Robert Louis Stevenson - "Moral Emblems"

Myra Kelly - "Little Citizens"

Constant - "Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, V1"

William Dean Howells - "The Leatherwood God"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: The American Woman\'s Home

C >> Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe >> The American Woman\'s Home




In a French market is a little portion for every purse, and the
far-famed and delicately flavored soups and stews which have arisen
out of French economy are a study worth a housekeeper's attention. Not
one atom of food is wasted in the French modes of preparation; even
tough animal cartilages and sinews, instead of appearing burned and
blackened in company with the roast meat to which they happen to be
related, are treated according to their own laws, and come out either
in savory soups, or those fine, clear meat-jellies which form a garnish
no less agreeable to the eye than palatable to the taste.

Whether this careful, economical, practical style of meat-cooking can
ever to any great extent be introduced into our kitchens now is a
question. Our butchers are against it; our servants are wedded to the
old wholesale wasteful ways, which seem to them easier because they
are accustomed to them. A cook who will keep and properly tend a
soup-kettle which shall receive and utilize all that the coarse
preparations of the butcher would require her to trim away, who
understands the art of making the most of all these remains, is a
treasure scarcely to be hoped for. If such things are to be done, it
must be primarily through the educated brain of cultivated women who
do not scorn to turn their culture and refinement upon domestic
problems.

When meats have been properly divided, so that each portion can receive
its own appropriate style of treatment, next comes the consideration
of the modes of cooking. These may be divided into two great general
classes: those where it is desired to keep the juices within the meat,
as in baking, broiling, and frying--and those whose object is to extract
the juice and dissolve the fibre, as in the making of soups and stews.
In the first class of operations, the process must be as rapid as may
consist with the thorough cooking of all the particles. In this branch
of cookery, doing quickly is doing well. The fire must be brisk, the
attention alert. The introduction of cooking-stoves offers to careless
domestics facilities for gradually drying-up meats, and despoiling
them of all flavor and nutriment--facilities which appear to be very
generally accepted. They have almost banished the genuine, old-fashioned
roast-meat from our tables, and left in its stead dried meats with
their most precious and nutritive juices evaporated. How few cooks,
unassisted, are competent to the simple process of broiling a beefsteak
or mutton-chop! how very generally one has to choose between these
meats gradually dried away, or burned on the outside and raw within!
Yet in England these articles _never_ come on the table done amiss;
their perfect cooking is as absolute a certainty as the rising of the
sun.

No one of these rapid processes of cooking, however, is so generally
abused as frying. The frying-pan has awful sins to answer for. What
untold horrors of dyspepsia have arisen from its smoky depths, like
the ghost from witches' caldrons! The fizzle of frying meat is a warning
knell on many an ear, saying, "Touch not, taste not, if you would not
burn and writhe!"

Yet those who have traveled abroad remember that some of the lightest,
most palatable, and most digestible preparations of meat have come
from this dangerous source. But we fancy quite other rites and
ceremonies inaugurated the process, and quite other hands performed
its offices, than those known to our kitchens. Probably the delicate
_cotelettes_ of France are not flopped down into half-melted
grease, there gradually to warm and soak and fizzle, while Biddy goes
in and out on her other ministrations, till finally, when they are
thoroughly saturated, and dinner-hour impends, she bethinks herself,
and crowds the fire below to a roaring heat, and finishes the process
by a smart burn, involving the kitchen and surrounding precincts in
volumes of Stygian gloom. From such preparations has arisen the very
current medical opinion that fried meats are indigestible. They are
indigestible, if they are greasy; but French cooks have taught us that
a thing has no more need to be greasy because emerging from grease
than Venus had to be salt because she rose from the sea.

There are two ways of frying employed by the French cook. One is, to
immerse the article to be cooked in _boiling_ fat, with an emphasis
on the present participle--and the philosophical principle is, so
immediately to crisp every pore, at the first moment or two of
immersion, as effectually to seal the interior against the intrusion
of greasy particles; it can then remain as long as may be necessary
thoroughly to cook it, without imbibing any more of the boiling fluid
than if it were inclosed in an egg-shell. The other method is to rub
a perfectly smooth iron surface with just enough of some oily substance
to prevent the meat from adhering, and cook it with a quick heat, as
cakes are baked, on a griddle. In both these cases there must be the
most rapid application of heat that can be made without burning, and
by the adroitness shown in working out this problem the skill of the
cook is tested. Any one whose cook attains this important secret will
find fried things quite as digestible, and often more palatable, than
any other.

In the second department of meat-cookery, to wit, the slow and gradual
application of heat for the softening and dissolution of its fibre and
the extraction of its juices, common cooks are equally untrained. Where
is the so-called cook who understands how to prepare soups and stews?
These are precisely the articles in which a French kitchen excels. The
soup-kettle, made with a double bottom, to prevent burning, is a
permanent, ever-present institution, and the coarsest and most
impracticable meats distilled through that alembic come out again in
soups, jellies, or savory stews. The toughest cartilage, even the
bones, being first cracked, are here made to give forth their hidden
virtues, and to rise in delicate and appetizing forms.

One great law governs all these preparations: the application of heat
must be gradual, steady, long protracted, never reaching the point of
active boiling. Hours of quiet simmering dissolve all dissoluble parts,
soften the sternest fibre, and unlock every minute cell in which Nature
has stored away her treasures of nourishment. This careful and
protracted application of heat and the skillful use of flavors
constitute the two main points in all those nice preparations of meat
for which the French have so many names--processes by which a delicacy
can be imparted to the coarsest and cheapest food superior to that of
the finest articles under less philosophic treatment.

French soups and stews are a study, and they would not be an
unprofitable one to any person who wishes to live with comfort and
even elegance on small means.

There is no animal fibre that will not yield itself up to long-
continued, steady heat. But the difficulty with almost any of the
common servants who call themselves cooks is, that they have not the
smallest notion of the philosophy of the application of heat. Such a
one will complacently tell you concerning certain meats, that the
harder you boil them the harder they grow--an obvious fact which, under
her mode of treatment by an indiscriminate galloping boil, has
frequently come under her personal observation. If you tell her that
such meat must stand for six hours in a heat just below the boiling
point, she will probably answer, "Yes, ma'am," and go on her own way.
Or she will let it stand till it burns to the bottom of the kettle--a
most common termination of the experiment.

The only way to make sure of the matter is, either to obtain a French
kettle, or to fit into an ordinary kettle a false bottom, such as any
tinman may make, that shall leave a space of an inch or two between
the meat and the fire. This kettle may be maintained in a constant
position on the range, and into it the cook maybe instructed to throw
all the fibrous trimmings of meat, all the gristle, tendons, and bones,
having previously broken up these last with a mallet. Such a kettle,
the regular occupant of a French cooking-stove, which they call the
_pot au feu_, will furnish the basis for clear, rich soups, or other
palatable dishes. This is ordinarily called "stock."

Clear soup consists of the dissolved juices of the meat and gelatine
of the bones, cleared from the fat and fibrous portions by straining.
The grease, which rises to the top of the fluid, may be easily removed
when cold.

English and American soups are often heavy and hot with spices. There
are appreciable tastes in them. They burn your mouth with cayenne, or
clove, or allspice. You can tell at once what is in them, oftentimes
to your sorrow. But a French soup has a flavor which one recognizes
at once as delicious, yet not to be characterized as due to any single
condiment; it is the just blending of many things. The same remark
applies to all their stews; ragouts, and other delicate preparations.
No cook will ever study these flavors; but perhaps many cooks'
mistresses may, and thus, be able to impart delicacy and comfort to
economy.

As to those things called hashes, commonly manufactured by unwatched,
untaught cooks out of the remains of yesterday's meal, let us not dwell
too closely on their memory--compounds of meat, gristle, skin, fat,
and burnt fibre, with a handful of pepper and salt flung at them,
dredged with lumpy flour, watered from the spout of the tea-kettle,
and left to simmer at the cook's convenience while she is otherwise
occupied. Such are the best performances a housekeeper can hope for
from an untrained cook.

But the cunningly devised minces, the artful preparations choicely
flavored, which may be made of yesterday's repast--by these is the
true domestic artist known. No cook untaught by an educated brain ever
makes these, and yet economy is a great gainer by them.

As regards the department of _Vegetables_, their number and variety
in America are so great that a table might almost be furnished by these
alone. Generally speaking, their cooking is a more simple art, and
therefore more likely to be found satisfactorily performed, than that
of meats. If only they are not drenched with rancid butter, their own
native excellence makes itself known in most of the ordinary modes of
preparation.

There is, however, one exception. Our staunch old friend, the potato,
is to other vegetables what bread is on the table. Like bread, it is
held as a sort of _sine-qua-non_; like that, it may be made invariably
palatable by a little care in a few plain particulars, through neglect
of which it often becomes intolerable. The soggy, waxy, indigestible
viand that often appears in the potato-dish is a downright sacrifice of
the better nature of this vegetable.

The potato, nutritive and harmless as it appears, belongs to a family
suspected of very dangerous traits. It is a family connection of the
deadly-nightshade and other ill-reputed gentry, and sometimes shows
strange proclivities to evil--now breaking out uproariously, as in the
noted potato-rot, and now more covertly, in various evil affections.
For this reason scientific directors bid us beware of the water in
which potatoes are boiled-into which, it appears, the evil principle
is drawn off; and they caution us not to shred them into stews without
previously suffering the slices to lie for an hour or so in salt and
water. These cautions are worth attention.

The most usual modes of preparing the potato for the table are by
roasting or boiling. These processes are so simple that it is commonly
supposed every cook understands them without special directions; and
yet there is scarcely an uninstructed cook who can boil or roast a
potato.

A good roasted potato is a delicacy worth a dozen compositions of the
cook-book; yet when we ask for it, what burnt, shriveled abortions are
presented to us! Biddy rushes to her potato-basket and pours out two
dozen of different sizes, some having in them three times the amount
of matter of others. These being washed, she tumbles them into her
oven at a leisure interval, and there lets them lie till it is time
to serve breakfast, whenever that may be. As a result, if the largest
are cooked, the smallest are presented in cinders, and the intermediate
sizes are withered and watery. Nothing is so utterly ruined by a few
moments of overdoing. That which at the right moment was plump with
mealy richness, a quarter of an hour later shrivels and becomes watery--
and it is in this state that roast potatoes are most frequently served.

In the same manner we have seen boiled potatoes from an untaught cook
coming upon the table like lumps of yellow wax--and the same article,
under the directions of a skillful mistress, appearing in snowy balls
of powdery whiteness. In the one case, they were thrown in their skins
into water, and suffered to soak or boil, as the case might be, at the
cook's leisure, and after they were boiled to stand in the water till
she was ready to peel them. In the other case, the potatoes being first
peeled were boiled as quickly as possible in salted water, which the
moment they were done was drained off, and then they were gently shaken
for a moment or two over the fire to dry them still more thoroughly.
We have never yet seen the potato so depraved and given over to evil
that it could not be reclaimed by this mode of treatment.

As to fried potatoes, who that remembers the crisp, golden slices of
the French restaurant, thin as wafers and light as snow-flakes, does
not speak respectfully of them? What cousinship with these have those
coarse, greasy masses of sliced potato, wholly soggy and partly burnt,
to which we are treated under the name of fried potatoes in America?
In our cities the restaurants are introducing the French article to
great acceptance, and to the vindication of the fair fame of this queen
of vegetables.

Finally, we arrive at the last great head of our subject, to wit--
_Tea_--meaning thereby, as before observed, what our Hibernian
friend did in the inquiry, "Will y'r honor take 'tay tay' or coffee
tay?"

We are not about to enter into the merits of the great tea-and-coffee
controversy, further than in our general caution concerning them in
the chapter on Healthful Drinks; but we now proceed to treat of them
as actual existences, and speak only of the modes of making the best
of them. The French coffee is reputed the best in the world; and a
thousand voices have asked, What is it about the French coffee?

In the first place, then, the French coffee is coffee, and not chickory,
or rye, or beans, or peas. In the second place, it is freshly roasted,
whenever made--roasted with great care and evenness in a little
revolving cylinder which makes part of the furniture of every kitchen,
and which keeps in the aroma of the berry. It is never overdone, so
as to destroy the coffee-flavor, which is in nine cases out of tent
the fault of the coffee we meet with. Then it is ground, and placed
in a coffee-pot with a filter through which, when it has yielded up
its life to the boiling water poured upon it, the delicious extract
percolates in clear drops, the coffee-pot standing on a heated stove
to maintain the temperature. The nose of the coffee-pot is stopped up
to prevent the escape of the aroma during this process. The extract
thus obtained is a perfectly clear, dark fluid, known as _caf
noir_, or black coffee. It is black only because of its strength,
being in fact almost the very essential oil of coffee. A table-spoonful
of this in boiled milk would make what is ordinarily called a strong
cup of coffee. The boiled milk is prepared with no less care. It must
be fresh and new, not merely warmed or even brought to the
boiling-point, but slowly simmered till it attains a thick, creamy
richness. The coffee mixed with this, and sweetened with that sparkling
beet-root sugar which ornaments a French table, is the celebrated
_cafe-au-lait_, the name of which has gone round the world.

As we look to France for the best coffee, so we must look to England
for the perfection of tea. The tea-kettle is as much an English
institution as aristocracy or the Prayer-Book; and when one wants to
know exactly how tea should he made, one has only to ask how a fine
old English house-keeper makes it.

The first article of her faith is, that the water must not merely be
hot, not merely _have boiled_ a few moments since, but be actually
_boiling_ at the moment it touches the tea. Hence, though servants
in England are vastly better trained than with us, this delicate mystery
is seldom left to their hands. Tea-making belongs to the drawing-room,
and high-born ladies preside at "the bubbling and loud hissing urn,"
and see that all due rites and solemnities are properly performed--that
the cups are hot, and that the infused tea waits the exact time before
the libations commence.

Of late, the introduction of English breakfast-tea has raised a new
sect among the tea-drinkers, reversing some of the old canons.
Breakfast-tea must be boiled! Unlike the delicate article of olden
time, which required only a momentary infusion to develop its richness,
this requires a longer and severer treatment to bring out its
strength--thus confusing all the established usages, and throwing the
work into the hands of the cook in the kitchen. The faults of tea, as
too commonly found at our hotels and boarding-houses, are, that it
is made in every way the reverse of what it should be. The water is
hot, perhaps, but not boiling; the tea has a general flat, stale, smoky
taste, devoid of life or spirit; and it is served usually with thin
milk, instead of cream. Cream is an essential to the richness of tea
as of coffee. Lacking cream, boiled milk is better than cold.

Chocolate is a French and Spanish article, and one seldom served on
American tables. We in America, however, make an article every way
equal to any which can be imported from Paris, and he who buys the
best vanilla-chocolate may rest assured that no foreign land can furnish
any thing better. A very rich and delicious beverage may be made by
dissolving this in milk, slowly boiled down after the French fashion.

A word now under the head of _Confectionery_, meaning by this the
whole range of ornamental cookery--or pastry, ices, jellies, preserves,
etc. The art of making all these very perfectly is far better understood
in America than the art of common cooking. There are more women who
know how to make good cake than good bread--more who can furnish you
with a good ice-cream than a well-cooked mutton-chop; a fair
charlotte-russe is easier to gain than a perfect cup of coffee; and
you shall find a sparkling jelly to your dessert where you sighed in
vain for so simple a luxury as a well-cooked potato.

Our fair countrywomen might rest upon their laurels in these higher
fields, and turn their great energy and ingenuity to the study of
essentials. To do common things perfectly is far better worth our
endeavor than to do uncommon things respectably. We Americans in many
things as yet have been a little inclined to begin making our shirt
at the ruffle; but, nevertheless, when we set about it, we can make
the shirt as nicely as any body; it needs only that we turn our
attention to it, resolved that, ruffle or no ruffle, the shirt we will
have.

A few words as to the prevalent ideas in respect to French cookery.
Having heard much of it, with no very distinct idea of what it is, our
people have somehow fallen into the notion that its _forte_ lies in high
spicing--and so when our cooks put a great abundance of clove, mace,
nutmeg, and cinnamon into their preparations, they fancy that they are
growing up to be French cooks. But the fact is, that the Americans and
English are far more given to spicing than the French. Spices in our
made dishes are abundant, and their taste is strongly pronounced. Living
a year in France one forgets the taste of nutmeg, clove, and allspice,
which abounds in so many dishes in America. The English and Americans
deal in _spices_, the French in _flavors_--flavors many and flue,
imitating often in their delicacy those subtle blendings which nature
produces in high-flavored fruits. The recipes of our cookery-books are
most of them of English origin, coming down from the times of our
phlegmatic ancestors, when the solid, burly, beefy growth of the foggy
island required the heat of fiery condiments, and could digest heavy
sweets. Witness the national recipe for plum-pudding: which may be
rendered: Take a pound of every indigestible substance you can think of,
boil into a cannon-ball, and serve in flaming brandy. So of the
Christmas mince-pie, and many other national dishes. But in America,
owing to our brighter skies and more fervid climate, we have developed
an acute, nervous delicacy of temperament far more akin to that of
France than of England.

Half of the recipes in our cook-books are mere murder to such
constitutions and stomachs as we grow here. We require to ponder these
things, and think how we, in our climate and under our circumstances,
ought to live; and in doing so, we may, without accusation of foreign
foppery, take some leaves from many foreign books.




XIV.

EARLY RISING


There is no practice which has been more extensively eulogized in all
ages than early rising; and this universal impression is an indication
that it is founded on true philosophy. For it is rarely the case that
the common sense of mankind fastens on a practice as really beneficial,
especially one that demands self-denial, without some substantial
reason.

This practice, which may justly be called a domestic virtue, is one
which has a peculiar claim to be styled American and democratic. The
distinctive mark of aristocratic nations is a disregard of the great
mass, and a disproportionate regard for the interests of certain
privileged orders. All the customs and habits of such a nation are,
to a greater or less extent, regulated by this principle. Now the mass
of any nation must always consist of persons who labor at occupations
which demand the light of day. But in aristocratic countries, especially
in England, labor is regarded as the mark of the lower classes, and
indolence is considered as one mark of a gentleman. This impression
has gradually and imperceptibly, to a great extent, regulated their
customs, so that, even in their hours of meals and repose, the higher
orders aim at being different and distinct from those who, by laborious
pursuits, are placed below them. From this circumstance, while the
lower orders labor by day and sleep at night, the rich, the noble, and
the honored sleep by day, and follow their pursuits and pleasures by
night.

It will be found that the aristocracy of London breakfast near midday,
dine after dark, visit and go to Parliament between ten and twelve at
night, and retire to sleep toward morning. In consequence of this, the
subordinate classes who aim at gentility gradually fall into the same
practice. The influence of this custom extends across the ocean, and
here, in this democratic land, we find many who measure their grade
of gentility by the late hour at which they arrive at a party. And
this aristocratic folly is growing upon us, so that, throughout the
nation, the hours for visiting and retiring are constantly becoming
later, while the hours for rising correspond in lateness.

The question, then, is one which appeals to American women, as a matter
of patriotism and as having a bearing on those great principles of
democracy which we conceive to be equally the principles of
Christianity. Shall we form our customs on the assumption that labor
is degrading and indolence genteel? Shall we assume, by our practice,
that the interests of the great mass are to be sacrificed for the
pleasures and honors of a privileged few? Shall we ape the customs of
aristocratic lands, in those very practices which result from principles
and institutions that we condemn? Shall we not rather take the place
to which we are entitled, as the leaders, rather than the followers,
in the customs of society, turn back the tide of aristocratic inroads,
and carry through the whole, not only of civil and political but of
social and domestic life, the true principles of democratic freedom
and equality? The following considerations may serve to strengthen an
affirmative decision.

The first relates to the health of a family. It is a universal law of
physiology, that all living things flourish best in the light.
Vegetables, in a dark cellar, grow pale and spindling. Children brought
up in mines are always wan and stunted, while men become pale and
cadaverous who live under ground. This indicates the folly of losing
the genial influence which the light of day produces on all animated
creation.

Sir James Wylie, of the Russian imperial service, states that in the
soldiers' barracks, three times as many were taken sick on the shaded
side as on the sunny side; though both sides communicated, and
discipline, diet, and treatment were the same. The eminent French
surgeon, Dupuytren, cured a lady whose complicated diseases baffled
for years his own and all other medical skill, by taking her from a
dark room to an abundance of daylight.