs on the top.
_A New Mode of cooking Cucumbers._
Pare them, cut them in quarters lengthwise, dip them in corn meal or
wheat flour, pepper and salt them, and then fry them brown, and they
are very fine.
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations
in hyphenation, spelling and punctuation remain unchanged.
Italics are represented thus _italic_.
The following changes have been made.
In the section on Kitchen Furniture
a vial tunnel, a larger tunnel
has been changed to
a vial funnel, a larger funnel
In the section Items of Advice
Boil old earthen soaked with grease in hot ley, and it will cleanse it.
has been changed to
Boil old earthenware soaked with grease in hot lye, and it will
cleanse it.