The complete Indian housekeeper & cook

5. Glass, to clean. — Wash in warm water with besun (parched gram flour) mixed to a paste with water, and use like soap. Rinse well, and polish. The stains or rims in neglected water carafes, decanters, &c., are best removed by a few drops of strong hydrochloric, or, at a pinch, sulphuric acid in a tumbler of water. This should be poured into the carafe and well shaken. Rinse thoroughly in clean water, as the acid bites into the glass. 6. Plate, to clean. — Powder, mix, and bottle four ounces each of common salt, alum, and cream of tartar. Add a teaspoon of this mixture to every quart of water. Boil the plate in the water for five minutes. Remove and plunge in cold water. Dry and polish, using a little powdered chalk tied in a muslin bag, and dusted over the silver during the final polish. Elbow-grease is the only secret of bright plate. Every now and again wash with Sapolio. 7. Table Linen, to remove Wine Stains from.— Put a soup plate under the stain while wet and squeeze a lemon or pour boiled milk over it. After five minutes wash out with water. A careful servant will remove all small grease stains from table linen as they appear by rubbing bread on them, and see all creases ironed out. 8. Tea, to make.— Use boiling water, and warm both tea and teapot before the fire. Fill the pot at once with the amount of water required. Infuse for five minutes, and decant into another well-warmed teapot. 9. Toast, to make. — Cut stale bread into thin even slices. Hold at some distance from the fire at first in order to dry it, or if there is an oven, place in that ; then closer to give it a golden brown tinge. Toast should be crisp and yellow brown, not tough and dirty white, streaked with burnt black. Place the toast when made in the toast-rack at once. 1 he Christy bread-knife enables any one to cut even, thin toast out of new bread. The Duties of the Musolchi or Scullion. The implements required by the scullion are, as a rule, confined to a pail of greasy water and a rag swab. The wisdom of having such a servant at all is doubtful ; but if the most prominent duty of a table attendant— cleanliness— is delegated to a nameless drudge on six rupees a month, a very 8o The Complete Indian great deal of supervision must be exercised by tlie mistress to ensure obedience to orders. In most liouses the scullion is an unknown quantity, a gruesome ghoul of spurious cleanliness, bearing, as his badge of office, a greasy swab of rag tied to a Ijit of bamboo. It is said that good khits will not work unless a musolchi is kept ; but this is not the authors’ experience, and one of them has never allowed such a servant in the house ; though in the cook-room she acknowledges a drudge may be necessary in a large family. Indeed, it seems absurd that khitviidgars should be above the washing of valuable glass and china; for it must be remembered that if once a musolchi is admitted to the pantry, he will be used for everything and anything. There is no objection whatever to his doing the preliminary clearing of the dinner-plates in the verandah, as elsewhere advised. Indeed, this is the scullery-maid’s duty, and the musolchi should be a scullion, and nothing else ; the pantry is a step above him, and on no pretence should he be allowed to flourish his swab there.