Jules Gouffe, a famous French cook, says: “The more inconvenient a kitchen may be, the more need for cleanliness, carefulness, and for plentiful and good utensils to simplify one’s work. Cleanliness! Cleanliness!--the great essential in all cooking operations--should, I maintain, at the risk of being thought over-particular, be written in large capitals on the door of every kitchen, large or small. A kitchen may be small, badly arranged and lighted, but it should never, on any plea, be dirty. Failure in cooking is often attributable to want of attention to cleanliness. Nothing more than a dirty saucepan is often sufficient to spoil the effect of a whole dinner. All kitchen utensils should be examined daily. Saucepans of all kinds cannot be kept too carefully; they should be washed, scoured with fine sand, and well rinsed each time they are used. The washing of many things in the same water should be carefully avoided; the greasiness this engenders adds much to the labor of cleaning. The brightness and cleanliness of the outside is very commendable; but the cleanliness of the inside must not be sacrificed to that.” What would be Jules Gouffe’s sensations could he look into many of our kitchens? What would our good housekeepers themselves say--those of them that are not obliged to do the cooking for their families--if we should tell them that the pans in which their bread is baked are seldom washed out and dried, but are, unless thrown into the closet just as the bread was taken from them, wiped with a wet, greasy dishcloth, and bread baked in them over and over again, day after day, with no other cleansing? Said a good lady, “What is the reason that the bottom crust of my bread always tastes like rancid butter?” Examine your bread-pans, and you will no doubt find the reason, to your great surprise and vexation. How often, think you, is your molding-board set away without being washed after molding bread or rolling pastry, and the dough left to dry and sour on it, and the next batch molded on the same unwashed board? “That can’t be possible. I saw it hanging up in the store-room over the flour-barrel only this morning, and it was clean.” Turn it over, under side up, before you speak with too much certainty. How about the flour-sieve? Is it left in the flour-barrel,--thrown in with the sponge, from the cook’s wet hands, upon it, or a piece of unused pastry put in it? If so, when the barrel of flour is about half used, you will find that it has suddenly become sour. Is it not well to watch over these things daily? XIX. HOW MUCH IS A WIFE WORTH?