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Miscellaneous Receipts Relative To Housewifery. Part 3 |
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Free Books / Cooking / The American Housewife / | |
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Miscellaneous Receipts Relative To Housewifery. Part 3 |
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This section is from the "The American Housewife" book, by Experienced Lady. Also available from Amazon: The American Housewife.
Pickles should be kept in unglazed earthen jars, or wooden kegs. Sweetmeats keep best in glass jars ; unglazed stone pots answer very well for common fruit. A paper wet in brandy, or proof spirit, and laid on the preserved fruit, tends to keep it from fermenting. Both pickles and sweetmeats should be watched, to see that they do not ferment, particularly when the weather is warm. Whenever they ferment, turn off the vinegar or syrup, scald and turn it back while hot. When pickles grow soft, it is owing to the vinegar being too weak. To strengthen it, heat it scalding hot, turn it back on the pickles, and when lukewarm, put in a little alum, and a brown paper, wet in molasses. If it does not grow sharp in the course of three weeks it is past recovery, and should be thrown away, and fresh vinegar turned on, scalding hot, to the pickles.
Cleanliness has been aptly styled the cardinal virtue of cooks. Food is more healthy, as well as palatable, cooked in a cleanly manner. Many lives have been lost in consequence of carelessness in using brass, copper, and glazed earthen cooking utensils. The two first should be thoroughly cleansed with salt and hot vinegar before cooking in them, and no oily or acid substance, after being cooked, should be allowed to cool or remain in any of them.
Dissolve a couple of drachms of lunar caustic, and half an ounce of gum arabic, in a gill of rain water. Dip whatever is to be marked in strong pearl-ash water. When perfectly dry. iron it very smooth; the pearlash water turns it a dark color, but washing will efface it. After marking the linen, put it near a fire, or in the sun, to dry. Red ink, for marking linen, is made by mixing and reducing to a fine powder half an ounce of vermilion, a drachm of the salt of steel, and linseed oil to render it of the consistency of black durable ink.
Melt together, moderately, ten ounces of Bayberry tallow, five ounces of bees' wax, one ounce of mutton tallow. When melted, add lamp or ivory black to give it a good black color. Stir the whole well together, and add, when taken from the fire, half a glass of rum.
Mix a quarter of a pound of ivory black, six gills of vinegar, a table-spoonful of sweet oil, two large spoonsful of molasses. Stir the whole well together, and it will then be fit for use.
Melt together a quarter of a pound of sealing-wax, the same quantity of rosin, a couple of ounces of bees' wax. When it froths, stir it with a tallow candle. As soon as it melts, dip the mouths of the corked bottles into it. This is an excellent tiling to exclude the air from such things as are injured by being exposed to it.
Rub the edge of the china or glass with the beaten white of an egg. Tie very finely powdered quick lime in a muslin bag, and sift it thick over the edges of the dishes that nave been previously rubbed with the egg. Match and bind the pieces together, and let it remain bound several weeks. This is good cement for every kind of crockery hut thick heavy glass and coarse earthenware; the former cannot be cemented with any thing ; for the latter, white paint will answer. Paint and match the broken edges, bind them tight together, and let them remain until the paint becomes dry and hard. Milk is a good cement for crockery - the pieces should be matched, and bound together tight, then put in cold milk, and the milk set where it will boil for half an hour; then take it from the fire, and let. the crockery remain till the milk is cold. Let the crockery remain bound for several weeks. The Chinese method of mending broken china, is to grind flint glass, on a painter's stone, till it is reduced to an impalpable powder: then beat it with the white of an egg, to a froth, and lay it on the edge of the broken pieces, match and bind them together firmly, and let them remain several weeks. It is said that no ar will then be able to break it in the same place.
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