The complete Indian housekeeper & cook : giving the duties of mistress and servants, the general management of the house and practical recipes for cooking in all its branches / by F.A. Steel & G. Gardiner.

  • Flora Annie Steel
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The complete Indian housekeeper & cook : giving the duties of mistress and servants, the general management of the house and practical recipes for cooking in all its branches / by F.A. Steel & G. Gardiner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    67/400
    economically served thus, as cold jjuddings, &c., of which there is not enough to hand round, can be neatly arranged in small dishes and placed on the table. Lunch in economical houses has to be more or less a made-up meal, or waste becomes a necessity. Where there are children, it will, of course, be the nursery dinner, and it will be found a good plan to begin with well-made soup or broth. Nothing is more nourishing than well-made mutton broth with plenty of rice or barley in it, and the meat stewed down into the soup. This, with an honest milky pudding eaten with stewed fruit, is as whole- some a dinner as it is possible to give. Of course, if Indian bairns are fed upon curry and caviare, their taste for simple dishes will become impaired, but there really is no reason why they should be so fed. Servants in India are particularly careless in serving up cold viands; having a contempt for them, and considering them as, in reality, the sweeper’s perquisites. So it is no unusual thing to see puddings served up again as they left the table, and pies with dusty, half-dried smears of gravy clinging to the sides of the pie-dish. This should never be passed over; but both cook and khitinutgar taught that everything, even down to the salt in the salt-cellars, must be neat, clean, and pleasant to look at, as well as to taste. Heavy luncheons or tiffins have much to answer for in India. It is a fact scarcely denied, that people at home invariably eat more on Sundays, because they have nothing else to do; so in the hot weather out here people seem to eat simply because it passes the time. It is no unusual thing to see a meal of four or five distinct courses placed on the table, when one light entree and a dressed vegetable would be ample. Even when guests are invited to tiffin, there is no reason why they shoidd be tempted to over-eat themselves, as they too often are, by the ludicrously heavy style of the ordinary luncheon ])arty in India. If the object of such parties is, as it should be, to have a really pleasant time for sociable conversation between lunch and afternoon tea, stufling the guests into a semi-torpid state certainly does not conduce to success. Yet if the memi be large and long, it is almost impossible for a luncheon guest to°persist in refusal without making himself remarkable. He has no