Miss Beecher's Housekeeper and Healthkeeper: Containing Five Hundred Receipes for Economical and Healthful Cooking; also, Many Directions for Securing Health and HappinessBeecher, Catharine Esther
General
Miss Beecher's Housekeeper and Healthkeeper: Containing Five Hundred Receipes for Economical and Healthful Cooking; also, Many Directions for Securing Health and Happiness
Beecher, Catharine Esther
Cooking; Home economics
If parents wish their daughters to grow up with good domestic habits,
they should have, as one means of securing this result, a neat and
cheerful kitchen. A kitchen should always, if possible, be entirely
above-ground, and well lighted. It should have a large sink, with a
drain running under-ground, so that all the premises may be kept sweet
and clean. If flowers and shrubs be cultivated around the doors and
windows, and the yard near them be kept well turfed, it will add very
much to their agreeable appearance. The walls should often be cleaned
and whitewashed, to promote a neat look and pure air. The floor of
a kitchen should be painted, or, which is better, covered with an
oil-cloth. To procure a kitchen oil-cloth as cheaply as possible, buy
cheap tow cloth, and fit it to the size and shape of the kitchen. Then
have it stretched, and nailed to the south side of the barn, and with a
brush cover it with a coat of thin rye paste. When this is dry, put on
a coat of yellow paint, and let it dry for a fortnight. It is safest to
first try the paint, and see if it dries well, as some paint never will
dry. Then put on a second coat, and, at the end of another fortnight, a
third coat. Then let it hang two months, and it will last, uninjured,
for many years. The longer the paint is left to dry, the better. If
varnished, it will last much longer.
A sink should be scalded out every day, and occasionally with hot ley.
On nails, over the sink, should be hung three good dish-cloths, hemmed,
and furnished with loops—one for dishes not greasy, one for greasy
dishes, and one for washing pots and kettles. These should be put in
the wash every week. The lady who insists upon this will not be annoyed
by having her dishes washed with dark, musty, and greasy rags, as is
too frequently the case.
Under the sink should be kept a slop-pail; and, on a shelf by it, a
soap-dish and two water-pails. A large boiler, of warm soft water,
should always be kept over the fire, well covered, and a hearth-broom
and bellows be hung near the fire. A clock is a very important article
in the kitchen, in order to secure regularity at meals.
ON WASHING DISHES.
No item of domestic labor is so frequently done in a negligent manner
by domestics as this. A full supply of conveniences will do much toward
a remedy of this evil. A swab, made of strips of linen, tied to a
stick, is useful to wash nice dishes, especially small, deep articles.
Two or three towels, and three dish-cloths, should be used. Two large
tin tubs, painted on the outside, should be provided; one for washing,
and one for rinsing; also, a large old waiter, on which to drain the
dishes. A soap-dish, with hard soap, and a fork, with which to use
it, a slop-pail, and two pails for water, should also be furnished.
Then, if there be danger of neglect, the following rules for washing
dishes, legibly written, may be hung up by the sink, and it will aid in
promoting the desired care and neatness.
RULES FOR WASHING DISHES.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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