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Title: The Young House-Keeper; or Thoughts on Foods and Cookery.
Author: Alcott, William Andrus
Publisher: Boston; Waite, Peirce & Company

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> THE YOUNG HOUSE-KEEPER.

> CHAPTER I.

> DIGNITY OF THE HOUSE-KEEPER.

Silent influence of the house-keeper. Her character as a teacher and educator. Should the mother be the house-keeper? Vulgar notions. Anecdote. Dignity of the house-keeper asserted. She is, in some respects, a legislator--a counsellor--a minister--a missionary--a reformer--a physician.

IT often happens that the most important results in the natural world are brought about by causes which operate silently, if not imperceptibly. Thus the growth of vegetation, though effected in a greater or less degree by the strong wind, the violent rain, and the heat and glare of the noonday sun, is yet still more effectually promoted by the mild action of the gentler breezes, the softly descending dew, and the less intense heat. More than this, even, is true. It is not so much by means of the dew, properly so called, or even the


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gentler breezes, or the more direct rays of the great source of light and heat, that the earth is rendered fruitful, and fitted to be the abode of man and beast, as by the motion of an atmosphere, holding constantly in solution a large quantity of water, in the form of vapor, which the earth seems to imbibe, and in a most wonderful manner work up into the living forms of the animal and vegetable kingdom. These living forms, too, often seem weakened and debilitated rather than invigorated by the sun's more direct rays, during a few short hours of each twenty-four; while the silent working, night and day,in sunshine and in shade, of that light and heat of which the sun is supposed to be the ultimate source, is indispensable--and is the means, along with the effects of air and moisture, of germination, growth and progress. So in relation to animal bodies, it is not that profuse perspiration which we sometimes witness or experience, that cleanses the system and promotes human health in the highest degree; but that gentler perspiration which is scarcely perceptible to the senses, but which, so long as we are in tolerable health, whether we are employed or unemployed, and whether we wake or sleep, is steadily going on.

It is somewhat thus, in the formation of human character. Too much comparative importance has ever been attached to our more direct, not to say


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noisy efforts to promote its growth. Not that these are without their influence in the moral world, any more than the violent rain and the strong breeze are without influence in the physical; but an undue importance has ever been attached to their operation and efficacy. Admit even that the pulpit, the bar, the legislative hall, the college, the school and the press, have done all which has been supposed. Admit their power, under an Almighty Spirit to regenerate, correct, reform, re-create, develope, regulate and direct in every part of the intellectual and moral world, were as great as their most sanguine adherents have supposed. Would it not be still true, that man is most developed, and formed, and educated, by causes which, from their silent operation, seem to be almost inoperative? Are not those the most effective educators and teachers of man, after all, whose lessons teach him as though they taught not?

If these views are correct--and that they are so will not, it is presumed, be questioned--does it not behoove us to pay more attention to these silent, but therefore certain sources and springs of human character? Have we nothing to do in the way of elevating and purifying, if I may so express it, the physical, the intellectual, the social, the moral atmosphere in which a child lives, and moves, and breathes, and grows, for years before those more


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direct influences to which I have just alluded can be applied? Have the temperature and the purity of the air which a child inhales, fifty thousand times in twenty-four hours, nothing to do in the formation of his physical character--nothing to do with the growth, health and strength of a body nourished by the blood which this unceasing ventilating process is intended to regenerate and purify? Have the light or the darkness, the noise or the quiet, the sweet tones or the discordant sounds, the smiles or the frowns to which the young inhabitant of our world is subjected, nothing to do with the formation and growth of character? Have the quantity, quality and condition of the food and the drink which are introduced to a child's stomach, and which, when assimilated, course their way through every part of the living machine twenty-five or thirty thousand times every twenty-four hours, nothing to do with character? Have the conversation and conduct of early associates nothing to do with forming the character of a being so highly imitative? Have not the actions, the words, the looks, the thoughts, even--for little children will sometimes interpret thought and feeling--of those who are so constantly about us as our parents, but especially the mother and the house-keeper, a prodigious influence in determining whether we shall be selfish or generous, self-governing or given up to the control


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of our passions, temperate or intemperate, sensual or pure, earthly or spiritual?

These, then, it is believed, are some of the gentler influences--the teachers that seem to teach not--which, like the soft dews of the morning and the evening, and the still more efficient moisture imbibed from the atmosphere, produce, by their never ceasing operation, the most important results. Mothers and teachers, says Dr. Rush, sow the seeds of nearly all the good and evil in our world. Teachers, he might have said, do this; since man is everywhere, in no small degree, what he is, by education--and since all persons and things become our teachers, and serve to draw forth, develope, or form us. Or he might have said, with nearly equal truth, that mothers do the work; since, if the doctrines of the foregoing paragraphs are true, mothers must be, from their very position, the most efficient teachers. Not that they always do the work well; this is quite another matter. But teach us they must--educate us they must--whether their instruction and education be good, bad or indifferent.

They educate us not only intellectually and morally, but physically. It is mothers who operate on our whole nature. Other educators, as the world now is, seldom reach the physical man. This whole field, or nearly the whole of it, is left to the sole direction and disposal of the mother


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and house-keeper. How important, then, is maternal influence! How important that mothers should understand this subject! How important that they should not only know, but also feel! How poorly fitted to sustain the maternal office is she who neither knows its dignity, nor feels nor heeds its responsibilities! And who that has any sense of the incompetency of modern female education, and is aware that scarcely one in a thousand is trained either to know or feel the greatness of her prerogative, the dignity of her character, or the weight and solemnity of her resposibilities, will not do with all his might what his hands find to do, to change the aspect and tendency of that education, and to render woman, and the sphere in which she moves, properly understood and appreciated, especially by herself?

I take the ground that the most efficient school of education is the domestic or family school; and that the MOTHER, whether wise or ignorant, learned or unlearned, healthy or sick, pious or impious, is the most efficient educator. Especially is this school the first and most important forfemale children. I take it for granted, also, that a work which shall assist the mother in the right management of her household, is a work on education; even if it be confined, as I intend this shall be, chiefly to those maternal duties which bear upon the formation


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of the physical character. I have even confined my remarks, in this volume, chiefly to what are commonly called household duties. The more direct efforts to form physical character have been treated in another work;* and the more direct efforts, intellectual, moral and medical, I have reserved for future consideration. In short, the duties of the mother, as a house-keeper, have seemed to me sufficient for a single volume of reasonable size; and I have believed that when we consider that the body is the house the soul lives in, and that the soul takes its hue, as it were, from the character and condition of the dwelling it occupies, we shall not find that the importance of mere house-keeping, in its bearing upon the formation of human character, has ever been over-estimated, or its tendencies on human happiness overrated.

[Editorial note: The following note appears at the bottom of page 27 in the original text.]

*The "Young Mother."

Do I then confound the mother and the house-keeper? Do I consider the terms as synonymous? I certainly do, in the present work. For though domestics or servants were admitted to a family, the mother should still be the mainspring of all its movements. If she does not perform all the labor with her own hands, assisted by her husband and children, she should at least direct others how to do it. What she knows and believes and feels


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would most promote the physical welfare of her family, should be accomplished, whether it be by her own hands or those of others. Am I not, then, perfectly right, in using the terms mother and house-keeper, for my present purpose, as synonymous?

I would, however--for it would make the duties of a house-keeper more simple, as well as more efficient--that every mother could perform all the duties of her family, without that aid which in fashionable life is now quite common, and which seems to involve the idea of a superior and an inferior class of citizens. And I hope and trust that I shall be able, in the progress of these pages, to make it appear, that as a general rule--to which of course there may be exceptions--every mother can do this.

I use the terms mother and house-keeper in the way I do, also, because, after all, they are, in a vast majority of cases, the same thing. The custom of keeping servants has not yet found its way very far beyond the precincts of our cities, towns and villages. If these pages should be read at all, it will be chiefly by those who perform their own household duties; or at least by those who closely oversee and direct. Those who fancy themselves excused, by their condition, from the performance of both of these duties, will not be likely to take


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the trouble to read a work on house-keeping. They will prefer to spend their hours in quite another manner. Or if they read at all, it is likely to be the fashionable nonsense of the day, and not that which aims at utility, or public or private happiness.

I am, indeed, acquainted with one house-keeper, who, though sensible, intelligent, refined and benevolent, fully believes the duties of a mother and house-keeper to be totally incompatible with each other. "The female who undertakes to fulfil her duties," she observes, "to her husband, her children, and society around her, has already more in hand than she can well perform. No matter how small her family, so that it consists of husband and children, and sustains the relations which a family ought to sustain to other families; its mistress, if wise and conscientious, cannot otherwise than be fully employed in the discharge of these duties without the addition of more. Not a single spare hour is left her for cooking, washing, mending, chamber work, &c. These last--some of them, at least--may indeed be and often are done; but they will forever be found to clash with the former--and cannot, I am certain, ever be safely or usefully performed by the same individual."

Now it appears to me that this young house-keeper has either made a very serious mistake-


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and she is not the only individual who inclines, now-a-days, to the same opinion--or there must be a mistake in the divine arrangement and economy. The plan of the Creator most certainly does require that these household duties should, as a general rule, be performed by the mother. Without attempting, at this time and in this place, to go deeply into the argument, I will simply state my belief--satisfied if in the progress of what I have to say in other parts of the volume, I shall be so successful as to make it appear that my belief is well founded--that there is not only no incompatibility in the case, but that common sense, philosophy and christianity, actually demand the performance of these varied duties by the same individual.

The house-keeper to whom I have referred has, however, disclosed to me the secret of her scepticism. She modestly owns that she was not trained to do house-work; that her heart is not in it and cannot be; that she sorely dislikes the sight of a kitchen, especially of everything that pertains to the business of cookery; and finally, she more than intimates a determination to maintain and cherish such opinions, views and feelings, through life.

But there is an apology for such females in this very fact, that they have been educated wrong.


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They have not only been trained to the neglect of household duties, and to the belief that they are quite beneath them, and properly belong to the vulgar, but to the erroneous idea that they involve a life of hardship, pain and drudgery. Whereas the truth is, that there are no labors which taken together are more easy or more healthful; and, if properly conducted, there are few which give more freedom as well as more leisure for recreation and study.

Should the period arrive, in the history of our world, when household management shall be regarded as indispensable to a correct female education, and when no young lady shall any more think of attaining to years of maturity without a knowledge both of the theory and practice of housewifery, than she does without a knowledge of reading and writing, this unreasonable prejudice against cookery, washing, mending, &c., which are important parts of this employment, will cease to exist; and one powerful motive which now exists, either concealed or avowed, for employing others, or at least, for treating them as our inferiors, will be almost entirely removed. It is too much to hope that such a period will sooner or later arrive? Or is christianity destined to effect but a partial reformation of humanity--and to obtain but half a triumph?

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To meet the now growing belief that house-keeping does not belong to the mother, necessarily--that its details and duties are not only irksome and hateful in their nature, but absolutely incompatible with hers--and to show as clearly as possible that they are not incompatible, but that the employment is much more simple, more pleasant, more rational, and more useful than is sometimes supposed, is at present a desideratum. It is with a view to this end that I have made the attempt to present, not merely the facts and principles of housewifery, but its philosophy and its dignity. And how much soever this whole matter is overlooked by some, contemned by many, and regarded as more or less a matter of hap-hazard by nearly all, I am fully confident that if there be a profession or occupation, which is, in its nature, truly dignified, and to which philosophy and philosophic instruction are more necessary or more applicable than to almost any other, it is to that of house-keeping. It is, I repeat it, a science; and though its practice should be chiefly confined to the family or maternal school, it should be recognized, at least in theory, in all schools for females, from the highest to the lowest--in Boston or in Franconia.

It is high time that this noble profession, lying as it does, like agriculture and horticulture, at the very foundation of human happiness, were disabused.


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It is high time the miserable notion that it is vulgar or mean, were discountenanced. It is quite time it were taken by wise and discreet mothers into their own hands, instead of being committed to those who have no interest in it; or at least no such interest as the mother has--a desire to promote by it, the highest well being of husband and children. Say what we will, it is the mother, and she alone, who can ever be expected to become the intelligent, the truly benevolent, or the truly skilful house-keeper.

We talk of the importance of legislation--and very properly. What republican does not admit, and--now-a-days at least--feel the importance of good and salutary laws? And yet where is there to be found a more efficient legislator than the house-keeper? "Let me make the ballads of a nation, and you may make its laws," said a person who understood well the tendency of human nature, and the causes which silently and almost imperceptibly operate to make human character what it is. But I would say, rather--Let me have the control of the nursery--let me direct the sweeping, the washing, the fire-building, the cooking, the conversation, &c., of the infant and the child--and I care comparatively little whether the laws are made by one man, by a few men, or by many men. I care comparatively little, as to the


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results on human happiness, for a single generation or even a century, whether the government be that of a monarchy, an aristocracy, or a democracy. If the human being is trained to obey, first from habit, and afterwards from a sense of duty, the laws and relations of the human constitution along with the laws divine, that being cannot, as a general rule, be very miserable, whether its residence be America, Burmah, Japan, Otaheite, Egypt, Soudan, Siberia or Greenland. But in proportion as an individual is not thus trained, will his condition be unhappy, and life itself seem to him, at times, but a doubtful blessing, though be have the clear sky of New England, or inhale the soft air of Italy, and the balmy breezes of Ceylon; or though he should be admitted to revel in paradise. Order is heaven's first law, it is said; but without this order in the little world within, of which the external world is but the transcript, there can be no heaven here, and I had almost said--and might have said it, so far as the creature whom we call man is concerned--there can be none hereafter.

We are accustomed to esteem wise and able counsellors. We do not always understand the laws framed by our legislators, in all their bearings on particular cases, and so we desire information, and sometimes direction, in questions which come up in regard to rights and duties. Hence the host


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of lawyers among us. And they are not without their use. The common prejudice against their honesty and integrity is altogether unreasonable. I believe a large majority of them are high-minded and honorable men. Perhaps there are, not unfrequently, too many. Still, I repeat it, a proportion is highly useful, taxed as the rest of the community may be and must be--as in the case of all other arrangements for the removal of the evils entailed on us by ignorance, error or infirmity--to support or sustain them. But what is the influence of the most able counsellor among us--I care not if he is a Webster, a Henry, or a Phillips--compared with the influence of the house-keeper? Her counsels, overlooked as they often are, whether she be the mother or not, have an influence in society, the sum total of which can never be over-estimated. She can establish what the law and the lawyer may labor forever in vain to accomplish; she can prevent, by her daily efforts, what, if not early prevented, no law or lawyers can ever cure--though their influence could be brought to bear seventy thousand years instead of seventy.

We are accustomed--most of us at least--to think favorably of the influences of the christian ministry. Though I am very far from being, in the cant language of those who complain so much


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of cant among us, of the number of the priest ridden, I am free to admit, that notwithstanding the clerical abuses in other parts of the world, and more especially in other ages, there never yet has been--since the creation--such a band of holy, self-denying friends of human improvement, elevation, and emancipation, as the Protestant ministry of the United States, especially New England; and for one, instead of diminishing their influence, I would increase it, at least thirty fold. Instead of one of these godly men and one true friend of civil and religious light and liberty to every thousand or two thousand persons, I would gladly have a minister with a society in every school district, and would cheerfully contribute my full proportion of what was really necessary for his comfortable and even liberal support. I would gladly see him spending his time, his talents and his strength, as a father in the midst of a hundred and fifty or two hundred persons, including men, women and children, and aspiring to no higher earthly glory than to be, not the brilliant orator among them, but the humble instrument of leading them, by his labors, his example, and his prayers, back to the bliss of Eden.

And yet, after all these concessions in favor of ministers and the ministerial office, what can the minister do for the moral, the social, religious


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elevation of mankind, without the aid of the house-keeper? He may watch, and labor, and pray for the soul; but the house-keeper can do more than all this. She presides over, and moulds, and shapes. She forms the "house" the soul "lives in;" and, in this way, almost entirely directs the motions and tendencies of the soul itself. What can a minister do for a person who continually breathes the impure atmosphere of filthy apartments; is drenched, daily, with hot, compound or over-stimulating drinks; or fed with hot, oily, indigestible or poisonous food; and whose very solids and fluids, in every "nook and corner," are, as it were, defiled? Worse, if possible, even than all this, what can he do to give a proper current to the thoughts and feelings, when every thought, and feeling, and motion which is kindled in the kitchen or the parlor, savors of some sensual gratification--good eating, good drinking, fashionable amusements, fashionable dress, equipage or money?

Many of us are accustomed to think favorably of christian missions, domestic or foreign; and well we may. That individual, male or female, old or young, high or low, rich or poor, of much or little influence, who does not feel the force of the command--"Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature"--that is, do all in your power to extend it to every human


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being--and who cannot say with Paul, "Wo is me if I preach not the gospel,"at least by example--is not more than half awake, as yet, to the true dignity of human nature; and that individual who does not, in this view, sympathize with modern missionary efforts, whatever may be the incidental or occasional mistakes or defects of those who direct or those who prosecute them, has not, in my view, become as yet, thoroughly imbued with the true gospel spirit--the spirit of Christ.

And yet what mission, foreign or domestic, has higher claims, even as a christian enterprise, than the mission of the house-keeper? To her is entrusted the development--provided she is at the same time both mother and house-keeper--of the buds of character; the first lineaments of self-denial, self government and self-sacrifice. Nay, more; she is herself required to exercise a degree of self-government and self-sacrifice, which is seldom if ever required of him who goes to India or the Sandwich Islands.

I do not mean by this, that the self-sacrifice of the foreign missionary is not sometimes greater than that of the true christian missionary in the household; but onlt that it is not so constant nor so great in the aggregate. It costs, indeed, a most painful struggle to leave one's friends, and relations, and country, to be consigned for life to--we know


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not what, till Providence reveals it in the event. The breaking away, even from the cold and sterile shores of our New England, is almost like tearing the heart away from the living system; and the pangs felt on reaching a foreign inhospitable shore, and landing or preparing to land amid a group of half naked, half fed, half brutal savages, is unknown, and must remain unknown except to those who have felt them. But there is something in human nature, independent even of divine influence, which enables it, in emergencies like these, to bear up. "As our day is, so is our strength." But these great trials excepted, we are less seldom called to self-denial abroad, perhaps, than at home. We can pursue what we deem a rational course of eating, drinking, dressing, conversing and acting, so far at least as we have the means of doing it, without subjecting ourselves to the "wise speeches" or the ridicule of those about us; as we should be, if we were at home.

But if in being missionaries at home we have fewer great trials or emergencies, they are yet constant and almost unremitted; and who that can even govern himself occasionally in great matters, has not found himself perpetually overcome in smaller things, and perpetually falling from his steadfastness? But of all persons in the world, who is more tired than the house-keeper, and the


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director and guide of some half a dozen children? Are they not continually looking to her for an example? Does she not know this? Does she not know that her every error--in eating, drinking, conversing--is educating them? Does she not know that the quality, quantity, &c., of food and drink, drawn in by the child at the breast, tends not merely to propagate danger and error, but to affect her own temper and character, modifying or affecting her example? Does she not know that she has not a child under her care, but is treading at every moment on the verge of destruction, physical and moral? And if watchfulness and prayer, and self-denial and self-sacrifice are necessary anywhere in the wide world, is it not here?

Every circumstance--I had almost said every thought and feeling--of the mother and all others around the child, is, in every waking moment of its early life, giving it a tendency to diverge from the desired point, the perfection of its nature. The whole current of fashion, in almost every family and out of it, is in opposition to the best interests of human nature; and I have never yet known the parent who had the moral courage to act up to all the true interests of her child, in opposition to the standard which fashion has arbitrarily set up, even so far as she knew what her duty was. All, so far as I know, yield more or


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less to the temptations with which they are surrounded. Now it is the moral courage to do right as far as we know, as well as to seek for farther light, which I deem more scarce than a spirit which would lead us to become missionaries on a scale where we should be more exposed and known as such. Or in other words, it seems to me that it requires more self-sacrifice to be a missionary to a household than to a foreign country.

Nor is the influence of the house-keeper in the formation of character, by any means wholly negative. Not only is a habit of self-denial required to be attended to at every step of her own life and the lives of those whom she is forming, with a view to save herself and them from loss and suffering, but also with a view to train them up for God and for their country. In vain, or almost in vain, may other efforts be made, if the proper work be not done here, in the family. And could it be well done here, for a few generations--could the nations which have not yet embraced christianity but see a race of such christians as might under God be reared were the foundations properly placed--we might then hope the labors of foreign missionaries would begin to produce their appropriate and expected fruits. The Jew, the Mahometan and the Pagan, might then be led to say--not as now, in irony, but in sincerity--"See how these christians love


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one another;" and what they would see and admire as truly lovely, they would not be slow to examine and ultimately to embrace.

How great, in this view, the dignity of the housewife--not, indeed, the pseudo character to whom this appellation is sometimes awarded, but she who is the housewife indeed--such a housewife as Solomon describes, and as the future millennial ages of the world are destined to realize! What can she not do, who, with the light, and truth, and love of a servant of the Most High, and with the bodies, and minds, and souls of men--from the very first--committed almost entirely to her charge, shall do for them what God and holy angels and holy men expect? It is astonishing beyond astonishment, that men made in the image of God, should have hitherto, as if with one consent, contrived to render house-keeping disreputable, and those who attend to it with their own hands as vulgar. Nothing can be more directly at variance with the truth--nothing, or at least hardly anything, more in the way of human improvement.

Much is said in our day--and too much cannot certainly be done--in the way of promoting reform in prisons. But how much more can the house-keeper do--as will probably be seen hereafter--in the way of preventing the necessity not only of


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legislation and lawyers, but of crimes and prisons. It is because children have first been prisoners in the domestic circle--in body, mind and soul--that they afterwards become state prisoners. Their appetites become perverted by exciting food and drink, and by this means, and by means of bad associations with domestics or others, their minds and souls become greatly injured, till they are ready to yield to and become the slaves of every temptation, and the votaries of every bad habit. And thus are they educated, and thus do they educate themselves, to vice and crime; and thus are our prisons and dungeons filled with convicts. How happy will be the day when there will be no such thing known as two classes of persons in families, a higher and a lower--jailers and prisoners--but when all the family, however numerous and how little soever united by ties of consanguinity, will be equal and free, dwelling together, eating and drinking together, and whether of one nation or another, always uniting around the same domestic altar.

How happy the time when no restraint will be necessary to keep children from mixing, too much, with those who would degrade them or lead them into temptation; when there will be but one common interest in the whole family circle; and when children will begin to regard father and mother,


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and brother and sister, and adopted brother and sister--if such there must be--not in the relation of jailers and prisoners, but in the relation of truest and best friends!

We have Moral Reform Societies. But a right early managment would prevent the necessity of all such associations. If every house-keeper knew her own dignity, and would live up to it, impurity and licentiousness would soon cease. The same bad habits, physical and moral, which fill our prisons, fill also our houses of ill-fame. Confectionary, and bad food, and bad drinks, and uncontrolled passions, and misplaced affections--all of which might be banished, were house-keeping restored to its primitive dignity--are the prolific source of half the licentiousness with which our earth is afflicted, and changed from an Eden to a scene of mourning, lamentation and wo.

We boast of our literary institutions--our infant schools, our common schools, our high schools, our institutes, our colleges, our universities. But what is the influence of these, excellent as it may be, compared with that of the kitchen and parlor? Say what we will, it is here--exactly here--that our characters, even in a literary point of view, are determined. I would not say formed; for of this, I am not sure. But I have never yet known, personally--others may have known such instances


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--of a lover of knowledge or moral progress,who was not initiated into this love by those who had the control of his early infancy and his childhood. On the contrary, I could fill half this volume with anecdotes of those in whom the seeds of that love of literature and science which they subsequently manifested, was sown in early infancy by that maternal teacher whose influence is, after all, most awakening, most impressive, and most permanent.

Were it left to my choice to say which of two things the world should have--the right sort of household management and education, with no school instruction whatever, or the best sort of school education of every grade, but without anything done in the household beyond what is now done by nine tenths if not nineteen twentieths of mankind--I should not hesitate a moment to decide on the former. Such is the value I attach to the domestic institution and the family school; and such are my conceptions of the native dignity of house-keeping.

I do not mean by all this that the house-keeper is to have, necessarily, her set hours and set lessons of instruction, though I wish her to have time for even these. But I mean that she should so manage in all concerns of the household--and these it is which, as I shall never cease to repeat, go far to form character, the great object and


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end of education--that the results, along with the aid of those who cooperate with her, shall do more for the children which form a part of it, than all else which is done for them, directly or indirectly, in the whole process of their forming stage of progress. But is not that the truest, noblest literary institution in the world--nay, is it not more than all others--which secures all this as its inevitable results? It certainly is so; it cannot be otherwise.

Let me not be understood as saying, that in the present state of things, every housewife who hadleisure to do things as she ought, and to control things as she ought, would do them right. There would be still, as there now is, both good and bad education. But even as the general knowledge of housewives now is, the common belief that the family is more important, because more influential on character than all other schools, would be in favor of human happiness, provided they would adopt, as speedily as may be, those principles, and that rational system of house-keeping, which it is the object of this work to recommend and inculcate.

Lastly, we value highly--but probably not too highly--the services of the worthy physician. He is one of our most intimate and bosom friends; and we are generally ready to award him a seat by the


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side of him who labors to remove or prevent the maladies of our souls. But if "prevention is better than cure"--if, according to the motto of one of our medical journals, "the best part of the medical art is the art of avoiding pain," who shall say that the maternal house-keeper, who holds, as it were, in her hands, the keys of life and health, and can prevent more pain--I was going to say infinitely more--than the ablest physician can cure, shall not be considered as at least a fellow being, and a fellow laborer in the common cause of humanity? I claim not for woman a place which does not belong to her; but I do claim that though she is not, and cannot be, and should not be a physician, in every sense of the term, yet she is, and should be, more to every family than the physician--incomparably more.

Every female should be trained to the angelic art of managing properly the sick. It is strange that in view of the common maxim, that a good nurse is worth more than a physician, we should have so few professional nurses, male and female, among us. Yet if we had a dozen of these, in all parts of our country, for each physician, it would not absolve woman from the universal obligation of attending to the subject. There is no female in the wide world--above all, no one who sustains the proud prerogative of being a mother, to say


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nothing of the house-keeper--that may not be called to watch and nurse the sick; nay, that will not be so, almost inevitably. But how many lives have I seen destroyed, through the ignorance or the over-kindness--usually both combined--of the mother?

I will not dwell longer, here, on the details of this subject. To show the superiority of the mother who is a house-keeper, to the physician, whom we everywhere so highly esteem, would be to follow her through her whole course of the physical management of her child, in sickness and in health; and to observe every step she takes, above all the rest, in the processes of cookery. This would be a task which I cannot attempt here. If I have done little more than toassert the dignity of the housewife, this at least is something. I trust, however, that subsequent chapters will do something in the way of proving it. I trust they will present some views on the duties of the house-keeper, that have not hitherto been current among us. Let not the reader, however, cry heresy, simply because the opinions presented are new. Truth is truth still, whether it be old or new, and whether it be fashionable or unfashionable.

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> CHAPTER II.

> FIRST PRINCIPLES.

1. Obey the dictates of conscience. 2. Dare to disobey the mandates of fashion. 3. Dignify your profession. 4. Keep the house yourself, as much as possible. 5. Whatever is worth doing, is worth doing well. 6. Importance of securing the aid of the husband and others. 7. Anecdote and reflections.

THE first resolution of a young house-keeper should be, to do what she believes she ought to do; in other words, to obey the dictates of her own conscience. I care not so much what other qualifications she posseses; if she has not this primary one, she can never succeed in discharging, perfectly, the duties of her profession. I do not, indeed, advise her to pay no attention to the opinions of others. She should have some regard to opinion, public and individual; these should be taken into the account, in making up a judgement as to her own proper course; but when her own course and duty are clear, and the time has arrived for action, let her act according to the dictates of her conscience.

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There are those who are swayed by fashion. They do not merely take fashion into the account, when making up a judgement what their duty is; but even after the decision is made, perhaps in the fear of God, they dare not executs it fully, lest it should be unfashionable; lest "my lord" or "my lady" should look sideways at them. Such housewives will never succeed well. They must resolve to do what they believe to be right, in view of all circumstances and consequences--and fashion among the rest; but the decision once made what duty is, let them go forward. Let there be no misgivings--no fears. Persons who do thus may control the fashions. Those who tremble to execute the cool decisions of their own sober judgement, lest it should be, after all, unpopular, will be the most miserable of slaves. They will be "hewers of wood and drawers of water" to a tyrant whose only law is that of caprice--and whose service is spiritual death.

The house-keeper, as I have already said, must have correct notions of the dignity of her duties. She is not ministering to the wants of a few bodies, considered merely as bodies; but through these bodies to the wants of immortal souls. I am sometimes astonished to find the employment of housekeeping rated so low. It would seem as if a world where employments are valued inversely, according


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to their uselessness, must be turned topsy-turvy. Yet such a world is ours. The cultivator of the soil and the keeper of the house, are considered as mere drudges, nigh akin to the domestic animals of which they have the charge; while the useless or almost useless being, that struts about doing nothing and producing nothing, either by the labor of body or mind--he is the true man, the man of value. He may, perhaps, have a soul.

These things ought not so to be. Young house-keeper, you must resolve, that so far as in you lies, they shall not be so. But in order to this, learn to reverence yourself and respect your profession. Make no unworthy concessions of inferiority. Just so surely as the soul takes its hues--yea, its character too--from the condition of the clay tenement in which it dwells, just so surely is your profession that of determining what the condition of this clay tenement shall be; and it is one of the noblest that can adorn or exalt humanity.

Away, then, from your mind, every unworthy idea concerning domestic life. Away the feeling, that your occupation is an inferior one. Fools may call it so; fools have called it so. If you were mere automatons--if amid the din of pots and kettles, it were not possible for you to think or feel--the case would be altered. But the service which I propose to the house-keeper is not a


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slavery to her employment. She has something more to do than to attend to pots and kettles. She has the temporal, and, to some extent, the eternal well being of those around her at her disposal. She has character at her disposal. Her work, in short, is education--the physical education and management of a rising family. It is more, even; she cannot be the physical without being the intellectual and the moral educator of her family. This I trust I shall make more plain hereafter.

One important resolution of a young house-keeper should be, to keep the house herself. Let her dispense, as much as possible, with all aid, except that of her children and husband. I know, indeed, that many an individual is so situated that she must have additional help; but let her not consider it a privilege, but a misfortune; and let her embrace, with joy, the first opportunity of going back to the simplicity of nature.

The young house-keeper should not only resolve--she should execute her resolves. Let it be understood, once for all, that it will be of as little value to resolve merely, if that should be the last of it, as it will be to read this book, and yet give no heed to its sayings. The Germans have a proverb--"He is the wise man, not who tells what he intends to do, but who does it." In like manner, she is not the wise house-keeper who suffers


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her resolves to be mere resolves; but who puts every worthy resolve into immediate execution.

Let her remember, too, that whatever is worth doing, is worth doing well. In this point of view there are no little things pertaining to housewifery. Indeed, as it is in morals, so it often is in physical matters, the little things of life become, by their results--their bearing on human character and human happiness--the truly great things.

She is not the worthy house-keeper who slights this or that duty, solely because it is a small one. She who would come up to the dignity of her occupation must, for the time, throw her whole soul into her employment. No matter how trifling it may, at the moment, appear; let her call to her aid her general principle--Whatever is worth doing, is worth doing well; and let it invest her labors with their real value. It is said of Dr. Goldsmith, that he "always seemed to do best that which he was doing." This is what is needed by the young house-keeper.

I have said that the young house-keeper should, as much as possible, keep the house herself. If she has the right sort of husband, she will, however, receive great aid from him. The husband can do an immense deal to render the labors of his wife lighter or more severe. He can bring more or less of dirt into the house. He can assist more or less


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in teaching the children to be cleanly. He can bring in more or less of wood and water. All these, and a thousand more of the little, almost nameless things of life, can be so managed as greatly to facilitate or retard the progress of the house-keeper, according to the disposition. Wo to the housewife who has a husband that refuses not only to help her, but to take any pains not to hinder her, or increase, unnecessarily, her labors!

I will not undertake to say how far a husband can go, in any particular case, in the way of rendering his wife assistance, without interference with his peculiar duties. But I do say he can go very far. I have been acquainted in hundreds of families--intimately so in many--and I can truly say, I never yet saw the husband who assisted to the extent he might have done. I have never yet seen one who did not leave undone many little things which he ought to have done, and who did not do some things which ought to have been omitted.

You will say, perhaps, that I am out of my sphere, just now; and that I am writing for husbands. By no means. I am only telling the house-keeper what some men are. Is not this needful knowledge? Is it not especially so, if along with the knowledge of what they are, I try to tell you what they should be, and what is and what is not


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in your power, in regard to rendering them what they should be? If instead of thinking me out of my sphere, and returning me thanks, you set about complaining of me, my case will be a sad one indeed; for I shall be sure to get no thanks from the husband, for revealing our secrets.

Let me tell you, however, be the hazard what it may, that you may train your husband to help you, if you will begin right; or you may, at your option, train him to hinder you. I have witnessed both sorts of training, and the consequences of both.--I repeat it, your husband will help you much or little, according as you begin with him. And so will your children.

The way to begin right is to talk the matter over. He wishes, as much as you--at least this is commonly the case--to live independently. He does not want, more than you, the trouble or the expense of domestics. Tell him of the importance and even necessity that you should receive, from time to time, a little of his aid, when he is about the house. Tell him, moreover, in these moments of calm conversation, what little fixtures, conveniences, &c., you need. Do not wait till the moment you feel the inconveniences of not having them begin to press upon you, and then scold about it. This will not accomplish your object; at least, it will not do it in the best manner.

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It is not difficult, where affection is mutual, to convince a husband of the importance of these kind attentions, which cost him so little, but which are so valuable to yourself. The great difficulty is, to form in him the habit of affording them. To this end you must not hesitate to tell him plainly but kindly what you need. More than this; you must set the example of assistance by aiding him. There are a thousand little things which you can perform for him, from time to time. See then that you are nor slow to perform them, and that you do it cheerfully.

Some men are trained in such a manner as to need little training afterward. Others are trained never to do anything in the house, at all. With the last you will have great trouble; but have courage, for your difficulties may all be surmounted.

I knew an excellent housewife whose husband had never been trined to render the least assisstance to the wife, in any of the little things about the house. He scarcely knew how to do so much as to bring in a pail of water. If requested to do it, he did not hesitate, but did it cheerfully; but as the request was seldom made, the assistance was seldom afforded.

The first months of matrimony at length over, the requests for aid, instead of increasing, were diminished; and along with the unfrequency of the


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calls on the husband came an increasing discinclination to comply with them when made. The result, in short, was, that it cost so much urging to get aid from him, that the effort was finally given up.

I have known this young housewife, when toiling very hard, over her wash-bench or elsewhere, when she really needed a little help, and when her husband could have afforded it as well as not--I have known her, I say, to leave her work, and go for wood and water, or into the field for vegetables to boil for dinner. All this I have known done, not only for a year or two, but for many years. I have, moreover, seen the father and one or two sons, almost as large as himself, sit in the house, doing nothing, perhaps, except holding a little loose or unimportant conversation with each other or with some neighbor; and I have known them sit for hours, while the mother, fully and laboriously employed directly before their faces, would often leave her work to perform little tasks that ought not to have been required of her in any case, and much more in the circumstances I have mentioned. She would not ask for aid; and as it was never volunteered, the sons grew up in all the stupidity to which the father has been educated; and indeed to a stupidity still worse. They seemed not to know that they had it in their power to do anything for the mother.

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Now it is difficult to know which to blame most in such a case as this; but it is impossible for me to help pitying rather the most, the house-keeper. And yet I am quite sure her situation, that of a complete drudge, might have been avoided. She might have trained her husband--and afterward her sons--to a course entirely different. Though she had an iron constitution, she is now, at sixty, worn out; and worn out, too, for want of the little attentions of which I have been speaking.

Let me say again, still more confidently, that such a course is entirely uncalled for and unnecessary. More than this, it is wrong. This housewife of whom I have spoken, never attempted--I veture to affirm it--to discuss the subject with her husband, in her whole life. She performed the whole household labor of a family consisting of herself, a husband, and four or five children, with few conveniences and with no foreign help; in addition to which she spun hundreds of runs of yarn, and wove her hundreds of yards of cloth every year. She performed, in fact, what is now considered--when we rememeber at what disadvantage it was done--at least enough for two common females; and she did it well. There was no slighting of her work, nor any neglect of cleanliness. All her washing, ironing, baking, brewing, making, mending, &c., was performed with the


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utmost neatness. Beyond even this, she found time for a great deal of reading and some visiting. She also found time for reading with and instructing her children. I do not know of more than one housewife in the whole neighborhood who did more than she in the education of her family--for here, too, she was without aid or cooperation--or who labored in this department with more success.

I know well the old maxim, it is better to wear out than to rust out; and there is much of truth in it. But we are not required even to wear out unnecessarily. Nay, more, we have no right to do it. It is as much our duty to God to preserve our health and strength as long as possible, consistently with the reasonable discharge of our duties, as it is to preserve either of them at all. But this housewife erred not only in wearing herself out prematurely, and shortening her life some fifteen or twenty years, but she did a most flagrant wrong to her own family. For to say nothing of her husband and of the wrong she did to him by leaving him to wrong her, as she did, she was the means of giving forth to the world two young men of the same habits, and liable to treat their wives with the same neglect.

We may thus see how easily the omission to do right may slide into a positive wrong. It happens, moreover, in the case I have metioned, that the


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results to the sons, are not merely conjectural or even theoretical. Neither of the two is predisposed, in his daily habits, to depart from the way in which he has been trained; and if a tendency to such a disposition is ever happily evinced, it is all a matter of effort, and not of ease and cheerfulness.

I have dwelt the longer on this topic, because it involves a very great evil, and because I do not remember to have seen it mentioned elsewhere. It seems to me to be regarded as a little thing, or a heresy, and on that account it is generally over-looked.

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> CHAPTER III.

> HAVING A PLAN.

Why a plan is indispensable. Hour of rising. Arrangements. Breakfast. Particular advantages. Mrs. Parke's opinion. Time gained, how to be employed.

"ORDER is heaven's first law," says one of the poets; and it is, or should be, the first law of that place which properly managed would, of all other places below the sun, most nearly resemble heaven.

But to have order, there must be plan. Here, too, more, perhaps, than anywhere else, is it important for the housewife to consult with her husband. What can she do, in this respect, without him? And if there are children in the family--as I have all along taken for granted--this circumstance renders mutual consultation still more indispensable.

I know a plan is difficult. So difficult, indeed, is it, that no plan is often formed by the house-keeper; and of plans which are formed, not one in ten is long adhered to. The departures from a plan formed, soon become frequent, and, as it was


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made without taking the circumstances, and wishes, and feelings of the whole family fully into the account, it forms at length the exception, and not the general rule; and is ultimately in danger of being regarded as a mere nullity.

And yet, difficult as it is, its necessity--I repeat it--is imperative. This living at hap-hazard, in families, is ruinous; not so much, indeed, to health as to the intellect and the morals. It is bad enough, however, for either; and is one of the errors in house-keeping which should be strictly and sedulously avoided.

I do not believe there is one husband in ten, who would not try to conform to a reasonable plan--and more than this, the housewife need not ask of him--when proposed and urged by one whom he loves; and when, above all, he finds her rigidly conforming to it herself. I say conformity is all she need ask of him, but I believe she would gain more than this. I believe that thousands of families fall into ruin for want of plan or system on the part of the housewife, while the head of the family remains ignorant of the cause; but I believe, too, there are some sensible men, who, without knowing--for want of experience--the value of order and system, would so approve of it at first sight, and be so cheered by the example of a wife, that they would conform, at once, to almost anything


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which should be proposed, at least long enough to make a fair experiment.

The hour of rising should be assigned for each--for the husband, the housewife, the children, the domestics, (if domestics there must needs be;) and it should be distinctly and cordially assented to. That hour should be early. I do not undertake to assign the precise time which is adapted to different persons, ages, habits, &c.; this is of less consequence than that there should be a time, and that it should be as seldom as possible deviated from. The master of the family, as he is supposed to need less sleep than any of its members, is the proper person to rise first; but if there be that energy wanting--that readiness to cooperate and carry on the plan--which may sometimes exist, and if, too, the thing be perfectly understood and agreed on, the house-keeper may be first.

There is no difficulty of awaking at a desired hour of the morning, when one has a strong motive for it; but it is to be regretted that when we sleep thus, on tip-toe as it were, our sleep is not so sound or so refreshing as under other circumstances. I therefore prefer that there should be some ingenious contrivance, to awaken a house-keeper at first--perhaps an alarm clock, if nothing better should present--until the habit is effectually formed; after which, she will find little difficulty


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of awaking when she wishes to do so. The power of habit, in this respect, is well known. At the appointed time, she should rise and call up the rest.

The hour for breakfast--and for devotion, if that precede breakfast-should also be assigned; and when thus fixed, should not be delayed except on special occasions, and these should be exceedingly rare. Better in all respects, to sit down a few minutes before the time, than one minute or even one half minute later;--better for the body, better for the mind, and better for the whole character. The same remarks may be applied to every meal during the day.

The time to be spent at breakfast should be fixed, as well as that to be spent at every other meal; and the allowance should be more liberal than is common in our country. It ought to be at least half an hour each for breakfast and supper, and an hour for dinner. But whether it should be less or more, let it be fixed; and except in emergencies, as in the arrival of a friend, or the occurence of an accident, let it seldom if ever be departed from.

Hours, also, should be alloted by the good house-keeper, to every kind of work which is known to recur statedly in connection with meals, or daily in connection with the arrival of particular


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times or seasons. The hour for evening devotions and for retiring to rest should be equally definite.

There are some individuals who, for want of plan, labor twice as hard to effect a given object as others. They pass through life in this manner--they are mere drudges, and yet seem to get nothing done. They are apt, moreover, to pass through life fretting. Their neighbors get along so easily, as if life were mere pastime, while they--poor unfortunates!--must toil on without hope or prospect of relief, except by death.

There are not a few who, with comparatively little to do, seem to be always in a hurry, and yet are always too late. They are a little too late about rising; then a little too late about breakfast; then too late about something else. It is as if they had lost half an hour in the morning, and were running and fretting all day to overtake it.

There are some advantages of early rising which are not easily explained, though they may be stated. The individual who rises at six in the morning, and goes to bed at ten in the evening, will, with the same amount of labor, have far less of fatigue, all other things being equal, than the person who rises at seven and goes to bed at eleven. Why is it so? Both are supposed to be employed sixteen hours, and both sleep eight hours, and they are supposed to have equal health and strength,


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and to labor equally hard. Why, then, I repeat it, should there be a difference?

She who rises at six will have less of headache, and thirst, and fever. Every person is, indeed, more or less feverish at evening. The pulse is more frequent, and there is more of thirst and lassitude than in the morning. In the robust, it is true, the difference is scarcely perceptible; but it nevertheless exists in a greater or less degree. When we do not eat late suppers, however, or have too much company, or sit up beyond eight or nine o'clock, sleep restores us; and we rise the next morning in our wonted health. We rise cheerfully, too; there is less of the feeling that we have not yet slept enough; there is less of headache or thirst; there is not so bad a taste in the mouth; and there is little of that disgust of life, which, at this hour, so often creeps in upon the house-keeper, and makes her feel as if she could not possibly get up and resume her daily round of duties. As housewives, in general, now manage themselves and their concerns, there will indeed be unpleasant feelings in any circumstances; but the course I have recommended will greatly diminish their number and their intensity.

I would not dwell longer on the necessity of "having a plan," if I did not see housewives almost everywhere suffering for the want of it.


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They labor, often, twice as hard as is necessary, and wear themselves out ten years sooner than would be necessary, were things done more upon system, and according to method and order.

Mrs. Parkes, in her book on Domestic Duties, complains bitterly of the habit in housewives, of hurrying from one thing to another, and regards it as highly destructive not only to health of body, but to the power and disposition to improve the mind. "I recommend to you," she tells the young housewife, "to plan the whole (of your work) out every morning; and, as far as you can command circumstances, to pursue your plan steadily. In what regards the business of your family, endeavor to arrange its performance as nearly at the same time of each day, as can conveniently be done." "This," she adds, "will prevent confusion or hurry." In another place she says--"Let everything be done in order and in the right season, and you will never be inclined to deny the truth that "there is a time for all things."

Mrs. P. also complains of procrastination in young housewives; and says it is a form of self-indulgence that entirely defeats its own intentions, by causing a load of business to be always hanging upon her shoulders. This habit is easily avoided by neglecting nothing which can be accomplished to-day, and by having, at every evening, a course


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marked out for each succeeding day. She even more than half encourages what some have called getting their work along one day beforehand, as in the following anecdote:

"I have seen a striking proof of the advantages of a contrary spirit, (the contrary of procrastination,) in Mrs. D.'s management, who has often been, laughingly, accused by her friends of performing to-day the duties of to-morrow, and anticipating all its wants. However this may be, her example is most worthy of imitation by all those who have large families; for, in hers, neatness, order and comfort are evident characteristics; and yet these are procured without any apparent effort or trouble; and Mrs. D. herself, though she does not enter into general society, has always devoted much time to the instruction of her children."

This leads us naturally to a very important part of the duty of all house-keepers, when there are children or young domestics; and to see the necessity of a plan for their benefit. There is no instruction that sinks deep like a mother's, whether that instruction is direct or indirect. I would have the young house-keeper form and pursue a meditated plan or system for her own comfort and health, but much more for the sake of her own peace, and comfort, and edification. I would have her do so for the comfort also of her husband and children,


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who are certainly, at all times, the more happy for it, in body and mind. But I would have her do so, above all, that she may find time not only to do her work slowly and instruct her daughters--yes, and her sons, too--in regard to the nature of her employments; but to give them numerous lessons in philosophy, chemistry, natural history, physiology, health, &c. Nor should I be satisfied till she had so simplified her business as to find time even for set lessons in her family, both in the forenoon and in the afternoon. The education--the right education--of a family of children, seems to me, I must say again, the more important part of the duty of a house-keeper, provided she is, at the same time, as I maintain she generally should be, the wife and the mother. But this subject of combining house-keeping with maternal instruction, cannot be pursued to its full extent in this volume. I will only repeat here a remark which can never be too often repeated, that this combination of elementary instruction with household duties, is one of the best methods--perhaps the only successful method--which can ever be devised for rendering the family what it was obviously intended by Divine Providence it should be, the most agreeable as well as most happy place in the world, for the young of both sexes. It is almost unnecessary to add, that should the time


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ever arrive, when the sons and daughters of our citizens come to prefer the kitchen, the parlor, the garden and the chamber, and the company and familiar conversation of the mother and of each other, to all the pleasures and enjoyments to be found abroad, half the temptation, and half the vice and crime in the world, will be prevented.

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> CHAPTER IV.

> KEEPING ACCOUNTS.

Every housewife should keep her own accounts. Deficiency in female instruction. Method of keeping an account. Advantages.

IT may excite a little surprise that I should insist on the necessity, in a young housewife, of keeping accounts. Her defective education, it will be said, unfits her for the task. This, however, is not strictly true. Every person who can read and write, can keep accounts. Not always in a way, perhaps, which would be perfectly intelligible to others, but in a way which would be intelligible to herself; and this is the main point to be secured.

But though we admit the ability of every person who can read and write, to keep his own accounts, it does not follow that the study of book-keeping is of no service. I deem it highly desirable, not to say indispensable, to every individual of both sexes. And herein is a sad deficiency in the usual course of female instruction. Young ladies are taught many things of comparatively little value,


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while this subject is usually neglected. But if mothers are to be our house-keepers, the general intention of Providence respecting females requires that they should be trained to everything which pertains to house-keeping. There would be far less of poverty, and bankruptcy, and crime among us, if all females were trained to the art of book-keeping, and if all wives kept their own accounts.

Every article purchased by the house-keeper, let it be ever so small, should, every evening, be carefully and regularly entered. All the particulars should be mentioned, and all the circumstances preserved. This account should be occasionally reviewed, examined and adjusted. In this way, the house-keeper will not only be acquiring the habit of order, but will, at the same time, be studying frugality and economy. She will see how readily small sums swell into large accounts, and discover, from time to time, many items of expenditure which might have been omitted, without in the least diminishing the happiness of any member of the family.

Such a course will, in short, greatly assist her in comparing her expenses from time to time, with her or her husband's income; so that the former may not be suffered to exceed or go beyond the latter. There is a sort of recklessness on this


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subject, apparent in our community, which it becomes every rational, and above all every christian house-keeper to avoid.

It is, moreover, a source of satisfaction as well as of pecuniary advantage to the husband, to find his wife carefully preserving a record of everything she expends. Not that he wishes, by any means, to act as a spy upon her proceedings. But as he keeps, or ought to keep a regular account himself, it is not only convenient but indispensable that her purchases should be entered somewhere; and what better method can be devised than that she should keep a book of her own?

The principal objection to this duty of a house-wife is, that it consumes time. Without availing myself of what I deem a fundamental principle everywhere in life, that there is always time for everything which ought to be done, my reply would be, that on the principles involved in the present volume, every house-keeper will have so much of relief from the ordinary routine of domestic concerns, as will afford her ample leisure for keeping her accounts. Indeed I deem it useful for all men, women and youth, to keep a record of their expenses through life; and I believe that if we have money to spend and time in which to expend it, we have also time enough to make a faithful and legible record of the expenditure.

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This suggestion is not one of mere theory. I have known a few house-keepers who kept a memorandum of their expenses, in this way, simply for the purposes I have mentioned. I am not here speaking of the regular accounts kept with the baker, the milk-man, the wash-woman, &c.; but of an account kept by the housewife for her own and her husband's amusement and instruction, and ultimate profit.

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> CHAPTER V.

> KEEPING A JOURNAL.

General importance of keeping a journal. Qualifications. Method should be simple. Materials of the journal. A difficulty--how overcome. Reflections.

THIS duty is not deemed peculiar to the house-keeper. Every individual in the world would derive benefit from preserving a daily record of events, with the reflections to which they give rise. It is asked, what there is, in the monotony of the parlor and kitchen, worth recording in a journal?

I do not deny that the duties which pertain to house-keeping are somewhat monotonous; but so are those which pertain to almost every other occupation or profession. Much of the monotony, however, is owing to a monotonous state of the mind. Few persons are as thoroughly imbued as they should be with the spirit of improvement. Too many look upon the stream of life, as it passes, to be still the same; whereas it ought to be regarded as ever fresh, and new, and varying.

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Let a house-keeper be but once thoroughly filled with the desire of improvement inu her calling--let her carefully observe every process to which, in the discharge of her numerous duties, she is called--let her observe her failures in everything, no matter how small--and let her strive, from day to day, to do, in everything, what Paul the apostle requires, when he says, "do all to the glory of God,"--let her possess this spirit, I say, and I have no doubt she will find materials enough for a journal.

Her journal may be kept in the simplest manner. It is not necessary to observe any particular form. All that I would ask is neatness and sense. I would not make blots or write nonsense. I would recall once a day, or oftener if it were preferred, the events of the day--the failures and the successes in cookery and other duties; the misgivings or painful reflections; the bright and joyful thoughts that had been indulged; the hopes entertained; the new facts acquired; the new principles established; the names and character of persons who called; and, in short, everything that it would be rational to recount to an intimate friend, as a husband or mother, in case an attempt were making to give to one of these relatives an account of the day, with its most minute details and trifling occurences.

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No house-keeper finds any sort of difficulty in relating the events of a day to an intimate friend. She will not fail to recount, with fluency, her errors, as well as her successes. Why then should it be more difficult to write them? And yet we all know it is. The truth is, we forget that writing should be just like good and correct conversation; and conversation should be like writing, only unwritten; that, in short, we should have but one language for both. Let this difficulty be but banished, and there is no person fit to be a house-keeper, who would not have abundant materials for a journal, nor any one who would not find herself greatly benefited by the record.

You will ask me, perhaps, to give you an example of such a record. But this I deem it unnecessary to do--unnecessary even for you. Time and experience will direct you properly. The great thing is to begin. If I can succeed in moving you to this, I shall have gained my point. I do not believe there are many persons in the world, who have really become possessed of the true spirit of improvement, and who have adopted a plan in house-keeping which gives them time for the employment, who, having once begun to keep a journal, and tasted its sweets, would not continue it. What if there was little to say at first? It is something to say that. When the hour assigned


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for making the record came, you would not hesitate to tell a friend you had nothing to say in it. Then why not put it down with the pen? You would not hesitate to say much more than this to a living friend. Then why not place that, too, in the journal? This is nature's simple way. By and by you will not want for facts, observations and reflections. The journal itself--educating you--will seem to elicit them.

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> CHAPTER VI.

> NATURE OF FOOD IN GENERAL.

In what sense man is omnivorous. Man a free agent. Animal food. Nutritious character of food. Table of nutritious substances. Second table, from the French. Inferences from these tables. Proofs of the inferior nutritive powers of lean meat. Three great divisions of aliments. The grand object of all food.

MAN has the power of deriving nourishment from almost every substance, both of the animal and the vegetable kingdoms of nature. A good education and temperate habits, will enable him not merely to subsist, but to enjoy a measure of health, and attain a degree of longevity, in almost every clime, and in the use of almost every kind of food, drink, &c. By this, however, is meant, that his stomach and digestive system are so "accommodating," that he can acquire the capacity of digesting, and to some extent, of assimilating--changing into blood, flesh, bones, &c.--not only flesh, fish, oil and blood, but almost all sorts of grain, seeds, nuts, roots, herbs, and even the bark


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of trees. In this sense, but it is in this sense alone, he may be justly said to be omnivorous.

But because he can subsist on all things, does it therefore follow that he must eat all things? In morals, character of some sort may indeed be formed under the worst examples and the worst influences; and so in matters which pertain to intellectual improvement, the mind may be fed and indeed may grow, by reading books of the most inferior character; but does it therefore follow that no choice is to be exercised? Because we can eat all things--morally and mentally--must we therefore do it? And so in physical matters, and especially in the matter of eating and drinking, because we can digest all things, must we therefore eat all things? For what purpose, then, is man a free agent? Why has the Creator delegated to him the right of choice?

That man has the power of choice, is a position which will not probably be controverted. That the Creator had an object or end in view in giving him this right of choice, is at least equally true. But do we conform to his purposes--do we execute his will and accomplish his ends--when we refuse to exercise it in regard to the selection of our food? Or are we to use our power of choice in regard to the company we keep and the books we read, and yet eat and drink at hap-hazard,


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guided by no rules--except, perhaps, to eat and drink everything we can--and exercising not the right of selection?

With this view--and I believe it to be a fair one--how strange is the conclusion, that because man can eat animal food and derive nourishment and even enjoy a measure of health from it, therefore he must use it!

I know it is attempted to fortify this argument by talking about the necessity of eating flesh or fish in order to get azote into the system; because we have four teeth in thirty-two which slightly resemble those of carnivorous animals; and because the structure of our intestines has been supposed to be midway between those of the animals that feed on flesh and those that feed on vegetable substances. But we forget that the ox and the horse, that eat no flesh, require azote as much as man. Now how are they to get it? Must they eat meat? As to the teeth, it is also well known that our teeth most resemble those of the ourang outang, who feeds on fruits and seeds. And as to the intestines, it is found out, of late, that the structure of these, so far as we can argue anything from it, is in favor of vegetable eating, entirely.

These old arguments are now generally given up. Lawrence, Cuvier and Lambe, in Europe, and a large number of the physicians of this country,


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do not hesitate to admit, that human health may be perfect, and life be sustained as long as it now is, in the exclusive use of good vegetable food, in almost every climate. We want no farther concessions. Admit but this; let it be granted that the physical welfare of man will not suffer from the exclusive use of vegetable food, and we are satisfied--nay, driven--in view of its moral and intellectual benefits, to adopt it without delay. The moral and social advantages of living on farinaceous vegetables and fruits, it is believed, have never been enough considered.

It is not my intention, in this work and in this place, to go deeply into the argument in favor of a vegetable and fruit diet. The foregoing considerations, with the few that follow, are all that my present limits will admit. These being premised, I shall take for granted the superiority of vegetable food, and proceed on that principle.

It is almost constantly said and believed, that our stomachs require a greater quantity of vegetable than of animal food, because the former is less nutritious; whereas, it is the reverse. Rice, and nearly or quite every form of bread, peas, beans, and many more vegetable substances, are much more nutritious than beef steak or any kind of lean meat or fish with which I am at present acquainted.

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The following table, derived from chemical analysis, shows the relative proportion of nutritious matter in some of the more common substances used as human food:

100 lbs.	Wheat	contain	85 lbs.	nutritious matter.
"	Rice	"	90	" "
"	Rye	"	80	" "
"	Barley	"	83	" "
"	Beans	"	89 to 92	" "
"	Peas	"	93	" "
"	Lentils,	"	94	" "
"	Meat, (average)	35	" "
"	Potatoes	"	25	" "
"	Beets	"	14	" "
"	Carrots	"	10	" "
"	Cabbage	"	7	" "
"	Greens	"	6	" "
"	Turnips	"	4	" "

Of course the proportion of nutritious substance will vary somewhat according to the variety or species of the article, as well as the quality of the soil; but this is believed to be, in general, a fair estimate. The following recent estimate, derived from the Encyclopædia Americana, accords very nearly with the preceding. It is the result of a series of experiments made by Messrs. Percy and Vauquelin--men of the highest learning and research--and communicated by them to the French minister of the interior:

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100lbs.	Bread	contain	80 lbs.	nutrit. matter.
"	Meat, (average)	"	35	" "
"	French beans	"	92	" "
"	Broad beans	"	89	" "
"	Peas	"	93	" "
"	Lentils	"	94	" "
"	Potatoes	"	25	" "
"	Carrots	"	14	" "
"	Greens and Turnips	8	" "

Hence it follows, say Messrs. Percy and Vauquelin, that one pound of good bread is equal, in point of real nutriment, to two and a half pounds of potatoes; and seventy-five pounds of bread and forty of meat--one hundred and fifteen of both--are nearly equal to three hundred pounds of potatoes. Half a pound of bread and five ounces of meat are equal to three pounds of potatoes. One pound of potatoes is equal to four pounds of cabbage or three of turnips. And one pound of rice bread, they say, is equal to three pounds of potatoes. To which we may add, that it is obvious from both tables, that all sorts of bread contain more than twice as much nutriment in the pound as butcher's meat; and rice, peas and beans almost three times as much.

But what then becomes of the old theory of physicians and others, that vegtables are less nutritious than meat? I reply that I do not know. I will only say, here, that by vegetables they often


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meant green or crude vegetables, such as celery and other salads, cabbage, turnips, beets, asparagus, potatoes, and green fruits. Few persons, learned or unlearned, in conversation or in books, when they spoke of vegetable food, ever thought of bread or rice. Yet these it is, and the other farinacea, on which the vegetable eater principally depends. What have usually been meant by vegetables, are, perhaps, the potatoe and sweet apple not excepted, rather less nutritious--or at least not more so, the best of them--than meat; nor would their exclusive use, unless it were the apple and the potatoe, be so well calculated to sustain the mind and body in the best state, as those which contain more nutriment, or even as lean meat.

That fat meat contains more nutriment than almost anything else I am not disposed to deny; but that the stomach can extract a large porportion of its nutriment, is more doubtful. My belief is, that where we are trained to the use of much fat, the stomach acquires the power of digesting a small portion of it--enough, at least, to sustain a measure of health and longevity; but that it is a process so contrary to the best intentions of nature respecting us, that it is done at a very great--and in our climate unnecessary--expenditure of vital power. The poor Greenlanders and Esquimaux,


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though apparently driven to the necessity of subsisting chiefly on fat, maintain but a miserable existence on it; nor is that existence very long. In our own more temperate climate, the system finds great difficulty in digesting oil; even where we have been early trained to it; and in tropical climates a greater difficulty still.

I have spoken of fat and its intrinsic nutritive qualities; but it is seldom that it is eaten in solid masses among us. And even when it is, it is but seldom digested. Of the pieces commonly procured of butchers and in the market, the far greater part is principally lean, with only a little fat intermixed.

Some of the abler French chemists have concluded, from experiment, that pure fat contains four times as much nutriment as the leanest portion of muscle, or what is commonly called lean meat. Now as the fat, if it were pure nutriment, could only contain a hundred per cent of nutritious matter, it would seem to follow that the leanest meats contains but twenty-five per cent.

The truth, as I suppose, is, that lean meats, as they commonly present themselves to us before they are cooked, mixed with more or less of fat, contain from twenty-five to fifty per cent of nutriment. But if we look at the tables, we find that even allowing the best beef steak to contain fifty


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per cent of nutritious matter, rice would be nearly twice as high in the scale of nutriment; and wheat and corn would, in this respect fall but a little behind rice. Peas and beans are also about twice as nutritious as the best of lean meats; and even potatoes, if good, contain twenty-five per cent of nutriment. So that he who eats rice, bread, puddings, &c., should eat less by weight than of animal food, instead of more. It does not alter the fact, that vegetable eaters often claim an indulgence on this ground, in regard to quantity; it only shows their ignorance, or their slavery to their appetites.

It is quite true that an unnecessary mass, even of pure nutriment, lying inactive in the stomach, would produce considerable disturbance in the animal economy. Still, it would not be so great as that which is produced by a smaller quantity of food which is much more stimulating in its tendency.

We are so much accustomed to eating and drinking for the sake of the immediate stimulus and momentary strength we obtain by it, that we are apt to feel unsatisfied when we eat and drink that which does not produce these effects in a very sensible degree. Now flesh and fish, and high seasoned food, and fermented and alcoholic drinks, by the immediate effect they produce on the


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nerves of the stomach, and through them on the brain and nervous system generally, excite us much more than mild and bland substances; and give us, for a short time, unless the quantity be excessive, much more mental and bodily strength and activity. But rice and bread, and other more nutritive though more simple substances, produce no such increase of heat and strength, and do not, therefore, so immediately satisfy us; and as their presence, in too large a quantity in the stomach, does not immediately produce any remarkable or sensible disturbance, we eat on, looking in vain for the feelings we are accustomed to receive from food and drink which are more exciting. And thus it is, at least in part, that the notion has originated that these bland substances are not so nutritious as flesh and fish. The very fact which should prove their comparative excellence and adaptation to the human stomach and the whole system, has thus been construed into a proof of their insufficient nutritive powers.

There are three great divisions of human aliments. The first and most important--the primary division--is the farinaceous or mealy vegetables. These, whenever they can be obtained in a perfect state, are to the healthy who are trained to their use, best adapted to human wants and human sustenance, in every climate and under every possible


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circumstance. I mean, that if we were to be confined to either of the three divisions I have named, this would be the best and safest. The second grand division is the fruits. These are principally designed for the hot or warm season. These two grand divisions--suitably combined--constitute the most appropriate food of man. They are his natural food, if he has any natural food at all. Animal food--the third grand division--is admissible in certain circumstances and conditions, national and individual; national, as in the case of the Greenlanders or the Esquimaux, who cannot always get food which is better--individual, as in the young infant or in certain diseased states of body, as in diabetes, or perhaps a few cases of scrofula or dyspepsia. Even if there are a few among us who call themselves healthy, but who cannot or fancy they cannot, on account of long established habits, at once quit the use of animal food, their condition is most properly regarded as a diseased condition.

I have said little of drinks in this place, because in the first place, I hold there is but one proper drink in the world, viz., water; and in the second place, because I shall speak on this subject, incidentally, in other chapters.

There is one more thought which I wish to present to the reader before I pass to the consideration


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of particular kinds of food, and the methods of preparing them. As the object of all food is to nourish, and sustain, and render useful and happy the whole man--compounded as he is, of body, mind and heart--and not merely to give him pleasure in eating, or make him a better animal merely; so this is the legitimate object, not only of each grand division of food, but of each particular article. The grand question, in short, is, What are the kinds of food which are best for healthy persons--best for their whole being, here and hereafter? We have no moral right to use anything short of the best, when we know what that best is, and can as well have it as that which is but second best. We have no more right in physical than in moral matters, to slumber on doubtful ground. We are to do good even by our eating and drinking; and not merely to do good, but do the most good in our power.

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> CHAPTER VII.

> FARINACEOUS FOOD.

Primary aliments. Secondary aliments. Substitutes. The following part of the work a vocabulary. General plan. Its contents.

It has been already observed, that the farina ceous or mealy vegetables constitute the first and best division of human aliments. They may be regarded as primary --and the fruits secondary. Animal food, except to the infant or the savage, and in a few other cases and circumstances, is only a substitute for food which is better. The infant is trained to the farinacea, as soon as he can be; and the savage adopts this class of aliments as soon as he becomes civilized.

This primary class of aliments, in one way or another, forms--and indeed always has formed--the principal food of the majority of the human race. Rice, and pulse, and the various forms of grain--wheat, rye, barley, oats, and Indian corn--are the means of forming, and, I repeat the idea, ever have been the means of forming the great


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mass of blood which has flowed in human veins, and from which has been formed the mass of the human solids and fluids, ever since time began. I know this is not the general belief; but it is not, therefore, the less true. The Japanese, by tens of millions, live chiefly on rice; and so do the Chinese, and Hindoos, and Burmans, by their hundreds of millions. The tens of millions of middle Africa, and of southern and middle Europe, and even a part of the population of South America, live on rice, grain, roots and fruits. True, they are often compelled to do so, from stern necessity, or some other cause; but this does not alter the facts. Meat is sometimes used, but it is often as a condiment, and only assumes the rank of a principal food, (with the exception, perhaps, of the United States and one or two more countries of moderate population,) among the uncivilized or among the rich and luxurious; and its consequences to these two classes of men are most obvious. If it enervates the individual but slowly, it does so, therefore, the more surely; and what injures slowly the character of individuals, sinks rapidly the nation which is composed of those individuals.

In treating of the farinacea, it has been my object to present just that kind of information which would be valuable to a house-keeper, from


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day to day, as a vocabulary. In connection, therefore, with almost every substantial article of food, as wheat, or rice, or potatoes, I have introduced more or less of dietetic principles and facts, to which I solicit particular attention. I believe that this method of instruction--this combination of the various topics connected with food--is the very best popular way of presenting the subject which can possibly be adopted.

It was my original purpose to place the articles in the order of their value; I mean in the order of their value; I mean in the order of their value in my own estimation. Thus I have placed wheat first, which I deemed the most valuable article of human diet, corn next, rye next, and so on. I have not, however, in every instance, followed out my plan exactly; but the deviations from it are neither very wide nor very important. I also intended, originally, to treat of each article at a length which was somewhat in proportion to its usefulness as a part of our diet; but here my deviations have been much more frequent than in the former case. Again; this first class of aliments is made to include some substances which cannot, in philosophical strictness of language, be called farinaceous; but their number is not considerable. Lastly, I have not included in it every article, even of the class of farinacea, which has been used for food, but only some of the


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most important, and those with which I am acquainted.

The substances considered in this primary class of aliments--the farinacea--are wheat, Indian corn, rye, rice, barley, oats, potatoes, beans, peas, buckwheat, millet, beets, carrots, parsnips, turnips, onions, radishes, squashes, pumpkins, gourds, cabbages, lettuce, tomatoes, greens, celery, arrowroot, tapioca, salep and mushrooms.

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> CHAPTER VIII.

> FOOD FROM WHEAT.

Remarks on Wheat in general. Bread. Why wheat meal should not be bolted. Unfermented cakes. Loaf bread. Mixed bread. Crackers, biscuit, &c. Bread pudding. Boiled wheat. Toast, &c. Bread and milk. Bread and butter. Pastry. Gingerbread. Flour puddings. Bread and fruits. Potatoe bread.

AMONG all civilized nations, and not a few savage ones, bread constitutes a staple article of food. When I say this, however, I must do it with many limitations and some qualifications. Bread is a staple article of diet in theory, rather than in practice. There are few who are truly fond of bread in its simplest, most pure, and most healthful state. The concession that it is the "staff of life," is indeed generally made; but the belief is but "skin deep." People generally keep it about them as they do truth, and pretend to regard it as a staple; and many, doubtless, never dream that the fact is otherwise; but, as with truth so with bread, notwithstanding our concessions, direct and indirect, in its favor, many seem


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to avoid it as much as conveniently they can. Is there one person in a thousand who would truly enjoy a meal of simple bread of two days old?

Bread, however, should be a staple in practice as well as in theory. As the class of farinaceous vegetables and the fruits are the best articles of human diet, so of the various kinds of the farinacea, though all of them are excellent, I regard wheat as, on the whole, far superior to every other. By this I mean, that if mankind were to be confined for a term of years, or for life, to any one article, health would be best promoted, and the greatest degree of longevity attained, by the use of wheat.

The great change which is produced during the application of heat to the paste or dough, formed from farinaceous substances, in my view, somewhat improves its qualities. This change consists, in part, in transforming a portion of the farina or farinaceous matter into saccharine matter or sugar; though in some respects the nature of the change is not so well understood as its effects.

The following points I regard as settled--1. That bread, whether from wheat or any other grain, is not only more favorable to mastication, and thus more healthy, but also more favorable to health independent of mastication, than the simple grain uncooked. 2. That all grain should be raised on a good and proper soil, and without too much artificial


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heat or prompting, by manures or otherwise. 3. That it should be properly cleaned, both by winnowing and washing. 4. That it should be ground properly.

The proper modes of cultivating grain cannot be discussed here. Of the method of cleaning it, I need only say, that it should always be washed, as a last process; and afterwards dried as well as possible, in the open air or sunshine.

Of grinding wheat, more needs to be said, because on this subject there is a great deal of error abroad. There has long been a very extensive belief in the community, that the finer it is ground, and the more nicely the bran is separated from the flour and rejected, the better. I object to grinding wheat or any other grain in the fashionable manner, for the following reasons:

1. The sweetness of the wheat is in part destroyed by it. Every unprejudiced individual, let him complain ever so much of its scratching his throat, will tell us that bread made of the unbolted meal is sweeter than fine flour bread. But whence is it so? I believe that the friction and heat produced by the grinding process is injurious. Richerand, in his Physiology, assures us that loaf sugar, in being brought to a very fine powder by means of a file or rasp, is reduced, in some measure, to the state of starch; that is, loses a part of its


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sweetness. I have also tested the truth of this statement by experiment. Now the heat and friction of the mill-stones, laid close together as they are in grinding fine flour, appear to me to reduce the flour to a state in which it is more insipid and lifeless than it would be in other circumstances, and thus to render it not only less palatable, but less wholesome. Indeed, that which is less palatable, other things being equal, is always less wholesome, even if there were nothing else about it to render it objectionable.

2. Wheat ground very finely has a less favorable action on the intestines than that which is coarser. The retention of every part of the substance of the wheat is also believed to be favorable. Divine Providence seems to have ordained that the skin of the smaller grains, properly broken, should be taken with the rest, to facilitate intestinal action. Not that fine flour promotes costiveness, exactly; but only that it does not act on the lining membrane of the intestines with sufficient energy.

3. Fine flour is too nutritious. If there be a fact in dietetics which is established beyond the possibility of a reasonable doubt, it is that health and longevity are best promoted by the combination, in our diet, of a portion of innutritious matter with that which is purely nutrient. Even Sir Gilbert Blane, who on a point like this will be among the


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last to be suspected of heresy, says--"Plain solid food, combined with a certain proportion of unassimilable matter, is infinitely more efficient for the purposes of health and strength, than that which consists of pure elementary matter."

These three reasons--to say nothing of any others--are amply sufficient, in my own view, to establish the principle that grain should be ground coarsely. How coarsely, has not, that I know, been determined. Perhaps that which is commonly sold in the market under the name of dyspepsia flour, is rather too fine. I think that if it were somewhat coarser it would be better relished and preferred, just as the coarsest ground corn is; and I also believe it would be rather more wholesome. It is true, that the finer it is ground the lighter loaves it makes; but they are not, therefore, the sweeter. If every family ground it for themselves, in handmills of a proper construction, they might grind it more or less coarsely, as suited their own tastes, or their own notions of health or fitness.

But suppose we have the meal duly ground. How shall it be preserved? This is an important point, though it is generally overlooked. Few persons seem to consider that all meal or flour can be injured by standing where it is exposed to damp or unwholesome air, or an atmosphere filled with noisome exhalations. Whereas, it ought always to


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be kept in a dry, cool, sweet place, in a perfectly dry and clean vessel, and covered.

Meal is sometimes kept in almost any other condition than in such a state as I have recommended, as many a house-keeper--and not a few rats and mice, had they vocal organs--could abundantly testify. If every family would grind their own meal, as suggested in the last paragraph, they would not only have sweeter and richer bread, but would be less troubled about preserving it; as only a small quantity would probably be ground at a time, and it would soon be consumed.

We come now to the consideration of particular kinds of wheat bread.

UNFERMENTED CAKES.--My opinion is, that the best bread in the world is that which is made of recently and coarsely ground wheat meal, mixed with water, and baked in thin cakes, not unlike the unfermented cakes so common in many parts of the east, and so much used by the ancient Israelites. My preference for unleavened bread arises, in part, from the consideration that leaven is a foreign and partially decayed substance, which it were better to avoid unless some essential point is to be gained by its use. I know, indeed, that as used in many families, it is comparatively cleanly; but it is not always so, even there; and in cities, and in


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the neighborhood of breweries and distilleries, a kind of yeast is often used to which most persons would object if they were better acquainted with facts. It cannot be said of such yeast, as is usually said of filthy cider, that the dirt "works out," (though even the latter is not true,) for it is incorporated with the bread, and eaten with it.

But the strongest objection to fermentation is, that it is one step in the progress of decay. Vegetable substances, it is well known, in their progress to entire putrefaction, usually pass through several stages or fermentations; the first of which is the saccharine, or that in which sugar is evolved; the second, the vinous, or that which produces alcohol; and the third, the acetous. Or if the saccharine or sugary change should not be regarded as a fermentation, and if the first fermentation, in the case of bread, were regarded as the vinous, still this is a fermentation, and is one step towards decay. Now can those substances be as wholesome, which have gone part of the way from a pure and perfect state to putrefaction, as those which remain in the highest state of perfection?

It is on this ground, chiefly, that I maintain the importance of using unfermented bread. It is true, as Mr. Graham says, in his "Treatise on Bread," that "there are many other considerations why unleavened bread of a proper quality and


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age, is better adapted to sustain the alimentary organs and general constitution of man, in their highest and best condition," besides the consideration of the changes induced by fermentation; but then I conceive, as probably he does, that the latter is the more prominent.* Some might urge the economy of unfermented bread, as it is well known that most persons eat one quarter, or at least one fifth more of fermented than of unfermented bread, provided both are a day or two old, as they ought to be; but to this it may be replied, that the saving in this way is nearly counterbalanced by the increased expenditure of time and fuel in cooking unfermented cakes.

* Even Dr. Dunglison expressly says--"Bread prepared without leaven agrees better with the stomach than the fermented." Dr. Paris's opinion, to the same effect, is given in another place.

LOAF BREAD.--When to the last circumstance is added the consideration, that "loaf or raised bread can be made so nearly in accordance with the vital laws and interests of our bodies, as scarcely to militate against them in any appreciable degree," it may be questioned whether, on the whole, loaf bread ought not to be considered as the most proper bread for the mass of mankind. I believe, indeed, that there should be, and in the


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nature of things is, time enough for doing everything, by human beings, which ought to be done; but then, such is the present distorted state of society, that it would be quite a tax upon the poorer class to be compelled to bake all their bread in thin cakes, especially where they use fireplaces. With cooking stoves it is often much more convenient; and if it requires more time and attention than baking in an oven, it also requires less fuel, since the cakes may be baked when the space in the stove would be wanted for nothing else, and with about the same quantity of fuel as would be required were no cooking going on.

In order, however, to have perfect loaf bread, the material must be perfect, the dough must be in a proper condition, the loaves must be set in the oven at precisely the right moment, and must be properly and thoroughly baked; and when perfectly baked, must be kept in the right place. On all these points the author of the Treatise on Bread already alluded to, has spoken so well and at such length, that I hardly need to say anything except for the benefit of such as have not seen that work. And even to the last class it is not necessary to say much.

The kneading should be so perfect that every particle of the mass should come in contact with more or less of the particles of the yeast, as well


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as of the water or milk used. It is customary, with many housewives, to mix the yeast and water with the dough, principally by stirring it; and to omit almost entirely the kneading. But this is wrong. No process has, as yet, been invented which can be substituted for the kneading process, without rendering the bread less perfect. The mass will be uneven; in some places it will be extremely light and porous, in others there will be hard or glutinous portions; and the whole will sooner become sour. The more thoroughly and perfectly bread is kneaded, the more equal will be its appearance throughout, and the easier will it be to preserve it from acidity.

One word in regard to the proper time for placing bread in the oven. This is to be done when it is raised or swelled to what appears to be about the extent to which this swelling will go; but if it stand too long, we lose much of the saccharine substance. The grand point is--I repeat it--to place it in the oven at the precise moment when it is at the height of the vinous fermentation. If delayed till the acetous fermentation begins--of which there is always great danger--it will not only be less pleasant to the taste, but less rich and nutritive; and though a little saleratus or carbonate of soda may restore its lightness, it cannot restore the saccharine matter which has unnecessarily


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been changed into alcohol and carbonic acid, and has escaped, nor wholly remove the ill effects of the acetic acid. Better by far that the loaves should be set in the oven a little too early than too late. The latter is the condition of most of our bakers' bread. In order to have it spongy and porous, they suffer it to rise much; and in order to correct the beginnings of acidity, as well as make it rise still more than it naturally would, they add substances which, if they are not actually poisonous, are at least injurious to the tone of the stomach.

Most house-keepers who have been unaccustomed to making bread of wheat meal, are not apt to have their ovens hot enough at first. Bread of this kind appears to require a hotter oven than bread made of fine flour. But a little observation and a few trials are all that are necessary to success, if the house-keeper have common sense, and if she have one more qualification, without which all else is comparatively of little avail--I mean, a love for the employment, and a love for her husband and family. No person who is a mother, who has a strong desire to promote her own personal improvement, and the improvement and happiness of her husband and family, and who has but a faint conception of the importance, in this view, of having good bread, can fail of becoming, in a reasonable time, mistress of this first and most important


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branch of housewifery. All other persons--bakers by profession, hirelings and domestics--may fail of success; and so may some who bear the name of mothers, sisters or daughters. But no true mother, daughter or sister, who is at the same time correctly informed in regard to the influence of this article of food on human health and happiness, and on whom devolves the responsibility, can long remain ignorant of bread-making.

It is rather more difficult to make loaf bread, at least of the coarse or unbolted meal, than to make the unleavened cakes which I have described above. There are, however, several ways of making the latter. The most common way has been to bake them in thin wafers; and it is when they are baked in this way that they cost so much labor. By means of a stove, unleavened cakes may be made very thick, with almost as little care and labor, all things considered, as the common loaf bread.

Loaf bread, properly made, and duly preserved, will be nearly as good at the end of eight or ten days, as on the second day. I have even seen it in tolerable perfection on the twelfth or fourteenth day. It is best, however, from the second to the eighth. To have it sweet and delicious a fortnight, it must not be kept in a closet or pantry, "where you set away dishes of cold meat, cold potatoes


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and other vegetables," and butter, cheese, &c.; nor in a damp filthy cellar, in the neighborhood of half putrid cabbage leaves, potatoes, apples, &c. I have seen bread kept, for many a day, in a damp, dirty cellar, on shelves thick covered with grease and dirt, to which neither soap nor water--no, nor even pure air nor the light of day--had been applied in a whole year. This will never do, for those who mean to consult health, or--I had almost said--decency. A neat, clean, airy, light room, is as indispensable for bread, as for company, clothes or bedding. I have known loaves of bread to imbibe the foul gases of the filthy places where they were kept, till the unimpaired sense of smell could detect their presence after the bread had been removed to the breakfast table.

HOUSEHOLD BREAD.--Next to unleavened cakes and loaf bread made of unbolted meal, I am inclined to place that form of wheaten bread which is prepared from the same meal, with the coarser parts separated by means of a sieve. The preparation of this form of bread requires an attention to the same rules which I have laid down in the preceding paragraphs. It is, I confess, inferior to the former; but is much used in England.

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MIXED BREAD.--Many forms of excellent bread may be made by mixing unbolted wheat meal with rye meal, Indian meal, barley flour, rice flour, pea meal, potatoes, &c. The best of all these forms appears to me to be an admixture of wheat and Indian, in the proportion of two thirds wheat and one third Indian. Whether in the form of loaves or unleavened cakes, wafers or biscuits, this mixture forms one of the most palatable, and next to those I have mentioned above, one of the most wholesome kinds of bread in the world. A much smaller proportion of wheat with more Indian meal will, however, make most excellent bread; and so will wheat meal and rye meal, wheat meal and barley, &c., mixed in many and various proportions.

CRACKERS, BISCUIT, &c.--There are various forms of crackers and biscuits found in our bakers' shops, now-a-days, prepared from unbolted wheat meal; most of which, though inferior to bread, are nevertheless comparatively wholesome. Ship or pilot bread, made of fine flour, is on the whole a tolerable sort of bread; nor have I as strong a dislike to bread made of fine wheat flour, when of suitable age, as many appear to have. It is much worse eaten hot or with butter than coarse bread;


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nor is it as good when cold; but whenever a person is in the exclusive use of coarse bread and fruit, to an extent that prevents any tendency to costiveness, the occasional use of flour bread will be very far from producing any positive injury. It is not because it is bad, that I object to it, but because it is not so useful as that which is better; though for my own part I seldom, if ever, use it, unless I am from home, where that which is better cannot be obtained. "Rolls," as they are called, though worse hot than cold, are by no means among the most wholesome preparations, even of fine flour.

Wheat flour ground finely as it formerly was, and as it is even now, for the most part, enters into a very great variety of compound articles of food. I have before me an English work, on Vegetable Cookery, containing more than three hundred and eighty recipes for preparing dishes into which wheat flour enters, as a more or less important part. I shall not attempt to describe, either in this place or elsewhere, one in twenty of these preparations. Most of them are unfit for the human stomach; and of those which are tolerable, most of them are unnecessary.

Of the various forms of wheat biscuit, those are best into which enter the fewest concentrated substances--as eggs, butter, lard, cream, sugar, molasses,


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&c. The preparations of biscuit and cake, into which eggs alone are suffered to enter, are almost innumerable. But I shall say more on this subject in a future chapter.

BREAD PUDDING.--Several of the puddings made of bread, wheat meal, &c., form very tolerable dishes. Among these the best with which I am acquainted, is a pudding made of stale bread. The reader will find the best account of this form of pudding in the chapter of recipes. There are, however, many ways of preparing it. One popular method is, to soften the bread by soaking it in milk till it becomes a soft mass, and then boiling it in a bag, like a pudding made of flour or dough. Such puddings as those to which I now refer, need no additions of sugar, sauce, butter, milk or gravy. They are sweet enough to the pure or perfect appetite without them.

BOILED WHEAT.--I think that good, clean wheat, simply boiled, and without any additions or condiments, would make a wholesome dish, if pains were taken to overcome the difficulties of masticating such small kernels. Buchan, in his "Domestic Medicine," says expressly, that boiled grain is the most wholesome. Simple boiling, moreover, precludes all adulteration.

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CRUSTS.--The crusts of bread are the richest as well as the sweetest part of the loaf; and this is one evidence of the greater excellence of the cracker or wafer, which is, as it were, all crust. And even those who are aged or infantile and toothless, can eat crusts by soaking them in various ways. I have lived in a family where nearly every member, old and young, avoided the crusts of the bread; and in these circumstances I have rejoiced to make many a simple meal of nothing but these fragments, somewhat stale, soaked in water.

TOAST, &c.--To those individuals whose taste is not wholly simplified--rather I should say, restored to its primitive state--there are several other methods of preparing these substances, which are comparatively excellent. One is by drying them quite hard, pounding them in a mortar, and then soaking them in milk. Another is by toasting them, then pouring on a sufficient quantity of hot water, and then, after beating them soft, adding a little milk, or butter and salt. To the simple and healthy palate, they would need neither butter nor milk; or if either, nothing but a little of the latter. This last preparation it is which is called brewis; and notwithstanding the unpopularity of the crusts before they are soaked and toasted, it is even with many fashionable families quite a favorite. Indeed


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it is worthy of remark, that the crusts of bread seem to gather richness at every step of the process I have described.

BREAD AND MILK.--Bread and milk is an important and favorite dish in almost every country where milk can be obtained. Although I regard solid food as generally preferable for healthy adults, and think it better, as a general rule, that bread, when eaten, should be eaten alone, and a full meal made of it, yet of all the liquid forms of food used by man, milk is the best; and of compound dishes, bread and milk is one of the best. It is good, with the bread broken into the milk; but it is better if the bread be eaten by itself, and the milk drank slowly at intervals between the mouthfuls--because we thus secure the benefits of a more perfect mastication and insalivation. Stale wheat flour bread is universally esteemed as an admirable accompaniment of milk; but that form of bread which is best alone, is also best with milk or any other substance. Besides, the compound of flour bread and milk is seldom sufficiently active for the intestines; and does not always prevent a degree of costiveness. Boiled milk and bread, in various forms, or milk porridge, is also a favorite with many families; and if coarse bread is used, it will hardly produce much costiveness.

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BREAD AND BUTTER.--Bread and butter--if the butter be fresh and spread thin--is another of the less hurtful compounds; but, like many other things I have mentioned, is not so good as bread alone. Many persons are fond of all sorts of bread, and of unbolted wheat meal bread among the rest, when toasted; but the latter is not improved by toasting. Milk poured upon slices of toasted bread is a favorite dish with many; but I must still say that the bread is best alone. Or if not alone, it is better to pour the milk upon slices of it not toasted. There is, however, one state in which bread can be somewhat improved by toasting slowly, or rather by drying; and that is, when it is either too new or too moist.

PASTRY.--The various forms of cake and pastry in common use, whose basis is fine wheat flour, are generally objectionable. It is scarcely necessary to name them; their names would not be worth the space they would occupy. Among the least objectionable--though some of even these are bad enough--are, loaf cake, pound cake, gingerbread, rusks, pancakes, dough nuts, ginger nuts, tea cakes, and seed cakes.

Fine flour crackers, retaining, as they often do, like fashionable hot rolls, the smell of firkin butter not so sweet as it ought to be, cannot be commended;


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nor are they very much to be desired by the healthy stomach, even in their best estate. Soda crackers, retaining as they do but little of the alkali, and shortened with nothing but milk, are much better.

GINGERBREAD.--There is a kind of cake which, though without a particle of ginger, is yet allowed to retain the shape of that ancient preparation, and is not highly objectionable. It is, in fact, nothing in the world but the unleavened bread which I have so highly commended in the beginning of this article, with a little molasses added to it, and baked rather more slightly than other plain unleavened cakes.

FLOUR PUDDING.--Of boiled wheat flour puddings--sometimes called minute puddings--I cannot say one favorable word; nor of flour dumplings, whether in the form of dumplings proper, or entering as a sort of crust or dumpling into pot pies, &c. Nor do I like what is called wheat mush, or puddings made of coarse or cracked wheat, unless eaten when cold. In this state wheat mush forms a very good article indeed. But all such soft doughy or slippery masses, eaten hot, are but little better than so many devices to cheat the teeth and salivary glands; and have no recommendation


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which entitles them to take the place, at our tables, of articles which are equally nutritious, and more wholesome, as well as more palatable.

BREAD AND FRUIT.--My views of the propriety or utility of uniting bread and fruits at the same meal, will be gathered from other parts of the work. Happy is he who prefers them separately. But I cannot say that he who commits no worse dietetic errors than those of conjoining apples and other fruits, either raw or baked, with most of the various dishes prepared from wheat which I have here spoken of and commended, is very culpable.

POTATOE BREAD.--Bolted flour has been, with us, commonly used for potatoe bread, or occasionally rye flour. I know of no reason why the unbolted wheat meal should not be as much better, for this purpose, than any other, as it is in the formation of common bread. Of the preparation of potatoe bread, I shall treat elsewhere.

POISONOUS BREAD.--I must not omit to mention, that there is always danger from the use of bread which is mouldy. At Hammersmith, in England, about the year 1830, the wife of one of the parish officers purchased one morning a loaf of bread, of which she ate a slice at breakfast. Her son,


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twenty years of age, ate two slices of the same bread toasted. Almost immediately after the meal, both became unwell, and diarrhœa, vomiting, and tenderness of the abdomen came on, and it was several hours before these symptoms abated. The loaf was of a yellowish color; and though baked that morning, and heated for the usual length of time, it was sprinkled over with small vegetations, the greater part of which were black, a few green, and several yellow. It was soft, wet, inelastic, and so tough that it could be drawn into strings. Its taste was unpleasant, and its smell acrid. A piece of it being given to a cat and a dog, they were poisoned in the same manner with the man and woman. There was no doubt of the presence of poison, but the question arose whether it was the mould which produced the mischief, or the bread on which it grew. A considerable quantity of the mould--say four or five grains--was accordingly collected, and eaten by a young man aged about twenty-two, without the slightest injury, while another individual, who ate a small piece of the bread from which the mould had been taken, had colic and diarrhœa. This, and similar experiments, established the fact, that mouldy bread may, at least occasionally, prove poisonous.

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> CHAPTER IX.

> INDIAN CORN, AND ITS COMPOUNDS.

Qualities of Indian corn. Its excellence as food. Hulled corn. Boiled corn. Hommony. Indian cakes--eaten cool. Warm cakes. Parched corn. Boiled pudding. Brown bread. Baked pudding. Hasty pudding. Loaf bread. Dumplings. Meat bread. Gruel. Green corn. Polenta.

INDIAN corn is one of the most wholesome articles for human sustenance, in the known world; and it may justly be doubted whether the exclusive use of any other article, except wheat, would be so well adapted to develope our whole nature--physical and moral--as this substance. It forms a large proportion of the food of many individuals, and even of some whole tribes of men; and there is nothing against the belief, that if used in a proper manner, it would impart full vigor of body and mind, and an unusual degree of health and longevity.

I have recently received a letter from a respectable traveller in Europe, which contains the following statements, concerning the use of this article


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in the valley of the Tesin or Tessin, in the north of Italy:

"In this valley (the Tessin) a considerable quantity of Indian corn is raised, as we saw when we passed through it. It is said that some of the laboring classes live mostly on bread made from this corn. They live long and are seldom troubled with disease; and labor, with them, is mere play.

"The person who related this to me, said that he saw a company of these people last year, at work on a new road, in the canton of Neufchatel, (in Switzerland.) They ate nothing but this bread, and that, too, in small quantity. They were always cheerful and lively, and seemed like children at play; while some of their fellow laborers--Bernese and others--who ate more and different kinds of food, were not so cheerful; and labor seemed to be a task to them."

But we need not go to Italy or Switzerland to test the virtues of Indian corn. The Mexican Indians, as well as many other tribes of native Americans, together with many of the whites in some parts of America, feed largely on this article, with the happiest results. Perhaps it is not too much to say, that were mere gustatory pleasure concerned, there is no single article in the whole range of human diet which, through a long course of years, would procure to us so much enjoyment


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as the various preparations of Indian corn--so rich, uncloying and delicious is it at all times, in all seasons, and in all climates.

HULLED CORN. --Corn is probably best adapted to the wants of the human system when boiled whole. The only difficulty in this mode of preparation, is with the cuticle or hull that covers the kernel, and the part from which, in germination, the chit is produced. These are not so easily disengaged as could be desired. Lye has commonly been used to separate them; but there are objections to its use. It is true, that subsequent boiling will remove the taste as well as the poisonous properties of the lye in part, but never entirely. Besides, too much boiling wastes, in some slight degree, the nutriment.

If corn is soaked or macerated in simple water of the temperature of about 100° of F., for ten or twelve hours, and afterwards boiled a reasonable time, the hulls will be so far disengaged, that they may be easily separated on the plate, and with as much expedition as is consistent with healthful mastication or safe deglutition. If, however, any person wishes to eat more rapidly, and to save time at the expense of health and life, he can add a bag of ashes to the corn at the first boiling, which will disengage the hulls more effectually.

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It is true, I have known the whole mass swallowed without any attempt to separate the cuticle, and without any apparent evil effects. Not, however, without great pains to masticate it perfectly and swallow it very slowly.

HOMMONY.--The slightest departure from the most perfect state of this article, would seem to be, to use it simply cracked or in the form of what is sometimes called hommony, or samp. Here, however, great pains is required, and much washing, if we mean to separate the cuticle. This form of food may be preserved after it is cooked, a long time. In cool weather, I have found it in the utmost perfection eight days after it was boiled.

I have said that this preparation would seem to be the slightest departure, &c., but in reality it is not so. The mastication and insalivation of hommony is less perfect than that of Indian bread, when cold.

There is a method of preparing from the corn of the southern United States--which, as my readers may know, is lighter and whiter than ours--a kind of hommony which is essentially the same as our hulled corn, only it more readily becomes soft by boiling. It is exceedingly coarse, being scarcely if at all broken, and yet the hulls and chits appear to be removed as effectually as if an


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alkali had been applied to it. (See the chapter of recipes.) Whether the process which is applied to southern corn, for the purpose, would be equally applicable to our own, I am unable to say.

INDIAN CAKES. --This valuable article of human sustenance, known by the various names of "johnny cake," "hoe cake," &c., is prepared differently by different persons; but in almost every way with which I am acquainted, it forms--to those who are trained to it--a very palatable, and if eaten at a proper temperature, an exceedingly rich and wholesome food.

The best way of preparation is probably the following:--The meal ground not too finely, should be wet with pure, cold water, (though some use boiling water,) and made into very thin cakes, which should be slowly baked till they become somewhat firm. These should be eaten without the addition of cream, butter, molasses, or any other condiment, and of the temperature of the surrounding atmosphere. Made in the common way, however, that is, of the ordinary thickness, and not baked very hard, and eaten with the usual additions, they cannot be said to be unwholesome, absolutely so; but only inferior to those which are made still more in accordance with the human constitution.

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No food which is prepared from Indian corn ought ever to be used hot. Corn has long been considered as too stimulating for the common food of most of our domestic animals; and it is quite as stimulating as the human animal can bear with safety. Its stimulating tendency, however, is greatly increased by heat, which, for this reason, if no other, should be avoided.

But there are other reasons. We do not masticate it properly, if used while hot. We also eat too much of it. Its richness and sweetness are so remarkable, that with a pure and perfect appetite most people who use it are in perpetual danger of over-eating, when it is even used cold; and if eaten hot or very warm, the danger is very greatly increased.

But I repeat it, Indian cakes, if eaten quite cool, and not until many hours after they are baked, require more mastication and insalivation than any other form of the article except that I have named first--the hulled corn; and next to that are, therefore, recommended. So slight, moreover, is the departure from nature, that for variety's sake, I would use the two alternately.

It is impossible for me ever to forget the repugnance I felt in early life, when compelled, for the first time, to make a dinner of Indian cakes, not hot. I say compelled, not physically, but socially.

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I was at the time a district school teacher, and was accustomed to board in the families of my employers. Some of these families were exceedingly poor, others were in more comfortable circumstances. It was in a part of New England where johnny cake, eaten either hot or cold, was considered quite a vulgar article of diet, more fit for swine than men; though some would eat it, if they could get it, at least occasionally, at the risk of their reputation. I was one of the latter class. Eaten hot, and especially with butter, I thought it a most delicious substance--the public opinion to the contrary notwithstanding.

It was customary when the families lived remote from the school-house, to carry with us our dinner. Mine, I was permitted to carry by itself, if I chose; but to show myself a true republican and to please the pupils, it was my custom, for the time, to eat with them. The "dinner" was accordingly usually put up in a basket and carried to the school room, where, after dismission at noon, we soon despatched it.

Being a boarder in a family in low circumstances, who had Indian cakes occasionally, I was not a little surprised one day at noon, on uncovering the contents of the dinner basket at the school room, to find little in it but "johnny cake!" My whole soul revolted. Make a dinner of cold johnny cake!


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I said to myself. Who ever heard of a school-master's eating such stuff for his dinner? And what will be said by the pupils of other families, when they see their teacher partaking of such coarse fare?--However, there was another side to the question. I must eat it or go without my dinner; and if I went without, the children of the family with whom I boarded would report it, and offence might be given. So that on the whole I concluded it best to set myself to work and eat my temperate dinner.

The first mouthful went down with difficulty. After eating a few moments, the whole face of things was altered. The dinner tasted very well, except that I could hardly help shivering to think of it. I was not a little surprised to find that it relished so much better than I expected. In short, I found myself alive at the end of the repast, and awaked in health the next morning!--the johnny cake to the contrary notwithstanding.

This was a valuable lesson to me, though it did not wholly cure me of my prejudices against Indian cakes of a proper temperature, or temperate food in general. * It taught me, however, to make the


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best of circumstances; and that where I could not have things just as I might desire, there was still room for enjoyment, would I but be cheerful and think so.

[Editorial note: This note appears at the bottom of page 124 in the original text.]

* I here say temperate, because it is not strictly correct to call food which is kept in our closets and cellars, at their usual temperature,cold. It causes a mental shivering with the fastidious, which is wholly unnecessary.

I am quite at a loss to account for the prejudice that exists in many parts of our country, against plain, simple articles of food. To say that a person lives on bread and water, is to say that he lives like a hermit or a criminal; therefore it is hardly to be wondered at, that bread and water, though among the best, and richest, and most nutritive of the Creator's gifts to man, as food and drink, are despised and rejected, and unfashionable; and that to say a man lives on these from choice, is nearly equivalent to saying he is either in a state approaching to starvation, or is a maniac. But how the prejudice should have arisen against the usual preparations of corn, especially plain cakes made of it; or how a measure of the same prejudice should come to exist against almost all simples, such as boiled rice, beans, potatoes, bread and milk, &c., is more difficult to conceive.

One might be disposed to believe that our standard of valuation and that of the Creator are as widely different from each other as the two poles. HE has dealt out to us, with a most unsparing hand, the richest blessings--light, heat, air, water, fruits and grains. The first four cost us almost


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nothing, and the two last comparatively little. And yet these we call vulgar, and attach value to and associate pleasure with things which are more doubtful, or exceedingly rare. We are ready to thank God for his benefits in general; but who ever thinks of thanking him specially for light, air or water, or for corn, potatoes or apples? Who would not be much more likely to return thanks--at least with more thankfulness--for a pebble called a diamond, and valued at a most enormous price because of its scarcity, for a few little pieces of gold or silver, or for a cup of Chinese herb tea, a chicken pie, or a pie from Strasbourg?*

[Editorial note: This note appears at the end of this page in the original text.]

* Very fashionable mince pies are made at Strasbourg, in France, from the diseased livers of geese, or other animals. These pies are now brought, in some instances, to this country, especially to Philadelphia, and our other large cities.

I am not ashamed to belong to a race of beings so unreasonable, and guilty of such obvious contradictions; but I am somewhat ashamed of myself, that it should have taken me more than thirty years to learn to value things somewhat as the Creator does; and I am still more ashamed that I have done and am still doing so little to teach others what I have learned in the school of Divine Providence, from a long and painful, but most merciful experience.

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WARM CAKES.--I have said distinctly that food of the kind of which I am speaking should not be used warm; and I have given my reasons. If, however, any individual cannot yet relish a meal of hulled corn, or of cold cake without condiments, let him begin with one or the other, as warm as may be agreeable, and let him gradually diminish the temperature, from day to day, or at least from week to week, till he has brought it down to that of the surrounding atmosphere--to 60° or 65°. Let him do so, I mean, if he is not wanting in faith, and a strong and determined will. With these last, the process need not be tedious. Confidence or faith and a strong will, may remove--and that speedily, too--whole mountains of difficulty.

PARCHED CORN.--This deserves a better reputation than it has generally received. Parched grain was a great favorite in ancient times, in Palestine and other eastern countries; and is one of the best kinds of food which can be eaten; provided, however, sufficient pains is taken to masticate it thoroughly. A breakfast of parched Indian corn once or twice a week, is admirable.

The labor of cooking it is not great; especially as a large quantity may be prepared at once; for it may be preserved, in perfection, several weeks. I repeat it, I regard parched corn as one of the


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staples in human diet, and worthy of far more attention, than in modern times it has received.

I have recently learned from good authority, that great use is made of parched corn in South America, especially by the armies of Peru. With nothing but a sack of parched corn, and a species of leaf which they chew, the Peruvian soldiers have been known to perform journeys of six or seven hundred miles, at the rate of sixty miles a day, without much fatigue--a swiftness to us almost incredible.

BOILED PUDDING.--The next most wholesome preparation of Indian meal, is in the form of boiled pudding. This, to him who would be "perfect," should be several hours old before it is eaten--perhaps a day is not too much--and nothing need be added in order to make it palatable. If, however, there are those who cannot at once receive this doctrine, let them take a similar course to that prescribed in a preceding paragraph, in relation to Indian cakes, until they can.

A person to whom this part of my manuscript was submitted, revolted from the statement of the preceding paragraph, and said I was going too far. I asked if it could be shown that I was going any farther than the truth.--Now I am not ignorant of the public feeling on the subject of eating cold


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boiled pudding. "It is as heavy as lead to the human stomach," multitudes will say. Now if any one will eat no more of it when it is hot than when it is cold, I will not so loudly complain of the heat. But I never yet knew a person of good appetite, who made a full dinner of hot pudding, without experiencing dulness, or drowsiness, or pain after it. The truth is, that if we have a good appetite, we shall eat quite enough of the article in question at twenty-four hours old, and the additional quantity we should be apt to eat in consequence of its being heated, would be just so much more than health or a good appetite renders desirable, and would injure rather than benefit us.

BROWN BREAD.--Next to this comes the brown bread of Massachusetts and some other parts of New England--made of rye flour and Indian meal. This, when composed of a large proportion of the latter, and unfermented, is a very tolerable sort of food, especially the crusts. Fermentation renders it sweeter, and to most old fashioned palates more agreeable; but when a person has accustomed himself to using it unfermented, he will relish it quite as well; and it is, in my view, more wholesome.

I can hardly forbear to mention, in this place, a fact in my own history. Six years ago, I had an


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utter hatred of the brown bread of which I am speaking. It appeared to me not merely tasteless and insipid, like bran and sawdust, but positively disgusting.

Becoming fully convinced, however, that this form of bread must be wholesome, and being a boarder in a family where there was no bread which I deemed preferable, I resolved to eat it daily; usually for my breakfast. I selected the latter season for eating it, because in the morning our appetite is most keen, as well as most perfect. Before six months had elapsed, I had not only conquered my dislike, but had acquired a fondness for it; and now, few articles of food give me more pleasure. Indeed, there are few things on which I could live exclusively, from day to day, and from month to month, with as much pleasure as brown bread.

It is highly desirable to devise some method of making this form of bread a little more dry than is customary with us. It is not unfrequently prepared in very large loaves, with all the interior of the loaf as soft almost as a baked pudding. Nay, it is not only soft, but watery. It can, indeed, be sliced and laid on plates and suffered to dry; but this appears to detract from its richness. Until some method can be devised of making it a little more solid without over baking, the best way


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is to toast it slowly. Great care should be used, however, in toasting bread, not to burn it, or even render it too crispy, as this would be unfavorable to digestion. It should be dried rather than toasted. But the process of toasting in any way, is a process which requires considerable care and labor.

BAKED PUDDING.--This may be made as simply and rendered as wholesome as boiled pudding. The usual accompaniments of suet, sugar, molasses, &c., are by no means indispensable. Prepared for the oven in the same simple way as the meal is prepared for cakes which are roasted by the fire, it makes a very superior article of human diet. Of course the suet, molasses, &c., usually added to it, must be omitted. The only possible objection to such a course is, that it does not require much mastication, and is almost universally eaten hot. Eaten cold, by which I mean cool, and without the addition of concentrated substances, it is by no means unfavorable to health and longevity, though cakes baked hard would unquestionably be preferable.

HASTY PUDDING.--Willich says that hasty pudding, on account of its tenacity and the quantity of mucilage it contains, is not so easily digested as people who feed their infants upon it are apt to


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imagine. I am quite of his opinion in regard to the digestibility of this substance, but not for the reasons he assigns. The grand objection is, that it requires, or at least receives, little or no mastication. This, indeed, is the principal difficulty with a great many sorts of food so constantly said by dietetic writers to be indigestible. They are highly nutritious in their nature; but they are ground or beaten so as to form a complete paste that will almost slide down the throat, as fast as it is put into the mouth; and lastly, molasses, butter, oil, sauces or gravies, are applied to hurry them beyond the reach of the teeth and salivary glands, as fast as possible.

The finer hommony, or that which is so frequently called samp, is liable to some of the very objections which I have urged against hasty pudding, especially that which relates to mastication. I never knew a child who was indulged largely and frequently in hasty pudding and milk, or hasty pudding and molasses, who had not a sour stomach, or worms in the intestines, or both. Few things are more deceptive to children or adults, than these soft lazy dishes; such I mean as glide down into the stomach without any trouble to chew them. They are deceptive because they seem to sit so smoothly on the stomach, while in reality they are over-tasking it. They compel it to do


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that which should in part have been done in the mouth; and this produces mischief in two ways;--first, by the over-tasking which I have alluded to--and secondly, by the want of action on the part of the teeth and salivary glands.

LOAF BREAD.--In travelling among the Dutch population of this country, I have sometimes met with loaf bread made wholly of Indian meal. I do not think it so good as the cakes, yet I believe it deserves a better reputation than it would be likely to receive among us, who are of English origin. I am wholly ignorant of the particular method of preparing this article of food; but it does not seem to me to be very well raised.

DUMPLINGS.--Boiled Indian dumplings are a very inferior kind of food, except for domestic animals. To the sick or the well, they are the worst form of food from Indian meal which I have ever seen, except some of those which follow.

MEAT BREAD.--I have met with a kind of bread made principally of Indian meal, but with the addition of finely chopped lean meat. Such bread, although evidently nutritious enough, is inferior to almost every other kind that could be named. The name I have usually heard applied


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to it is crackling bread. The term meat bread is wholly of my own invention.

GRUEL.--Where a gentle laxative is required, and nothing seems to be more convenient or better adapted to the purpose, than gruel of Indian meal, it is not at all objectionable. But as an article of daily food for invalids, especially for those whose stomachs are weak, it seems to me peculiarly improper. It is much harder of digestion than solid food; which is one reason for the prohibition. The same objections, in substance, exist in relation to it which were mentioned in speaking of hasty pudding. It is not masticated; and the nutriment it contains, forming a concentrated sediment in the stomach, is digested with very great difficulty.

GREEN CORN.--I have hitherto said nothing of corn boiled before it is ripe; though there are several fashionable dishes of this sort among us.

The first is the boiled ears. These, if simply boiled in water, with no addition but that of a little salt, form a tolerably nutritious and very sweet food; but green corn can never be as wholesome as that which is ripe. I know it is customary with many writers on diet to denounce this article of food, in toto; but they do not give us sufficient


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reasons for their denunciations. It is, indeed, an article of food which I never eat; but my reasons are--I find so many better dishes that I cannot feel justified in the use of one which is worse; that it is a waste to use the green ears of corn in this way; and that I seldom find it at tables in a proper state. It is very often boiled with meat or other greasy food, which renders it peculiarly unfit for the stomach. No article, perhaps, forms so unwholesome a mass for the stomach, when in combination with oily or greasy substances, as green corn. Some add butter, but this is still worse. The combination of green corn and green beans, called by its Indian name, suckotash, is far from being among the most wholesome, even without the accustomed seasoning. Both articles are better eaten alone, after they have attained to maturity. The same remarks, in general, which have been applied, in this paragraph, to boiled ears of corn, apply also to those which are roasted.

POLENTA.--Corn meal mixed with cheese, says Dr. Dunglison, and baked into a kind of pudding, forms the dish which the Italians call polenta. It is, however, extremely indigestible.

There is a great variety of forms of cookery, into which Indian meal, notwithstanding its supposed


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vulgarity, sometimes enters, but I forbear to mention them here. The very name of pancakes or fritters, whether with or without apples or other fruits, and whether with or without oysters, is enough, almost, to give one an attack of dyspepsia; and fried hasty pudding is still worse. There is no special, or at least serious, evil in warming over a mass of cold hasty pudding; but when we add the frying process, it is too much; and if I ever wish for sumptuary laws at all, it is when I think of that parent of a thousand evils, fried hasty pudding.

Indian meal is apt to heat and ferment, and thus sustain injury during the summer. It should, therefore, like wheat and rye meal, be kept in a cool, airy place; and in a quantity not too large; and should be often stirred and exposed to the air.

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> CHAPTER X.

> FOOD FROM RYE.

Extensive use of rye. Brown bread. Rye bread. Mixed bread. Biscuit, &c. Unleavened cakes. Gingerbread. Puddings. Gruel.

SOME may be surprised that I should place rye, in point of excellence, next in order to Indian corn, and before rice; but this appears to me its appropriate place. In the north of Europe, it is the principal source of sustenance; and after wheat, nourishes the greater portion of the population of that continent. It forms the bread of nearly twenty millions of the French nation alone. Even in many parts of New England it forms a very large proportion of the ordinary diet.

There is, however, a very great difference in the character of the rye itself, not only as respects its whiteness, but its flavor. Much of this difference depends upon the manner of raising it; and still more, perhaps, upon the manner of raising it; and still more, perhaps, upon the manner of preparing it. With milk and good yeast, I have seen it almost equal to wheat, both in point of lightness


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and whiteness, notwithstanding the deficiency of gluten which many writers represent as so fatal to its excellence; and even without the milk it makes excellent bread. In one word, I believe its qualities and wholesomeness have hitherto been greatly underrated.

BROWN BREAD.--I have already spoken of the brown bread, so common among us--formed from rye and Indian. The proportion of these two ingredients may vary at the pleasure of those who prepare it; and wheat meal, as well as barley and oat meal, and even rice flour, may be added for the benefit of those prefer it.

RYE BREAD.--Notwithstanding the preference given by many--and even by myself--to brown bread, great numbers of the people of New England regard the latter as dry and insipid, and some as offensive; while they think bread made of rye alone is peculiarly tasteful and agreeable. So powerful is habit, and so much is the taste subject to it. Rye bread, however, is by no means an inferior sort of bread; it has been the principal diet of thousands of New England's hardiest, healthiest, most enterprising sons, and of some of her most distinguished literary men. The Journal of Health says rye bread requires rather more


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salt than any other bread; but this cannot be true, as some of the best rye bread I have ever eaten was made wholly without salt. It is, however, generally added by house-keepers in small quantity, especially in making bread of rye alone.

MIXED BREAD.--There are several mixed breads into which rye enters, which are very much approved of in families. One is called the third bread; consisting of wheat, rye and Indian, one third each. Another, which I regard as still sweeter and better, is the mixture of rye and Indian I have already mentioned; but I am not able to state the usual proportions. Another still--and I deem it preferable to all others--consists of two fifths rye and three fifths wheat. This is usually prepared by making a paste or dough of the wheat alone, and as soon as the fermentation has commenced, working in the rye meal, moistened with water.

BISCUIT, &C.--A plain, but excellent sort of biscuits, is made of rye flour wet with milk. Crackers of rye flour have also sometimes been made, but not so often. Rye puddings are more common, but are liable to the general objections brought against all puddings; although, if their use be at all admissible, rye puddings of coarse


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meal--rye mush--is among the most wholesome. Rye dough nuts and gingerbread are better--much better--than those which are made of superfine wheat flour; although many fashionable people, who never saw a particle of rye flour used except to form the brown bread already spoken of, would find it somewhat difficult to believe it.

UNLEAVENED CAKES.--These might have been put first. But there is such a prejudice against unleavened bread of any sort, that having encountered it for once, viz., in the article on wheat, I seem to shrink from it, with a dread almost instinctive. And yet why should I? Dr. Cullen, more than half a century ago, ventured to defend it. "The whole people of Asia," says he, "live upon unfermented rice. In Scotland, nine tenths of the lower classes of the people--and that is the greater part of the whole--live upon unfermented bread and unfermented farinacea in other forms, and yet I am of opinion that there is not a more healthy people anywhere to be found." And Dr. Paris, who wrote almost half a century later than Dr. Cullen, says that "where leavened or fermented bread does not agree," the use of that which is unleavened "cannot be too strongly advocated."

Under the sanction, then, of authority so high, I may venture to say, that the best form of rye


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bread, after all, is that of unfermented cakes baked upon the hearth or elsewhere, and eaten when of a proper age.

Those who object to them, on the ground of their tendency to produce consumption--a sort of traditional belief among us--do not in reality object to the cakes themselves, eaten cool, and with no accompaniments; for though this is the only way in which they should be eaten, it is precisely the way in which nobody eats them. They are commonly, perhaps I should say universally, eaten with butter, and while hot--when they are as unfit for the human stomach as can be conceived. But let them be a day or two old, and then eat them as loaf bread commonly is or should be eaten, and we shall no longer hear of their being injurious. They will be as wholesome, to say the least, as any other form of bread into which rye enters.

GINGERBREAD.--If gingerbread is allowable at all, it is nearly as good made of rye as of wheat. But as I have already said, those who make this form of cake should omit the ginger, and only add a small quantity of molasses. If rye is ground coarsely and neither bolted nor sifted, unless it be to remove a very small quantity of its coarser parts, it will make bread or cake but little inferior to that which is produced from wheat.

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PUDDINGS.--To puddings made of rye meal or flour, I have already objected, at sufficient length. But there is one species of pudding--if it deserve the name of pudding--which is much more tolerable. I allude to boiled or steamed loaves of stale bread. They need not be eaten hot. They are excellent twelve hours after they have been revived by the steaming process, and seem, even at this age, to possess all or nearly all of their original freshness.

GRUEL.--Rye gruel--usually considered very healthy--is of course a liquid; and--I repeat it once more--I object to liquid food, so long as solids are admissible. As a medicine, it is, like gruel made of Indian or wheat meal, often very useful.

Rye meal should be kept in a cool, airy place, especially in summer. It should also be occasionally stirred. It is said that a large stone put in the middle of a barrel of rye or Indian meal, will help to keep it cool. Probably this is mere tradition.

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> CHAPTER XI.

> RICE.

Rice extensively used. Mistaken notion of its producing costiveness and blindness. Boiled rice. Baked rice. Rice bread. Rice and milk.

No substance which enters into the human stomach, and which is at the same time perfectly inoffensive, has been more slandered than rice. On the one hand, it has been said to be an innutritious, feeble substance; on the other, it has been said to be an active poison. It has been charged with producing costiveness, blindness, and even in some instances the cholera.

The truth is, that rice is one of the most nutritious substances in the world; as may be seen from the tables in a former chapter. I know, as I have already said, that it will be hard for many people to believe this. Because meat stimulates more, and gives more momentary warmth and strength, it is therefore insisted that it contains more nutriment. On the same principle, it might be proved that alcohol is highly nutritious; whereas all the alcohol


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in the world does not contain a particle of that which can nourish us or make blood.

Nor does rice tend directly to produce costiveness. The most that can be said against it is, that it is not very active on the stomach and bowels--and in our climate, and especially when trained as our stomachs and intestines are, to the action of substances much more stimulating and irritating, seems to have the effect of producing costiveness. But to the eastern nations who are trained to it--even without the curry sauce so largely used in many places--it has no constipating qualities. Let our children and youth be trained, from the first, to a pretty full proportion of rice with their food, and let them use other simple, wholesome, unstimulating things, and we shall hear little more of its tendency to costiveness.

As to its producing blindness, I have sought, these ten years, for evidence on this subject; but have never found a particle. The nearest approach to evidence I have met with, is the statement of a very worthy old man, that he knew a case of the kind in Maine. But every one knows how many other causes might have contributed to produce such a result as was stated. If this substance could cause blindness, we ought to hear of such facts from China, Japan, and other parts of Asia; especially since the establishment of eye infirmaries


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by the missionaries in those regions; but no such developments have, to my knowledge, ever been made. In short, I regard the whole as a base slander; and the charge that it produces cholera, no less so. Neither of the charges ever was, or--I venture to affirm it--ever can be substantiated.

BOILED RICE.--The best, or at least the simplest mode of preparing rice, is boiling it in pure water. After careful washing, it should be boiled in such a way that it is completely soft, and swelled to its full size, but not broken and reduced to a pulp. The Hindoos, I am told, boil it till they reduce it to a perfect paste; but I can never believe it so wholesome, prepared in this way. On the other hand, it should be cooked thoroughly; for I have known considerable temporary disturbance produced in the bowels, by eating it when it contained portions of the kernel which were hard and uncooked. It is difficult to masticate rice, unless the grains are left whole, and swelled to their fullest size.

BAKED RICE.--Next to boiling, baking is the most proper method of cooking this substance. Indeed, some prefer baking to boiling. It is equally simple; and to those who use cooking stoves, perhaps more easy and more economical.

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Rice, whether baked or boiled, is best eaten alone; or at least with no additions except a very little salt. If, however, anything must be added, milk poured on it is best--and next to that, a little molasses. Butter, sweet oil, and all sorts of sauces on rice are highly injurious. Honey is not so good as molasses, or sugar, or milk. I do not say it will be well to eat nothing but naked rice from one year's end to another, or even from one day to another. All I say is, that when we eat a meal of rice, it is preferable, in point of health, that we should eat it alone.

A great deal is said by dietetic writers, about the necessity of eating something with our rice. "If taken in large quantities, by itself," says Dr. Paris, "from its low degree of stimulant properties, it is apt to remain for a length of time in the stomach." And again he says--"where the stomach is in a state of relaxation and debility, it ought not to be taken without condiment."

But why should it be eaten in large quantities, at all? I do not hesitate to admit, that if thus eaten, it will lie long in the stomach. It is so pure a nutriment that no stomach, let it be ever so strong, ought ever to receive it in large quantities. If, however, this injunction should be disregarded or disobeyed, I have no doubt most kinds of condiments would, for the time, have a good effect.


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They would operate upon it like whip and spurs upon an overloaded horse; they would urge it forward for the moment, but it would be at the expense of the future. There might be sound philosophy in eating a moderate quantity of thin, hard-baked, fermented cakes or wafers with our rice, for the sake of the mastication.

Baked rice puddings are by no means very exceptionable, if nothing is mixed with the rice but a little milk and molasses. But when eggs and condiments of various sorts are added, they are not so wholesome.

Experience teaches that rice is not so good when first boiled, as after the lapse of six, nine, or twelve hours. Even three or four days after it is boiled, especially in cool weather and when kept in a cool place, it retains all its excellent properties.

RICE BREAD.--Of this substance, in any of its forms, I know very little; and all directions, here or elsewhere, will be either theoretical or borrowed. I suppose that on the general principle, that every substance is best by itself, rice would not be so good mixed with flour or meal of any sort, and made into bread. But there is one thing to counterbalance all this. Formed into bread, it is more apt to be subjected to the processes of mastication and insalivation, than it is when eaten alone. For


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all other purposes except to make bread of some sort, I dislike the grinding of rice into flour at all; and if ground, I dislike its use.

RICE AND MILK.--This is a very palatable mixture, but so exceedingly quiet, in its immediate effects on the stomach, and it slides down the throat so easily, that we are peculiarly apt to err in regard to quantity when we use it. If used at all, let it be used with great caution; and it were somewhat better that the rice were eaten by itself, and the milk drank afterward, than that they should be mixed before eating.

I must conclude my remarks on rice by saying, that while I reject the false notions of its deficiency in nutritive properties, of its tendency to costiveness, and above all, of its sometimes causing blindness, its use is not without danger; but it is, on account of its being so purely nutritious, that almost everybody who uses it, is apt to take too large quantities. I know a minister of high standing who has lived for years in no small degree on rice, and maccaroni, and other simple articles of the most nutritive kinds--but who, in the belief that these contain comparatively little nutriment, is almost constantly injuring his stomach by them. This error seems to me one of the most difficult to remove in the whole range of dietetics.

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> CHAPTER XII.

> BARLEY AND OATS

Barley much used in Europe. Its properties. Mixed bread. Pearl barley. Oats.

BARLEY is but little raised in this country; and when used, is seldom converted into bread. On the eastern continent its use is quite common, and has been so time immemorial.

The proportion of the principle called gluten, in this grain, is so small, that alone it does not make very light bread. Wheat, as my readers already know, contains the glutinous principle in greatest abundance, and therefore it is, among other reasons, that it makes the lightest loaves. Wheat contains, with seventy-five parts in one hundred of starch, twelve of gluten; rye, with sixty parts of starch, eight of gluten; and barley, with thirty-two of starch, three of gluten. As the nutritive parts of farinaceous vegetables are principally contained in these two principles, it will be seen, not only that wheat and rye are most nutritive, but also that they are by far the most glutinous and


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best fitted for loaf bread. Still, barley is very good; and were not our American soil so happily adapted to the production of wheat, rye, or Indian corn, might be very serviceable.

There is one kind of mixed bread into which barley enters, which is comparatively excellent. It is made of equal parts of wheat, rye and barley. The dough is made of the wheat meal, and the meal of the two other grains is added after fermentation of the mass has begun.

In our own country, the principal use made of barley as food, is in the form of gruel. This for the sick or weak is often admirable. Most of the apothecaries' shops keep it for this purpose under the name of pearl barley.

OATS.--The farmers of Ireland and Scotland find themselves strong, and healthy, and happy, on oaten bread; and many hundred thousands in those countries, especially in Scotland--to say nothing of her philosophers--have little other nutriment but oat meal and potatoes. But in our own country very little of this kind of bread has been used; nor is it necessary, since we have so many other substances which are preferable. The Scotch use it most in the form of unleavened cakes, which, if eaten cool, are probably healthier than loaves.

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> CHAPTER XIII.

> THE POTATOE.

Importance of the potatoe as an article of diet. Modes of cooking it--boiling, baking, steaming and roasting. Bad boiling. Examples of a better mode. Cooking a potatoe well, seldom understood. The "civic crown." Mashed potatoes. Potatoe bread. Potatoes and milk. Potatoe soup. "Hash." Fried potatoes. The potatoe sometimes poisonous.

Too much importance can hardly be attached to an article which forms the principal support of many millions, and the partial support of a still larger number. I believe most of the civilized countries of Europe use this valuable root more or less freely--and that it is daily gaining favor.

In many parts of the United States, and especially in New England, it forms one of the staple productions of the soil, and ranks among the principal articles of food for man and for beast. Here, too, its use has been, till recently, constantly increasing. At the present time, especially among the fashionable, there is an increasing tendency to regard it as somewhat vulgar. It seems to be


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sharing the same fate, or nearly the same, with bread; which, though acknowledged to be a highly useful article, is considered insipid when compared with rolls, rusks, bunns, puddings, cakes, and the various forms of pastry--and the use of which, seems only tolerated as a sort of penance.

There are many varieties of the potatoe. In their properties they do not, however, materially differ, except in a single instance. The sweet potatoe is much more cloying, in its nature, than the rest, on account of the larger proportion it contains of saccharine matter; it is also rather harder of digestion. Besides, it is more nutritious than any other variety. Sweeter, however, as it is, and consequently less happily adapted to the purposes of daily food, it is subject to the same general rules in preparing it for the table.

Following out the general principle, that the simpler the method of cooking the better for health, it is not difficult to say what are the best methods of preparing this valuable esculent. Boiling, baking, steaming and roasting, are all of them simple processes, and none of them objectionable. If there be a preference, it is in favor of roasting in the fire.

To the pure appetite, there is a richness of the potatoe roasted in hot embers, for which we look in vain elsewhere. Perhaps it is owing to the fact,


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that all its properties are preserved unimpaired; whereas, in boiling, if none of its properties are actually lost, some of them may be impaired.

The best method of roasting the potatoe, is to take away the ashes of a good fire quite to the hearth, lay down the potatoes in a single layer, cover them with hot embers to the depth of an inch or so, and then build a good fire over them. In this way, and in a reasonable time, they will usually be found light and excellent. Once it was thought necessary, first to fill the interstices and just cover the surface with cold ashes, before putting on the hot embers; but the former mode is preferable.

Those who wish to be very nice, may find it pleasant to wrap each potatoe, when well washed, in a piece of brown paper, wetted just so that it will adhere, before committing it to the embers. In this way it comes forth in a more cleanly condition, and is sooner made ready for the table. This method is also preferable for those who eat the skins. The latter I do not recommend; but like the skins of apples, as well as many other vegetables, if not too much changed by cookery, and if well masticated, the skins cannot be particularly objectionable.

The various methods of baking and steaming this article need no particular description in this


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place. Next to roasting in the embers, they are unquestionably the best in use, and some regard them as preferable even to roasting.

Boiling is the most universal mode of cooking the potatoe. It is, moreover, a very convenient process. More care, however, is required to render it dry and mealy than in roasting, steaming or baking; and strange as the assertion may seem, there are very many house-keepers who suppose themselves perfect in the art of cookery, who do not understand the art of boiling potatoes.

Some do not boil them enough. This, however, is not so serious an evil; since we are not obliged to eat the inner, unboiled portion. But a still greater number do not boil them well.

One reason why boiled potatoes sometimes are not good is, that they are unripe or otherwise imperfect. Potatoes, in order to be perfect, should be planted in a proper soil, and at a proper season; and if manure is used at all, it should be that sort of manure which is best adapted to the crop itself, and also to the kind of soil to which it is applied. There is a certain kind of relation, I should rather say opposition, in the character of soils and manures, which deserves to be attended to. For want of the necessary knowledge on this subject, or for want of a disposition to use the knowledge which is possessed, a large proportion of the potatoes


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which are used in our families are more or less watery, or at least far from being as mealy as they might be. The more mealy a potatoe is, as a general rule, the better flavored and more healthy it is; but of those which are truly mealy, there is a great difference in their flavor. A truly perfect potatoe, perfectly roasted, steamed or boiled, is almost as delicate an article of food as a loaf of bread, though not so nutritious.

The best and most perfect potatoes may be so badly boiled as to be comparatively unfit for the table, while those which, though mealy, are somewhat inferior in richness and flavor, may, by superior cookery, be rendered vastly their superiors.

Potatoes may be boiled either with or without the skin; but I prefer the former mode until some time in the winter, after which it is best to pare them. Great care should be taken to see that they are thoroughly washed in the first place. No judicious farmer will neglect this point, even in boiling them for his swine or cattle--how much more, then, should it be attended to in their preparation for the table!

The water should boil before the potatoes are put into it; and the quantity of water should be so great, if practicable, that the boiling may continue, notwithstanding the quantity of heat suddenly abstracted by their addition and presence.

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When they are boiled, the water should be suddenly poured off. Then they may be immediately taken up, or may remain in the covered pot a few moments till they become thoroughly dry. I believe they are rather more mealy in the latter case, than if taken up wet with the water in which they are boiled.

Some boil them so long that they fall to pieces in the pot, and become soaked; or at least they become injured in this way before they reach the table. Others boil them so slowly that they appear to lose much of their excellence. The more rapid the boiling, and the shorter the time they remain in the vessel, provided the process of boiling is thorough and complete, the better.

It has been said, and I think with truth, that while the boiling of potatoes is an art which belongs to every house-keeper, scarcely one in a hundred appears to understand it. Many even seem to think an occasional failure unavoidable.

The American lady, says the Boston Medical Intelligencer for October, 1826, who shall teach her sex how to boil a potatoe, will deserve public honors and a civic crown. This may, at first view, seem a reward rather above the merit of the discovery; but are we quite sure it is so?

"There are, we will suppose," says the work referred to, "ten millions of potatoes put into the


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pot every day, in these States; of which, probably, not more than two millions come out fit to eat. Now the difference between seven or eight millions of potatoes well or ill cooked, daily, is no small concern, especially if we multiply the amount by three hundred and sixty-five, to make it a yearly statement.

"We know that soil, climate and season have their favorable or unfavorable influence on this vegetable; but it is still true, that bad cookery spoils more potatoes, otherwise good, than all the droughts, inundations, heats and colds, and bad soils, in this country. Count Rumford, in one of his essays, speaking of potatoes, as much in reference to the mode of boiling them, as of their native properties, says, an Englishman knows nothing of the luxury of an Irish potatoe."

Potatoes, to be perfect in this way, should be boiled entirely alone; except, perhaps, with the addition of a little salt. The old custom of boiling them with other vegetables is objectionable, but less so than that of boiling them with meat, especially fat meat. The last custom is more than objectionable; it is, to a pure stomach, next to intolerable.

It is commonly said that a potatoe is most agreeable immediately after it is boiled; and to those who cannot eat anything which is not hot


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enough to endanger their mouths, it may be so. But it is more wholesome and scarcely less mealy a short time after boiling, when it has had time to cool a little; and to an unperverted taste and good appetite, quite as agreeable. It is even pleasant and wholesome for twenty-four hours or more after boiling, to those who are accustomed to its use; and nothing is more common than for laborers to prefer it six, eight or twelve hours after boiling. That it is more heavy, as it is termed, in these last circumstances, is no more an objection to it, where the relish for it is equally keen, than the fact that bread is more solid, and cannot be swallowed in quantities so great, when cold, is an objection to the use of the latter. Both require more mastication when cold than when hot; and both are less liable, when cold, to be taken in too large a quantity. And, to a reflecting mind, this is one of the strongest arguments which could possibly be brought in favor of this method of using them.

Among the various other uses of the potatoe are the following. They are named in the order of their departure from what I consider to be its most perfect state, as already described.

MASHED POTATOES.--The potatoe is least injured by simple mashing. Some persons have a great fondness for mashing almost everything they


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eat. The only evil to which the potatoe is then subjected is, that it is rendered a little softer, and demands a little less of trituration and insalivation. I do not despair, in this inventive age, of the discovery of some simple method of preparing the cooked potatoe in such a way, as shall tax the masticatory organs more than now, instead of diminishing their labor.

POTATOE BREAD.--Potatoes with flour, are sometimes used for bread. M. Parmentier, a French chemist, says that if the starch be collected from ten pounds of raw potatoes, by grating them into cold water and agitating the mass properly; and that if the starch thus procured, be mixed with other ten pounds of boiled potatoes, and properly subjected to fermentation, like wheat flour, it will make as good bread as the finest wheat. I know not how this is, having never witnessed the experiment.

In times of scarcity, however, I have repeatedly known good, sweet and wholesome bread, prepared from wheat flour and boiled potatoes, in the proportion of about eighteen pounds of the former to nine of the latter. Dr. Darwin speaks of this sort of bread in terms of high praise. Steaming or roasting the potatoe for the purpose, by rendering it more dry, would probably make the bread still


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better. From experiments recently made in Boston, I believe that the unbolted wheat meal is better for the purpose than flour. However, I regard this as an unnatural use of the potatoe, and unless in times of scarcity, of little value to a country abounding in bread stuffs which are better.

POTATOES AND MILK.--In eating the potatoe in milk, its character is not materially altered. The only serious evil which it involves, is the neglect of the teeth and the salivary glands.

POTATOE SOUP.--Potatoe soup is more objectionable, because the potatoe is in a state which requires less mastication. If anything oily is mixed with the soup, it adds to its indigestibility.

Mashing with turnips, aside from the fact that butter, pepper, &c., are often added to the mixture, would not be much worse than simple mashing without any mixture.

The addition of pepper, mustard, horse-radish, and above all, of vinegar, to potatoes, is an abuse of still greater magnitude and flagrance. The only condiment which ought, at most, to be used in this case, is a little salt.

I have known pies made of potatoes; but the potatoe is so changed, that whether injurious or not, it does not, in this form, deserve attention.

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"HASH."--Minced victuals, or hash, that is, potatoes, turnips and other vegetables, chopped finely and mixed with meat, to which pepper and other condiments are added, is a still wider departure from simple nature. The fact that so many healthy people eat and highly relish it, and perceive no bad effects from it, no more proves it to be healthy, than the fact that many healthy people have long used coffee and tea, and even spirits, with apparent impunity, proves these things also to be healthy.

Mashed potatoes, with butter, gravy and other condiments, or potatoes in any form in connection with oily substances, are fully believed to be highly improper for the healthy stomach.

FRIED POTATOES.--But of all human folly connected with the art of cooking the potatoe, is the practice of slicing and frying it. It is sometimes fried alone; at others, with apples, onions, and other vegetables; and sometimes with meat. In some of the southern states, even the sweet potatoe is fried, in precisely the manner of our common dough nuts.

In the spring, it is well to cut off a slice from the smaller or seed end of the potatoe, before it is cooked, because this part is apt to be watery; and


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unless cut off, may injure the rest of the potatoe. Care should also be taken of potatoes in the spring, to break off the sprouts as fast as they appear.

Potatoes keep in the freshest state in the cellar, if not too damp; but I prefer putting them in an upper chamber or garret, as soon as the weather is so mild that they will not freeze. Lastly, and as a universal rule, potatoes and all other vegetables should be kept as cool as possible, provided they are not in any danger of being touched by frost.

"If you wish to have potatoes mealy, do not let them stop boiling for an instant," says Mrs. Child. "In Canada, they cut the skin all off, and put them in pans to be cooked over a stove by steam. Those who have eaten them, say they are mealy and white looking, when brought upon the table, like large snow-balls."

One thing remains to be told respecting the potatoe. Being of a poisonous family, everything which indicates imperfection in it, indicates at the same time, an approach to the poisonous character. Small potatoes, and those which, though large, are less mealy, are less healthy; still it is not quite correct to say they arepoisonous. But those which, during their growth, protrude from the earth, and have a green appearance, are believed to be actually poisonous.

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> CHAPTER XIV.

> BEANS AND PEAS.

Beans and peas produce flatulency. Why. How they should be cooked and used. Green peas and beans. Their pods. Bread of peas and beans. Puddings. Pea soup. Bean porridge.

THE complaint has been almost universal, that peas and beans, especially the latter, produce flatulence, and are heating and indigestible. Some even say they contain little nourishment. Nothing better shows the superficial views taken by most writers on diet, than these statements. The truth is, that beans and peas, instead of containing "little nourishment," are among the most nutritious substances which enter the human stomach. Indeed, it is owing to this fact, more than to anything else, that they have been accounted indigestible. There is, indeed, a great difference in both of them, in regard to nutritive properties; but five ounces of those which are least nutritious, contain more nutriment than eight ounces of the best beef steak or ordinary butcher's meat.

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As to their heating and flatulent tendency, this arises, in part, from wrong methods of cookery. Rice prepared in the same way, that is, with fat meat or butter, and eaten hot and with other things which usually accompany beans, would produce the same effects, in a degree. The fault, therefore, I repeat it, lies chiefly in our modes of cooking and eating them.

They should be cooked in pure water, and nothing should be added to fit them for the table, but a little salt. They should also be eaten for breakfast; and either alone or with bread. Those who are vigorous, and who dine as early as twelve o'clock, may eat them at dinner, if they prefer it; but breakfast is thebest hour; and they should never be eaten at evening.

I have said they should be eaten alone, or with bread. At first, I would make at least two thirds of the meal of good coarse bread; but I would afterwards gradually withdraw the bread, till the beans or peas constituted the principal part of the meal. In this way--and if the other two meals and our general habits were healthy--we should hear little more about their flatulence.

One or two conditions more are indispensable, in regard to the cookery of these substances. They should be prepared so slowly, that they may remain whole as much as possible; and with so


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little water, that they are perfectly dry and mealy. They should also be ripe, or at least full grown It is not only bad economy to eat peas and beans before they are half grown, but it is bad for health, or at least comparatively so. It cannot be, in the nature of things, that green pulse is as wholesome as that which is ripe. Still, green peas and beans, if properly cooked, are very tolerable food compared with many other things. They may be baked or boiled, but are best baked.

The pods of beans and peas are still more unwholesome than their green contents. They are unwholesome boiled; but they are still more so when pickled. The pods of the species of bean, frequently called in New England the cranberry bean, are more wholesome, when boiled with the young bean itself, than most others; but it were better to avoid even this.

Let not the reader regard these views of beans and peas as mere theory. Daniel and his three friends at Babylon, are not the only persons with whom pulse has agreed, when eaten as it should be. I could produce others who would attest to the truth of what I have said, from their own experience. No man can be more sure of their flatulent tendency than I once was. Yet I can now eat a whole meal of either of them, once a day, with the most perfect impunity. The fault, I repeat


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it, is not so much in the nature of the food itself, as in the heat, and butter, and meat, and pepper, and vinegar, and mashing, and softening, which are added.

In some countries, and under some circumstances, it has been common to form these substances into bread. This seems to me entirely useless, if people would follow the directions I have given above; nevertheless, for those who are willing to be at the trouble to prepare it, a suitable proportion of pea meal in bread, is by no means unwholesome. The best bread of this kind, is made of three fourths rye flour, and one fourth peas or beans.

The meal of peas and beans is sometimes formed into puddings; but in this state they are objectionable. It is, indeed, the same thing as to boil or bake them, and then form them into a pulp by mashing; and is attended, usually, with the same results.

Pea soup, though very grateful in cold weather, is neither so wholesome nor so digestible as the pea itself, properly baked or boiled. The same may be said of bean soup, or "bean porridge," as it was formerly called.

Here I am aware I shall oppose a very prevalent opinion among the plain old fashioned people of our community. They tell us our ancestors


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lived much on bean porridge, and yet were remarkably healthy; and they seem to sigh for a return to their primitive habits. Now that bean porridge is quite as wholesome as many of the mixed and high-seasoned dishes, usually found upon our modern tables, I will not pretend to deny; but that any liquid food can ever be as wholesome, to the healthy, as the same amount of nutriment when in a solid form, is to my mind most evident. Had our ancestors, along with the rest of their good habits, lived on bread and milk instead of bean porridge, we, their offspring, at least most of us, should have enjoyed far better constitutions of mind and body, than we now do.

I have often smiled to hear people complain of the degeneracy of modern times, and especially of the feeble constitutions of both males and females, particularly the latter--and yet in the next breath laud some of those very habits of our ancestors, which I have no doubt have had a powerful influence in producing the very degeneracy complained of.

But I must still insist on the usefulness of peas and beans themselves, when properly baked or boiled, notwithstanding the fashionable fears. They are not to be eaten at every meal, it is true, but only as an occasional breakfast or dinner; say two, or three, or four times a week. In this way,


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they are useful, and more than useful; they seem to me almost indispensable. Alluding to this subject, Dr. Paris observes--"It has been said with some truth, that nature would seem to point out the necessity of mixing such food with other grains, for the soil becomes exhausted unless it is alternately sown with grains and pulses; whereas, by such an alternation, the ground is preserved in a condition to afford a constant supply of nutriment." Every intelligent agriculturalist knows the correctness of the principle to which Dr. P. refers; and he who has reflected on the subject, will be apt to derive from it, as he does, a strong argument in favor of variety in human diet--not, indeed, at the same meal, but at different ones. It is at least a strong analogy.

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> CHAPTER XV.

> BUCKWHEAT AND MILLET.

Buckwheat pancakes. In Germany, used for bread, puddings, &c. Hulled buckwheat. Anecdote of Peter the Great. Buckwheat bread in Boston. Millet.

THERE is a wide difference of opinion among intelligent farmers in regard to the nutritive qualities of buckwheat. Some affirm that it is worth almost as much for swine and some other animals, as wheat or corn, while others appear to regard it as nearly worthless. The truth is probably somewhere between the two extremes.

Buckwheat pancakes, sometimes called slap-jacks, or flap-jacks, were formerly much used throughout the eastern and middle United States. They were in special demand during the winter; and are, in many places, very fashionable still. They are a very inferior kind of food, but are most wholesome when eaten alone and nearly cold, or with a very little milk; whereas, they are commonly used hot, and with molasses; or, what is a thousand times worse, covered with melted butter.

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It is quite common also, to allow children to dip pieces of these cakes in the gravy of meat, especially fresh meat, fried. In this way, they are quite as bad as when deluged with butter.

Few, I trust, will use buckwheat in any form, in a country where there is a rich abundance of wheat, rye and corn. The better way, for the most part, is to leave it to oxen, swine, poultry, birds, squirrels and mice, to whom of right it belongs. Peter the Great, however, claimed a right to the use of it. He is said to have eaten it boiled, with butter on it; but we are not told how the hulls were disengaged. Hulled buckwheat could not be very bad food.

I am told that some families in this city have acquired the art of forming buckwheat flour into loaves of tolerable bread--tolerable, I mean, so far as the taste is concerned. Still--I repeat it--it is a heavy, pasty substance, and not very wholesome.

MILLET.--This is much used in eastern countries, as food for horses and cattle, and to fatten poultry. It is also sometimes used by the peasants of Europe for bread. It is, however, more fashionable to make it into puddings; and some prefer it in this way to rice. In America, or at least in New England, it would be hardly worth cultivating.

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> CHAPTER XVI.

> THE BEET, CARROT AND PARSNIP.

Richness of the beet. Boiling, steaming, baking and roasting it. Pickled beets. Medicinal properties. Nature of the carrot. Fit only for strong, healthy stomachs. Seasoning it. Does it prevent intestinal worms? Medicinal effects. The parsnip. How kept. Should it be eaten young?

THE beet, next to the potatoe, is the most nutritive esculent root which comes to our tables. It is not only nutritious, but, if properly prepared, easy of digestion. Its agreeable flavor, moreover, renders it generally acceptable. It contains a very large quantity of sugar,* but not much farina or meal.

[Editorial note: This note appears at the bottom of the page in the original text.]

* Of some kinds of beet, fourteen pounds are said to produce a pound of sugar. Great efforts are now making, in many parts of our country, to introduce this species of manufacture among us.

The best ways of cooking the beet are boiling, steaming, baking and roasting. Boiling is the most common mode. The time requisite to boil the beet well, is said to be about an hour and a half.

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There are many fine varieties of the beet; but the deep red beet, of a size rather large, is thought by many to be the richest and best.

Willich says that some less flatulent root, such as parsley, celery, or even potatoes, ought to be used with the beet; but, if eaten slowly and in moderate quantity only, it does not often prove flatulent to healthy people. The last mentioned writer recommends it for supper, to which I am decidedly opposed. None of the esculent roots ought to be used at supper, not even the potatoe. No wonder there is so much flatulence in a world where, after a long day of bodily and mental fatigue and exhaustion, people are allowed to eat things for supper which require the strongest efforts of the digestive powers.

The pickled beet is quite a favorite among us, but it ought never to be eaten. It is also said, that the beet is sometimes stewed with the onion, but that if eaten in great quantity, in this way, is injurious to the stomach. The fried beet is still more injurious. I ought to say, in closing my remarks on the beet, that its mild laxative properties render it most happily adapted--if care is used about the quantity--to regulate the habits of those who are inclined to costiveness. Were mankind duly enlightened in physiology and hygiene, we should find less dependence on medicine


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than we now do. A proper attention to food, drink, air and exercise, would equally prevent such a necessity.

THE CARROT.--This, in many respects, resembles the beet, but is more difficult of digestion. Like the beet, it contains a large proportion of sugar, and is very nutritious. It is best when boiled, steamed or roasted.

The carrot, like other esculent roots--the potatoe itself not excepted--must be used in small quantity by those whose stomachs are not firm and strong. And if such persons attempt to make a whole meal of it, salt should be added, and perhaps spice. To the strong and vigorous, the spice would be injurious; and I would advise others to do with the article when spiced, as some one advises his readers to do with cucumbers, after having prepared them in fine style--throw them away.

It is said by some writers, that this esculent has the property of destroying, or at least preventing the development and growth of intestinal worms. This opinion may or may not be well founded. Whatever gives permanent tone and strength to the stomach and bowels, and through them to the whole system, has a tendency to destroy or prevent the formation of worms; but whatever, on the contrary, weakens the system, favors their


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development and growth. The carrot is, at all events, slightly laxative.

THE PARSNIP.--This, also, is quite as nutritive as the beet and the carrot, and somewhat less flatulent than either; and is easily digested. I am not fond of it, nor of the carrot; on account of its sweetness. If properly boiled, however, and eaten as an occasional meal, when the stomach is in full strength, it cannot be objectionable. Parsnips should be kept in the cellar; and should be excluded from the air by being covered with sand.

These three roots--the beet, the carrot and the parsnip--are said by many dietetic writers to be best while young. I do not know how this is; though I can easily conceive, that in these circumstances, they may be more easily digeseted as well as more nutritious; but it does not thence follow that they are more wholesome.

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> CHAPTER XVII.

> THE TURNIP.

Character of the turnip. Use made of it by the Romans. Mashing it.

TURNIPS are less nutritive than most other esculent roots; but if well boiled or roasted, they cannot be a bad article of diet, for occasional use. They are too innutritious to be used long without bread, or some other solid and more substantial aliment. They are somewhat deceptive in their effects on the stomach; for though they sit easy, they have too little nutriment to form a very rich or nutritious chyle; and hence, perhaps, it is, that physicians have been divided in sentiment respecting their wholesomeness. There is, however, a great difference in the quality of turnips. Some are much richer and of a more uncloying sweet than others. They are slightly laxative; which renders it necessary to avoid using them at too many successive meals.

The ancient Romans, in the best period of their republic--so Dr. Paris says--lived much upon the


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turnip; and I have known several healthy old men who made it a principal article of their diet. It cannot, therefore, be as inefficient, as many persons suppose

It is quite customary to mash the turnip, before it is eaten; and to mix it with mashed potatoe, and to add butter, salt and pepper; and sometimes sauce or gravy besides. Now this is quite incorrect. It should never be mashed except in the mouth; and if this were even admissible, it should not be peppered, or above all, buttered; nor should it be mixed with other substances.

When will people learn to avoid this artificial mashing of their food? Multitudes seem to think they cannot eat so much as a potatoe, until it is mashed and something is added to it. Their beans and their rice even, must be mashed and reduced as much as possible to a soft slippery mass, that will elude the teeth and tongue, and the salivary action. Whereas, nothing ought to be mashed before it is eaten, which can as well be eaten otherwise. This is a universal rule--almost as much so as that two and two make four.

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> CHAPTER XVIII

> THE ONION AND RADISH.

Dr. Paris's opinion. Modes of cooking the onion. How to preserve it. Radishes. Objections to their use.

GREAT use is made of the onion in the United States; but I do not regard it as a very valuable esculent, except for medicinal purposes. It is somewhat stimulant and heating, as well as diuretic. Dr. Paris says it certainly contains a considerable proportion of nourishment; but his manner of expressing his opinion appears to me, to imply doubts of the truth of his own statements. He relates, moreover, from Sir John Sinclair, that a Scotch Highlander, with a few raw onions in his pocket, and a crust of bread or some oat cake, can travel to an almost incredible extent, for two or three days in succession, without any other food. This is not very strange, however. Who could not travel, with crusts of good bread in his pocket, if in sufficient quantity? There is no better food in the world for a person who is to travel violently a few days, than this; but I


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have yet to learn that the raw onions would add much to the amount of real sustenance. They might serve as a condiment.

Since, however, the onion is much in fashion, it may be well to say that the best method of cooking it is either by boiling or roasting; and the worst by frying. The fried onion, either alone or with apples, potatoes or meat, is exceedingly indigestible and unwholesome; and to any but a perverted taste, highly offensive and disgusting. As a medicine, it is sometimes very properly used raw.

Onions should be kept very dry; and the more they are kept in the open air, provided they do not freeze, the better. At all events, they should never be kept in a cellar after March. It is said that boiling onions in milk and water, greatly diminishes their strong taste.

Garlics and chives belong to the same general family of eatables with the onion, and require the same general remarks. The chives, however, are greatly inferior both to the garlic and the onion.

THE RADISH.--Radishes, though often eaten, are miserable things; not so much because they contain but little nutriment, as because they are too acrid and stimulant, and withal, very indigestible, especially when old. They produce much flatulence, also, unless in the very strongest stomachs.

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> CHAPTER XIX.

> THE SQUASH, PUMPKIN AND TOMATO.

The squash. Boiled. Made into pies. The pumpkin. Pies. The tomato.

THE squash is usually eaten in an unripe state. It is roasted, boiled or baked. Boiling is the most common mode of cooking it. There are few persons who are fond of it, however, in its simple state; and hence few are fond of it at all. They are more fond of the butter and other seasoning applied to it. Some of the better sorts of squashes are permitted to get nearly ripe before they are gathered; and a few varieties will keep with care till winter. The squash simply boiled, when ripe, and pies with an under crust, made of coarse meal, or even without crust, are by no means among the worst kinds of food.

The squash should never be kept in the cellar, unless to prevent freezing. Dampness greatly injures it. It requires a dry warm room to keep well.

The pumpkin is seldom if ever used till quite ripe, which renders it better food than the squash.


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Some of the new settlers of the western states, when they first locate themselves on the soil, are said very frequently to alternate their corn bread and cakes with roasted pumpkins; and they deem them wholesome. Plain sauce from them, when boiled or baked, is almost equally common. But pumpkin pies are, in almost all parts of New England, as well as other regions of the United States, regarded as quite a luxury. The common method of making the crust renders them objectionable; but if, as was proposed in regard to the squash, in the last paragraph, the crust were made more simple, an objection would remain, which is, that this species of food does not require mastication enough. Nor is it, after all, very nutritious.

THE TOMATO.--Of the tomato or love apple, I know very little. It is chiefly employed as a sauce or condiment. No one, it is believed, regards it as very nutritious; and it belongs, like the mushroom and the potatoe, to a family of plants, some of the individuals of which are extremely poisonous. Some persons are even injured, more or less, by the acid of the tomato. Dr. Dunglison says it is wholesome and valuable; but a very slight acquaintance leads me to a different opinion.

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> CHAPTER XX.

> CABBAGE, LETTUCE, GREENS, &c.

Cabbage of little value. How best adapted to use. Boiled. Raw. Sour crout. Eaten with ham and chesnuts. Lettuce. Anecdote of Galen. Greens and celery.

THE chief claim of the cabbage to our attention is founded on the fact, that it is one of the comparatively few things that can be preserved during the winter. And yet it is far inferior to the potatoe, the beet, the carrot, the parsnip, the apple, the pear, and even the onion. Still, as many will eat it, if they like it, in defiance of consequences, it may be well to say a few words respecting it.

For those whose stomachs have preserved their original integrity, or who having once lost it have since regained it, cabbage is best when boiled, with a little salt. It needs to boil about an hour. The addition of vinegar, after it is boiled, renders it more quickly digestible, but the vinegar injures the stomach more than the cabbage would by digesting a little more slowly; and therefore I


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cannot advise its use.
For the stomach, as it is usually trained, and as we find it almost everywhere in life, weak and inefficient, and unable to work without the application of "whips and spurs," I suppose that raw cabbage, sliced fine and eaten with pepper, salt and vinegar, is the most useful form of this vegetable; and next to this, the German sour crout.

I do not say that this sour crout is the most palatable preparation of the cabbage for the table, except to those who have been trained to it from infancy; but only that it is digestible, nutritious, and little injurious to the powers of the stomach. This is one of the dishes which Capt. Cook made use of among his sailors, in his long voyages round the world; and I have no doubt it had, on them, in these circumstances, a most happy medicinal effect. No one will, for one moment, however, be likely to suppose that the cabbage was as useful as many other vegetables would have been, could they have been preserved in an equally healthful and perfect state.

Willich says of the red cabbage, by which I suppose he must mean the purple, that as the French and Germans eat it, that is with ham and chesnuts, it is indigestible, heating, flatulent and laxative, and contains no nourishment. That the ham would be indigestible there can be no doubt


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and it would probably require stronger stomachs than most we meet with now-a-days, to digest a combination of ham, cabbage and chesnuts.

LETTUCE, &c.--Lettuce, greens and celery, though much eaten, are worse than cabbage, being equally indigestible without the addition of condiments. Besides, the lettuce contains narcotic properties. It is said of Galen, that he used to obtain from a head of it, eaten on going to bed, all the good effects of a dose of opium. For condiments, when eaten, oil and the yolk of eggs have been often added to it; but some prefer a mixture of salt, vinegar, and sugar or molasses. It is at best hard of digestion, and contains very little nutriment; and if eaten at all, should be eaten in the morning, or when the stomach is strongest.

All these crude substances seem to me uncalled for, and unnecessary. Why should the healthy stomach be filled with such trash, when it would relish and even prefer that which is, to say the least, less doubtful? For variety's sake, will it be replied? But we have variety enough without it. Besides, few people will eat such things without vinegar, oil, pepper, or some other objectionable substance added to them.

One person, in conversation with me on this subject, said that he believed greens could not be


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unwholesome, for he knew a man who was in the constant habit of using them every spring, for several years, and yet remained remarkably healthy. "But," said I, "did not the same person eat bacon daily, during all this time?" "Most certainly," he replied. "And which do you think is worst, bacon or greens?" "Bacon, by far." "But do you think that the fact, that he ate bacon without immediate suffering, proves that too to be harmless?" "Oh no, by no means." "Then why do you make such a conclusion, in regard to greens?"

As to the gourd, it is not much used, in this country, as food; but its pulp is a favorite dish among the lower classes of people in Arabia and Egypt. They boil it, or make it into a sort of pudding, by filling the shell with rice and meat.

One word, in this place, respecting asparagus. The young shoots of this plant, boiled, are the most unexceptionable form of greens with which I am acquainted. They approach, in their nature, to green or half grown peas, and are probably about as wholesome.

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> CHAPTER XXI.

> ARROW-ROOT, TAPIOCA, SAGO, &c.

Nutritive properties of arrow-root. Made into jelly. Eaten with rice. Sago. Mushrooms.

ARROW-ROOT is one of the most nutritious vegetable substances in the world. Salep, sago and tapioca, and even the starch of the potatoe, have a very strong resemblance to it in their properties, but are none of them quite so purely nutritious.

As a sort of substitute for other forms of food, especially in bowel complaints, the jelly formed from these substances is exceedingly valuable. Arrow-root is not only valuable by itself, but is often very useful mixed with rice. I have seen these two substances, in various proportions, administered to the sick and the feeble, with great evident advantage, especially where there was much unnatural heat or febrile action. For the consumptive, sago appears to be more particularly adapted than either of the others.

None of these substances, notwithstanding the great amount of nutriment they contain, are so


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digestible as is generally supposed. We are probably deceived, by their quiet, unstimulating character. This comparative quiet we mistake for agreement; but this is not the end of the matter.

I have sometimes wondered how sago, and arrow-root, and tapioca jellies and puddings came to be so popular, even at fashionable tables, as we often find them. But the fact is, that they are precisely that sort of substances which admit and even demand, a great many additions, as milk, sugar, sauces and condiments; and they require but little mastication. These, though objectionable in point of health, are, to the fashionable, high qualifications. Yet the only condiment which is at all compatible with health, in this case, seems to me to be milk or cream. To the perfect stomach they are, like nearly all other substances, the most wholesome alone, taken as an occasional breakfast or supper. Still, they do very well conjoined with bread, or even with mealy potatoes.

THE MUSHROOM.--Strange that mankind should ever have used the mushroom. All the various species of this substance are of a leathery consistence, and contain but little nutriment. The condiments or seasonings which are added are what are chiefly prized. Without these, we should almost as soon eat saw dust as mushrooms.

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> CHAPTER XXII.

> ON FRUITS IN GENERAL.

Second grand division of aliments. Principles interspersed. Apology for the order and arrangement.

THE second grand division of human aliments is fruits. These, with some exceptions, I have endeavored to place, like the farinacea, in what appears to me to be the order of their value.

I have also interspersed with my remarks on almost every article, but especially in the chapters on apples and pears, much collateral and general information. I have done this for two reasons--first, because the thoughts seemed naturally to arise, while treating of these subjects, and as I supposed might naturally arise in the same connection in the minds of many of my readers; and secondly, because I was willing, by extending a little some of the principal chapters on fruit, to inculcate or at least suggest the idea of their great importance. Fruits, as a real and essential part of human diet, at our daily meals, have, for the most part, been strangely and unaccountably overlooked.

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There is a prejudice among us against foreign medicines; but in order to be consistent, we ought to extend our prejudice to foreign drinks and aliments. There may be, and undoubtedly is, some general truth in the doctrines upon which this prejudice is founded; nevertheless, as I conceive, they are carried too far. Were our foreign imported aliments perfect in their kinds--fruits among the rest--I should have less objection to their use than I now have. But it does seem to me very unreasonable to use imperfect, unripe, dried or half-decayed substances, merely because they came across the water, in preference to our equally rich and more perfect domestic productions.

The fruits which have been made the subjects of remark in the progress of the following chapters, are principally the following:--The apple, pear, peach, apricot, nectarine, strawberry, raspberry, blackberry, whortleberry, gooseberry, currant, cherry, plum, melon, fig and raisin. To these are added, for the sake of convenience, the chesnut, walnut, hazelnut, peanut, &c. The chesnut most properly belongs in the same general division with peas and beans.

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> CHAPTER XXIII.

> THE APPLE.

The apple one of the Creator's noblest gifts. Varieties of this fruit. Little used for food. The apple very nutritious. Sweet apples. Rules for selecting the apple. Raw apples best. Baked apples. Why apples sometimes "disagree." Five rules for learning to use apples as food. Apples for breakfast. Accompaniments. Boiling apples. Apple sauce. Danger of putting it in home-made earthen vessels. Stewing apples. Baking and roasting. Baked apples and milk. Apple dumplings. Puddings. Bird's nest puddings. Fried apples. Preservez. Mince pies. Improved mince pies. Other preparations of apples. Apple bread. All apples should be perfect. Never cook green apples.

THE apple is one of the noblest gifts of the Creator to man. It may be raised, in a tolerable degree of perfection, in almost every country of the temperate zone; and to some extent, in the torrid.

One society in Europe has twelve hundred varieties of this fruit; and in a single garden at Flushing, Long Island, may be found four hundred and thirty.

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The apple has hitherto been but little used for food. It has, indeed, been mixed with meat to form a very unwholesome compound, well known by the name of mince pie; and it is sometimes used to form pies by itself. But the most familiar and frequent use of it at the table, in the interior of New England, is in the form of what is usually called apple sauce--the more common method of preparing which consists in boiling the apples in sweet or unfermented cider. In general, however, as I have already said, the apple has been used comparatively little at meals.

I do not know what are the respective proportions of nutritious and innutritious matter contained in the apple. These doubtless vary greatly, according to the quality. From the great amount of saccharine substance contained in the sweet apple, and from experiments recently made on its use among domestic animals, not a doubt can remain that it is sufficiently nutritious to be received at our tables, and to hold a more conspicuous place there than has usually been allotted to it.

I have known many families of children who, during the latter part of summer and the early part of autumn, lived almost wholly upon apples, and yet seemed well nourished and healthy. I think I have observed, however, that such children incline a little more to verminous diseases than


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other children, as well as to bowel complaints and corpulence. This is probably because they eat them between their meals, use them in too large a quantity, and do not make a proper selection. They eat much of this sort of fruit which is unripe or imperfect.

Indeed, most kinds of the apple, as it is usually procured by children, are of an inferior quality. Very little pains has been taken among the mass of our farmers to cultivate the best kinds. They have been raised, after all, chiefly for cider; and the notion that small, sour, knotty apples make the best cider, has been so extensively prevalent, along with a want of enterprise or any hearty desire for improvement, as to prevent the introduction, to any considerable extent, of such noble fruit as the New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey pippins, and the New England pearmains, greenings, seek-no-furthers, gilliflowers and russets.

Sweet apples are probably more nutritious than sour ones, although the fact that the latter make nearly or quite as much cider as the former, would seem to prove that even these are sufficiently nutritious for all the purposes of health. Few persons reject the turnip, the cabbage, or the tops of the asparagus, on account of any supposed deficiency of nutritious matter; and yet I cannot resist the belief, that good, ripe, mealy sour apples, not too


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sour, are far more nutritious; and that good sweet apples are even as nutritious as the beet or the carrot, if not as much so as the potatoe.

There is a very great difference in the quality of apples. Some are much coarser grained than others. Some are more dry. Some have thicker and tougher skins. Some have their juices and pulp better developed in particular soils or in dry seasons, than in others. There are a few general rules which will probably assist us in the selection of this important article of food.

1. The larger and more perfect apples on a tree are usually the best. Not that apples naturally small are not sometimes as good as those naturally large; for I am not here speaking of a selection from different trees, but from the same tree.

2. Apples from a given tree or stock are, as a general rule, more perfect in their juices, more wholesome, and probably more nutritious, in proportion as their color is deep or intense. Thus, if the color is green, the more intense the color the better. If light red, the fruit is more perfect in proportion to the brightness of the red. If yellow, its excellence is in proportion to the depth or intensity of that yellow. Any one may satisfy himself of the truth of this remark, by a little observation. The remark may even be extended to different trees. Thus, of the fruit of two trees,


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both bearing dark green apples, that will usually be the best whose color is most intense or perfect, and that the worst whose color is most faint or pale. The apple has a degree of life--a kind of vital force or power;--and this vital force is in proportion to the perfection of its qualities.

3. The more mealy the pulp of an apple, provided it is not tasteless, the more digestible. I know it is thought otherwise by most writers. They tell us that both apples and pears are best when they are most melting or juicy. They may be more nutritious, without being any more digestible; and hence, probably, the mistake. I am confident that the most juicy apples--sweet or sour--are far from being most easy or most rapid of digestion.

4. The perfection of an apple is somewhat in proportion to the fineness and the firmness of its pulp. A loose, spongy or stringy pulp is not only less digestible, but less wholesome and nutritious than one which is the contrary.

5. Apples with a thin skin, other things being equal, are richer and better than those which have thicker and tougher skins.

6. They should be eaten, as much as possible, in their most perfect or most ripe state.

7. To preserve the apple in the most perfect state, it should be kept in a pure and dry air. It


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is not by any means uncommon, to put apples in a damp place; or in large piles, where they seem to gather and retain moisture. They are always injured by this treatment, even though they should not go so far, at once, as to begin to decay.

The apple is most conducive to health when eaten in its raw or natural state; not merely because in its natural state--the state in which the Author of nature has prepared it, though even this deserves our attention--but because in this way it requires and receives more perfect mastication. If the skin is very hard or firm, possessing a sharpness which the digestive powers cannot readily overcome, it may be removed. The paring should be thin, however, as the best of the apple is believed to be nearest the skin.

Baking or roasting renders most apples somewhat sweeter than they would otherwise be; but it may justly be questioned whether the process at all improves them--to say nothing of its lessening the demand upon the teeth and salivary glands. To say they are unwholesome in this state, absolutely so, would indeed be wrong; but to say that for those who are in perfect health, they are usually more wholesome in their natural state, than when cooked, is quite correct. It can hardly be denied, that they are often more nutritious when cooked; but one of the advantages of fruits is,


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that they furnish to the stomach a supply of innutritious substance.

We are often told by adults--seldom if ever by children --that raw apples do not agree with them. If this circumstance proves anything against their use, it proves too much. There is hardly an article of diet, however wholesome in its nature, which has not been found to disagree with some individual or other. Milk, rice, beans, corn, potatoes, corn bread, and almost every sort of bread, and even cold water, cannot be borne by some individuals; so they tell us. Will any one pretend that they ought not therefore to be used?

No doubt raw apples lie heavy on the stomachs of some persons. For though the experiments of Dr. Beaumont and all other experiments of the kind, go to show that the ripe mellow apple, especially the sweet apple, is exceedingly quick and easy of digestion, when used in a proper manner, there are numerous circumstances of civic life which may render it the contrary of all this.

1. Apples may lie heavy on a person's stomach if he eats too many at once, especially when he has long been unaccustomed to their use. Such a person should not begin with using a dozen or two at a time. I would begin with half or one third of an apple of moderate size; or even less, if this should not sit well. The quantity, when


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we have not taken too much at once in the outset, may be afterwards slowly increased.

2. They may not sit well, if they are only half masticated. Some persons never think of making it a principle to masticate an apple as thoroughly as possible. This is not to be wondered at, in a world where it seems to be the grand aim of everybody to masticate their food as little as possible. But though not to be wondered at, it is to be regretted; for there is hardly anything which is rendered slow and difficult of digestion by being swallowed whole, in as great a degree as apples. They ought to be reduced to as fine a pulp as possible.

3. Apples will lie heavy--more readily, perhaps, than some other things, which could be named--when eaten after we have already taken a full meal. Too much of the simplest and most digestible food is always an evil, but when to enough and more than enough of something else, you add a quantity of apples, and especially when only half masticated, it is no wonder they do not agree.

4. Apples sometimes disagree when eaten between meals. If the stomach is ever so strong, it will need rest when it has got through with the work of digesting a meal. But if we go and eat apples about the time the digestion is completed, and thus, instead of permitting the stomach to rest,


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however fatigued it may be, set it to work again, we can scarcely expect it to do its work well. Nor can we reasonably wonder or complain, if it should refuse to work at all, and the new substance should be to it, for some time, as a dead weight or foreign substance.

5. The same lying heavy on the stomach will often happen in consequence of eating fruit at a wrong time of day, especially if a person is not very robust. Thus the feeble will sometimes bear apples, if they begin with a small quantity and masticate them well, in the morning, when they cannot be made to sit well at evening. They should be eaten by the feeble at their meals, and when their digestive powers appear to be strongest. With most, this is at breakfast; but with some, perhaps, at dinner.

There are very few persons in the world on whose stomachs apples appear to lie heavy, who could not gradually bring themselves to use them with impunity, by observing the cautions which I have mentioned.

To the individual of perfect appetite--though I do not yet know where such an individual can be found--the best way probably is to make a breakfast--now and then--of apples alone. He must, however, get rid of the fashionable idea that they are not hearty enough; and that they will not give him


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strength. No healthy man will suffer for want of strength to labor, simply because he ate nothing for breakfast but apples. They are fully as nutritious as turnips, onions, asparagus, carrots and beets; and sweet ones probably much more so; perhaps as much so as potatoes.

He must, however, have full faith in them. He who only half believes his breakfast will sustain his strength, will be very likely to imagine a falling off at eleven, just as the dram-drinker does, for want of his dram; but he who does not expect anything of the kind, will rarely experience it;--so powerful is the influence of mind over body.

For those, however, who in consequence of their erroneous habits, early formed, cannot or think they cannot receive these doctrines, or who would feel that they were doing penance to confine themselves to a breakfast of even the best sweet apples, I will give some further general directions.

Where apples are made a part only of our meals, they should be conjoined with such things as most resemble them in their tendency. I know this is not the general belief. An entirely different view is frequently taken. The principle is almost universal, that contraries should be eaten to counteract unfavorable tendencies. Vegetables, for example, must be set off against meat, and meat against vegetables; and fruits which are juicy and


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pulpy should be conjoined, it is thought, with dry bread or some substance not unlike it. Again, sauces and preserves must be taken, it is thought, with meat.

The objection to this prevalent belief is founded on the great leading principle, that each meal should be as little complicated as possible. If sweet apples are to form a part of a meal, instead of using dry flour bread with them, I should prefer sweet potatoes, pumpkins, beets, carrots, or even common potatoes. Contraries I would withhold till the next meal; though I would be careful to use them then.

It is no wide departure, however, from physiological truth to eat the apple in small quantity, either at breakfast or dinner, with any article we choose, which is wholesome. I have stated the abstract truth, and happy is he who can live up to it; but let us not complain of him who cannot, or who thinks he cannot. Let him, also, who cannot use the stronger food, be allowed for a time to use that which is weaker; provided, however, that he comes up at all times, to his own convictions of duty--his own standard of right and wrong--his own conscience.

Much has been said by dietetic writers on the importance of boiling apples, pears and other fruits. They say it expels the wind. Now I


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doubt whether the wind in an apple would ever give us any trouble, if the stomach was in a good and sound state. If boiling the stomach would give it tone, it might be well to boil that; but if it has not tonic power enough to digest a good raw apple at breakfast time, properly masticated, it is high time it were trained to do so; and eating boiled apples would probably weaken it rather than strengthen it.

The truth is, that such stomachs as cannot digest simple things have already been humored too long; they want solid things. We must begin of course with small quantities at a time. He alone who can eat a raw apple, is fit to eat a boiled one. To him who can eat raw fruit, however, that which is boiled is pretty near the physiological truth; and in this view I commend its use. I have already alluded to apple sauce made by boiling down the apples in sweet, unfermented cider. This, next to boiling, is one of the best modes of cooking the apple; and seems to be so common among us, that it would be almost useless to declaim against it, were it not so.

I must here insert a caution to all housewives, who make apple sauce, pear sauce, quince sauce, or any other sauce or article of food which contains an acid, or in which an acid of any kind can possibly be developed by any change to which it


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may be exposed by standing, not to put it in the common red carthen vessels. The reason is, that these vessels are glazed with an oxyde of lead which is readily dissolved by vegetable acids, forming a poisonous compound. If the acid happens to be the acetic acid--the same with that of vinegar--the substance formed is the acetate of lead, or sugar of lead--as poisonous almost as ratsbane. If it is some other acid that is formed, still the result is a poison. Many house-keepers have observed that the glazing comes off; but, in general, without knowing the reason, or dreaming of any danger. The lighter colored stone ware is usually glazed with melted salt, which renders its use for culinary purposes perfectly safe. On this subject, the curious reader may find some important facts in the "Library of Health," for July, 1837.

The red earthen vessels of which I have spoken are extensively used, and people are as extensively poisoned. Few, indeed, die outright; nor are the causes of disease so obvious, in every instance, that physicians at once detect them. Besides, where these causes alone produce disease once, they probably fall in with and aggravate other diseases produced by other causes, a hundred or five hundred times.

There can be no doubt that hundreds of lives are lost every year among us by errors in cooking,


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and in preparing food, drink, medicine, &c. But for one who dies, hundreds, if not thousands, are more or less injured; some of them for their whole lives.

Next, in point of usefulness and saftey to the plain boiling of apples, is the process of stewing. They are pared, cut into quarters, and after being put into a vessel with a little water, slowly softened for the table. This is much better than boiling them in cider, but is less economical, because it must be repeated oftener; since apples prepared in the former mode, much sooner spoil.

Next to stewing come the processes of baking and roasting. Indeed, I regard these three or four processes of cookery as nearly on a par with each other. Boiling is the most natural; stewing is next, if they are not made too soft by it; next, baking; and lastly, roasting.

There is a very general fondness, in this country, for baked apples with milk, especially sweet ones. Of all the compounds used as food, this is one of the most natural; and it seems to me, to be one of the slightest and least objectionable departures from truth which can be named in modern cookery.

Apple dumplings are not very objectionable, were it not for the crust;--I mean when they are simple. If spices are added, they become injurious. The great objection is the crust. This is


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usually a flour paste; nor is the state of things much better when the paste is made partly of potatoes. Unbolted wheat meal is preferable to either. But why should we have the apple dumpling at all? Few would prepare it, or eat it after it was prepared, were it not for the crust, and above all, for the butter, the sauce, or the sugar added to it; but all these are objectionable.

Apple puddings are so nearly of the nature of the last mentioned, that it is sufficient barely to mention them. There is, however, the bird's nest pudding, which is more than injurious, to say nothing of the waste of time in its preparation.

To fried apples, as to all other fried food, I must strongly object, and for the same reason:--they are thereby rendered exceedingly difficult of digestion.

Apples preserved in sugar or any other similar substance, are still further removed, if possible, from a state of nature than in any of the preparations yet mentioned, if we except the fried state. Drying apples, as it involves so much unnecessary labor, is by no means to be encouraged. There is no difficulty in preserving raw apples till June or July, when new fruits begin to appear, if we take the necessary pains; and though not absolutely perfect in the raw state, after they have been so long kept, they are nevertheless far better than if preserved in any other manner.

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Perhaps, after all, the use of apples chopped fine and mixed with meat, as in mince pies, is as objectionable as any. These mince pies, when made in the best manner, are bad enough; but when made up not only with lean meat, but with the addition of suet, spices, raw and dried fruits, wine, brandy, &c., and put into the usual forms of pastry, they become--as Dr. Paris says of pastry alone--an abomination.

The best and most rational method of making mince pie of which I have ever heard, was recently communicated to me by a lady of this city. Its principal excellency consists in the fact, that while it retains all the sensible properties of ordinary mince pie, it is comparatively simple, and contains not a particle of meat or suet, or a drop of wine or spirits; and the crust is of unbolted wheat meal, with no more butter than is just necessary to prevent its adhering to the platter. It is quite a discovery; and is a most happy substitute for the old fashioned mince pie. On this account I have inserted in another place a recipe for preparing it. Still, it is an article which I do not mean to recommend to my readers. There are many other better modes of using apples than to use them in any such compound, however great may be its comparative innocency.

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As to pancakes, fritters, cheese, cheese cakes, biscuits, trifles, jelly, marmalade and creams, prepared with apples, they are scarcely worth naming.

Apple bread is a French preparation, which appears to be comparatively unobjectionable, and which I would not discourage, as an occasional variety for those who have not yet attained to that simplicity of taste which is desirable. The mode of preparing it will be found in the chapter of recipes; but I think the French mode is susceptible of improvement, especially by substituting unbolted wheat meal for flour.

Let me once more remind the reader that all apples, however used, should be perfect. Some persons begin to use them before they are more than half ripe. They stew them, make them into sauces, pies, &c.; but not without the addition of sugar, molasses, spices and other ingredients. I am wholly opposed to the use of green fruits of every sort. The juices of all green fruits are very different from those of ripe ones. Their acids are less wholesome than after they are changed by the action of the sun in ripening; nor does the addition of saccharine substances in preparing them, at all change their real nature. They are still there; they are only concealed. The oxalic acid is still oxalic acid, cook green fruits as you will. No culinary process--I repeat it--can be substituted


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for, or produce the effects of solar action. The Creator, in many instances, by means of the sun, performs the most perfect culinary processes; and nature is often the best kitchen and cook.

Not only should all fruits be perfectly ripe, but they should be perfect in their structure and character. Many people, in order to save them, use the more perfect parts of those which are partially decayed or infested with worms, for pies or sauce; and seem to think that by the addition of seasonings they remove, in some good degree, their natural evil tendency. Formerly, the worthless part of our apples went to form cider; but now, since cider is becoming unfashionable, those people who wish to save every particle of their fruit, whether wholesome or not, contrive to use it all up in the family. I hardly need to repeat, that no imperfect fruit is fit for the human or even the brute stomach, at least so long as we live in a land of such abundance, and can, if we will, just as well have that which is perfect.

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> CHAPTER XXIV.

> THE PEAR.

Quality of pears. Bad ones. Baking and roasting pears. Cautions in preserving them. Forcing maturity. Mealy pears. Cultivation of the pear. Stewing. Drying. Pear jam.

IN general, what has been said of apples, will apply to pears. Next to apples, they are one of the best table fruits of our country. They are best uncooked. Those are usually preferable which have the thinnest skins; and those are most wholesome, though they may not be all at first the most agreeable, which are most mealy. Their excellence, moreover, seems to be, in some good degree at least, in proportion to their sweetness.

There are in fashion among us, certain larger, coarse grained winter pears, which I wish were wholly set aside as injurious. For to say nothing of the great waste of soil in occupying it with the trees that bear them, it seems to me worse than a waste--a perversion--of the powers and energies of the human stomach, to fill it with such miserable


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trash. I know these pears are seldom eaten, how long so ever they may be preserved, in an uncooked state. But, as a general rule which is at least applicable to the fruits, I do not believe substances wholly unfit for the human stomach when uncooked, can be made fit for its use by cookery. The legitimate province of cookery, rationally pursued, is, as I shall insist more strongly hereafter, to improve substances already wholesome, or to increase the quantity of their nutriment. Thus wheat and corn, for example, even uncooked, are quite nutritious; but cookery, besides securing a better mastication, appears to me to improve them; and this is undoubtedly the fact in regard to many of the esculent roots, especially the potatoe.

The time may possibly come, when a cheap method will be discovered of preserving, not only apples and pears, but many other fruits, free from decay, for almost any period desirable. But such a time has not yet arrived; and though apples may be preserved, with pains enough, for a long time without much injury, it is seldom so with pears. And, on the whole, I would not attempt it. Let us make the most of them in their season; and let them be preserved as long as they can well be without special effort; but let us do no more. At least let us not think of preserving those coarse, hard, tough, stringy, unpalatable things which are


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sometimes deemed so valuable, simply that we may waste our precious hours during the winter, in converting them, by the cooking process, and the addition of sugar, molasses, and other things, into a substance, which, after all, is neither so wholesome, nor to an unperverted appetite so palatable, as a good raw apple. We are responsible to God and posterity for the use of our minutes as well as our mouths; for our cents as well as our dollars; and have no more right to be selfish or wasteful of minutes and cents than of months and dollars. If we must or rather will preserve any winter pears whatever, let them be of the finer grained sort; not of those which look within more like the flesh of a sturgeon, than like anything delicate or wholesome.

Some sorts of pears which are merely hard and ill tasted, provided they are not coarse grained and stringy, may be rendered very agreeable and comparatively wholesome, simply by baking or roasting them, without consuming more time than we should dare to account for.

The cautions which were given against putting apple sauce into the common red earthen vessels of this country, are equally applicable to cooked pears and pear sauce.

Rules are sometimes given by writers on dietetics for rendering apples, pears and other fruits


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prematurely mellow; but all such rules are, as I have already said, worse than useless. Fruits should always become perfectly ripe in their own natural way. And even those which ripen soonest on the trees--a sort of scattering first crop--are often imperfect in some way or other.

I have spoken of both the apple and pear as being preferable when the pulp is somewhat dry and fine, and therefore need not repeat my remarks.

It is much to be wished that more pains were taken in New England to cultivate the pear, and to select, in cultivating it, the best varieties. If equal pains were taken, I believe the pear might become nearly as important an article of diet as the apple. Not less than two hundred varieties, fit for the table, are already known to our horticulturists; and one British society has six hundred. Of these some are slightly acid, others slightly sweet; and some exceedingly rich and sugary. A constant succession of this fruit, as well as of the apple, might be had from July to winter.

There are several methods of stewing pears, drying them, &c., but they are not worth knowing. Pear jam is of still less consequence. The only application of fire to this fruit, which is at all tolerable, is in the process of baking, boiling, &c.

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> CHAPTER XXV.

> THE PEACH, APRICOT AND NECTARINE.

Stone fruits in general. Nature of the peach. Cooking it. Drying. The apricot and nectarine.

THERE is a very great variety of opinion abroad in regard to the peach; some affirming that it is one of the most digestible and wholesome fruits in the world; others, that it is cold, indigestible and unwholesome.

None of the stone fruits are probably quite as wholesome, under any circumstances whatever, as the apple and the pear, but are sufficiently so, perhaps, to justify their use as an occasional meal for those who believe in the importance of variety at different meals. They who think we should confine ourselves, through life, chiefly to one article of food, or even to a very few, should not select the peach. Used day after day, it appears to me it would soon injure the tone of the stomach. The stringy nature of this fruit requires strong or at least active powers of digestion; but to persons possessing such powers, an occasional


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meal of the peach is comparatively wholesome. I am not aware, however, that it is ever improved by cookery, even by the simple process of baking. And as to drying, no one ought, on the principles mentioned in speaking of the pear, to think of using dried peaches.

THE APRICOT AND NECTARINE.--The apricot so much resembles the peach, that the same general train of remark will be alike applicable to both. The nectarine, according to Dr. Paris, "is liable to disagree with some stomachs;" but this "disagreement" is no test positive of the excellence of a thing, in a world containing its hundreds of millions of morbid or diseased stomachs.

The peach, the apricot and the nectarine, may be used, in the morning, as a simple natural breakfast for the healthy, after the stomach has had a good night's rest; but I do not say how long the practice might be persisted in with impunity. Apples, or pears, or bread, would indeed be better, would the person be equally well satisfied with them; but if not--if there is a hankering after variety, and a feeling that the peach, &c., are the gifts of God, and that to abstain from them and eat something else, however excellent, is a sort of self-denial--not to say penance--then let them be moderately used.

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> CHAPTER XXVI.

> THE STRAWBERRY.

Prejudice against fruits--how unreasonable. Fruits a preventive of disease. Green fruits injurious. Market fruits very imperfect. Cultivating the strawberry. General laws of summer fruits. Strawberries for breakfast. Eaten alone. Eaten with wine, sugar, milk, &c. Strawberries and bread. Used for luncheon. Preventive of gravel and other diseases.

A PREJUDICE against the summer fruits, which prevails to some extent in this community, is not confined wholly to the more ignorant. As lately as the first appearance of the cholera among us, not a few distinguished physicians retained more or less of this unnatural and ill founded prejudice; and did not hesitate to proscribe the use of all summer fruits as dangerous, and sometimes as the exciting cause of the cholera. Facts, however, did not long bear them out in these views. Multitudes who lived exclusively on vegetables and fruits--especially in New York--wholly escaped the disease, while many of their friends who abstained from fruits and vegetables, and used flesh and fish, though living in the same house, fell victims.

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These facts served to confirm a doctrine which had been advanced long before, and which was repeated at this time, but which even wise men were slow to admit--that instead of promoting disease, the summer fruits, properly used, are most happily calculated to prevent it.*

[Editorial note: This footnote appears at the end of the page in the original text.]

*The author has maintained this same doctrine in an anonymous pamphlet, entitled, "Rational View of the Spasmodic Cholera," published by Clapp & Hull, of this city, in July, 1832, on the first appearance of the cholera in this country.

During the hot season, exposure to great heat and a profuse perspiration, have a debilitating effect on the skin, in which the whole lining membrane of the intestinal canal, by a law of the animal economy, is sure to sympathize. The consequence is, that the functions which are usually performed, both in this canal and the parts immediately adjoining it, are much disturbed, and sometimes the organs become feverish or inflamed. These effects, if the causes I have mentioned continue to operate uninterrupted, may result either in bowel complaint or fever. Probably no small share of our cholera morbuses, diarrhœas, and dysenteries, have their origin in this source.

Now it happens that just as the summer heats begin to be severe, and the lining membrane of the stomach and bowels begins to be irritable and


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feverish, the summer fruits begin to come on. These, if ripe, usually contain a moderate proportion of some gentle, cooling acid, with sugar, mucilage and water. There is, indeed, a difference in them, but they are all, when eaten in proper circumstances, exceedingly cooling to the intestinal canal. So far are they from inviting disease, that they actually have a powerful tendency to repel it.

But there is no valuable earthly blessing which may not be abused. Eaten green, or when we have already eaten enough of something else, or when we are over heated or over fatigued, or when the stomach needs repose, or when they are beginning to decay, all summer fruits may prove injurious, and defeat the very object for which the Author of nature intended them. And yet these are the circumstances under which, after all, most of them are received.

One might think, at first view, that when they are abundant, and cheap, and excellent, there can be little temptation to use what is inferior in quality. And yet such is the eagerness of children for these things, that, unless controlled, they are very unwilling to wait for them to ripen, but are ready to swallow them as soon as they begin to change their color, and sometimes a great deal sooner. Nor are children alone in this. Not a few older persons, who ought to know and do


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better, are as little apt to govern themselves in this matter as children.

The evil to which I now refer is not so great, however, in the country as in the city. There is scarcely a fruit in our market which is not brought in long before it is ripe. The folly of purchasing such fruit, is enhanced by the consideration, that it is not only worse in quality than when ripe, but much dearer. And yet, such is our natural eagerness for fruits, how few resist the temptation!

Few summer fruits are more easily cultivated than the strawberry. I know not how many varieties of it there are, but they are numerous; and some of them make their appearance very early. They may, however, be so managed as to be had in one or another of their varieties, for a period of several months. The strawberry is not only one of the earliest, but one of the most excellent fruits--being not only very wholesome, but highly delicious. The pulp is light, though but little watery; and it does not very readily undergo the acetous fermentation in the stomach.

It is truly surprising that so few persons, in our country, ever think of cultivating the strawberry. A few people around cities and towns raise it expressly for the market; and a few more, especially of the wealthy, cultivate small beds or short rows of it--rather, however, as an occasional treat


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to themselves or their friends, than as a regular, and important, and indispensable article of daily food. The far greater part choose to buy such trash as they can get in the market, rather than be at the trouble to raise for themselves.

In the country, however, where the appetite is somewhat less perverted than in the city, a more extensive use is made of this fruit for a short time, but it is seldom cultivated. The wild species is chiefly relied on.

I repeat it, however, most persons, in city or in country, fail to secure to themselves all the benefits they might from the use of fruits, were they to understand the true philosophy of their nature and use, and practice according to their knowledge. To know how and when to use this single fruit--the strawberry--so as to derive from its use the pleasure, the nourishment, and the health for which nature intended it, is worth more than the knowledge of whole chapters in the art of tickling the palate with condiments and ingenious mixtures, at the certain sacrifice of health and longevity. But it happens that the same general rules which apply to the strawberry, are applicable, with few modifications, to other fruits. This will be a sufficient apology for introducing, under the present head, a few general principles which should govern us in the use of all the summer fruits.

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The black mulberry, says the Encyclopædia Americana, is "in perfection only for a few moments, and that at the time when it can be detached from the tree by a slight shaking of the branches." Now the black mulberry is not wholly singular in this respect. All the fruits, but more particularly the berries, are more or less subject to the same law. Indeed, it is well known of the strawberry, that it exhales the most delightful perfume, and that its flavor is the most exquisite, when, on being perfectly ripe, it is first plucked from the stem. There can be little doubt, that the strength of the odor and the intensity of the flavor of this and other fruits, is always in proportion to their perfection. I believe that as the mulberry is in perfection only a "few moments," so the strawberry and the raspberry are almost equally short lived. The blackberry may retain its perfection a little longer; the cherry and plum longer still; and the currant and gooseberry, perhaps, several days--though of the gooseberry I am more doubtful.

Now the proper inference to be made from all this is, that unless we raise these fruits for ourselves, we are not likely to have them in perfection. They will come to our tables too soon or too late; unripe, or beginning to decay. And though they may not make us immediately sick, because we chance to eat them for once or twice


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when they are not absolutely perfect, yet who will doubt that health and happiness, as well as the immediate gratification of the senses, are most favored by using them in their most perfect state? And following out this idea, who, if he could help it, would ever buy them in a public market?

I grant, most readily, that thousands among us have their senses of taste and smell, even in very early life, so blunted by the errors of modern cookery, that they cannot distinguish the state of absolute perfection of a fruit from its unripe or half putrid state. There are thousands, even of children, to whom a strawberry is a strawberry, though it be not quite ripe, or though it has begun to putrefy. But their ignorance does not prevent their suffering, sooner or later--in their own persons or those of their posterity, or both--the punishment of their transgressions, however ignorant they were in their commission.

It were greatly to be wished that every person would raise his own fruits--especially of the perishable kinds of which I am now speaking. At least he ought to see that they are raised in his own neighborhood.

Like the other fruits I have mentioned, strawberries are most wholesome as the morning meal. How pleasant to pluck them soon after sunrise, in all their native richness and freshness! The labor


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of gathering them, added to the rest of the stomach during the night, is the best possible preparative for their reception. In these circumstances, what more elegant breakfast can possibly be prepared--what more likely to raise the heart in thanksgiving to the bounteous Author of all good--than a basket or dish of strawberries, just from their native vines and stems, with all the richness of fragrance and deliciousness of taste, which in these circumstances cluster around them? And who is there, that with his mixed, heating, heated, greasy breakfast, might not well envy, were envy ever admissable, his more fortunate neighbor, that can command for himself and his rising family, such simple, nutritious, cooling, wholesome and truly philosophic viands?

But shall we then eat them alone? you will perhaps ask. And I ask, in reply, Why not? What objection is there--what objection can there be to making an occasional morning meal wholly of strawberries? Such breakfasts have been made--and enjoyed, too--a thousand times.

If it is said that a laboring person will feel faint before dinner-time after breakfasting on a meal of nothing but strawberries, I answer that this proves nothing against relying on them. It only proves that when we do so, we feel at first, a want of the stimulus which we have been long accustomed to


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use at our breakfast--whether a natural or an unnatural one, the mere sensation of faintness does not determine. The faintness will be felt when we have omitted our bitters, our tea, our coffee, our hot drink of any sort, our animal food, or our condiments; and sometimes when we have omitted solid food and used only that which is liquid. It is felt least, however, in proportion as our meals are simple and our appetites unperverted. Even when they are not so, we have only to repeat the breakfast of strawberries a few times, and the faintness wholly disappears; and if followed by a solid dinner, I mean one of bread or some more nutritious and solid substance, we shall be as well nourished, feel as much strength, and enjoy as much gustatory pleasure, as in almost any other way.

If it is said that fruits are not wholesome in the morning, and this is a reason why we should not make a whole breakfast of them, I reply, by denying the truth of the statement, antiquated as it may be. There is no time in the whole twenty-four hours, according to the general testimony of science and of dietetic writers, when fruits may be more healthfully as well as pleasantly used than in the morning; and the prejudice against their use must have arisen--so it seems to me--among the intemperate or the gluttonous, whose tastes are


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so perverted that they never relish anything simple, especially on first rising.

"But why not use wine, or milk, or cream, or sugar, with them? What possible objection can there be to their use? Whoever felt the worse for using strawberries in milk, or with bread?"

If it is a substantiated physiological truth--and I suppose it is--that one article of food at a meal, provided it is a wholesome article, (for a whole meal of butter and cheese, or meat, would not be so good as if its place was partly supplied by bread or some wholesome vegetable,) is better than more, then however quiet our stomachs may be, or however undisturbed our feelings, after a mixed meal, it cannot be so conducive to health as a simple one. We are very often injured, or at least not benefited so much as we might be--which amounts to nearly the same thing--by an article which sits upon our stomachs perfectly well. When there is obvious disturbance after a meal, or at least pain, we know there is injury; when all is quiet, there may or may not be. It is impossible, by our mere sensations, always to tell.

Hence the principle that everything should be eaten by itself, as preferable to being mixed with anything else, even an article equally excellent. But because the strawberry, like everything else, is best eaten by itself, it does not follow that it is very


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bad eaten otherwise. To be sure, the question may arise whether we have a moral right to use that which is inferior when we can just as well have that which is better; nor can there be but one answer to it.

Strawberries and milk, then, or strawberries and cream, or strawberries and raspberries, or lastly, strawberries and roasted apples--if old apples can be found at this season which are tolerably perfect--are among the best, that is, least injurious mixtures. Of all these, however, strawberries and milk or fresh cream, are the best. They are also tolerable with brown bread; or with bread made of unbolted wheat meal; or even with bread made of the ordinary wheat flour, if not too new.

Sugar with strawberries--or any substance more concentrated than milk or cream, I deem highly objectionable. There is as much sugar in the strawberry itself, if in a perfect state when eaten--and if not, I repeat it, we ought to let it entirely alone--as is well adapted to the most healthy condition of our system. Honey, sugar, molasses, &c. are too concentrated and too cloying in their nature to be the most conducive to health.

Wine is still worse; and yet there are numbers who think the strawberry does not agree with them unless mixed with wine of some sort; and many prefer for this purpose the astringent or port wine.


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But such persons, if residing in the country, must certainly have diseased stomachs. If they reside in the city, and buy their fruits in the common market, there is a natural reason why they should injure them when wine is not added; and if it were absolutely necessary to load the stomach with such unripe and decaying stuff, I would say, take wine with it, for once--and thus relieve the stomach of its indigestible burden. But I would also say, do not load it again in the same manner.

It is disgusting to see healthy, sensible people--sensible I mean in all other respects--putting wine, a poisonous substance, into a rich bowl of perfect strawberries. It seems to me like a kind of profanation. It is, to say the least, a foolish practice; but it is more, it is unreasonable. Nay, more still, it is unhealthy. The use of milk and cream does not seem quite so bad; but pray, why can we not "let well enough alone?" Why reduce everything, or almost everything we eat, to a monotonous state, so as to make it smell or taste of some sort of grease or condiment? Why not enjoy the full happiness of all that variety which the Author of nature intended? Why not eat milk by itself, and take the benefit and the pleasure of it, unaltered by the flavor or smell of fruits of any sort? And why not take each fruit by itself, and enjoy the full benefit of its peculiar flavor and fragrance, without


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making it smell and taste of milk? Is this continual mixing of things a natural, or just, or sensible idea?

I should hardly be disposed to object to an occasional dinner of strawberries, provided the individual had eaten a more solid breakfast, as bread, or corn, or potatoes; though I still think the breakfast hour is the most appropriate time for fruits. But I would not, ordinarily, use two meals, in succession, of strawberries.

Were luncheons at all allowable--for physiologically they are not, except for children--I would say, that next to using fruits at breakfast, the best time for them is at a luncheon, about midway between breakfast and dinner. For laborers who perspire much, and at ten or eleven o'clock become thirsty, and who, imagining themselves hungry as well as thirsty, demand food, nothing can be better than a small quantity of ripe, perfect fruit of some sort; and in its season, I know of none better for this purpose than the strawberry.

I ought, perhaps, just to say, that it has been set down by many dietetic writers as a preventive of the gravel; and it is said, that persons inclined to this disease should eat it with great freedom. As a medicine, however, it is affirmed that the wild strawberry is preferable to the cultivated. I believe that either is salutary. And if it should turn out that the strawberry has no


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specific tendency to the bladder, I should not be greatly surprised. If the fact, that it prevents the gravel should be owing to its general cooling, healthful tendency, it would be just as important that we should use it, as if it had a more specific tendency. Whatever promotes the general health, tends to prevent the development of those particular diseases to which individuals are predisposed. In other words, the best preventive of disease, in every form, is good health. He who so lives, from infancy to maturity, as to secure the most perfect health of all his organs and their functions--if such a person can be found--he it is who need not fear disease. Fevers, pleurisies, bowel complaints, gravel, colds, rheumatisms, consumptions, even, have no terrors for those who act up to the dignity of their own natures, physical and moral. Let them be as much predisposed to these diseases as they may, they cannot touch them. No person should, in hot weather, omit so important an article of diet as the strawberry; nor must we forget to use it in a rational manner. Its use should be directed by the laws of God, in the human frame, rather than imposed by an arbitrary and tyrannical custom or fashion.

I hardly need object, after what has been already said, to preserves, jams, &c., or to strawberry puddings, pies or dumplings

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> CHAPTER XXVII.

> THE RASPBERRY.

Medicinal character of the raspberry. Its varieties. Every family should cultivate it, as they should the strawberry. Difficulties. How overcome. Female labor.

THE raspberry, in its nature, is a good deal like the strawberry, being cooling, gently laxative, and, in the language of medical books, anti-septic--by which is meant that it corrects, in the stomach and bowels, especially during the hot weather, any putrid tendency. It is also spoken of by foreign writers as possessing the same general medicinal properties. It is as nutritious as the strawberry, and I am sometimes inclined to think more so; and it does not more readily become acid in the stomach.

The raspberry grows wild, in the greatest abundance, in many parts of our country; and even in this condition is highly valuable as an article of food. But it is, like the strawberry, easily cultivated; and what renders it as worthy of our attention as the strawberry, if not more so, is the fact


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that it flourishes so well in our northern climate, and in wild, rocky places and light soils; whereas the strawberry requires a soil somewhat excellent. It must, however, be admitted, that a good soil improves the raspberry as much as it does the strawberry.

The raspberry, like the strawberry, is in a state of absolute perfection only a very short time. Still, by cultivating the different varieties--white, purple, red, flesh-colored, yellow, &c.--by planting them at different times, and by watching them from day to day as we would our strawberry beds, and collecting in the morning all such, and such only, as are in their perfect state, we may--if we raise them ourselves--enjoy them for quite a long season. The small seeds of both the strawberry and raspberry have been supposed to render them hurtful, but I think their influence is favorable rather than otherwise. Still, I cannot go so far as to believe, with Willich, that the seeds of the apple and the stones of the cherry are to be eaten for the same reason; that is, for the sake of promoting the action of the intestines.

I do not, however, think it necessary or desirable, that we should raise them to an extent which would give a large family a full meal more than two or three times a week, even in the season when they are in the highest perfection: for the


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season of the strawberry and one or two other fruits, would trench upon that of the raspberry, and we certainly cannot consume everything. A very small patch of ground is sufficient to give a family several morning meals of each--the strawberry and the raspberry--and this, too, with little, if any, interference with other employments.

I have made the last statement, because many of my city and village readers, as soon as they come to my remarks on the importance of having each family raise its own stock of the short-lived summer fruits, will begin to wonder how it can be accomplished. Some suppose it will require the employment of a gardener, native or foreign, and this they think is beyond their means; and so the project will be given up. Some are merchants, manufacturers, or mechanics; and say they have no time. Some will make one apology, and some another; and the consequence will be, as I suppose, that things will remain, after all, about as they were before. But whether they know it or not, all will be more or less influenced, in their apologies and final neglect of the subject, by indolence and the want of a desire for improvement.

That there are indeed some slight difficulties to encounter, I am not disposed to deny. The greatest is a want of the necessary soil. And yet of the whole number of those who are without


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this indispensable preliminary, three fourths, at least, have it in their power to procure it, by purchase or by hire, did they understand, in any good degree, its importance. Most people might, in a little while, make such changes in their external circumstances, as would give them land enough on which to raise their summmer fruits. There certainly is land enough in the world--nay, even around our cities--to give each family a good-sized garden spot.

One trifling difficulty is the want of a knowledge of the best method of raising these fruits. It happens, however, that there is almost always somebody to be found, especially around our towns and villages, who can give the information required, so far at least as to enable us to make a beginning. But let only a beginning once be made, and experience will soon give all further needful instruction. Admitting, however, no knowledge on the subject could be had from the lips of any individual around us, there is another and perhaps better way remaining. This is to get some popular work on gardening, and begin with that for a teacher. In short, I do not believe that a person can be found, who, being fully convinced of the importance of raising his own strawberries and raspberries, ever failed to go on with it. A person quite awake to the subject,


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will always find some means of acquiring all the needful information.

Another difficulty still, will be the want of time. But this is no sort of difficulty at all, when we come to grapple with it. There are few if any families to be found, who cannot command the necessary time for raising a few beds of strawberries, and a small patch of raspberries. Tell me not of the pressure of your employments, your poverty, the necessity of your families, &c. It is to relieve your pressure and necessity, and diminish your poverty, at least in part, that I am writing. There are many shreds of our valuable time, which, for want of some employment of this kind and a disposition to use them, are lost to ourselves and the world. Indeed, there is seldom a family whose male members have not, every year, an abundance of time which they might devote to the accomplishment of all the purposes I have mentioned.

Suppose, however, it were not so. Suppose it were utterly impracticable for any male member of a family to attend to the department of horticulture of which I have been speaking. Are there not females in the family? Do they not need, for the sake of their health, this very exercise? Compare them, degenerated as they are, physically, with the females of the old world, and


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say whether they do not need more exercise in the open air--the mother of a family, especially.

Is it still said, How can the mother of a family find time for this? I shall show how, in the latter part of this work. I shall show how a very large proportion of the time now wasted, and worse than wasted in the repetition, at almost every meal, of half a dozen or a dozen, hot or at least newly prepared dishes, when nothing which can properly be called cooking needs to be repeated, in any ordinary circumstances of health, more than once a day, or even as often as that. It may not be improper, however, just to observe, that the saving of time to the female head of a family and to her daughters, during a single season, by breakfasting a part of the time on fruit uncooked, would be amply sufficient for the purpose of cultivating and gathering it. In other words, it will not take up more time to cultivate and gather fruit for four or five breakfasts (one kind at a time) in a week, even if bread or bread and milk were taken at the same time, than it now takes to prepare the same number of breakfasts in the usual manner. Which is the most pleasant, depends, I suppose, upon circumstances, and especially upon early associations; but the answer to the question, Which is most healthy, has, as I conceive, been long ago settled.

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The notion that out-of-door labor degrades a female, must, as I conceive, be given up. Females can never become what they ought to be, till they are employed more in the open air. Walking--and above all, that kind of movement abroad which goes by the name of "making calls"--can never answer the purpose. It is indeed better than no exercise at all, but it does not come up to the real wants of female nature. It exercises, too much, some parts of the frame, and leaves, almost without exercise, some of the others. Besides, the mind and feelings are not enough refreshed in mere walking. There is something done to the mind and body both, in cultivating and pruning the grape vine, and in weeding, and watering, and attending the strawberry, raspberry, &c., which, so far as I know, cannot be fully accounted for on any known principles of philosophy or physiology, but which is as important to the female as to the male; perhaps more so. The pure air, the fragrance of leaves and blossoms, the natural color for the eye to rest upon, and many more things which I have not room to mention, come in undoubtedly for a share in the result; but there are probably other influences which as yet elude our observation.

After devoting several pages to the consideration of the raspberry, not excluding even the method


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of cultivating it, I shall not be likely to satisfy the expectations of those who are unhappy unless they are perpetually employed in something in the shape of cookery, if I do not just allude to the creams, jams, jellies, marmalades, pies, ices, waters, vinegars, sherbets, sponges, drops, &c., which are sometimes prepared from this rich and delicate substance. But I shall only name them. Those who are determined to spend precious time in making these useless preparations, must consult other works for information respecting them. Like most other books of little comparative worth, they are sufficiently numerous; and sometimes sufficiently expensive.

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> CHAPTER XXVIII.

> THE BLACKBERRY.

The best variety of this fruit. Raising it ourselves. The Dewberry. Prejudice against the high blackberry. Anecdote to show how unfounded it is. Abuses of the blackberry.

THE blackberry, next to the strawberry and the raspberry, is one of the best table fruits in our country; and one which merits much more attention from horticulturists than it has generally received. There are many varieties of this fruit, both high and low. I think the low or running kind the best, on the whole, though by no means the richest or the sweetest. Both kinds, however, are excellent; and they are not near so perishable as many other berries. Still they can be kept but a very short time after they are plucked perfectly ripe from the vines, especially the low or running sort; and therefore it is that I would not advise my readers to buy them from the market. They may possibly be tolerable, bought there, but never excellent. The better way is to raise them, if you


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have a garden or field of your own; and if not, buy them of a neighbor, with the privilege of picking them for yourselves. You can far better afford to give nine-pence a quart for them, if you pick them yourselves, than if you buy them in the public market.

The rules and remarks in connection with the strawberry and the raspberry, will so generally apply to the blackberry, that I need not repeat them. The blackberry forms a most delicious and nutritive breakfast now and then, for those who possess a pure taste; and if it is a little more astringent than the strawberry, it is nearly as wholesome.

The dewberry, though much smaller, appears to be very nearly related to the low or running blackberry in its properties, especially in its astringency; but I think it less wholesome. Much, however, depends on the soil in which it grows. On some soils, and especially in particular seasons, I have observed it to be much sweeter than on others.

There is a very strong prejudice, in many parts of our country, against the high blackberry. It is said to produce the dysentery; and to be always dangerous, but especially so, when that malady is abroad. I remember the time when I would almost as soon have swallowed arsenic as this fruit--so strongly had the impression been made on my mind that it was injurious. The notion of its hurtful or


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dangerous tendency is probably 'part and parcel' of the general prejudice which prevails in reference to all fruits which come about the time, or rather a little before, the arrival of the summer and autumnal diseases.

I remember to have become skeptical on this subject at a very early period of my life. It was not, however, till I became a medical student, that I completely broke the spell in which my mind had been bound. Residing in a neighborhood where the dysentery was raging, and being often requested to render gratuitous assistance, especially by watching with the sick, I was perpetually reminded of the necessity of taking every proper precaution to preserve health. In this state of things, the question arose whether or not I ought to eat fruits, which just at that time were abundant. Contrary to the wishes of my friends, and in spite of the early prejudice which prevailed, I ate ripe fruits, especially pears, very freely, through the whole sickly season, and without apparent injury. I have since done the same, and have known it done by others; always without apparent injury, and usually with obvious benefit. I am aware that a few instances of this kind are not decisive of the question; but they have some weight on my own mind, and serve to confirm opinions otherwise derived. I believe that the high blackberry, used in moderation, for


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an occasional breakfast, might prevent dysentery but would never produce it.

Blackberries are often made into pies, puddings, &c. Blackberry jelly is also very common in fashionable life; and we sometimes hear of blackberry powder. All these, however, as my readers will of course expect me to say, are objectionable. Our blackberry pie is least injurious. Baked with a coarse crust, of unbolted and unleavened wheat meal, the berries retain much of their native excellence. They are not, however, so rich, or delicious, or agreeable to a pure appetite, as when just plucked from the vines and eaten in their native freshness; nor are they as wholesome.

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> CHAPTER XXIX.

> THE WHORTLEBERRY.

An error. The whortleberry with milk. Not improved by cookery. Varieties of this fruit.

THE author of the work entitled "Sure Methods of Improving Health and Prolonging Life,"say that the whortleberry is very unwholesome. But he gives no reasons why it should be so; and I have never heard or read anything which had the slightest tendency to lead me to adopt such an opinion. These mere assertions, when confronted by the experience of thousands, weigh but little.

If the whortleberry, for wholesomeness, is not even superior to the strawberry, the raspberry, or the blackberry, I am sure it is of the berries, the next in order. It is at once agreeable, delicate, rich, uncloying, nutritious, and easy of digestion. It makes a most satisfying and wholesome breakfast or dinner; and if there be a fruit--I do not believe there is however--which is improved by conjoining it with milk, it is this. I may say, at least, that the two articles unite in the stomach


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more readily than almost any other two articles, so widely different in their constitution, with which I am acquainted. Eaten with bread of various kinds and with rice, if people will not eat them alone, they are comparatively excellent.

But with what readiness soever they unite with other articles of food, they are, of all other fruits, most impaired in their excellent qualities, by being made into pies and puddings, or by being cooked in any other manner. It is a matter of utter astonishment to me that any of the smaller fruits can be so highly esteemed as they are by many, when half their native sweetness and excellence, and nearly all their peculiar life and richness are destroyed by cookery. The least amount of artificial heat appears to me to injure them; and an amount of heat which is commonly applied to cook the substances with which they are connected, would render them insipid and almost worthless.

There are two sorts of whortleberries among us--the black and the blue. Some prefer one kind and some the other. I know not which is best, when both are so excellent. Dr. Paris speaks of the red whortleberry, but I have never seen it in the United States. I have, however, usually found the blue whortleberry rather the sweetest; though much depends, in regard to both, on the dryness of the soil, and on the season.

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> CHAPTER XXX.

> THE GOOSEBERRY, CURRANT AND GRAPE.

Character of the gooseberry. When useful. The currant. Used unripe. The grape. What varieties useful.

THE gooseberry is less wholesome than most of the small seeded fruits; but would be more wholesome than it usually is, if people would not swallow the skins, which being highly indigestible, often prove a source of irritation to the stomach and bowels. The gooseberry approaches somewhat nearer to the cherry, in many of its properties, than to the currant.

It cannot be denied, that if perfectly ripe and well masticated, and the skins carefully rejected, this berry forms a very tolerable article of food; and if it is somewhat lower in the scale of excellence than the strawberry, raspberry and whortleberry, it is much lighter than the cherry or the currant. It is slightly acid in its most perfect state; but its acidity is highly agreeable to the taste of most persons. There are, however, several


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varieties of the gooseberry; some of which are much better than others.

Gooseberry pies, puddings and sauces, are among the more fashionable viands of the luxurious; but if there were no other objections to their use, when thus compounded with other articles, their tough, indigestible and unwholesome skins are against them. Of gooseberry creams, custards, jams, preserves, marmalades, pancakes and vinegars, I have nothing to say, for reasons which will be obvious. This fruit is also sometimes dried and bottled.

THE CURRANT.--Some will be surprised that I regard this very common fruit--so easily raised and so generally admired--as quite inferior, viewed as an article of food, to all those which I have mentioned. But thus it is. Though extremely fond of it myself, I do not believe it among the most nutritious or the most wholesome of summer fruits. I think that as an occasional article of food, say used once a week or so for breakfast, it may answer an excellent purpose; but it seems to me both too sour and too innutritious to be very extensively and steadily used. So far as luncheons are admissible at about ten o'clock in the forenoon, the currant, especially the red and the white species, is admissible. The black currant is among


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the most undeserving of the whole tribe of summer fruits, and is scarcely worth the trouble of raising. I am aware that it is sometimes used in fashionable cookery; but it is unworthy the notice even of the fashionable. The flesh-colored species I have never seen.

The currant is most used as food, so far as I have observed, while yet unripe. For this purpose it is soaked, scalded and sweetened; and sometimes made into pies. In this form, it can scarcely fail to be productive of disease. Its acid--though in a riper state it is changed into the mild and more wholesome citric or malic acids--is, while green, injurious. Besides, its skins, at this stage of its progress, are highly indigestible.

As a medicine, the juice of the ripe currant is somewhat valuable; and the currant wine is quite famous. Except as a medicine, however, I should not recommend it; nor is it very often useful for medicinal purposes.

Currant pies are, generally speaking, among the most indigestible substances in the form of pies; and the crust seems beyond the digestive powers even of the ostrich. Need I speak here of bottled currants, of currant water, currant gruel, currant fritters, currant jam, currant jelly, currant sauce, currant sherbet, and the like? They may do to speak of, as specimens of human weakness and


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folly, but not as fit substances for the human stomach, especially while in health.

THE GRAPE.--Most kinds of grapes which grow wild, in this country, are very unfit for the stomach; and hence it is, that to those who know of no other kinds, the encomiums which have been lavished on them have been either misunderstood or misplaced. Objections are, however, made to the husks as well as to the stones; and to the former, in most instances, as I think, with good reason. But the white, or rather light green, foreign or Madeira grape, cannot be unwholesome in any part of it, if thoroughly masticated. And as an occasional breakfast, if eaten in this manner, I know of few articles of diet more wholesome. I speak, of course, without reference to the expense; for it is so expensive that few economical people will venture upon its frequent use.

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> CHAPTER XXXI.

> THE CHERRY.

Proper selection of cherries. Swallowing the stones. Its evils. Drinking wine or spirits with cherries. No cooking into pies, puddings, &c.,admissible. Varieties of the cherry. It should be eaten in the morning.

THERE are many varieties of the cherry--some of which are far preferable to others; and a few of them are comparatively wholesome, if eaten with proper cautions and restrictions. As a general rule, they are far better food than the currant or the gooseberry, if they are not almost equal to the blackberry.

In eating cherries, care should be taken to select those which have the thinnest skin, and the driest pulp. Or whatever may be the thickness of the skin, be careful to secure as mealy or dry a pulp as possible; and above all, be careful not to swallow the stones or kernels.

I am aware that both these last opinions will meet with opposition. The most juicy cherries are usually most highly esteemed. But they are certainly


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more flatulent in proportion as they are juicy; that is, they require stronger digestive powers. And as to the general belief, so current that it has almost become a maxim, that if we eat the stones of cherries, the fruit will not hurt us, nothing can be more untrue. They ought to be avoided with the utmost carefulness. It is true, that in a vast majority of instances, they seem to cause no perceptible injury, except a little of that irritation which other foreign bodies of the same size--say little pieces of wood--always have a tendency to produce, from the fact that they are wholly indigestible; and being so, the digestive powers seem roused into action, sometimes a little violent, to resist them. And yet the mischief may be far more serious. There is a region of the intestines, which such comparatively heavy bodies find it difficult to pass; in which they have been known not only to lodge, but to form large concretions or calculi, which have finally produced death. A few examples of this sort are on record; and though this terrible result is not frequent, no one who swallows cherry stones, can be certain that the case may not be his. My readers will judge for themselves, therefore, with how much safety old maxims can be followed, simply because they are old maxims--especially that in question which encourages a practice so unnatural, were it not highly dangerous.

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There is one objection to swallowing cherry stones which I do not recollect to have seen mentioned. It is the danger of their falling into the windpipe, or rather the danger of their producing death, should such a thing happen. The Author of our natures has so wonderfully constructed our throats, that if we pursue the work of masticating and swallowing our food slowly and rationally, and do not talk and laugh too much while we are eating, it is scarcely possible for anything to get into the windpipe; although everything we eat and drink has to pass directly over the little opening, at its top. But children, and even some adults, do not always eat rationally; and hence it is very common for small pieces of food to fall into the windpipe, or, as it is commonly said, go the wrong way. These usually produce more or less of immediate irritation and coughing, during which they are often dislodged and thrown out; but sometimes they remain. When they remain, especially if they are soft substances, as pieces of bread or fruit, they are gradually softened and removed by absorption--or perhaps thrown out by a cough which is but slight, and in pieces so small as hardly to be observed. If they are hard bodies, like an uncooked pea, or a cherry stone, they are sometimes coughed up, but at others they remain; and when they remain, they must sooner or later cause great trouble.


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If they cannot be removed by a surgical operation, which consists in opening the windpipe, on the outside, and taking out the offending substance, they will be very likely to cause death sooner or later, either by ulceration or otherwise. Many deaths are caused in this way every year; and the cause of some of them may never be suspected. The child "gets choked," perhaps, and coughs for some time; but at length seems to get over it, or so nearly over it that no one supposes anything remains in the windpipe. If the substance deposited there is smooth, like a cherry stone, it may remain so long before it begins to produce trouble, that the parents of the child forget the circumstance of his "getting choked," and the physician not having skill to detect the cause, the patient lingers and dies. If careful and scientific examinations of the body, immediately after death, were more common than they now are, there would still remain a chance of detecting and exposing the evil. But it happens, unfortunately, that there are in many parts of our country strong prejudices against these dissections, useful as every rational person will admit them to be.

Now the objection to which I have alluded is founded on the carelessness of childhood, and the danger of such accidents. If a child is talking or laughing--and children, we all know, are very apt


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to talk and laugh while they are swallowing cherries and cherry stones--nothing is more easy than for these smooth little bodies to slip down the windpipe; and nothing is more possible than that they may remain there undiscovered or unsuspected till death. Or even if discovered, a surgical operation is sufficiently severe, one would think, to deter us from exposing ourselves so foolishly or wantonly to its necessity.

Connected with the subject of cherries, is one popular error which I wish to expose. It is often said--or rather used to be before the days of "temperance"--that if a person has eaten too much fruit, a little brandy, or some other sort of spirit, would correct the evil. This indulgence was particularly extended to cherries. The remark was probably founded in truth. The spirit, by rousing the stomach, for once, to violent action, enables it to carry off a load which it could not otherwise have disposed of, whether that load were cherries or something else. Just as the spur or the whip may prove the means of enabling a horse to go beyond his natural strength, for once, and carry a load quite too heavy for him; with this difference, however, in favor of the spurred horse, that he is far less injured than the spurred stomach, and far less likely to refuse to carry even a rational load the next time a demand is made.

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Nor does this disclose, without saying a little more, the whole evil. The indulgence of using spirits to remove one excess, emboldens us to repeat an excess which we find so easily removed, and by such a pleasant remedy; and not only to use spirits after eating cherries, but after eating other kinds of fruits; and not only to use spirits, but wine and cider. Indeed, though I am almost ashamed to say it, such has been the extent of this error, that we find some dietetic writers telling us that such is the tendency of many fruits to produce fermentation, flatulence, or diarrhœa, that a glass of old wine is very proper to promote their digestion. What evils must not society endure, so long as it is infested with such teachers of morality as these?

A meal of cherries, whether it be breakfast or dinner, should always be moderate in quantity, and slowly swallowed; and as I have before insisted, the stones should be rejected, as much as if they were poisonous. All cooking of cherries is inadmissible, and for many and various reasons. The cherry puddings and pies of our country, are much prized by many; but they are a most stupid concern, to say nothing of their tendency on health, and the changes the cherries undergo, and the new combination produced in their cookery. Dried cherries are by no means proper to be eaten, though some appear to be fond of them.

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It is utterly inconceivable how a rational appetite, formed to relish a pure, plain, unperverted pudding, and the plain, but rich, juicy, delicious fruits which the Creator has bestowed in such profusion, can ever be willing, even on the score of gustatory pleasure, to eat cooked fruits, especially the smaller fruits like cherries! I say it is utterly inconceivable how this happens; but I mean, rather, that it would be, were we not in a world where people learn to eat with a high relish almost anything which they please, not excepting whole animals.

The varieties of the cherry, even of the common kind, are exceedingly numerous; and their excellence is equally various. The varieties of the choke cherry are almost as numerous as those of the more common sort. They are all more or less astringent; too much so, perhaps, for frequent use. Some of them, however, are very rich and nutritious; though they are all rather hard of digestion, and if taken at all, should be taken in the morning, in the form of a light breakfast, and when we are in the most perfect health. The small black cherry, or fruit of the wild cherry tree, though often eaten, is wholly inadmissible. I do not know that this fruit contains, as the tree does on which it grows, the prussic acid; but it contains other properties little less injurious.

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On the subject of fruits a little more explanation may be necessary. I have represented the gooseberry and cherry, for example, to be greatly inferior to the raspberry and the strawberry, in point of real excellence; and yet, if neither of the latter could be had by reasonable effort, during the hot season, I would use, with due caution, an occasional meal of one of the former. And if circumstances prevented my getting any other fruit, I would eat more freely even of currants and plums than would be admissible in other circumstances.

Again, if I could not get the better fruits in a more perfect state--say, if I was compelled to get it half ripe or half decayed from the public markets--I would use that which was somewhat inferior, which could be procured from my own or some neighboring garden.

The same remark will apply to many other things and circumstances. Thus, though I would not prefer a dinner to a breakfast of fruit, yet if I were so situated that I must eat the fruit at dinner or go without it, I would prefer the former; at least occasionally--for one meal a day of ripe fruit of some sort during the hot season, seems to me next to indispensable.

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> CHAPTER XXXII.

> THE PLUM.

The plum indigestible. It should be eaten alone. The prune.

THE plum, though highly delicious to most persons, especially in the case of the more perfect varieties, as the garden plum, meadow plum, &c., is more doubtful as to its wholesomeness than any of the fruits I have yet mentioned. Strong stomachs may indeed digest it; but it appears to me that the strength of this organ would be more profitably expended on something else than on so doubtful an article, unless, indeed, no other fruit can be obtained. But to most persons, in society, enfeebled as their stomachs are, by abuses, plums are very apt to occasion too much relaxation and irritation of the stomach and bowels; and sometimes even colics. Whenever the plum is eaten, it should be eaten alone, unconjoined with any other aliment whatever. This advice, respecting the plum, is given even by the old English writers.

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This may be the appropriate place for saying something of the prune, which is neither more nor less than a dried plum. The prune is usually imported; but all our plums would make prunes. This is by no means one of the worst articles of food, especially when boiled, or rather stewed. In this condition, it is indeed often ordered for the sick; but it is equally good for those who are well. I do not mean by this, that a stewed prune is as good as a raw apple or an uncooked strawberry; but only that when no better fruit can be had, it is tolerable; and it is probably the best of all the dried fruits which can be obtained, unless it is the fig.

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> CHAPTER XXXIII.

> THE MELON.

The muskmelon. Hot bed cultivation. The watermelon. How sometimes raised.

"THE farinaceous fruits," says Dr. Paris, "are universally unwholesome." Of what he calls the farinaceous fruits, melons are the most important. Now I regard this condemnation of the melon tribe as quite too sweeping.

The muskmelon and the watermelon are both in extensive use among us, and when perfectly ripe, and raised in a natural manner, without the use of strong fresh manures, and without any forcing or hot bed process, are by no means as injurious as some writers have represented them to be. Indeed, I regard them both, in the absence of the summer fruits, which are preferable, as rather useful. An occasional meal of either is much better than no fruit at all.

"The watermelon," says the Encyclopædia Americana, "serves the Egyptian for meat and drink;" that is, doubtless, during a small part of


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the year--for I do not think it sufficiently solid or nutritious to form the sole food of man for any great length of time, even in warm climates. Were either to be used exclusively as a daily article of food, the muskmelon would be preferable.

Some persons have a kind of antipathy to the smell and taste of this fruit; of which class of individuals the author was one. This antipathy, however, can be easily overcome.

Having alluded to the manner of raising melons, it is proper, perhaps, that I should just observe, that watermelons--and for aught I know, muskmelons too--in the immediate neighborhood of cities, are often raised by the aid of the most offensive manures of which the imagination can well conceive. Under this culture they thrive most luxuriantly. And the same or nearly the same thing, may be said of the method of raising many of the vegetables about cities. It may be said, at least, that they are raised by means of strong fresh manures, whose effects on vegetables, according to the observation of Dr. Whitlaw and others, are very unfavorable. In some instances they render them actually poisonous. But on this point, in a work like the present, it will hardly be expected that I should enlarge. Enough, if I succeed in dropping one of those words or hints, which "to the wise," are said to be "sufficient."

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> CHAPTER XXXIV.

> THE CUCUMBER.

Evils of the cucumber overrated. Ripe cucumbers. Not very nutritious.

THE cucumber, I suppose, will hardly be regarded as a fruit, even if the melon should be; but it was found more convenient to class it thus. Both appear to be of the same family, though the cucumber is the least wholesome. I do not find, however, anything in its nature, when ripe, which should render it deserving of that general condemnation which it has received. It is true, I never eat it; but it is because I have hitherto been able to get fruits which I consider far preferable; because I have no moral right to use the worse article when I can as well have the better; and because I have usually had it presented, prepared in a manner totally unfit for the human stomach. Custom seems to demand, now-a-days, that cucumbers should be eaten not only uncooked, but also unripe--very unripe. If eaten green, it seems to me it should be cooked--perhaps in milk, like


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the gourd, which is another of the melon family. If not cooked, it should at least be ripe, like the watermelon and the muskmelon.

Some may smile at the idea of ripe cucumbers, and say that the very thought of them, like the smell, is offensive. But I am not speaking of the decayed or putrid cucumber; that is quite another thing. The truly ripe cucumber is quite as agreeable to the taste and smell of any individual, as the muskmelon; and to those whose taste has not been strangely perverted, much more so. It was probably eaten only when ripe, at first; but a fastidious taste, by requiring it earlier and earlier, has at length brought about the state of things we see.

But I must not omit to say, that even the ripe cucumber is not very nutritious. It is rather a medicine than an article of food; being cooling, bland, and gently laxative. To produce its good effects--so far as it has any--it should be eaten in great moderation, and without that pepper, oil, salt and vinegar, which are usually applied to it while green, and which, if it be eaten in this state, are always required. But whatever other uses are made of the cucumber, I entreat the reader not to use it in the form of pickles. These, of almost all the forms of vegetable substances, seem to me worst adapted to the human stomach; and I cannot but hope will be shunned by every reader.

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> CHAPTER XXXV.

> THE FIG AND RAISIN.

The fig extensively used for food. Fresh figs. Dried figs. Figs and bread. The raisin.

THE fig has, in all ages, formed a very considerable article of diet in many parts of the East; especially in the south of Europe, where it is said to be brought upon the table, either in its fresh dried state, for five months of the year. In these circumstances it is a very tolerable article of diet--soft, sweet, fragrant, and of a purplish color. But it seems to me, it would be much better if it were suffered to ripen in the natural way, instead of having the ripening process artificially hastened.

Contrary to the rule which generally obtains in relation to dried fruit, the dried fig is said to be more easy of digestion than the fresh; though perhaps less nutritious. Still, it is highly nutritious, even in its dried state. Dried figs and barley bread are said by travellers, to form the common food of the lower classes of inhabitants in Greece and the Archipelago.

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One objection to the use of the fig as an article of food among us, is the numerous animalculæ which infest it. Were it not for this and the expense, I should be half disposed to recommend the fig with bread, as an occasional breakfast, especially for children.

THE RAISIN.--There are several kinds of raisins. Some of them contain few if any seeds, and hence are probably rather more digestible than others. Besides, the quantity of sugar they contain disposes them to a rapid fermentation in the stomach. But in addition to this is another evil, greater than all. I allude to their tough, indigestible skins.

I do not deny, that when eaten alone, occasionally, or still more rarely with bread, they form a breakfast far better than thousands of breakfasts which might be mentioned. And yet, such breakfasts are not by any means among the best which could be named.

In pies, puddings, &c., raisins are not to be tolerated, and I must protest against their frequent use in this way, as not merely a waste of time and property, but as a means of destroying more health, in fashionable life, than all the physicians, in high life, ever restored.

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> CHAPTER XXXVI.

> NUTS.

The chestnut much used by the ancients. Boiled chesnuts How used, now, in Europe. Used for bread

I HAVE classed the various nuts together, both because I have very little to say about them, and because what I have to say will, in general, be equally applicable to all. The more important of this class of substances are chesnuts, walnuts, hazelnuts, butternuts, peanuts and almonds.

We are told by the most ancient histories, of men who in the first ages of the world lived almost entirely on acorns and chesnuts, and yet attained to a very advanced age. All this may, however, be fabulous. But of one thing we are certain, which is, that the chestnut, in its raw state, is highly nutritious to swine and many other quadrupeds. To say that it would be equally so to man, even were he early trained to its use, would be to affirm what I believe we could not very well prove.

Boiled chestnuts, however, form a highly nutritious article of diet, and are, on the whole, easy


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of digestion. I think that the worst objection to their use, in this way, is, that they are rather too nutritious, like peas and beans. As an occasional dinner, however, they are not very objectionable. Those whose stomachs are as yet unaccustomed to simples, might find them rather flatulent. But to those whose digestive powers have any claim to be considered as healthy, they form a pleasant and excellent food, and sit well on the stomach.

In the south of Europe the chesnut is much used for bread, puddings, &c.; and is regarded as pretty wholesome. Of late it has been exported, considerably, to this country, and is gradually coming into use. Our own chesnut, however, is finer grained and sweeter. But both are good, and deserving of more attention than they have hitherto received.

Those who regard a dish of boiled chesnuts as forming a vulgar dinner, can easily form them into pies, puddings, bread, cakes, &c. They may be boiled and mashed; or, if it should be preferred, they can be ground into a sort of flour before they are cooked. The flour and meal may also be mixed with various other kinds of flour or meal, to form such compounds as the fancy or the judgment may direct.

Though all nuts are somewhat difficult of digestion on account of the oil they contain, yet the


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butternut and walnut are most so. They may all, however, be occasionally eaten, when the stomach is strong, at the breakfast hour; but never after a full meal of something else.

And here I am bound to exculpate the whole tribe of fruits and nuts from at least one half of the blame usually thrown upon them. They are said to be flatulent, indigestible, &c. But does any one wonder that they should be so, when we consider the manner in which they are used? Are they not commonly eaten at the close of a full meal of something else, or in the evening just before going to bed? In the former case, the stomach, though strong, is overtasked by an unreasonable load; in the latter, a task is imposed, which, though light, is too much for the circumstances--it being always unsafe to eat anything, especially substances hard of digestion, just as we are going to bed.

And hence it is, that notwithstanding all that is said about flatulence and difficulty of digestion, he who lives temperately and has a good--not a craving or fastidious--appetite, may eat a moderate meal of almost any kind of fruits or nuts that is not poisonous, without flatulence or trouble. I can certainly do this. And yet if I were to eat fruits and nuts as other people do, I should soon experience all the ills of which they complain so loudly,


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and which have even found their way into the pages of so many dietetic writers.

What they say, however, though it be enough to frighten one, will do pretty well for those whose stomachs are reduced to the pitiful necessity of being watched and tended, like the infant; and who eat fruits and nuts either on a full stomach, or in circumstances almost equally objectionable. But their array of cautions is entirely useless, to him who is temperate in the largest sense, and who, after making an occasional breakfast of one of them, uncombined with anything else, masticates it well, and goes about his ordinary business to think no more of consequences till the hour arrives for the next meal.

One important principle needs to be here repeated; which is, that almost all things, and of course almost all articles of food, may be said to be good or bad principally by comparison. Compared, for example, with hot bread and butter for breakfast, to a pure stomach, (I do not say a puny, debilitated one,) a meal of nuts, particularly of chesnuts, would be excellent. But compared with plain bread of unbolted wheat meal, whether leavened or unleavened, or with boiled corn, or even with good mealy potatoes, all the nuts, unless it is the chesnut, are, to say the least, unimportant; and I should be inclined to say injurious.

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> CHAPTER XXXVII.

> ANIMAL FOOD.

Where animal food is admissable. Should be used, if used at all, principally as a condiment. What animals have been eaten. Arrangement of the subject.

THIS is the third principal division of human aliments. I regret to be obliged to recognize animal food as, in any sense, a primary aliment; for I consider the resort to it as proper only in the case of infants, diseased persons, and the people of those regions or places where better food cannot be obtained. It ought to be used only as a condiment.

I hope to live to see the time when farinaceous food will come to be so universally regarded as the staff of life, that no family will any more think of living without it, than did the family of Jacob in Canaan. To be out of bread, or grain to make it of, at that day, was to suffer all the horrors of famine; notwithstanding the existence of flocks and herds somewhat numerous. The flesh of the latter was used, not as the principal dish on ordinary


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occasions, but only as a condiment, or at feasts. Such it is even now regarded in many eastern nations. They would no more think of giving animal food the conspicuous place we do, than of living on salt or pepper.

Nearly every known animal in the world has, by some nation or other, savage, semi-civilized or civilized, been eaten; from the stately elephant and horse, down to the snail and other insects still smaller and more offensive to our usual notions of propriety.

If I were about to enter largely upon the subject of animal food, I should arrange my articles in three divisions:--1. Milk and Eggs. 2. Flesh. 3. Fish. But this division is hardly necessary to my present purpose. A few short sections to aid those who are obliged to have recourse to this sort of food, either for themselves or for others, is all that can be admitted.

I shall say something of milk, butter, cheese, eggs, flesh--wild and tame--and fish. The chapter may be passed over by those who have risen above the necessity of studying the subject--of whom I would fain hope there are many. I do not think one in a hundred of our population, except the diseased and veriest infants, ought to have anything more to do with animal food, if trained properly, than with alcohol.

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> CHAPTER XXXVIII.

> MILK.

What the circumstances are in which milk is admissable. Milk for infants. Milk for diseased persons. Use of it by the Arabs. Milk a cheap food. Healthy milk. Milk poured on bread. Milk toast.

SOME may say that milk is not animal food, strictly speaking, but only an animal secretion. On this principle most of the fat of animals would not be animal food; for what is that but a secretion?

It is a favorite doctrine with me, and I believe a true one, that we should always use those kinds of food which are best for us, provided, at least, they can be obtained without interfering with the rights of others. But when, under these circumstances, we content ourselves with that which is only second best, we commit an error. So it is with most adults who, in our own country, use milk as food.

But when a person cannot use food which is better for health and happiness than milk, he


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certainly ought to use it. It is on this principle that milk is assigned to the infant. The Author of his nature, seeing it best to introduce him to the present state of existence in his known weakness and helplessness, has adapted him, before hand, to the very best diet which in the nature of things could be furnished for him. It is most readily assimilated; and though it is somewhat heating in its nature, it is the best medium through which to lead him off, as it were, from a food highly animalized, to one which is best adapted, in general, to the development and progress of his whole nature.

Accordingly, after the lapse of a few months, his teeth begin to appear, indicating the proper period at which new forms of food should be presented. At this period, the common sense of almost all rational physicians in the world assigns him farinaceous food, in small quantity; and the quantity is to be gradually increased, as he grows older, till he is weaned. Even for a time afterwards, common sense, with many, retains its sway, and they accordingly require that for a few years longer the farinaceous diet should be continued. It is true, some of them say, a change should be made back again, after the lapse of some time, to a mixed diet of animal and vegetable food; but none of them tell us exactly when they should "turn the corner." They would gradually lead


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them off from the use of animal food to vegetable, and then, when their habits have been nearly formed to its use, and they are doing very finely, they would make them flesh-eaters again!--I think it behoves them to tell us at what age the latter change should be made.

I would not be in such great haste, as many are, to wean a child; nor when weaned, would I give up, at once, the use of milk. I would leave off gradually, only; continuing for some months, perhaps for several years, a greater or less quantity of cow's milk, properly diluted, for at least one meal a day--say for breakfast, when the stomach is empty. When I gave the milk, however, it should form the principal part of the meal, for the time; and if a little bread was used in connection with it, I would see that instead of being soaked in the milk to soften it, the child should properly masticate it.

But when a child is once fairly weaned from milk, and is perfectly healthy, I would not return again to the use of it, so long as good farinaceous food could conveniently be had, and so long as he continued healthy. In a scrofulous or consumptive habit, however, should this arise, and in a few other cases of disease, or tendency to disease, I would, with the advice of the physician, use milk. Many a consumptive person has had his life and usefulness


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prolonged many years, sometimes twenty or thirty, by a milk diet.*

[Editorial note: This footnote appears at the end of the page in the original text.]

*Such, at least, is the general testimony. But I have often suspected the cure in these cases was less owing to the milk itself, than to the simplicity of the individual's habits. He confines himself, in these cases, to a single dish, instead of an endless variety. Now how do we know that if he were to confine himself as cheerfully, to bread, the consequences would not be equally favorable?

There are other cases in which I think a milk diet is highly proper. Without the milk of his camel, how could the Arab traverse the desert of Sahara for more than a century? Without it, what would many travellers do who find nothing else to eat that is not much worse?

"But what," it will be asked, "is the real objection to milk?

First, it is too stimulating. Secondly, it is a liquid; and liquids do not secure, to those who have teeth, a sufficient amount of mastication and insalivation; and they impose too heavy a task upon the stomach and the whole of the digestive apparatus. Thirdly, it is almost always eaten wrong, when eaten. Milk, I repeat it, should be either eaten alone, or with something which is well masticated. But the usual way is to put bread into it, or pudding, or hommony, or potatoes, or baked apples, or other fruits, so that here a double mischief is done. Not only is the milk swallowed without due mastication and


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insalivation, but the solid substances too, through its intervention, go down in the same way.

Some parents, especially in cities, seem to grudge their children the use of milk, when they really suppose they need it. They say it is too costly. I am surprised at this mistake--so very common. No person ought to think of the expense of milk once a day, even for a whole household, did they need it. It is one of the cheaper articles. A child of three years old should not use over a pint and a half a day, and ten ounces of bread, if he ate nothing else. This is a very large allowance indeed. And yet, in the dearest cities, this could not ordinarily cost over eight cents. This is fifty-six cents only a week, and it involves but little house work. But on this subject every one can make his own estimates.

Milk, if eaten at all, should be new; though it need not be swallowed the moment it is obtained from the cow. The cow should be healthy. She should not be confined, or fed on slops, or bad hay or pasture, or impure water. She should have pure air and water, and enough of exercise, and good grass or hay. All the cows of Paris have tubercles in their lungs, (the beginning of consumption,) so the most eminent European medical writers say; and there is no doubt that many of the cows about our own cities and towns are in the


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same sad predicament. If so, their milk should not be eaten; it will be injurious.* I do not like boiling milk, either for porridge, or for any other purpose; but I prefer boiling it to preserve it, to the practice of using it when sour. Nor do I at all like the practice of eating skimmed milk, as some families do. It is better with the cream in it.

[Editorial note: This footnote appears at the end of the page in the original text.]

* People have been poisoned in considerable numbers by bad milk, and have occasionally died.

Cream poured on toasted bread, is quite a favorite dish with many. With dyspeptics, cream sometimes sits better on the stomach than milk. A few sweeten their milk or cream for the purposes I have been mentioning, but this I cannot recommend. If milk is used at all by healthy adults, I would advise them to use it as a condiment. Thus, I would pour a little good milk on a slice of bread, whether toasted or otherwise. Or I would pour it, in small quantity, on wheat mush, hommony, hasty pudding, and other puddings, johnny cake, beans, rice, potatoes, &. For beans and rice, it is the best condiment that could possibly be used. How much better to train a family of children to use a little milk as a condiment, poured on their plates, than to spoil their stomachs with molasses, sugar, vinegar, pepper, butter, &c.!

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> CHAPTER XXXIX.

> BUTTER.

Butter on bread. "Made" dishes. Butter eating carried to the highest excess. The real evils of eating butter.

A LITTLE fresh butter, spread on stale bread, and the latter well masticated, cannot be very hurtful. It gives a relish to the bread, which is favorable to its digestion. This, however, is saying but little in its favor; for he has not a perfect appetite who cannot relish, keenly, the bread I have described without the butter. But this is the only instance in which I deem butter at all admissible. On new bread, of every form, on toasted bread, on puddings, rice, cakes, &c., or mixed with food to shorten it, there can be no doubt of its injurious tendency.

Even plain bread and butter, says Willich, require strong digestive powers, and to hot tempered and bilious persons, are pernicious. "I am inclined to think," he adds, "that it would be beneficial to society, if the making of butter were strictly prohibited, as well as the importation of


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salt butter into every civilized country. Melted fat, or the drippings of baked and roasted meat, are equally, if not more pernicious to the stomach than even stale butter; but both ought to be used only for greasing cart wheels; never for injuring the human organs."

One of the mischiefs attending the use of butter is, the more we use it, the more we are compelled to do so. The delicate female who can hardly swallow her bread without butter on it, little thinks that every indulgence of the kind renders a second indulgence still more necessary; and that her stomach is, in this way, every hour growing more and more fickle. I knew one lady who carried her butter eating to such an excess, that she could scarcely relish a substance till it was almost half butter or lard. She has even been known to fasten a lump of butter to the end of a stick, and after holding it in the flame and turning it till the surface was beginning to melt, dip it in flour, then hold it in the flame again, then dip it in the flour--and so on, alternately dipping it and roasting it, till the whole consisted of a species of fritter thoroughly impregnated with butter, when she would immediately eat it. And yet she wondered why she had not better health, and how it was that Providence saw fit to leave her to suffer so much from dyspepsia!

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> CHAPTER XL.

> CHEESE.

General properties of cheese. Good cheese. Bad cheese. Cheese sometimes poisonous. Anatto. Arsenic. Grand objection to cheese. New and old cheese compared.

CHEESE is generally considered as quite indigestible, and therefore to be avoided by all those who have not very strong stomachs. If, however, a very little good cheese be taken in conjunction with other proper substances, as bread or rice, as a mere condiment, it can hardly be considered as positively hurtful, to those who are very vigorous. A stronger objection to its use is, that it is too concentrated a substance--or too pure a nutriment.

I have spoken, however, of good cheese only. Bad cheese is among the worst of eatables. Cheese is even sometimes poisonous. I have known nearly a hundred persons poisoned at once by eating from a certain cheese. Other instances of the kind have occurred. I do not know that the cause of this phenomenon has ever been detected. Some have supposed it to be a vegetable


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poison, as the lobelia or the hemlock, eaten by the cows.

The anatto or otto, so frequently used to give color to cheese, is slightly poisonous; but there is another more striking method of poisoning cheese which has been discovered very recently. Some of our dairy women have fallen into the habit of adding a small quantity of arsenic, (ratsbane,) say a piece half as large as a small pea, to each large cheese, especially when made, in part, of old milk. The object is, to give it freshness and tenderness; and the plan is said to succeed admirably. But it produces, or may produce, great injury to the human constitution; and some persons have been made immediately sick by it.

My greatest objection, after all, to the use of butter and cheese both, grows out of the consideration, that their manufacture involves a great amount of female labor, while no permanent or substantial benefit is obtained. What can be more valuable than female labor, applied to the physical and moral management and early instruction of children?

If cheese is to be eaten at all, let it be eaten rather new than old; and let it be well masticated. Do not eat grated cheese. Nor should it be toasted. Toasting, though with many a favorite process, only renders cheese more indigestible.

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> CHAPTER XLI.

> EGGS.

How eggs should be cooked. Rarely boiled. Poached Artificial or "made" dishes. Fresh eggs. How to preserve eggs. Egg cider. Eggs and wine.

EGGS are almost entirely pure nutriment, and when not cooked too much, are easy of digestion. When over-done, however, they are exceedingly difficult of digestion, especially their white or albuminous part. The last coagulates at about 160° of Fahrenheit's thermometer; and when once coagulated, is no longer soluble by the gastric juice. It is also said by some that when hard boiled, they tend to constipation of the bowels; whereas when very slightly boiled, they are known to be laxative.

This last is the state in which we ought to eat eggs, if we eat them at all. Some suppose they are best raw; but this is going to the other extreme. They should be boiled just long enough to coagulate slightly the greater part of the white, while the yolk still retains its fluidity.

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Next in point of wholesomeness to the boiled, is the poached egg; but even in this form it is apt to be over-done. It should only be just sufficiently hardened, says Dr. Kitchener, that the white part may form a sort of transparent veil to the yolk.

The third common form of cooking the egg among us is frying it. This is decidedly the worst form of all. It would be far more wholesome eaten raw. The very thought of frying the egg, to him even who knows but half the evils of frying in general, is enough to make him shudder. The albumen is hardened, and the animal oil of the yolk is rendered empyreumatic, or burnt.

All artificial preparations of eggs, as in pancakes, &c., however agreeable they may be to a perverted taste, are very apt to sit heavy on our stomachs, and corrupt our fluids. The yolk of eggs in any form has a tendency to putrefaction; and people whose stomachs are not uncommonly strong ought not to eat any kind of food which is very putrescible. The eggs of our hens are the most wholesome; the eggs of ducks and geese far less so.

Great pains ought to be taken in regard to the freshness of eggs; and no eggs should be used, in any form, which are not new. The reason of this prohibition will appear when it is remembered how readily they tend to putrefaction. "We cannot


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not too circumspect," says Willich, "in the use of eggs, as to their freshness; for examples are not wanting of persons, who, after having used corrupted or only tainted eggs, were seized with putrid fevers." How much of mischief, then, may be done, short of producing fever, by ignorant house-keppers!* And how important is it, since they are so apt, notwithstanding their ignorance, to seize on every new recipe, whether philosophical or unphilosophical, and follow its directions--perhaps to the destruction of the health or even the life of a favorite child or of a husband--how important it is, I say, that they should understand these things! If they cooked everything simply, the danger would be less; but they do not. Complication is everywhere the order of the day. I know a lady of comparatively simple habits, but fond of cookery, who almost always keeps eggs by her, and who seldom fails to put them into one or more kinds of food which she brings to her table daily. And yet I cannot doubt that they are used three fourths of the time when in a state of incipient


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putrefaction. But if plain people poison themselves, their families and their friends, how is it with the more fashionable--those who have lost sight of all simplicity?

[Editorial note: This note appears at the bottome of page 279 in the original text.]

*People are taken sick, for example. Well, the sickness is supposed to be the will of Providence, or the hand of fate; when it is, more properly, their own will or ignorance, or that of some house-keeper. Sometimes it results from the error of an ignorant physician or quack; and the seeds of disease may have been sown months or years before we see their appropriate fruits.

It is true, we have not yet gone to the extreme of the French, who have more than three hundred methods of cooking the egg, and nearly seven hundred compounds into which the egg enters. But we have gone quite too far; and are likely to go much farther, unless housewifery can be elevated to a science, and conducted in a truly christian spirit.

Eggs are particularly obnoxious when mixed in any way with butter or fat; and this constitutes one objection to frying them. But it is not in frying alone that we have this hurtful mixture; it is everywhere. At fashionable tables we are constantly taking mixtures of butter and eggs. Yet it is not too much to say, that neither of these substances, even when taken alone--but especially when combined--can be employed, (with the single exception of boiling the egg and spreading the butter on bread,) without mischief. Even Dr. Dunglison says that eggs are never employed in the formation of compound dishes, without rendering the aliment more difficult of digestion. He goes further indeed, and affirms that "every preparation


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of eggs, and every made dish, are more or less rebellious."

The preparations of food into which eggs enter are, as I have said, almost innumerable. Some, especially the delicate, will scarcely taste anything that is not tinctured with eggs or butter.

There are various ways of preserving eggs from rapid putrefaction, but they are all more or less imperfect. The best way is to use them fresh, or not at all. I greatly prefer the latter. For the benefit of those who will keep them, I may observe, however, that they are said to keep best in lime water, fully saturated with the lime.

Egg cider is a favorite drink in some parts of New England. It is made in various ways; but the most common method is simply to break an egg or two into a quart of heated cider, with a little sugar or molasses, if the cider is too sour, and stir it violently by means of a wooden instrument prepared for the purpose. I have seen a family of children brought up to relish this as one of the greatest treats. And yet it is, as it were, a parent of abominations. Cider is bad enough for the human stomach; but cider, eggs and molasses form a compound still worse, and one which deserves not to be named, except to expose its folly, in any decent circle or civilized society.

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Eggs swallowed in wine, without beating, is another fashionable but improper mixture. It is quite in vogue with the licentious, whether without or within the pale of our civil or domestic institutions. They suppose, often, that it has the power of repairing suddenly the waste, and correcting the abuses, of their frames. But it usually only lures them on, by its fallacious appearances, to greater and more criminal errors.

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> CHAPTER XLII.

> FLESH AND FISH.

General remarks. Simplicity in diet. Best kinds of flesh. Wild animals. Fattened animals. Salted meat. Smoked meat. Meat pies. Boiling. Broiling. Baking. Frying.--Fish. Animal food sometimes poisonous. Shell fish.

I HAVE already given my opinion against the use of animal food of all kinds, where better food can be had; and have stated briefly, though not fully, my reasons. The moral evils, however--the moral insensibility which its familiar use involves--to which I but barely alluded, is, after all, the most serious. But since people will continue for some time to use animal food, in some of its forms, it seems incumbent upon me to state, as briefly as possible, what forms I deem least objectionable. Milk I have attempted to show to be the least injurious; and butter, cheese and eggs, next.

On one point, however, I wish not to be misunderstood. There are other errors in regard to food besides quality. It would be folly to pretend


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that a meal of bread, or even of bread and milk, though not naturally the best food for an adult, would not be better--far better--than a thousand other dishes or combinations of dishes which might be mentioned, even if made up from simple farinaceous articles; and, as has been already said, I am not sure that the benefits attributed to changes from the common abuses of civilized life to a steady diet of bread and milk, have not been owing to the simplicity rather than to the quality of the adopted dishes. But be this as it may, there can be little doubt that a moderate allowance of milk, for one of our daily meals, or bread and butter, or bread and cheese, or bread and eggs, or even of lean meat properly cooked, would be far less hurtful in the end, setting moral tendencies aside, than an extravagant quantity of bread, or pudding, or even of potatoes, especially if hot; or a combination of a dozen sorts, some only half masticated, some incompatible with each other, and some too hot or too highly seasoned.

When, therefore, I express my dislike to flesh, and speak of its inferiority to other forms of food, I am not comparing extravagance or abuse in the use of the one with moderation and reason in the use of the other; for this would involve unfairness, and partiality, and untruth.

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If I were to use flesh in a way which I thought to be least injurious, I would select that of wild animals, apparently in full health and vigor, and of youthful or middle age, and use it with no condiments or accompaniments, except, perhaps, a small quantity of bread and salt, and with as little cooking of any kind as possible. I would also select the leanest parts. I would allow myself no gravies or sauces. It should be eaten at breakfast or dinner--never at supper--and breakfast would be preferable. I would masticate it as slowly as possible, and take little or no drink with my food. I would use it but once a day, and even then in moderate quantity.

Fattened animals are usually diseased animals; and I am unwilling to eat diseased food, if I can help it. Some fattened animals have liver disease, some fever, and some consumption--at least the beginning of it. I have already mentioned the case of cows in a state of confinement, as in our cities; and I might relate a thousand facts, had I room, to confirm the truth of my statements.

I would not eat meat which had been long preserved by salt. If I could not get it either fresh or dried without smoke or any additions, I would not use it. Smoked meat is bad, decidedly so; and so is much salt, long applied--and salt petre. Meat pies, of all sorts, are specially unfavorable to


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health; and so, in general, are meat soups and broths. Like other liquids, the latter are difficult of digestion, as I have elsewhere shown. I speak of the healthy, of course--for the sick, I am not writing.

The best forms of cooking meat are boiling, broiling and roasting. Boiled meat is, perhaps, most easy of digestion, but not most nutritive--something being probably lost in the process of boiling. Broiling preserves most of the juices, and being performed in the open air, has many advantages. The more rare the cooking, in either case, however, and the more free from butter, gravies, herbs, stuffing, &c., the better. Let it be the simple lean meat, with its natural juices; and let it be cooked just enough for us to relish it--but nothing more. Frying is, of course, of all forms of cooking meat, decidedly the worst.

If this is the simple truth respecting the use of animal food, and if these are the laws which limit its use, what is to become of our broths, our soups, our hash, our pies--even those of Strasburg, made of the diseased livers of geese--our bacon and eggs, our sausages, our tripe, our turtles, our "bird's nest," our shell fish, our locusts, our snakes and our snails? And what, too, is to become of the multitude of fishes that inhabit the ocean and the rivers?

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In regard to fish, I ought, perhaps, to have observed, that these are seldom diseased--and therefore, though they may be somewhat more heating and less nutritious than other animals, they are, in some respects, preferable. If used, the same principles will apply to their use which have already been laid down in relation to the flesh of land animals.

I might relate, here, many anecdotes, well attested, of disease and death from bad animal food. I might relate, from Dr. Chrisiston, stories of poisoning by veal, beef, bacon and sausages. I might speak of two hundred and thirty-four cases of disease, and one hundred and ten deaths, which, between the years 1793 and 1827, occurred in the kingdom of Wurtemberg, from eating a kind of sausages made of blood and liver. Cases might be extracted from the Journal of Health for 1832, showing the danger not only of meat, but of meat pies. Some of the cases of poisoning from the use of meat pies are truly frightful, and might deter us, one would think, from venturing upon their use.--I might also show, or endeavor to show, that much of the disease of every day occurrence among us, is produced or aggravated, or both, by improper food, and especially by improper animal food. But it seems to me unnecessary.

I will only add a few thoughts on shell fish. How strange it is that people in a civilized community


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will perpetuate, by their example, such an uncivilized--I was going to say disgusting--practice as that of eating, on all occasions when they can get them, oysters, clams, lobsters, &c. We are disgusted with the Arab and the South Sea Islander for eating locusts and snails; yet, in what respect is eating whole oysters or clams a whit more decent? They are not, in fact, so good food for mankind as the snail, nor so nutritious. I do most sincerely hope that no young house-keeper who reads this work, and considers what a multitude of better articles for human sustenance can be obtained from the wide range of farinaceous vegetables and fruits, will ever lend her aid willingly in encouraging among her household this outrage upon good sense and decency.

Oysters and clams are scattered along our coasts--usually in the neighborhood of some miserably barren soil. Perhaps they are in part designed to afford a temporary sustenance to the miserable mariner who has been wrecked, where there is nothing better for his support; and to him they may afford a tolerable nourishment till he can get something better. Nearly the same remark would be applicable, I think, to the use of the tortoise, the frog, and several other animals, both of the sea and of the land.

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> CHAPTER XLIII.

> SUMMARY OF LEADING PRINCIPLES.

Simplicity in diet. Penalties of neglecting it. Importance of mastication. Temperature of food should be low. Why it should be so. Why purely nutritious substances should not be used. Why solid food is preferable to liquid. Drinks in general. Our meals should be regular. Proper hours of eating. Number of meals a day. Rules for the proper combination of several articles of food at a meal. Regard to the season of the year, hour of the day, and time of the week. Regard to our employment. Regard to age.

THE preceding chapters, if carefully studied, contain, at least by inference, nearly if not quite all of what I deem the essential principles of rational and scientific dietetics, together with the more important rules of cookery. Still, it may not be amiss to present some of the most important of them in a more connected as well as a more condensed form.

1. The first rule in regard to food is, to observe simplicity. I have often heard people say, in relation to diet, Well, after all, the great error is in eating too much. And there is much truth in the


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remark. If error in quality slays its thousands, error in quantity slays its ten thousands. And though there may be a few who go to the extreme of eating too little--an evil of at least equal magnitude with the former, wherever it exists--yet cases of this sort are believed to be very few indeed. The great dietetic error, in this country at least, is excessive alimentation.

Multitudes, in this country of abundance, are trained from their veriest infancy to eat three or four times as much as they ought. Probably the estimate of many intelligent writers, that we eat upon an average, about twice as much as the general condition of the system demands, is a safe and correct one. People seem to go upon the principle of eating as much as they can and not immediately get sick. I say immediately; for as to the after consequences, few seem to care or inquire. Whereas the only safe rule for any individual in health is, to eat as little as he possibly can, and yet sustain, in the best condition, all the powers, functions and faculties of his system. Four or five pounds of solid food, such as bread, puddings, potatoes, beans, peas, &c., are consumed in a day by hundreds of hard-laboring individuals, besides a large amount of apples, and cider, and beer, and some tea, coffee, and fruits. Nay, we may find--without going to Siberia--many young men of sixteen, eighteen or


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twenty years of age, among our hills and mountains, who will consume their twelve or fifteen pounds of food daily, including milk, apples, &c., nor dream of danger till they chance, some five, ten or fifteen years afterwards, to be sick; and even then, neither their friends nor themselves--perhaps not the doctor himself--ever dream that the disease was produced or aggravated, as one leading cause, by excessive alimentation.

But although this is a common dietetic sin, it will never, in my view, be cured or prevented, till people come to habits of simplicity. It is in vain to tell of the evils, dreadful as they are to soul and body, from over-eating, so long as the custom prevails of placing in their way, to tempt them, three or four times a day, a dozen, or twenty, or thirty high-seasoned and highly stimulating dishes.

I grant indeed that some will eat to excess, even of a single article, as bread, or beans, or potatoes. But who are they that do this? Are they those who were brought up temperately and simply? Seldom, I believe, if ever. All the gormandizers on a single dish plainly cooked, I have ever met with, had been first trained to distend their stomachs enormously; and that, too, with stimulating food. When such persons first break off, in regard to quantity, especially if what they retain is of a mild, bland nature, they feel as if they had taken almost nothing


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at all. But train children to proper qualities of food, and they will not so often err as to quantity. I have seen the experiment so effectually made, that I speak on this point with certainty and decision.

Let our training be as favorable, however, as it may have been, and let the day of reformation be deferred to the latest possible period of life, still simplicity will be safest. If we are not safe at a simple table, we shall not surely be so elsewhere. Those who are on their guard will more readily perceive what a large amount they consume, when they eat wholly from one dish, than when they make their meal from half a dozen or a dozen different ones.

I do not undertake to say with precision what quantity of food, as the maximum, should be used by a healthy adult in a day; for so various are constitutions, conditions, employments, habits, &c., that it would be impossible. If, however, we place it as high as a pound and eight ounces of solid food--and I presume no intelligent dietetic writer will allow more--and if all above that quantity is in excess and is slowly producing disease, what a mass of error there is among us! By solid food, however, I here mean bread, rice, beans, peas, corn, &c.--substances which contain from eighty to one hundred per cent of pure nutriment. For if a pound and eight ounces of these be the standard, than we


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may eat some three or four pounds, in twenty-four hours, of apples, potatoes, turnips, beets, &c., and perhaps from three to four pounds of plainly cooked lean meat.

I would not set people to weighing their food with too much exactness, lest I should promote the very evils I wish to avoid and remove. Nor would it be so necessary, if each one would make a few experiments in weighing some of his more common articles of diet, and having found out what a very small quantity it takes to make a pound, learns to confine himself chiefly to a single dish at the same meal, and to measure out with his eye, the appropriate quantity--and withal never to violate the monitions of conscience.

2. Another great principle in dietetics is, to masticate our food well. This is indispensable, not only to the highest gustatory enjoyment, but to the most healthy digestion. Nay, it is indispensable to the well being of the teeth, the salivary glands, the gastric secretion, and the whole system. It is not enough insisted on by writers on this subject, and in the practical world almost wholly overlooked. It could scarcely be more neglected if the universal end and aim were to neglect it as much as possible. But the penalty is as universal as the disobedience; and is experienced in a bad state of the stomach, unhealthy sympathies of the


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system with the stomach, especially an unhealthy state of the skin and bowels, and foul and early decaying teeth.

3. Food should not be of a high temperature. I will not say, indeed, that it should be as cold as ice; but it should be cool. The system has the power of generating heat for itself; and it not only has this power, but its well being requires that our heat should be thus generated. All unnecessary heat, applied either externally or internally, diminishes the powers of the system to accomplish this work, and is hence injurious. What would be the effect of living constantly immersed in an atmosphere of the temperature of 90 or 100° of Fahrenheit? Who does not know that it weakens us to remain long in a temperature above 60 or 70°; and that in fact the lower the temperature, provided we are quite comfortable under it, the better for the lungs, the skin, and the whole system. Now the same remark would be applicable to the substances, whether liquid or fluid, received into the stomach. Above 60 or 70°, they are, as a general rule, more or less injurious; and they would probably be better at a much lower temperature still; for the stomach is not so well able to resist heat by evaporation as the skin, or even as the lungs. What, then, must be the effect of hot tea, hot coffee, hot soups, hot bread, &c.?

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4. Food ought not to be too nutritious. This doctrine might be inferred from analogy. Domestic animals, the horse for example, is known to suffer soon on a diet too nutritious--hence the necessity of mixing hay, potatoes, or even straw, with his grain. Nay, it is said, that when his health has been failing from confinement to grain, a mixture of thin shavings of wood has sometimes restored him to sound health.

But what is true of the horse and other domestic animals, is equally true of man. He will soon fall off, and finally sicken, on purely nutritious substances. His diet should always contain a proportion of innutritious matter. Thus wheat, rye, corn, &c., are best unbolted; and wheat meal, if bolted and used to the exclusion of everything else, soon produces injury. On the same principle, in part, should we use not only the farinaceous articles, but fruits and esculent roots; and the simpler they are prepared the better. I would also, both on this principle and those which precede it, avoid butter and oil of every description, cheese, eggs, and pastry. There are many doubts in regard to the long continued exclusive use of arrow-root, cassavi flour, tapioca, sago, &c., and even rice. If these substances are used for an occasional meal, they should, all of them, except rice, be alternated with those of a contrary character.

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5. Solid food is generally preferable to that which is liquid. If there be an exception, it is