FoodNet

The complete Indian housekeeper & cook

1898

Page 50

Presented as published in 1898. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
her IcMtmutgdr -wasliing up, in the present, with his own hands. Plate, glass, teacups and breakfast cups, &c., should be washed in the pantry. Dinner plates and dishes should be washed either in anotlier scullery, if available, or in the verandah ; for if the pantry and scullery w'ork are done together, there is no possibility of keeping the pantry as it should be — sweet, clean, and free from flies. In addition, there is a certainty that the same greasy water will be used for plates and cups alike. The pantry should be provided wdth a w'ashing-up table, and at least three M'ooden or tin tubs. A supply of cold water can easily be secured by placing a cask against one of the outside walls with a few inches of leaden pipe, and a tap inside, while a sink below the tap is also easily made to con- nect w'ith a removable zinc tub outside. 'I'his will be found a great convenience, and, as such, an immense help towards cleanl^f habits. The cask should be filled by the bheesti every day, and the tub emptied morning and evening by the sweeper. I'lie scullery or verandah should also have a washing-up table, a plate rack, and at least two wooden tubs, and a pail for scraps. In regard to dusters, tea-cloths, &c., the supply must be much larger than is necessary for an English household. The best plan is to give out the week’s supply to the bearer, and make him responsible for issuing the fixed daily number of clean cloths, and taking back the same number of soiled ones. Otherwise your fine glass cloths will be used for scrubbing the kettle, and being black with grease and dirt, will fall to pieces in a few washings from the manipulation necessary to remove the filth. One thing must be fought against root and branch, and that is the extraordinary want of forethought, and desire to save themselves much washing-up, which leads every khil- viutgdr to vary his waiting at table by constant dives into the pantry, whence he returns breathless with a hastily-wiped sj)oon or a forgotten butter-knife. Everything required for each meal should be in the dining-room before that meal is announced, and a running accompaniment of washing should be ruthlessly repressed. If milder measures fail, lock the pantry door before sitting down to meals for a few days, and fine one for every missing article. Good habits are Housekeeper and Cook 75 quickly learned when there is no possibility of continumg bad ones. In regard to details of the khiimutgar n duties, it will, perhaps, be as well to begin with the things he is to leave undone, since his offences are by no means of the negative order. , , ^ i Therefore he should not lay the table for any meal nioie