Hilda's diary of a Cape housekeeper

Servants are not plentiful or good, and to any mistress who has tact and patience I would say, get a young white or coloured girl and train her. I have found training a girl, if you can get one out of a nice home, very satisfactory, paying, if she is capable, £\ 2. month for the first six months and increasing to £\ lOi-. or ;.^i 15^.; ours make very nice bread and simple puddings. Men are paid by the week and women by the month. A general servant in Cape Town is paid £i 15^. or ';^2 a month. On farms there is usually some coloured family where one or two go into service. Natal, Orange River Colony and Transvaal employ native “ boys ” and coolies, but in Cape Colony we have a mixed coloured population. The women, as a rule, make very good cooks, but few stay with a mistress longer than twelve months. Many English ladies who keep an English nurse say they get on very well with a coloured cook, and perhaps a young girl as housemaid. I find the best way to train them is just to devote some time when you first get them, and give them an object-lesson in cooking or housework, letting them do things under your supervision — for instance, I would have cutlets and soup several days running, till they know exactly how to do it, and so on ; take a cookery-book, if you don’t know much yourself, and teach practically, not by description. One cannot give hard-and-fast rule.s, for most people have their own ways and like things done so, but I always arrange things to simplify the work, reminding my cook or housemaid of important items which they might forget ; Cape girls are inclined to be careless and forgetful. For the care of children native servants are not so ad- [illustration: HOME-MADE YEAST Jan.] visable, as, though many of our coloured women are most faithful and attached servants, they have not, as a rule, been trained in habits of obedience and truthfulness themselves and consequently are not capable of training children to be truthful and obedient. Home-made bread is always cheaper and more nourishing, if it is good, than baker’s. Our Groote Poste brown bread is in Hilda's Where is it, p. 13. The old Cape recipe for yeast, given in Hilda's Where is it, p. 261, is excellent, though it often takes longer than twenty-four hours to ferment. In winter and very cold weather I find it best to make it thirty-six hours before required, or say at three p.m. if required at eight o’clock next morning. Recipe for yeast for home-made bread. I teacupful of hops. 1 lb. potatoes. 2 quarts water. (N.B.— salt to be added to the yeast, but to the flour when mixing the dough.) Boil the hops and potatoes and water for an hour, let it cool, and strain. • Then add four tablespoonfuls of flour and four of sugar and mix well. Put this in any wellcorked fruit-jar ; Mason or Hazel jar will do. All air is to be excluded for 24 hours, when the yeast will be fit for use. Keep it in a cool place. Bread. — Use half a teacup of above yeast for 4 lbs. ' flour, and screw up your jar again, it will keep for several bakings. The flour should be mixed with hot water and kneaded till no dough sticks to the hands ; let it rise for two or three hours, keeping the dough warm, and bake in a good warm oven. It is best to arrange for the bread to 33 D [illustration: RAISIN YEAST. POULTRY Jan.] be baked while the dinner is cooking, which is, of course, a great saving.