By HENRIETTA SOWLE (“HENRIETTE”) BOSTON · LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY · MDCCCC Copyright, 1900, by Little, Brown, and Company . UNIVERSITY PRESS · JOHN WILSON AND SON · CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. TO MR. EDWARD H. CLEMENT...

B EFORE dipping into this book very far, reader (pray note that I cozen you with neither “gentle” nor “dear”), allow me to suggest that you familiarize yourself with the spirit of Emerson, who has allowed that the truly consistent person changes his mind whenever occasion offers. Then you will be in a frame of mind to acknowledge that I have but exercised my privilege if you chance upon passages that seem to put me in a self-contradictory position. I hold to one opinion till new or increased lig

S OME fine day, perchance, I shall to market go and find there what all housekeepers are “a-sighin’ and a-cryin’ for”—namely a new edible; and be it fish, flesh, or fowl, I shall, with all haste, make you acquainted with its nature, and with the name of the marketman who introduces the boon; and methinks that nothing short of canonization should reward the man, or woman, who finds “something new under the sun.” But till that blessed day of discovery really arrives I must be content with telling

O NCE upon a time, one of the resourceless sort of housekeepers said to me that she was never quite so stumped as when she felt the economical burden laid upon her to utilize lamb or mutton “left-overs.” Now, this has been quite the opposite of my experience. In fact, I wouldn’t acknowledge that I found cold lamb a facer, anyway. Suppose we talk of a leg of lamb roasted in this way: The bone neatly removed, the cavity filled with a mushroom stuffing, then roasted in a hot oven and served with ca

T HERE couldn’t be a better time than the present in which to have a smoke-talk, mesdames. There, there, now, pray don’t be alarmed; I’ve no notion of passing round any of the popular brands of cigars. Neither would I so much as offer you cigarettes, albeit the latest scientific utterance has pronounced them harmless. No, our talk shall be of some of the smoked and salted viands that, while they may not perhaps come under the head of delicacies or indelicacies of the season, are decidedly appeti

T HE very first thing to be done on Easter morning is to get up in time to see the sun dance; for, as you probably know, not a bit of good luck will be yours for the year to come if laziness, or anything, in fact, save cloudy skies, prevents your beholding this phenomenon. But it is possible that you don’t know that this means nothing less than to be facing the east with eagle eye and steady nerve at a pretty early hour. Rather rough, isn’t it? How would it do, then, to sit up all night in order

I T’S the month when, by a logical amount of reasoning, the housekeeper is persuaded that she can easily treat her family to roasted veal, at least once a week, without any member of it entering a complaint. She tries it. The second time serving it threatens to go a-begging, and the third time there is so much left over that it can’t be worked up in seven days—when, by her reckoning, another knuckle is due. People do tire of veal in short order, even those who have a liking for it, for some reas

C LAMS are good and plentiful now,” said the fish dealer one day, and as I was in the frame of mind to take him at his word I hastily ran over in my mind the various ways in which this delectable fish may be prepared, the while I ordered from him the quantity I thought I could use. It doesn’t take very long to sum up the gastronomical possibilities of the clam that are cherished in the minds of most housekeepers, you will admit. But, with time and opportunity favoring, there is room for expansio

I T was with the thought of Hortensia’s garden party weighing somewhat heavily on my mind that I made my customary tour “all on a market day,” for she had beseeched me with tears in her voice to plan for her a list of appetizing dishes to put before her guests which should not be so elaborate as though meant for a grand dinner, nor yet so simple as if intended for the refreshment of a Sunday-school picnic. Hortensia would, I felt sure, see to it that the piazzas, grounds, and tent-like buffet we

A BOUT the only time when I am really anxious to have the right to vote is when some legislation tending toward the preservation of the lobster is on the docket. Then, if I had the opportunity, I should not only vote with both hands for a “close season” on that delectable shellfish, but I should lecture as long as I could get any one to listen to me, either on Boston Common or in Faneuil Hall, in an endeavor to induce others, men and women, to vote with me. I believe I should even resort to brib

T HERE are persons, as some of us can testify, who appear to be horrified if a Manhattan cocktail is mentioned in the most casual manner, and who are warranted to shy if they but get a whiff of a Martini, but give them a chance to partake of an oyster cocktail and you have added a substantial item to their sum of worldly pleasure. Almost everybody likes an oyster cocktail when it is judiciously mixed, but folk of the ilk above referred to do seem to have a peculiar fondness for it. Now, is it be

W HEN all the world adopts the Pythagorean menu as its standard of good living then I will bestir myself and concoct the daintiest dishes possible from those “foods that are freshly chemicalized by the sun’s rays,” and will gladly give you the benefit of my experiences. But I’m no reformer, and until that day of universal self-denial arrives I will continue the tenor of my way along the old line, and try to idealize commonplace, every-day viands into dishes that pique the appetite, and make of e

O NCE upon a time, a somebody who was famous for his or her wit or wisdom, or for both qualities, remarked that oftentimes the easiest and best way to get over a difficulty was to go round it. To my great regret, I can’t give you the name of the author of the very pithy saying, neither can I tell you just what conditions called it forth, but it’s safe to say that its context was a suggestion or opinion offered for the settling of some great big question of state. But, what is more to the point,

A NY one can go to market if she has the wherewithal and secure any kind of game that happens to be on the list and be happy in the purchase and eating of it, I dare say. But the happiest dames in these times are those who have a husband or sweetheart in the field shooting straight to the mark with all thoughts for the recipient of his day’s work. So it comes to pass that by express to many a door there come on these fine crisp mornings boxes or hampers of game birds. The next thing, of course,