HOUSEHOLD GUIDES AND RECEIPT-BOOKS.
C4 WHO reads, and to his reading brings not a spirit and
judgment equal or superior, uncertain and unsettled still remains, crude or intoxicate." It is a far cry from "Para- dise Regained" to the showers of Household Guides and Receipt-books, or food papers in magazines, that come pouring upon us all, though perhaps some link of connection might be got out of the feast in the Second Book (which has, indeed, been instructively criticised) ; but Milton's often quoted dictum applies with striking force to the cases of such weak brothers and sisters as surrender themselves to the sole guidance of the popular food literature. "Crude or intoxicate" they still remain, unless their own spirit and judgment is equal or superior to that of the author. Much valuable instruction is to be got out of such literature ; it is usually worth its money ; but it should be approached in the inquisitive spirit of the student immortalised by Professor Tait, who, on being instructed in the way to work an equation, asked, "But suppose a: should turn out not to be the unknown quantity after all ?" The housewife who with absolute docility obeys the receipt set before her in the book or the magazine, will too often find that the product turns oat not to be the right dish after all. Mrs. Carlyle seems to have said that when her husband complained that his dinners were uneatable even by a philosopher, she wept, shut herself up with a cookery-book, and ere long sallied forth from her retirement, qualified to content even the organism of the man who had sacrificed his assimila- tive forces to the problem of the three bodies. But facts are against the lady's accuracy, for only a few years afterwards we find a critic vehemently accusing her husband of dyspepsia of the blackest dye, and accompanying the charge with a recom- mendation which we decline to quote here for the benefit of a familiar and "quite too consummately awful" quack medicine. No; not even when read with tears, are cookery books to be trusted.
It is a great thing, Cookery ; it is also well to know what
is wholesome and nutritious ; and the higher the authority, the better. A year or two ago, in a Revenue case (an un- licensed eating-house keeper having been prosecuted for allow- ing a customer to sit down over a saucer of hot tripe), no less a person than Sir William Grove, the author of "The Correlation of Physical Forces," thought it his duty to -defend tripe, and declare, if we may trust the report, that though it had been depreciated in the course of the trial, it was agreeable, wholesome, and nutritious. Since the days when Domitian called the Senate together to discuss the -cooking of a turbot, never were food questions treated from so lofty a point of view. The food advertisements alone might tempt any one to study organic chemistry, though we have not yet got so far as the American newspapers, in which an adver- tisement of phosphorus pills begins by inquiring, "Why were fishermen chosen for Apostles ? Because fish contains much phosphorus, which is the true brain-food, and great mental energy was required in the first advocates of our holy faith. Try," &c. Even in London, there are houses of refreshment which advertise their "snacks of fish" as "rich in phosphorus, or brain-power ;" And, indeed, at luncheon-time you may see the customers emerg- ing after their meal, looking conscious of aggrandised intellectual force. But how recent all this stuff is ! Did, it not have its beginning from somewhere about the time of the Irish famine ? It was when Cobbett's "accursed root" failed us, that we first heartily gave our minds to haricot beans, Indian corn, and economical cooking. The great Soyer told us that, while engaged under the authority of Government in a mission to Ireland (1847), it dawned upon his receptive intelligence that the " million " were more worthy of his attention than the " wealthy few ;" but that in going about to instruct "the million" in cookery, he found himself baffled by his ignorance -of their ways and means. It became necessary for him -to visit their homes, scrutinise their saucepans and frying- pans, and watch them in the very act of preparing .their food :—" My readers will easily perceive that whilst semi-buried in my fashionable culinary sanctum at the Reform Club, surrounded by the glite of society, who daily honoured me with their visits in that lounge of good-cheer, I ,could not gain, through the stone walls of that massive edifice, the slightest knowledge of cottage life. Determined," continued M. Soyer, "to carry out my long-thought-of project, I cheer- fully bade adieu to my wealthy employers, leaving them in a most thriving condition, regretting only my fair visitors ; And, like a joyful pilgrim of the olden time, I set forth • on my journey, visiting on my route every kind of philan- thropic and other useful institution, but more especially the domains of that industrial class, the backbone of -every free country,—the people." From the epoch-making volume which followed upon these astounding peregrinations, which was dedicated to the Earl of Shaftesbury, and sold by hundreds of thousands, the arts of household management and cookery began to be accounted as things to be taught in books and schools. Not that either books or schools for such matters were new ; but now they became popular, and they have gone on multiplying and asserting themselves ever since.
The Household Guides form a literature by themselves, and neither they nor the Cookery Books are unedifying, if read with an inquiring mind. But it is to be hoped that husbands of "limited means" do not often take the theorems for granted, and criticise the poor wife's management on the strength of receipts which furnish forth "an appetising .dinner for six persons " at a cost of is. 4d., and con- clude by recommending that what is left should be warmed up, as a relish for breakfast, next morning. Still, it must be a shock to a married working-man, earning 18s. a week, or a married City clerk, earning 30s., to find that his wife's .cheap cookery-book (which was to do them so much good) as- sumes that he will at once lay out several weeks' rent in a patent kitchener ; that he has his flour and potatoes by the sack ; and that he has a garden, in which he grows sage, sorrel, parsley, basil, chives, celery, carrots, turnips, mint, lemon- thyme, beets, lettuces, radishes, vegetable-marrows, winter savory, cress, kale, borage, balm, four-leaved shamrock, aspho- del, and sweet marjoram. The wife, too, discovers that, in order to make these cheap "appetising dishes," she must be standing over the fire, stirring, or larding, or basting, half her time, and burning more coals three times over than the -4'
cheap" process can possibly save.
Nor is this all. In the Christian Socialist of 1851, there were some papers, by a physician, which showed a wise sense of a fact which is not always recognised. Working tailors, poor clerks, and other persons of "limited income," can be queasy, as well as marquises,—yes, really ! Now, half the very cheap " appetising " dishes are fit only for " navvies " or others who are in the open air all day long. The fact is, that com- paratively few can, without injury, take hashes, stews, or soups, unless they are made much more carefully than a poor man's wife has time or energy to make them. What is to become of the children, the mending, making, and cleaning-up, while the poor woman is skimming, or straining, or pressing, or " carefully removing the fat," or "preparing the following sauce," or watching and poking, in order that there may be "a clear fire" at a given hour, sharp ? Soyer is, after all said and done, by far the most reasonable in his requirements in these matters, and there is not one of the cookery-books out of which an educated woman with brains may not get help ; but the majority of the teachers take far too much for granted in the personal capacities and other resources of quite ordinary learners. So far, we have assumed that the writing in the guide-book is intelligible, and the formula correctly given. But this is a large assumption. Some of the receipts are evidently put in "for a lark." They leave out essential ingredients (such as eggs for binding), or they direct you to perform physical impossi- bilities. Certainly, the style of the authorities is too often obscure. It is, no doubt, a philosophical first principle that "Nature seems to have given man those instru- ments, the teeth, by which he is enabled to masticate." Quis negavit ? But, "A pint of batter added to either the parsnips, artichokes, carrots, peas, asparagus &c., using only one pound instead of two, but quite boiled, and omitting the gravy, either of these will turn out like a pudding," is hardly scientific. Nor can the following receipt for anchovy sauce be considered exhaustive :—" Anchovy Sauce.—Add two tablespoonfuls of essence of anchovies and mix well." As difficult of construction is this :—" At the end of the London season when the markets are full of everything, and few to par- take of them, this can be made as a bonnebonche." Why should a housewife up in Carlisle, or down at Portsmouth, wait for the end of the London season to make a bonne bouche when there are few to partake of the markets which are full of everything?
It would require much space and many comments to intro- duce instructively the receipts for physical impossibilities, or those which some of our lady friends maintain are inserted as experiments on human credulity,—bref," for a lark." With as much study as would enable you to take a good degree in Arts, or by that lax kind of " gumption " (a profound mystery it is, too) which enables the flabby-minded to understand each other, a meaning can be put into a great many receipts which at first read like the rhubarb, the apple-dumplings, the she-bear, the soap, and the Great Panjandrum. Only, the students who do not possess the flabby gumption have to call in the help of some one who does, but who can- not construe ; while those who can only understand sane English have to rehabilitate the text, both in its logic and its grammar ; and by that time all appetite, or hope of appetite, is gone, and the cookery-book has become as pleasant as Chancery interrogatories. As an example of audacity in flat contradiction, we will take a certain printed label (of long stand- ing), which may be inspected by any human being in grocers' and oilmen's shops, and which is now before us .—" Directions for use. —Pat about one tablespoonful of this juice into a tumbler of cold water, and add sugar according to taste N.B.—Be sure to sweeten the water before adding the juice." One more example, from a cookery-book. "When a hare is not to be pro- cured," you are presented with an artful receipt for" mock-hare." Much, however, "depends upon the force-meat," and this you are instructed to prepare according to a previous formula; on turning to which you find that the material is to come from the interior of the hare, which is, ex hypothesi," not to be procured." It is, however, triumphantly added, that "if care is taken, this dish will deceive the best judges."
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