Page:The English housekeeper, 6th.djvu/64

36 people, out of materials which would otherwise be thrown away.

To be a good cook she must take pleasure in her occupation; for the requisite painstaking cannot be expected from a person who dislikes the fire, or who entertains a disgust for the various processes necessary to convert meat into savoury dishes. But a cook who takes pride in sending a dinner well dressed to table, may be depended upon, and that is of great importance to the mistress of a house: for though Englishmen may not be such connoisseurs in eating as Frenchmen, I question whether French husbands are more dissatisfied with a badly-cooked dinner than English husbands are. Dr. observes, "God sends us victuals, but who sends us cooks?" And the observation is not confined to the Doctor, for the walls of many a dining-room have echoed it, to the great discomfiture of the lady presiding at the head of the table. Ladies might, if they would, be obliged to confess that many ill humours had been occasioned by either under or over roasted meat, cold plates, or blunt knives; and perhaps these are grounds for complaint. Of the same importance as the cooking is neatness in serving the dinner, for there is a vast difference in its appearance if neatly and properly arranged in hot dishes, the vegetables and sauces suitable to the meat, and hot—there is a vast difference between a dinner so served, and one a part of which is either too much or too little cooked, the meat parting from the bone in one case, or looking as if barely warmed through in the other case; the gravy chilled and turning to grease, some of the vegetables watery, and others crisped, while the edges of the dishes are slopped, and the block-tin covers look dull. A leg of mutton or piece of beef, either boiled or roasted—so commonly the dinner of a plain-living family—requires as much skill and nicety as the most complicated made dishes; and a plain dinner well cooked and served is as tempting to the appetite as it is creditable to the mistress of the house, who invariably suffers in the estimation of her guests for the want of ability in her servants. The elegance of the drawing-room they have just left is forgotten by those who are suffocating from the over-peppered soup; and the coldness of the plate on which is handed a piece of turbot bearing a reddish hue, may hold a place in the memory of a visitor, to