The complete Indian housekeeper & cook

Ask for everything you can want that day, and if you can write, put down your orders on a slate, then there will be no mistakes. Take the orders for breakfast also ; and if there is to be a dinner-party next day, settle the outlines, so that you may be prepared. Try your best to help your mistress in making a pleasing variety in the food. She will be pleased if, when she is racking her brains for a pudding, you say, “There was extra skim milk to-day, so I made a caramel custard,” or, “The rice at breakfast was not eaten, and the kbit says some of the dessei't apples are going, so we can have Housekeeper and Cook 231 rimne if you like.” Instead of which, Indian n say, » Jo hiizoor ke huhn ” (As your honour served. Advice as to the best way of boiling, baking, roasting, stewino-, frying, will he found under these heads and in all recipes : any common mistakes and bad habits have been pointed out, so no more need be said here, except to assure you that the eadcst recipes have been given ; and if you try half the plan given and half your own, you are quite sure to come to grief. , Serving the meals is, perhaps, the cook s busiest time, and without method you are sure to fail. At breakfast all the dishes should be sent in at once ; at luncheon theie aie seldom but two courses. With dinner it is different, but if you make a proper use of your hot case theie need be no delay. If your mistress has not given you one, it is better for you to get one made out of an old box and kerosene tins than to be hurried and bothered by doing without it ; so for keeping sauces hot, if you have not a regular water bath, or bain-marie, use an old kerosene tin cut down to six or eight inches. Put this over the fire with hot water in it, plunge your little saucepans in it, and there you are. A cook that wants to cook well will always manage to do so. If you take an interest in your work, it will interest you. A cook who really cares to be a c/ie/'will do as an old cook of one of the authors used to do. After a dinner-party, when the guests had gone, if it was twelve or one o’clock at night. Imam Khan used to appear in clean clothing, and ask if all had gone well ; and one day, before his mistress could say a word, he said — “ I know it, Mem Sahib ; I know it. The wild duck was underdone. Tobah ! tobah !” (My fault, my fault.) It is the fashion nowadays for cooks to say they cannot ^32 The Indian Housekeeper and Cook make nice dishes unless tliey are allowed truffles and cream, and butter and champagne, and goodness knows what. By saying this they confess their own ignorance, since any fool can make nice dishes out of nice things ; it is only a real cordon bleu who can make the commonest food delicious. There is but one ingredient without which it is impossible to send up a palatable dinner, and that is care. CHAPTER XXII ADVICE ON BOILING, FRYING, ROASTING, STEWING, AND BAKING