The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, Adapted to the Use of Private FamiliesEaton, Mary, active 1823-1849
General
The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, Adapted to the Use of Private Families
Eaton, Mary, active 1823-1849
Cooking, English; Formulas, recipes, etc.; Home economics
It is in general a good maxim, to select servants not younger than
thirty. Before that age, however comfortable you may endeavour to make
them, their want of experience, and the hope of something still better,
prevent their being satisfied with their present state. After they have
had the benefit of experience, if they are tolerably comfortable, they
will endeavour to deserve the smiles of even a moderately kind master or
mistress, for fear they may change for the worse. Life may indeed be
very fairly divided into the seasons of hope and fear. In youth, we hope
every thing may be right: in age, we fear that every thing may be wrong.
At any rate it is desirable to engage a good and capable servant, for
one of this description eats no more than a bad one. Considering also
how much waste is occasioned by provisions being dressed in a slovenly
and unskilful manner, and how much a good cook, to whom the conduct of
the kitchen is confided, can save by careful management, it is clearly
expedient to give better wages for one of this description, than to
obtain a cheaper article which in the end will inevitably become more
expensive. It is likewise a point of prudence to invite the honesty and
industry of domestics, by setting them an example of liberality in this
way; nothing is more likely to convince them of the value that is
attached to talent and good behaviour, or to bind them to the interest
of those whom they are engaged to serve. The office of the cook
especially is attended with so many difficulties, so many disgusting and
disagreeable circumstances, and even dangers, in order to procure us one
of the greatest enjoyments of human life, that it is but justice to
reward her attention and services, by rendering her situation every way
as comfortable as we can. Those who think, that to protect and encourage
virtue is the best preventive to vice, should give their female servants
liberal wages. How else can they provide themselves the necessary
articles of clothing, and save a little to help themselves in a time of
a sickness, when out of place, or amidst the infirmities of age. The
want of liberality and of justice in this respect is a principal source
of the distress and of the degradation to which multitudes of females
are reduced, and who are driven at length to seek an asylum in Foundling
Hospitals and Female Penitentiaries.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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