FoodNetArchive

Cooking for profit

1886

Page 266

Presented as published in 1886. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
When certain kinds of fruits have been repeatedly used because of their plenti- fulness some variety may be had by mix- ing two sorts together. Apples and blackberries are good in any form of pastry when so mixed ; in the bakery pies. No. ^03, in steamed fruit puddings, No. 176, and in the ordinary family pie — and mulberries which are almost useless alone may be used as well as any other fruit if mixed with an acid variety. 886— Trouble IVilh Captain Joh son. The trouble with Captain Johnson was, he was too superficial in his methods for his own interests and was not so smart as he thought himself. It was a long way from this place ; yet I could not help reverting to one of the extremes of wastefulness, wheu, by a singular unfit- ness of season, just as I was deploring the . loss of frying fat in making the dinner of two days ago, the woodman, or keeper of this place through the winter time, came with a complaint that he is getting no grease this summer for his wife to make her winter's soap with, as he has been used to do, and that the waste from the kitchen is not sufficient to fatten over half the pigs he has supplied himself with, and his pork crop will be deplora- bly short. He intimates that his place is SAN JiRANCISCO HOTEL GAZETTE'S J2<y not worth much to him if shorn of these perquisites. This is a sad case, but none of us get any such perquisites in this house. The question is here how a good table can be set in a house that charges ten dollars a week when all the saving ways of turning one thing into an- other and using up everything by the ap- pliance of skill such as the French are credited with in the same Ime are brought into requisition and carried out industri- ously, and not how many hogs can we fatten, or how many barrels of grease can we make. Poor John! By the time the little suet that comes on the closely trimmed meats has been used for short- ening pie crusts and puddings, and the fat from the roasts and soups is used for frying and sauteing, there is^ hardly enough left for him to grease his boots with. I know from experience that thousands of meals are sold daily for from 20 to 25 cents that are allowed to cost 40 or 50 cents, not through what the people eat or want, but because of the unneces- sary wastes of all kinds and the extrane- ous expenses, and the sellers of meals on those losing terms are only kept up by their beds, their bar profits, livery or other source of revenue. John is a young man and was born too late. He would have been happy on Captain Johnson's steamboat on the Mississippi where the cooks made from 7]^ to loYz barrels of grease to sell for themselves every trip the boat made. It I will be observed there was always a half I barrel — that is where Captain Johnson ' comes in. He could neither read nor ' write, but he owned his steamboat and she was a good one — the America — carry- ing cotton, tobacco and pork from the city of N , State of T , to