Domestic science

Many years back cookery meant “knowledge of herbs and fruits and balms and spices and all that is healing and sweet in the fields and groves, and savory in meats. It means carefulness and inventiveness and willingness and readiness of appliances. It means the economy of our grandmothers and the science of the modern chemist; it means much testing and no wasting; it means English thoroughness and French art and Arabian hospitality; and, in fine, it means that you (women) are to be perfectly and always ladies—loaf givers.”  This quote by Ruskin is the introduction to the 1914 Austin’s Domestic Science book for teaching girls “cookery”.
The author states that he lived to eat rather than eat to live. He ascertained that between ages ten and 70 that he had eaten and drunk 44 wagon loads of meat and drink and in doing so, had starved to death at least one hundred people.
Students were taught how to arrange their laboratory (kitchen), what to wear, table manners, how to set a table, the position in which one should sit while at the table and to talk only of cheerful matters, the order of washing dishes, and the instructions of preparing food. The best offered advice for table manners was to use a spoon for anything that was too soft to be handled with a fork. Washing and rinsing dishes were taught to be done in this order: first the glassware, silver, china, crockery, granite and tin items, and lastly the kitchen utensils.
The class included instructions from creaming butter to delicious recipes of the era. One such recipe was for a peanut and potato dish. The idea was that since potatoes are a starchy food and nuts are an oily food that the two would make a healthy combination. Just prepare potatoes, mash and cream. Add peanuts, butter, milk, and salt to potatoes. Pour into a buttered baking dish and bake in a moderate oven until thoroughly heated and browned on top. The potato was used by the Indians long before America was founded. Introduced in Europe in the sixteenth century by the Spanish, it was first planted in the flower garden “as a curiosity”.
Coffee was explained to have three important compounds; caffeine, tannin, and aromatic oils. If you are boiling the coffee in a granite ware pot, add a mixed-up egg to one cup of ground coffee.  Filtered coffee would drip through the French coffee pot and did not require an egg.
As for fruit, their chief uses were summed up to be: to furnish nourishment, to act as blood purifiers, to give a stimulus to appetite, to serve as medicine, to aid in digestion, and to give variety in food. Apples are 84.6 percent water, should be polished with a dry cloth, and served with a silver fruit knife being placed at the right of the polished apple on the plate.
Milk is 87 percent water and does not furnish enough nutrients or bulk to supply a person’s life so milk should be combined with other foods. The school class would then be instructed that, when milking, using a milk pail with a cap-like cover to prevent dirt from entering the milk as opposed to using an open pail. To pasteurize one cup of milk, one would need a half-pint bottle, some cotton, a rubber cork, and a deep pan.
As for meat, steak should be browned (seared) only one-eighth of an inch from each surface and then cooked (grilled above the fire) at a lower temperature so as not to harden the protein compounds in it. Salt has a tendency to extract meat juices and is not added until the meat is done.
Written long ago in pencil on the blank “recipe” pages are several favorite recipes. What follows is a recipe for making marsh mellows: 1 package Knox gelatin without the acid in 5 tablespoons of water. Boil 2 cups sugar, 6 tablespoons water till it threads or one minute more than frosting, then beat in gelatin till stringy as long as possible. Flavor, if desired.  Or for a sponge cake combine 6 eggs, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, ½ teaspoon salt and flavoring.
Here are a few of the “miscellaneous directions” in the way of good manners. Put only small portions of food into the mouth at one time. Do not open the mouth to received food until the food reaches the mouth. Hold the arms close to the sides while eating. Never put the elbows on the table. Sit close to the table and keep both feet flat on the floor. Sit near enough to the table to maintain an easily erect position while eating. Never reach across the table for food. Never try to talk with food in the mouth. Toothpicks should be used only in private. Stand at the back or side of the chair until the hostess gives the signal to be seated. Sit in a chair at table from the right side of the chair and rise from the same side. Speak only in low, well-modulated tones at the table. Never leave the table before the others without asking to be excused. Coffee, tea, and cocoa should be drunk from the cup, not from the spoon, except just at first when sipped to ascertain if the flavor or the temperature is right.
Domestic science for girls began in the 1800’s as the counter curriculum for manual training for boys. Catherine Beecher and her sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe were first to introduce the teaching of domestic sciences. They designed a small Rumford Kitchen exhibit at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Today, we refer to the teachings of  domestic science as Home Economics.

Contact this reporter at norine@lakesun
leader.com