Parisian markets--No refuse food brought into a house--Catering in
London--Cooking-stoves--Pretty kitchen--Underground kitchens
objectionable--Kitchen level with the street door--Larder and
store-room--The dresser--Kitchen in the Swiss style--Herbs in the
window--Hygienic value of aromatic plants--Polished sink--Earthenware
scrap-dish--Nothing but ashes in dust-bin--Soap-dish--Plate-rack--
Kitchen cloths--Few cleaning materials necessary--Hand work better
than machine work--Washing at home--Knife-cleaning--Fuel-box--No work
in the kitchen unfit for a lady to do.
Time works many changes; but will it ever bring into our English
markets the various and neatly arranged vegetables, the bouquets of
salad, pleasant to the eye as to the taste, the neat little joints and
divisions of meat, the temptingly prepared poultry and game, and the
many kinds of appetizing comestibles, which are to be found in the
markets of Paris? There a housekeeper may amuse herself by varying her
dinners for every day, having an embarrassment of choice between
countless delicacies. There the fillet of beef (the undercut of the
sirloin) is already larded for the roast; the pigeons are boned and
prepared for the _compote_; the veal is cut in shape and beaten for the
cutlets; the pigs'-feet are boned, stuffed, and truffled; slices of
galantine are ready to be laid on a dish for luncheon; crayfish woo the
_mayonnaise_; parsley and butter are waiting to be poured over potatoes
_a la maitre-d'hotel_. There the spinach may be bought ready boiled and
finely chopped, only needing to be warmed with its poached eggs; the
sorrel is already picked over and cooked; the carrots are cleanly
grown, and evenly selected, and sold with just the quantity of
feathered green tops useful for a garnish. In fact, all is so contrived
that the least possible refuse matter shall be brought into any house,
so saving the labour that this entails.
Nor does this trimming and spoke-shaving add to the price of the
articles, as the surplus vegetable remains go into the ground at once,
but little of what is uneatable being taken to the market at all; thus
saving the cost of carriage, and paying for the little time expended in
its removal; while in the case of meat, the purchaser finds it more
profitable to cook only such parts as are entirely eatable, without
letting time and fire be consumed in preparing what is always wasted.
This is not a cookery-book, though when I think of how much we have to
learn before we can make good use of our fine provisions, I feel
tempted to branch off on this line; but the lady amateur will learn
more by giving careful attention at the cooking-school than by reading
many books.
In London we can buy peas ready shelled, fowls ready trussed, fish
prepared for the pot or pan, and sometimes our beans ready slit; but
carrots must be scraped, greens washed, and turnips peeled, and apples
also, though potatoes need not; tongues and hams may be bought boiled,
and cakes ready baked. Still, with us much more food has to be prepared
at home than in France, though we have this convenience--that the
provisions are brought by the tradesmen to our doors, which is seldom
the practice there.
For general cooking, the gas tripod like that used at breakfast will
not serve our turn, except on cold-collation days in the heat of
summer, when cold lamb or salmon, salads and fruit, are more grateful
than anything else.
Many people dislike to have their cooking done by gas, and it is
objectionable for roasting or broiling; still, there are such numerous
inventions in cooking-stoves, each simpler, cleaner, and more perfect
than the rest, that only the embarrassment of selection can cause
hesitation in making a choice.
Near a nice bright stove, placed in a recess glittering with Dutch
tiles or Minton's artistic _plaques_, surrounded by burnished pans
and pots of well-lined copper or brass and neat enamelled saucepans,
the genius of the hearth presides over the mysteries of Hestia.
The window, made with diamond panes mingled with a few lozenges of
bright colour, is mostly open in summer, and wreathed with climbing
plants--as vines, and ornamental gourds, with their curious black or
scarlet fruit, the rich foliage intercepting the sunshine--or closed if
it be winter, and draped in pleasant muslin. I would take great pains
to make my kitchen the most picturesque and cheerful room in the house,
as it is one of the most important.
On no account would I use the great black beetle-trap cellar downstairs
and underground, which strikes with dismay the greater number of young
girls who have rushed from school into marriage, and who instantly
become the prey of the tyrant imprisoned in that dungeon, which is too
often also a den of iniquity.
No; if obliged to have a house with one of these dismal caverns, I
would invent some useful purpose for it; but I would not willingly
select such a dwelling. These underground kitchens must eventually die
out, and our children will wonder why we used such airless, lightless
places.
In a house arranged on my plan we aim upwards, not downwards. We might,
perhaps, on wet days, let the children go to these basement rooms to
skip or romp, as there they could not shake down the ceiling beneath
them, as sometimes happens in upstairs play-rooms; only the rooms must
be kept carefully whitewashed, and, as far as possible, well aired.
Or the old kitchen might be fitted up with racks for guns and
fishing-rods, and used as a smoking-room, when cosily papered, and
carpeted with matting; and the back kitchen converted into a
carpenter's shop with lathe and tool-chest.
But our kitchen, the pride of our house, will be level with the
dining-room and front door. It is a foolish practice to have all
vegetables, meat, coal, etc., taken downstairs for the purpose of
bringing them all up again.
When it is impossible to spare two rooms on the ground floor for
household use, let both kitchen and dining-room be upstairs, while the
drawing-room might be on the ground floor. This would give no more work
than does our present custom. But where it is possible, it is better,
for obvious reasons, that the kitchen should be on a level with the
street door.
When the room used as kitchen is large and has two windows, one side of
it may be partitioned off for a larder, or store closet; or if there is
a small third room near, it may be used for these purposes. But much
depends upon the aspect of the room and its means of ventilation. A
town larder need not be large, as the butcher, fishmonger, etc., can
keep the provisions far better than we can do in the best of larders. A
pantry and scullery will be quite unnecessary in a house arranged in
this way. Wine will be kept in the usual wine-cellar, but beer, in
bottles or in a small cask, may be kept in the cupboard under the
stairs which is so universal in town houses.
The kitchen floor should not be carpeted; but one or two undyed
sheepskins make comfortable mats, and are easily cleaned.
The kitchen dresser may be made of the usual shape, though the cornice
seems superfluous, as it is too high for anything but dust to rest upon
it.
Where it is thought better to do so, the old kitchen dresser may be
brought bodily upstairs. If it is varnished and its back painted red,
and the edges of its shelves very dark brown, with bright brass hooks
in them, it may have bright brass handles put on its drawers, and it
will do very well; and white or blue-and-white ware will look extremely
well upon it.
A kitchen may be very prettily fitted up in the Swiss style, with
unpainted deal employed decoratively whenever there is a fit occasion
for it. The back of the dresser may be made of narrow boards, each lath
cut out uniformly in a pattern at the top, forming a band of ornament.
The shelves will look very nice with a border of fretwork, in sycamore,
placed either above or below their edges. They are more easily cleaned
if the ornamental border is fastened on like barge-boarding, but this
plan is not so well adapted for hooks.
Mottoes in old English character, which is similar to the German Gothic
type used in Switzerland, form an appropriate decoration to the cornice
of the room.
The tables and chairs must be of unpainted wood, plain, but of good
form. All hooks and bars, or whatever cannot conveniently be made of
wood, should be of wrought iron. This gives a good opportunity for
having window-bars and fastenings, or even a balcony, made in
ornamental iron work. The window-curtains will be of Swiss muslin.
Oval wooden pails, with a board on one side left tall and cut out for a
handle, made in various sizes for water, milk, etc., are as useful as
they are suitable to the style adopted; and baskets may be made like
those carried by the Swiss mountaineers at their backs. A cuckoo clock
and a few hooks of chamois horn carry out the effect. Characteristic
ornaments, such as paintings of Swiss scenery, and flowers in wooden
frames, wood carvings on brackets, wooden bears as matchboxes, wooden
screw nutcrackers, should be collected during visits to Switzerland;
and a Swiss costume will be found as practically useful as any dress
the young cook can wear, and will add a great charm and liveliness to
the scene.
But be the style adopted what it may, and it is well to exercise
individual tastes, it need not be made expensive, or not more so than
an ugly kitchen. Thought and care should combine to make it cheerful
and attractive, in order that the real work to be done in it may not
have a depressing influence: that the lady, or her assistant, may not
pine for the greater excitement of the Row or the rink. The kitchen
window should be well furnished with scented plants; and in case of
having no garden, pots of parsley, mint, and thyme may be grown
successfully on a balcony. Every house might possess its sweet basil
plant, and every Isabella might rear it in as elegant a pot as that in
Holman Hunt's picture. Plentiful use should be made of it in cookery;
it is one of the best of herbs. Indeed, we too much neglect all these
aromatic plants, the hygienic value of their fragrance alone being very
great. Some girls might save the small fortune they now spend in
opopanax and patchouly, by cultivating lavender and thyme for their
wardrobes; while balm and bergamot are sweet enough to make the kitchen
smell like Araby the Blest.
China ginger-jars will be found good for preserving dried herbs for
winter use.
The sink is a very important part of the kitchen furniture. This, in
our model kitchen, should be a shallow bath of Marezzo marble, which is
a strong, durable composition, finely coloured. We should select it of
a colour harmonizing with the general style of the kitchen. The sink
must rest upon two columns, or short shafts, of the Marezzo marble,
hollowed down the centre, to allow of the water running freely away at
both ends of the sink, each tube being stopped by a bell-trap. It must
stand on one side of the kitchen fire-place, so that a pipe and tap may
readily communicate with the self-supplying boiler. There must also be
the usual pipe to conduct cold water from the cistern.
The best possible sink would be of real marble, highly polished; but
the cost of this would preclude its use in our economical household.
Enamelled slate would be cheaper and very good, and it would retain its
polish better than the Marezzo marble, or japanned metal might answer
the purpose pretty well. But doubtless a demand for such articles would
cause Messrs. Minton's factory to produce a sink in strong glazed
earthenware which should be finely coloured as well as elegant in form,
making, indeed, an object as beautiful as a Roman porphyry bath. Many
of the public washing fountains in Italy, or the south of France, would
serve as models for this purpose. One of the most important points to
be attended to is that it should be highly polished, as grease would be
more easily removed from it, and it would be cleaner.
Beneath the sink is the pot for scraps and refuse, of which a small
quantity is inevitable, unless there is a garden, or poultry are kept;
in which cases all rubbish may be turned to account, the only exception
being fish-bones and scraps, which, under all circumstances, must be
burned.
The refuse dish should be of earthenware to match the sink, or of
terra-cotta, glazed inside. It must be made in two compartments, one
for usable scraps and one for waste. Each division should have a cover
with a small air-hole in it, both covers made sufficiently heavy not to
be upset or opened by the cat; and there must be a handle to lift it
out once a week, or oftener, when its contents are disposed of, either
as gift, or to some person calling for it regularly. In all economical
families the dripping is consumed either for frying, or else clarified
for cakes, etc. Cinders, of course, are to be sifted in the covered
cinder-sieve, and the ashes only allowed in the dust-bin. By care on
this point, seven-tenths of all fevers might be prevented.
By the side of the sink should stand a neat towel-horse for drying the
damp cloths; and a pretty dish made in two divisions, with a strainer
for soap and soda, should be hung in a convenient place. This dish
would be best made in earthenware, but it might be of carved wood in a
kitchen fitted up in the Swiss style.
A plate-rack must be above the sink, and here is great scope for
tasteful decoration without interfering with its lightness or strength.
A rack like those in general use would, however, be perfectly
inoffensive, and so would our ordinary buckets and dish-tubs; but
souvenirs of travel, such as the quaint wooden pails seen at Antwerp,
or the brass fryingpan-shaped candlesticks at Ghent, should be eagerly
sought, as they add much to the picturesqueness and piquant liveliness
which are so desirable.
A round towel, on a roller with nicely carved brackets, is
indispensable. This should be of finer holland than it is generally
made of, being for ladies' use; or it might preferably be of soft
Turkish towelling, with coloured stripes and a fringed end, and so be
pleasanter to the eye and touch than the ordinary jack-towel.
The dresser-drawers must have their piles of kitchen cloths neatly
folded, and separated for their different services. These should be
the pride of the young housewife's heart, all of them having their
ends tastefully ornamented, either ravelled out or knotted into fringe
for the commonest, or open worked, or edged with Greek lace and
_guipure-d'art_, according to their quality; the dusters only being
plain, and these of two sorts, one stout for furniture, and the other
kind of soft muslin for ornaments. Housemaid's gloves, wash-leather,
and any favourite cleaning materials, should be kept in a drawer by
themselves; but in my experience I have found very few of these things
necessary. As is the case with all the arts, the more complete the
paraphernalia, the less is the work done. It takes so long to set in
order one's apparatus, and to play with it a little, that as soon as
something is begun to be done, it is time to put all away again. How
often we see this with amateur painters; they set out too heavily
equipped.
The black-lead and brush, and broken saucer full of something pulpy,
the powder that is always falling out of its packet or bit of
newspaper, and the other odds and ends which crowd our house-maids'
dirty buckets, and the scrubbing brushes and hearthstone which encumber
our sinks, are only barbarisms trying to conceal the slovenliness they
pretend to correct. A house regularly and neatly attended to needs few
or none of these things, while sandpaper, rotten-stone, and whiting may
be almost entirely dispensed with. The homely old proverb should be
remembered, when tempted by advertisements of these things,
"Elbow-grease is the best furniture polish."
Mincing-machines, apple-paring-machines, and toys of this kind, are all
very well when ladies use them themselves; but they represent so much
idleness, waste, and destruction in the hands of careless cooks, who
like to sit over their letter writing, or their weekly paper, while the
kitchen-maid does the work. And when a fragile machine breaks or gets
out of order under her heavy hand, she only "drats the nasty thing" and
throws away the broken part, pushing the rest aside to become a portion
of the dreadful accumulation of lumber to be seen in every house.
My own practice as a wood-carver teaches me to prefer using that
perfect tool, the hand, in its ever adaptable way, to using it
servilely to grind out sausages. By the time one has prepared the meat
to feed the machine, set it in working order, and taken it to pieces
again to clean it, one might as soon have used a sharp knife, and the
meat would have tasted better than it does when its juice is squeezed
out and its fibre torn to rags, so that the insipid _rissoles_ made
from it need half a bottle of Harvey's sauce to make them eatable. It
may be a matter of taste, but the difference seems to me as great as
between music played on a piano and noise ground out of a barrel-organ.
Washing-machines, I have found to my cost, are a failure also, at least
in hired hands. I bought one of the best, but as I had also a
washing-tray, the machine, warranted to do everything, was neglected,
and its lid employed as a table; as we too often see with our pianos,
telling thereby a tale of forgetfulness. The mangling part of the
machine, which was sometimes used by semi-compulsion, always had its
screw left turned on at full pressure, so that the spring would have
been powerless in a week, had I not loosened it myself. Washing at home
had better not be attempted in the case of ladies doing their own work.
We want to lighten the labour of the house; since, if we endeavour to
do too much, we shall either become household drudges, or else decline
the work altogether.
But supposing a family has time and opportunity to do the laundry work
at home, a tablespoonful of liquid ammonia and a dessertspoonful of
turpentine used in the washing water, where a quarter of a pound of
soap has been finely sliced, will be found to remove dirt from the
clothes without rubbing, saving labour, much soap, and the wear and
tear of the things.
In the case of large families, besides the greater economy of washing
at home, which is, however, doubtful when extra labour is hired, the
immunity from infectious diseases being brought home in the linen is a
powerful motive for undertaking the work, and doubly so where there is
a garden, as it is so much better for our health to wear linen dried in
the fresh air, rather than in the small courts of the neighbourhood
where our laundresses usually dwell, or in the close passages of their
houses.
Kent's patent knife-cleaner is as much used, and as useful, as any of
these domestic machines, though I prefer the leather-covered board.
Pyro-silver knives seem to save labour, as they are cleaned like any
spoon; wiped first, as all greasy knives should be, with paper, then
washed in warm water and wiped with a cloth. My own pyro-silver knives
keep very well and remain bright, but as they have valuable handles of
elaborate Burmese ivory-carving they are carefully used. I have heard
people say that the pyro-silver does not wear well, being easily
scratched and otherwise injured.
Balancing the sink on one side of the stove is the fuel-box, containing
a quarter of ton of coal. This, in most of the new stoves, will last
several weeks, and it may be bought in this small quantity at a time,
or replenished from the usual coal-cellar. This consideration would be
determined by the season, by whether the other stoves in the house burn
gas or coal, and by the number of rooms requiring daily fires.
The fuel-box should have a lid, forming a table for any temporary uses,
or any of the less cleanly sorts of work--I will not say dirtier work,
because in this system there should be no dirty work, nothing but what
a lady may do without loss of dignity, and without injury to hands
which in the afternoon will handle delicate needlework, and in the
evening recreate themselves over the piano.
And this leads us to speak of the systematic employment of lady-helps,
in such cases as they may be a real comfort and assistance in a family,
and not where they are expected to be perfect servants, who for small
wages will relieve idle ladies from the difficulty of first obtaining
and then enduring a few ignorant domestics.