such as I have already indicated, with just enough water to prevent
burning, cover closely and stew until soft, but not broken. Strain
off the liquor; set aside the cherries in a covered bowl, add three
tablespoonfuls of sugar to each pint of the juice, return to the fire;
boil fast for half an hour and pour over the fruit. Keep covered until
cold.
Raw cherries
To be eaten at their raw best they should be kept in the ice-box until
needed. Then they may be served with their stems still on in a glass
bowl with fragments of ice scattered among them.
Sugared cherries
Use large, firm cherries for this dish. Have in front of you a
soup-plate containing the whites of three eggs mixed with five
tablespoonfuls of cold water, another plate filled with sifted powdered
sugar at your right, the bowl of cherries at your left. Dip each cherry
in the water and white of egg, turn it over and over in the sugar and
lay on a chilled platter to dry. When all are done sift more powdered
sugar over the fruit and arrange carefully on a glass dish.
Glacé cherries
Select firm, sweet cherries from which the stems have not been
removed. Into a perfectly clean porcelain-lined saucepan put a pound
of granulated sugar and a gill of cold water, and boil to a syrup. Do
not stir during the process of cooking. Try the syrup occasionally by
dropping a little in cold water. When it changes to a brittle candy it
is done. Remove the saucepan at once from the fire and set it in a pan
of boiling water. Dip each cherry quickly in the hot syrup and lay on a
waxed paper to dry. If the syrup shows signs of becoming too thick, add
more boiling water to that in the outside pan. When all the cherries
have been “dipped” stand them in a warm place to dry.
Pineapple and orange
Cut the top from a pineapple and carefully remove the inside, so that
the shell may not be broken. Cut the pulp into bits, mix it with the
pulp of three ripe oranges, also cut very small, and liberally sweeten
the mixture. Smooth off the bottom of the pineapple shell so that it
will stand upright, refill with the fruit pulp, put on the tip and set
in the ice for three hours.
Creamed peaches
Lay large, ripe free-stone peaches on the ice for several hours, peel,
cut them in half and remove the stones. Whip half a pint of cream
light, with two tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar. Fill the hollows left
by the stones to heaping with the whipped cream. Keep in the ice-box
until time to serve the fruit.
Grapefruit and strawberries
Cut grapefruit in half and remove the tough fiber and part of the pulp.
Chop this pulp and add it to mashed and sweetened strawberries. Refill
the grapefruit rinds with the mixture, and set on the ice for an hour
or two.
Strawberries and cream
Cap the berries, one at a time, using the tips of your fingers. The
practice of holding capped berries in the hollow of the hand until one
has as many as the space will accommodate, is unclean and unappetizing.
Cap them deftly and quickly, letting each fall into a chilled bowl, and
do this just before serving, keeping in a cool place until they are
ready to go to table. Pass powdered sugar and cream, also ice-cold,
with them.
Raspberries and cream
Follow the directions given in last recipe.
Bartlett pears and cream
Select sweet, ripe pears and lay them in the ice for two hours. Do not
peel until just before they are needed. Pare deftly and quickly, slice,
sprinkle with sugar, cover with cream and serve.
Bananas and cream
Bananas are very good treated as the pears were in the last recipe.
It is a good plan to bury these in the ice until wanted for dessert.
Then the hostess may, at the table, quickly peel and slice them into
different saucers. Bananas thus prepared do not have time to become
discolored from exposure to the air.
SWEET OMELETS
Apple sauce omelet (baked)
Beat the yolks of seven eggs light; stir into them five tablespoonfuls
of powdered sugar and a cupful and a half of sweetened apple sauce.
Beat long and hard, stir in the stiffened whites, beat for a minute
longer and turn into a greased pudding-dish. Bake, covered, for about
ten minutes, then uncover and brown. Serve at once with whipped cream.
It is also good served with a hot sauce made by the following recipe:
Into a pint of boiling water stir a half-cupful of sugar, and when this
dissolves add a teaspoonful of butter, the juice and the grated rind of
a lemon and the stiffened white of an egg. Beat for a minute over the
fire, but do not let the sauce boil.
Jam omelet
Beat the yolks of five eggs light with a heaping tablespoonful of
powdered sugar. Into this stir a teaspoonful of corn-starch dissolved
in three tablespoonfuls of milk, then the stiffened whites of the eggs.
Cook in a frying-pan until set; spread with strawberry jam, fold and
serve as dessert.
Omelet soufflé
Beat the yolks of five eggs very light, adding, gradually, four
tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar. In another dish whip the whites to
a standing froth. With a few long strokes blend the two; pour into
a buttered bake-dish and bake quickly. Sift powdered sugar on the
top at the end of two minutes, and very quickly, as the omelet will
fall if the oven stands open even a few seconds. Serve at once in the
bake-dish.
Orange omelet
(Contributed)
Beat the yolks of five eggs together until thick and lemon-colored. Add
five tablespoonfuls of orange juice, the grated rind of one orange and
five tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar. Then fold in lightly the beaten
whites of four eggs. Put a little butter in an omelet pan, and when hot
pour in the omelet mixture and spread in evenly. Let it cook through,
but not harden. Fold the edges over and turn out upon a hot dish. Serve
with a dressing of sliced oranges and powdered sugar.
Omelet with marmalade
(Contributed)
Beat the yolks of three eggs very light. Then fold in the whites beaten
dry. Turn into an omelet pan in which one teaspoonful of butter has
been melted. Spread the omelet evenly and cook over a slow fire to
set the eggs. Then put in the oven until done. Spread one-half of the
omelet with marmalade, fold and serve on hot platter.
Queen Mab omelets
Beat four eggs, the yolks as smooth as cream, the whites to a standing
froth. Into the yolks whip three tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar. Mix
all together, add a tablespoonful of thick cream, whip lightly and pour
into buttered “nappies,” filling each half-way to the top. Set in a
pan of boiling water in a quick oven and bake five minutes, covered.
Turn out upon a hot platter, sift powdered sugar over them and serve at
once.
FAMILIAR TALK
A commonsensible talk with the nominal mistress of the house
There is not that household in the land where servants are employed
which is not measurably dependent upon them for peace of mind as well
as for comfort of body. Every housewife who reads this will recall the
sinking of heart, the damp depression of spirit, which has suddenly
overtaken a cheerful mood when the kitchen barometer beckoned “storm”
or “change.” Such an overtaking is not an affliction, but it sometimes
comes dangerously near to sorrow. The independent maid of all work has
it in her power to alter the family plans with a word, when that word
is “going.” Should she elect to stay, her lowering brows and sharp or
sullen speech abash a mistress who quails at little else. In wealthier
households a domestic “strike” involves panic, disorder and suffering.
I know of a wet-nurse whose abandonment of her infant charge, without
a word of warning, at ten o’clock one Saturday night, caused a long
and terrible illness, resulting in infantile paralysis. A cook who had
lived in one family for three years resented the arrival of unexpected
guests, packed her trunk and left her mistress to get dinner. The
lady was in delicate health and all unused to such work. She became
overheated and exhausted, took a heavy cold, which ripened into
pneumonia, and died three days after the cook’s desertion.
I need not multiply illustrations of the helplessness of American
housewives in the face of such disasters, and the possibility that
these may befall any one of us. We have no redress. The women who
helped organize the “Protective League” know this. The law does not
protect the employer. Public opinion gives her no support. The cook
whose fit of temper cost a kind mistress her life was recommended to
me within a month after an event that should have shocked the moral
sense of every housewife in the community, and recommended by a friend
of the murdered woman and of myself. When I exclaimed in surprise, I
was told: “We can not be judges of our neighbors’ domestic affairs.”
There is no class spirit among us. For some reasons this is a matter
of congratulation to us and the public. All that is needed to make the
opening gulf between mistresses and maids impassible is organization
on our part, which signifies open war. It is, nevertheless, I note in
passing, patent that there should be a code of honor among us with
regard to employment of those who have proved absolutely untrustworthy
in other households.
We are not true to one another in this matter, and our employées, who
are held together by the unwritten laws of a union, none the less
strong because nameless and informal, know this as well as we do. The
knowledge is one of the most potent weapons in their armory.
Let this pass for the present. I would direct your attention, my
sister-worker in the home missionary field, to the brighter side of the
vexed question.
After forty years’ careful study of this matter of domestic
service—study carried on in other lands as well as in our own—I record
thankfully my conviction that the domestics in well-regulated American
homes are better cared for, better paid and more thoroughly appreciated
than any other class of working women in this country or abroad. I
record, likewise and confidently, that the proportion of faithful,
valued and even belovéd domestics among us is much larger than that
of indifferent or worthless. Most cheerfully and thankfully I add
to this record that, personally, I have a list of honest, virtuous,
willing workers, whose terms of service in my family varied from three
to thirteen years, and who went from my house to homes of their own,
bearing with them the cordial esteem of those they had served. Nor is
my experience singular, even in these United States. It is so far from
being exceptional that I deprecate, almost as an individual grievance,
any attempt to organize those who should be our coworkers into a
faction that considers us as “the opposition.” It is a putting asunder
of those whom a mutual need should join together.
Backed by my two-score years of experiment and action, I dare believe
that a leaf or two from my book of household happenings may be of
service to younger women and novices in the profession which absorbs
the major part of our time and strength.
To begin with—beware of discouragement during the early trial-days of
the new maid. Be slow to say, even to yourself: “She will never suit
me!” The first days and weeks of a strange “place” are a crucial test
for her as for you, and she has not your sense of proportion, your
discipline of emotion and your philosophical spirit to help her to
endure the discomforts of new machinery.
Looking back upon my housewifely experiences, I am moved to the
conclusion that the domestics who stayed with me longest and served me
best were those who did not promise great things in their novitiate.
One—“a greenhorn, but six weeks in the country”—frankly owned that she
knew nothing of American houses and ways. She was “willing to learn,”
and—with a childish tremble of the chin—“didn’t mind how hard she
worked if people were kind to her.” I think the quivering chin and the
clouding of the “Irish blue” eyes moved me to give her a trial. She did
not know a silver fork from a pepper cruet, or a tea-strainer from a
colander, and distinguished the sideboard from the buffet by calling
the one the “big,” the other the “little dresser.” She had been with me
a month when I trusted her to prepare some melons for dessert, giving
her careful and minute directions how to halve the nutmeg melons,
take out the seeds and fill the cavities with cracked ice, while
the watermelon—royal in proportions and the first fruits of our own
vines—was to be washed, wiped, and kept in the ice-chest until it was
wanted.
At dinner the “nutmegs” appeared whole; the watermelon had been cut
across the middle and eviscerated—scraped down to the white lining of
the rind—then filled with pounded ice. The succulent sweetness, the
rosy lusciousness of the heart, had gone into the garbage can.
Nevertheless, I kept blue-eyed Margaret for eight years. She stands
out in my grateful memory as the one and only maid I have ever had who
washed dishes “in my way.” Never having learned any other, she mastered
and maintained the proper method.
The best nursery-maid I ever knew, and who blessed my household for
eleven years, objected diffidently at our first interview to giving a
list of her qualifications for the situation. She “would rather a lady
would find out for herself by a fair trial whether she would fit the
place or not.” I engaged her because the quaint phrase took my fancy.
She proved such a perfect fit that she continued to fill the place
until she went to a snug home of her own.
What may be called the New Broom of Commerce has no misgivings as
to her ability to fill any place, however important. Upon inquiry
of the would-be employer as to the latter’s qualifications for that
high position, the N. B. of C. may decline to accept her offer of an
office which promises more work than “privileges.” But she could fill
it—full—if she were willing to “take service” with the applicant.
One of the oddest incongruities of the new-broom problem is that we
are always disposed to take it at its own valuation. With each fresh
experiment we are confident that—at last!—we have what we have been
looking for lo! these many years. She is a shrewd house-mother who
reserves judgment until the first awkward week or the crucial first
month has brought out the staying power or proved the lack of it.
Officious activity in unusual directions is a bad omen in the New Broom
of Commerce. In sporting parlance, I at once “saw the finish” of one
whom I found upon the second day of service with me washing a window
in the cellar. She “couldn’t abide dirt nowhere,” she informed me,
scrubbing vehemently at the dim panes. I had just passed through the
kitchen where a grateful of fiery coals was heating the range plates to
an angry glow. All the drafts were open; the boiler over the sink was
at a bubbling roar; upon the tables was a litter of dirty plates and
dishes; pots, pans and kettles filled the sink.
It is well to have a care of the corners, but the weightier matters of
the law of cleanliness are usually in full sight.
I once knew a woman who, deliberately, and of purpose, changed servants
every month. She said no new broom lasted more than four weeks, and
when one became grubby and stumpy she got rid of it. Her house was the
cleanest in town and her temper did not seem worse for friction.
Another woman who, strange to tell, lived to be ninety years old,
“liked moving” and never lived two years in one and the same house.
She maintained that she kept clear of rubbish by frequent flittings,
and enjoyed rubbing out and beginning again. Personally, I should have
preferred a clean, lively conflagration every three years or so, but
she throve upon nomadism.
In minor details of housewifery, as in more important, make up your
mind how you will manage the home and turn a deaf ear to gratuitous
suggestions from people whose own households would be better conducted
if their energies were concentrated.
Let one example suffice: A so-called reformer felt herself called in
(or out of) the Gospel of Humanity, the other day, to inveigh in a
parlor lecture upon the unkindness and general unchristianliness of
the maid’s cap and apron which all would-be stylish mistresses insist
upon. “Have I, a Christian woman in a republic,” cried the oratress,
“the right to put the badge of servitude upon my sister woman, because,
having less money than I have, she is obliged to earn her living? Do I
not tend to degrade, instead of elevating her?
“Of a piece with the cap and apron is the black dress, now ‘the thing’
for girls in domestic service. Why should not Bridget and Dinah
exercise their own right in dress as well as I?”
These questions have been put to me many times by women who think and
act for themselves without regard to arbitrary conventionalities.
I am so well assured that most conventionalities have a substratum of
common sense that I am slow to condemn any one of them.
I dispute, at the outset, the insinuation that black dress, white cap
and apron are a badge of servitude. I know no more independent class
of women than trained nurses, no more arbitrary men than railway
officials. I should certainly never consider the distinctive garb of
the Sisters of Charity—Protestant or Roman Catholic—as degrading.
The idea of humiliation attached to the uniform of housemaid and
child’s nurse in the mind of employees or employer is founded upon the
conviction that domestic service demeans her who performs it. This is
precisely the prejudice which sensible, philanthropic women are trying
to beat down—a prejudice that has more to do with the complications of
the servant question than all other influences combined. If I hesitate
to ask a maid entering my service to wear the uniform of her calling,
I intimate too broadly to be misunderstood that there is something in
that service which would demean her were it generally known that she is
in it.
I had one maid, years ago, who would not run around the corner to
grocery or haberdasher’s without taking time to put on her Sunday coat
and hat, and to lay off her apron. When I spoke to her of the absurdity
and inconvenience of this, she confessed, blushingly, that the porter
at the grocery was “keeping company with her,” and “it was nat’ral a
gurrel should want to look her best when she was like to see him.”
“Ah,” I said, “doesn’t he know what your position is in my house? Has
he never seen you in cap and apron?”
“Shure, mem! Every day when he fetches the groceries.”
“Then, if he is a sensible fellow, he will respect you all the more
for not pretending to be what you are not. Since he knows what your
business is, show him that you are not ashamed of it. You are as
respectable in your place as he is in his—as I am in mine—always
providing that you respect your service and yourself.”
Call the distinctive dress of your maid a “uniform,” not a livery.
Point out to her the examples of trained nurses, of railway conductors,
of the very porters who “keep company” with her; the policemen she
admires afar off; the soldiers, whose brass buttons dazzle her
imagination. Remind her that saleswomen in fashionable shops wear the
black gown, white apron, deep linen collar and cuffs and pride
themselves upon looking their best in them. Especially make her
comprehend (if you can, for the ways of the untrained mind are past
finding out), that she has an honorable calling and need not be
ashamed to advertise it.
Congratulate yourself, above all, that a sensible fashion holds back
Bridget and Dinah from the “exercise of their own taste in dress.”
The modification of that taste wrought by the neat and modest costume
prescribed by a majority of modern housewives may be in itself a good
thing, sparing the eyes of spectators of her toilettes when she becomes
“Mrs.” and independent, and the purse of the porter, or truckman, or
mechanic, who will have to pay for them.
I have laid stress upon the advantages of long terms of service, to
maid and to mistress. Like all other good things it has its perils and
its abuses to be avoided.
Two-thirds of the scandals that poison the social atmosphere steal
out, like pestilential fogs, through servants’ gossip. We discuss “the
girl” in our bedchambers, and if so much stirred up by her works and
ways as to forget what is due to our ladyhood, compare notes in the
parlor as to these same works and ways. Being well-bred women, the
traditions of our caste prevent us from making domestic grievances
the staple of drawing-room conversation and the marrow of table-talk.
The electroplated vulgarian never calls attention more emphatically
to the absence of the “Sterling” stamp upon her breeding, than when
she chatters habitually of the virtues and the faults of her household
staff.
On the other hand, the most sophisticated of us would be amazed and
confounded if she knew what a conspicuous part She plays in talk below
stairs and on afternoons and evenings “out.”
Thackeray, prince of satirists, puts it cleverly:
“Some people ought to have mutes for servants in Vanity Fair—mutes
who could not write. If you are guilty—tremble! That fellow behind
your chair may be a Janissary with a bowstring in his plush breeches
pocket. If you are not guilty, have a care of appearances, which are as
ruinous as guilt.”
We should be neither shocked nor confounded that these things
are so. If we are mildly surprised, it argues ignorance of human
nature, and of the general likeness of one human creature to
another, that proves the whole world kin. When mistresses in Parisian
toilettes, clinking gold spoons against Dresden as they sip Bohea in
boudoir or drawing-room, raise their eyebrows or laugh musically over
the latest bit of social carrion in “our set”—Jeames or Abigail, who
has caught a whiff at a door ajar, or through a keyhole, is the lesser
sinner in serving up the story in the kitchen cabinet. The domestics
are in, yet not of, the employer’s world, living for six and a half
days of the week among people with whom they have no affinity by nature
or education. Where we would talk of “things,” the lower classes
discuss what they name “folks.” Their range of thought is pitifully
narrow; the happenings in their social life are few and tame. What
wonder if they retail what we say and do and are, as sayings, doings
and characters appear to them?
What would be extraordinary, if it were not so common, is the
opportunity gratuitously afforded in—we will say, guardedly—one family
out of three for the collection of material for these sensations of
the nether story. I speak by the card in asserting that the influence
gained by the confidential maid over her well-born, well-mannered,
well-educated mistress is greater than that possessed by any friend in
the (alleged) superior’s proper circle of equals.
Without taxing memory I can tell off on my fingers ten gentlewomen, in
every other sense of the word, whose intimate confidantes are hirelings
who were strangers until they entered the employ of their respective
mistresses(?). We need not cross the ocean to listen with incredulous
horror to insinuations and open assertions as to the hold a gigantic
Scotch gilly acquired over a royal widow. Our next-door neighbors on
both sides and our acquaintances across the way are in like bondage.
I have in mind one of the best and most refined women I ever knew whose
infatuation for her incomparable Jane was the laughing-stock of some,
the surprise and grief of others. Jane disputed the dear soul’s will,
oft and again; gave her more advice than she took, and, behind her
back, ridiculed her unsparingly—as many of the mistress’s friends were
aware. The dupe would resign the affection and society of one and all
of her compeers sooner than part with Jane.
Another “just could not live without my Mary.” The remote suggestion
throws her into a paroxysm of distress. Her own husband knows it to
be necessary to warn her not to tell this and that business or family
secret to Mary, knowing, the while, in his sad soul, the chances to be
against her keeping her promise not to share it with her factotum.
Ellen is the bosom friend of a third; Bridget is the right hand,
the counsellor and colleague of a fourth. A fifth confides to her
second-rate associates that her faithful Fanny knows as much of family
histories (and there are histories in the clan) as she does, and
that she—the miscalled mistress—takes no step of importance without
consulting her.