on sweeping-day, or during house-cleaning week, that I complain of; but my heart swells with sincerest pity for the husbands before whose eyes the play is enacted three hundred and sixty-five times every year; to whom the elf-locks and collarless neck, the greasy, lank, torn dressing-gown of dark calico appear as surely and regularly as the light of each new day.”
I do not say that you should bring to the breakfast-table a face like a May morning. I hate stereotyped phrases and stereotyped smiles. But try to look as gracious as though a visitor sat between you and the gentleman at the foot of the board. It is not always easy to appear even moderately cheerful at breakfast-time. An eminent physician told me once, as the result of many years’ study and observation, that no woman should be up in the morning more than an hour before breaking her fast. My own experience has so far corroborated the wisdom of the advice that I always strive to impress upon my domestics, especially the not strong ones, the expediency of eating a slice of bread and drinking a cup of tea during the interval that must elapse between their rising-hour and the kitchen breakfast. I practise the like precaution against faintness and headache, in my own case, when I have to give my personal superintendence to the morning meal, or when it is later than usual. But with all precautionary measures, I believe “before breakfast” to be the most doleful hour of the twenty-four to a majority of our sex. In winter, the house is at a low temperature; dressing, a hurried and disagreeable business; the children are drowsy, lazy, and cross; John “doesn’t want to seem impatient, but would like to have breakfast on time, to-day, my dear, as I have an important engagement.” While the mother, who has slept with one ear quite open all night, and one eye half shut, because she fancied, at bed-time, that baby’s breathing was not quite natural, fights twenty battles with bodily discomfort and spiritual irritability before she takes her seat behind the coffee-urn, and draws her first long breath at the beginning of the “blessing,” that reminds her of the mercies, new every morning, which are still hers. For all this, try womanfully to launch John upon the day’s voyage with a smile and word of cheer. Think twice before you tell him of the cook’s indolence and stupidity, and the housemaid’s petulance. In the hope that the nauseating pain in your head may yield to a “good cup of tea”—(bless it, with me, O my sisters, one and all!) it is as well to withhold the fact of its existence from him. If he will read the morning paper over his coffee, his cakes growing cold meanwhile, and thereby obliges the cook to bake twice as many as would be necessary for the meal were all to partake of it at the same time, restrain the censure that trembles on your tongue, and chat merrily with the children. A silent, hasty breakfast is one of the worst things imaginable for their digestion and tempers.
You would often rather have “a comfortable cry” in a corner than act thus, but persuade yourself bravely that nine-tenths of your miserable sensations are hysterical, and, therefore, ephemeral. If we women do not know what the “morning cloud” is, nobody does. Still, remember it “passeth away.”
If possible, let your eating-room be light and pleasant—warm in winter, breezy in summer. Not only should the table be neat, orderly, and, so far as you can make it so, pretty, but guard against what I have mentally characterized, in some very grand salles-à-manger, as the “workshop look”—the look that says to all who enter—“This is the place where you must eat.” There are tall beaufets with loads of plate and glass, side-tables with reserves of implements for the labors of the hour and place; pictures of game, fish and fruit;—more eating;—and if the walls are frescoed, more game, sheep and oxen, or, at the best, hunting, seem to reassure the consumers of to-day that there will be more creatures killed in season for to-morrow’s dinner. Therefore, eat, drink and be solemn while doing it, as befits the season and surroundings. There is nothing like having a single eye to business.
Do not fret yourself if your dining-room boasts neither paintings nor frescoes. Throw open all the shutters in the morning, and coax in every available ray of sunlight. Press the weather into service to adorn the repast. If fine, remark upon the blueness of the sky and the enjoyment of the outer world in the glory of the day. If stormy, make the best of home-cheer, and promise something attractive as an evening entertainment, should the weather continue wet, or snowy. A canary-bird in the sunniest window is a good thing to have in a breakfast-room if you like his shrill warbling. A pot of English ivy, brave and green, twisting over the face of the old clock, and festooning the windows, is a choice bit of brightness in the winter time. In summer, when flowers are cheap and plentiful, never set the table without them if you can get nothing more than a button-hole bouquet to lay on John’s napkin. Insist that the children shall make themselves tidy before coming to the table, whatever may be the meal, even if they will meet nobody except yourself there. Teach them early that it is a disgrace to themselves and to you to eat with unclean hands and faces. Inculcate, further, the propriety of introducing, while at table, topics that will interest and please all. Let wrangling, fault-finding and recrimination be never so much as named among them. These are little things, but whatever detracts from the idea that the family repast is a tri-daily festival, and should be honored and enjoyed as such, is a wrong to those whose happiness it is your mission to guard and maintain. A wrong to health as to heart. Food swallowed in bitterness of spirit engenders dyspepsia and bile as surely as do acrid fruit and heavy bread. A sharp reprimand will take away sensitive Mamie’s appetite, and a frown between the eyes that, when serene, seem to John to mirror heaven itself, will beget in his bosom that indescribable sinking of heart we know as “goneness,” which is yet not physical faintness.
I have jotted down these hints under the heading of “Breakfast,” although most of them are applicable to all meals, because, as a rule, people bring less keenness of hunger to this than to any other. It is as if the longest fast that separates our stated time of eating from another were the hardest to break; as if we had got out of the habit of desiring and receiving food. It behooves us, then, as wise housewives, to make provision against mortifying rejection of our viands by various and artful devices to tempt the dull or coy appetite. Especially should we study to avoid sameness in our breakfast bills of fare; an easy thing to compass by a moderate exercise of foresight and ingenuity on the part of the housewife.
The American breakfast should be a pleasing medium between the heavy cold beef and game pie of the English and the—for our climate and “fast” habits of life—too light morning refreshment of the French. That in order to accomplish these ends it is not necessary greatly to increase the market bills of the household, or the cares of the mistress, I have tried to prove in these pages, while I have not deemed it well to specify, in all cases, which are exclusively breakfast dishes. Very many of those I have described might appear with equal propriety at breakfast, at luncheon, at what is spoken of in provincial circles as “a hearty supper,” or as an entrée or side-dish at dinner.
PATÉS.
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No form of meat, entrée, or made dish is more popular, and, if rightly prepared, more elegant than the paté. It is susceptible of variations, many and pleasant, chiefly in the form of the crust and the nature of its contents. The celebrated patés de foie gras, imported from Strasbourg, are usually without the paste enclosure, and come to us in hermetically sealed jars.
Paté of Sweetbreads.
Make a good puff paste, basting two or three times with butter, and set in a cold place for at least half an hour. The best paté covers I have ever made were from paste kept over night in a cool dry safe, before it was rolled into a sheet for cutting. When the paste is crisp and firm, roll quickly, and cut into rounds about a quarter of an inch thick. Reserving one of these whole for the bottom crust of each paté, lay it in a floured baking-pan, cut the centre from two or three others, as you desire your paté to be shallow or deep, and lay these carefully, one after another, upon