1869. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



155 



HOUSEHOLD ECONOMY. 



CONTRIBUTED FOR THE NEW ENGLAND FARMER, 



Mr. Editor : — Being interested in this de- 

 partment of your paper and often getting val- 

 uable hints therefrom, I would like to submit 

 the following receipts for the trial of all house- 

 keepers who read the Farmer : — 



Brown Bread. 



Indian meal, two cups ; rye meal, one cup ; 

 flour, one cup ; molasses, one-half cup ; two 

 cups sour milk or buttermilk, in which dissolve 

 one teaspoonful of saleratus ; salt. Boil or 

 steam five hours. Set in the oven a little 

 while before putting on the table. 

 Suet Pudding. 



Take six ounces each of chopped apples, 

 suet, raisins and bread. Boil three hours. 

 Serve with sauce — butter and sugar beaten to 

 a froth. 



Sponge Cake. 



One cup of sugar ; three eggs ; two table- 

 spoonsful cream ; one and one-half cups flour ; 

 one teaspoonful cream of tartar ; one-half tea- 

 spoonful saleratus. 



Lemon Pie or Tarts. 



One lemon ; two eggs ; one cup sugar. 

 Grate the peel, and sqeeze in the juice. Beat 

 all well together. 



Another, more economical : Two lemons ; 

 two eggs ; three-fourths cup water ; three- 

 fourths cup milk ; one cup molasses ; one 

 cup sugar ; one cup chopped raisins. Prepare 

 the lemon the same as above. m. p. b. 



Somerset, Mass., Jan. 5, 18G9. 



Ciiu^K Ribs of Beef, with Vegetables. 

 — There is hardly a greater error, for modest 

 households, than preferring the best pieces of 

 inferior animals to the cheap bits of bits of 

 excellent beeves, calves or sheep. Any one 

 who can and will follow my prescription to-day 

 will be abundantly convinced of this. 



Try to buy the chuck-ribs of a fine beef 

 and prepare as follows : — 



Cbuck-ribs and vegetables, — divide the 

 piece of beef if too large. Place the whole 

 in a pot or earthen jar, surrounded or covered 

 with coarse salt ; cover the pot, and leave for 

 five or six days. 



To cook, relieve It of the salt ; wash slightly 

 in soft water and set it to cook in a large ket- 

 tle or earthenware pot, without too much wa- 

 ter; when the foam has risen, season with a 

 little onion stuck over with cloves and with a 

 bay leaf; let it boil an hour, then stir in plenty 

 of (blanched) cabbage, carrots, turnips, po- 



tatoes, etc., and allow them to cook gently 

 until done. 



At the time of serving, make a butter-sauce 

 without browning it too much, mixing it with 

 the remains of water in which the beef and 

 vegetables were cooked ; season with salt and 

 pepper, if necessary. Let it simmer down, 

 and serve in a large dish, the vegetables be- 

 neath, the meat upon them, a part of the sauce 

 poured over, and the rest in a boat. 



To Freshen Salt Fish — Many persons 

 who are in the habit of freshening mackerel, 

 or other salt fish, never dream that there is a 

 right and a wrong way to do it. Any person 

 who has seen the process of evaporation going 

 on at the salt works, knows that the salt falls 

 to the bottom. Just so it is in the pan where 

 your mackerel or white fish lies soaking; and, 

 as it lies with the skin down, the salt will fall 

 to the skin, and there remain ; when, if placed 

 with the flesh side down, the salt falls to the 

 bottom of the pan, and the fish comes out 

 freshened as it should be. In the other case 

 it is nearly as salt as when put in. 



GLOSS ON" SILK. 



The method of giving an artificial gloss to 

 the woven pieces was invented in 1663. The 

 discovery of the method was due to pure 

 hazard. Octavio Mey, a merchant of Lyons, 

 being one day in deep meditation, mechani- 

 cally put a small bunch of silk threads into his 

 mouth and began to chew them. On taking 

 them out again into his hand, he was struck 

 by the peculiar lustre they had acquired, and 

 was not a little astonished to find that this 

 lustre continued to adhere to the threads even 

 after they bad dried. He at once bethought 

 him that there was a secret worth unravelling 

 in this fact, and being a man of wits, he set 

 himself to study the question. The result of 

 his experiments was the procede de lusirage, 

 or "glossing method." The manner of im- 

 parting the artificial gloss has, like all other 

 details of the weaving art, undergone certain 

 changes in the course of years. At present 

 it is done in this wise : Two rollers, revolving 

 on their axes, are set up a few feet from the 

 ground, and at about 10 yards, in a straight 

 line, from each other. Round the first of 

 these rollers is wound the piece of silk of 20, 

 40, or 100 metre's length, as the case may be. 

 Ten yards of the silk are then unwound and 

 fixed by means of a brass rod in a groove on 

 the second roller, care being taken to stretch 

 the silk between the two cylinders as tightly 

 as possible. A workman with a thin blade of 

 metal in his hand daintly covers the upper- 

 most side of the silk (that which will form the 

 inside of the piece) with a coating of gum. 

 On the floor under the outstretched silk is a 

 small tramway, upon which runs a sort of ten- 

 der filled with glowing coals. As fast as one 

 man covers the silk with gum, another works 

 the tender up and down so as to dry the mu- 



