Part 7 (1/2)
Moorish bra.s.s salvers add colour and brightness to the sideboard, in families where silver salvers and presentation plate are not matters of course.
A simple style of dinner is more elegant, as well as more healthful, than one more elaborate. Let it vary with each day rather than with every course: the dinner will thus preserve a character of its own, better than where this is frittered away among so many dishes that you cannot remember off what you have dined.
There is a medium between this fidgety _menu_ and the monster joints we sometimes burden ourselves with. It requires judgment to take the right line. We need not attempt, in our everyday dinner, to realize Disraeli's ideal of dining: ”eating ortolans to the sound of soft music.” But we may try to make our dinner an enjoyment as well as a refreshment; and although our set banquets may be rare, taste and attention will impart to every meal something of the character of a feast.
Stress must be laid on the importance of having every article of food in its due season.
Independently of the hygienic value of the change of diet so supplied, which is in itself a subst.i.tute for many tonic and alternative medicines, attention to this point will give us luxuries when we may reasonably afford them.
Salmon is as nice when it is a s.h.i.+lling a pound as when it is four times that price, and venison is by no means an expensive viand if the market be watched. If we only think of ribs of beef and legs of mutton, we shall only get beef and mutton. But if we take Nature for our guide, we need not deny ourselves the most gratifying and healthful variety.
It is essential that we should eat the fresh fruits as they are ripe, and this rule is equally necessary as regards vegetables.
Indeed, in summer we should accustom ourselves to think more of the vegetable food than of meat; to arrange our dinner in this department primarily, considering what dainty dishes we may concoct of flour and vegetables fried, boiled, and baked, dressed with oil or milk, herbs or spices, incidentally adding the meat--in fact, reversing our usual order of proceedings, where we construct our dinner plan of solid meat, only throwing in vegetables or fruit by way of garnish. But what I wish to dwell on now is not so much the quant.i.ty of vegetable produce we ought to consume, as the necessity of its seasonableness.
When our cooks, be they n.o.ble, gentle, or simple, have come to study the medicinal properties of plants--how they act upon the different organs of the body, and so on--they will see how beautifully they are adapted by the great Provider to our bodily requirements, according to the weather and other circ.u.mstances, and how often what grows best in any situation or soil is the aliment best suited to our own growth in that situation.
If we attended more to this point, our digestions would have sufficiently varied exercise to keep them in healthy working order, and we should hear less about what does or does not agree with people. It is of more consequence that our digestions should be permitted to work at regular hours, than that they should have an over-easy diet. This, indeed, is absolutely injurious to them.
Persons sometimes feel ill, and whatever they may happen to have fed upon is loaded with the responsibility, and that article of diet is cut off for ever from their list, and its hygienic benefit lost to the const.i.tution. The blame is never laid on irregularity, want of air, exercise, or occupation, excitement or perhaps temper, or upon circ.u.mstances generally. Either the weather or the food, irrespective of the quant.i.ty taken, is charged with every ill.
If we took care to make pictures of our dishes of fruit, they would afford us two delightful sensations instead of one. To do this it is not needful to have heaps of fruits, or pyramids of pines. A plum on a leaf, an orange on a china tile, with a branch of flowers laid across it, make exquisite pictures.
See how we appreciate the form and grace of a single flower in a specimen gla.s.s, so that we cannot now endure to see the ma.s.s of crushed flowers we used to call a nosegay; the very word, so descriptive of the bundle, being done away with the thing itself. The old nosegay gave us the scent and gay colours of the flowers, but their tender grace had fled. Now they are delightful to their very stems.
Provident housekeepers have so impressed upon our minds the necessity of caring for the future, that we have been taught to make jam of our most delicious fruits, denying ourselves their fresh beauty and fragrance at our tables, while we roast ourselves over preserving pans in the hottest days of July. This, besides being martyrdom, is a work of supererogation, as the fruit is nicer fresh, and to buy it for the sake of keeping it is absurd, as it can but be eaten once. It is a very reasonable practice in the case of persons possessing large fruit-gardens, as much might otherwise be spoiled; but in our town households it is trouble taken in vain.
We all know the difference it makes to our dinners whether they are served up hot, or only lukewarm; and this alone gives a sufficient reason why we should insist upon the kitchen being close to the dining-room. Where there is no possibility of making a door of immediate communication, we should try our utmost to get a slide-window between the two rooms, so that the dishes, and indeed the whole paraphernalia that necessarily moves from kitchen to dining-room, may be placed on a slab at the said window on one side, and taken in at the other side.
If two persons are engaged in performing this work, one dis.h.i.+ng up and placing on the window slab, and the other putting the things on the dining-table, it will be very expeditious, but it may be quite easily managed by one person. The slide-window, either a sash or a sliding-door, saves much running to and fro.
I will conclude my remarks upon dining-room furniture with a few words about plate.
The bulk of the plate in daily use in the houses of the upper middle-cla.s.s is electro-silver, and it is very admissible, being strong, durable, and agreeable to use; and when made in the ordinary fiddle or threaded patterns is useful without being pretentious. But when it expands into Albert patterns, king's patterns, and the like--when, in short, it claims intrinsic value, and pretends to be silver--it becomes vulgar immediately, because it represents a sn.o.bbish feeling which is bent on making a show with a sham. We cannot all afford silver plate, though doubtless we should all like it, but all of us wish to have the most agreeable medium with which to eat our food, and for this purpose electro is as good as silver.
It is better, in purchasing, to buy the best quality, as it is so much more durable, and it always looks better.
For dessert knives and forks, those with mother-of-pearl handles are the best; the colour is so pleasant, and they are very easily cleaned.
Should you happen to be the fortunate possessor of old plate, let nothing induce you to do as many weak persons are talked into doing: exchange it for modern patterns.
Modern plate is seldom of even moderately good design. The object of the manufacturer seems to be to crowd upon it as lumpy an embossed ornament as possible, to make it ma.s.sive, and remind us of so much per ounce. This was not the motive of the old silversmiths, who more frequently engraved than embossed their ornaments. Most of the old engraved silver is delightful, and it is very light.
The Queen-Anne plate, now so keenly sought, is of admirable workmans.h.i.+p and good design, though the edges are rather thin and sharp for comfort in use.
It is worth while having nice electro dish-covers, as the ugly tin ones sometimes seem to have such a very miserable appearance. It will not be necessary to possess many, and they will come to no harm in our elegant kitchen. They may be either hung up or stood on the dresser; the former way is preferable, and rings to suspend them by are easily attached.
Dish-covers should be warmed before they are put on, as a cold metal cavern chills a leg of mutton almost to the marrow.
Real silver ornaments for the dinner-table are very precious, but failing these, we may make our tables very elegant with Parian, gla.s.s, or even wicker ornaments; and the most interesting of any adornments are vases and dishes painted on porcelain by members of the family. I am sorry to see so many small vulgarities introduced in the shops in the way of _menu_ holders, and other so-called ornaments.