1900 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER; 
59 
The Mother of Cakes. 
The little woman who was selling the 
church cook book had succeeded in dis¬ 
posing of one at almost every house, for 
if all other inducements failed she had 
found that her assurance that there were 
“more than 100 different recipes for cake 
in it,” always proved irresistible. She 
felt a little less confident when she 
reached the low brown cottage where 
“Aunt Susan Bliss” lived alone, for 
Aunt Susan was a famous cake maker, 
and had earned the little brown house 
and a snug sum of money in the bank by 
many years’ work as a pastry cook in a 
city hotel. 
“Of course you do not need this book 
as much as a less experienced cook 
needs it, but even you will find some¬ 
thing new in a book which contains 100 
different recipes for cake,” the little 
woman explained to Aunt Susan, who 
had put on her “reading spectacles,” and 
was turning the leaves of the new cook 
book. 
“I suppose I could tell you the rule for 
making more than half of the cakes 
there are in this book,' said Aunt Susan, 
after turning over a few pages of the 
book. 
“You must have a wonderful mem¬ 
ory,” said the little woman, not knowing 
what else to say. 
"One rule is all I need to remember,” 
said Aunt Susan, with a wise look 
through her spectacles. 
“Why, I am sure there is a great va¬ 
riety,” said the astonished saleswoman. 
“Just look at this one page, Sunshine 
Cake, White Mountain Cake, Ribbon 
Cake, Cream Cake, with three kinds of 
filling, Marble Cake, and White Fruit 
Cake, six different k;nds on this one 
page.” 
“Yes,” said Aunt Susan, “and let us 
look at the recipes and see if they are 
not all made after the one, two, three, 
four cake rule which my mother used to 
call ‘cup cake,’ but which I always call 
‘the mother of cakes.' White Mountain 
cake, one cup sugar, one-half cup butter, 
two eggs, one-half cup milk, l 1 /^ cup 
flour, baking powder, and vanilla ex¬ 
tract. Double that and you have the one 
cup of butter, two cups of sugar, three 
cups of flour, and four eggs of the old 
time recipe.” 
“But you will find the sunshine cake 
different,” said the perplexed caller. 
“Just the same, except that the whites 
of the eggs are put outside in the frost¬ 
ing, instead of in the cake,” said Aunt 
Susan triumphantly, after reading it 
through. “Cream cake is a third of the 
rule, instead of one-half; marble cake 
takes out a half cup of sugar and sub¬ 
stitutes molasses and spices for the dark 
part; and white fruit cake leaves out 
the yolks of the eggs and adds citron 
and a little more flour, but the skeleton 
of the cup cake rule is there, and shows 
through every one of these recipes if you 
only look for it.” 
“I believe you are right,” said the lit¬ 
tle woman, “but I am sure no one but 
you would ever have found it out, and I 
hope you will keep it secret until I sell 
all of my books.” 
“Cooks know how to keep secrets,” 
said Aunt Susan, with a twinkle under 
her glasses. “Colonel Corbin at the 
hotel never guessed that the 12 kinds of 
cake I always made for big suppers were 
mixed up a dozen eggs at a time, doc¬ 
tored with raisins, and spice, and choco¬ 
late, cocoanut, citron, and chopped al¬ 
monds and hickorynut meats until it 
wouldn’t have known itself if it had seen 
itself in the looking glass,” said Aunt 
Susan with a chuckle, as she remem¬ 
bered former triumphs and thought of 
the simple means by which they had 
been achieved. 
“Of course I will buy a book to help 
the cause along,” Aunt Susan added, as 
her visitor rose to go, “besides my niece 
is coming to spend the Summer and I 
will let her practice on the cake recipes, 
for it will be easier for me than it would 
be to try to get the principles of cake 
making into her touzled pompadour 
head, but as for me my old ‘mother of 
cakes’ rule will furnish all the variety 
I shall ever be likely to need.” 
The little lady rose to go, well pleased 
that she had made a sale, and furnished 
with a new story that helped her to sell 
more books than ever, for she told at 
every house how “even Aunt Susan 
Bliss, the best cook in town, bought one 
of my books when she found out that it 
contained more than 100 different re¬ 
cipes for cake.”—American Kitchen 
Magazine. 
Some Farm Suppers. 
What shall we have for supper is an 
ever-recurring question, that comes up 
to vex the farm housekeeper. Potatoes 
and meat, bread and butter three times 
a day, with little variation, grows rather 
monotonous, but there are many dishes 
that are much relished by the family for 
supper, especially if they are well pre¬ 
pared. Potatoes pared and sliced thin, 
drained out of cold water and fried in 
butter or sweet lard are very much en¬ 
joyed. If there is some dry bread on 
hand it may be made into milk toast. 
Use considerably more milk than enough 
to cover the toasted bread; let it get hot 
then spread some butter on the toast and 
put all in the milk together. If the milk 
is not hot when the toast is put in, it 
will fall to pieces. Salt the whole a lit¬ 
tle, and have enough of the hot milk for 
some gravy, but it needs no thickening. 
Cold boiled beef sliced is excellent for 
supper, especially to the laborers. Chili 
sauce or spiced fruit make a nice accom 
paniment. 
Eggs dropped in boiling water are also 
relished by those who eat them. The 
water should be taken from the fire, be¬ 
cause if it is boiling hard it will tear 
the eggs in pieces and waste them. 
They need to be handled carefully, and 
removed with a skimmer. Sweet apples 
baked, and afterwards sliced, to eat with 
cream are fine. Dried beef soup, which 
can be made very quickly, has its ad¬ 
mirers. Pull the beef in small pieces 
and cook a minute or so in a very little 
water, then pour in milk, according to 
the quantity. Stir some flour into a lit¬ 
tle milk and when that in the dish comes 
to a boil, stir it in and cook a minute 
till it thickens, stirring to keep it from 
burning on. Some like this soup made 
with water alone, preferring that to 
milk. Apples sliced with the peelings on 
and fried make an agreeable addition to 
the supper table. 
An Indian meal johnny cake is made 
with part sour milk and part buttermilk, 
wet up thinly at noon and left to stand 
and swell until an hour or so before sup¬ 
per time, then salt and soda put in, and 
baked in a large dripper with room to 
rise, without overflowing on the bottom 
of the oven; two well-beaten eggs are 
put in at the last, and the oven must be 
quite hot when cake is put in. This is 
found a very satisfactory piece of cook¬ 
ing. Scalloped potatoes are always handy 
and palatable. Cut up a quart of cold 
boiled potatoes, put in a suitable baking 
dish a layer of potatoes and one of rolled 
crackers, or bread crumbs, pepper and 
salt, a few bits of butter. Have ready a 
teacupful of hot milk in which has been 
cooked a teaspoonful of flour; pour this 
over, and cover all with cracker crumbs, 
and bake 20 minutes. aunt rachel. 
A Small Brother’s Revenge. 
An elder sister, with a talent for nar¬ 
rating homely things in a funny way, 
regaled guests at a dinner-party with 
naming over the various and ludicrous 
assortment of articles found in her small 
brother’s pocket. It caused much merri¬ 
ment. The small brother, being present, 
vowed he would have his revenge. A 
few days later each guest received the 
following interesting document, written 
in a boyish hand: 
SOPHIE BELL’S TOP BUREAU-DRAWER: 
A Seauel to 
THE CONTENTS OF A BOY’S POCKET. 
Pull easy; a box-lid pokes up in the 
back and keeps it from opening. But 
once opened, a lot of things pop up, like 
jacks-in-the-box, like as if they had 
MOTHERS.—Be sure to use “Mrs. Wins¬ 
low’s Soothling Syrup” for your children 
while Teething. It hi the Best.— Adv. 
springs in them, and had only staid 
down because they were pressed to it. 
Some things fall out on the floor, but 
there’s plenty left. Here they are—rib¬ 
bons, most green. Pull the end of one, 
and this is what comes with it: A shoe¬ 
horn, a‘pocket-book, a piece of a United 
States flag, a shoestring, a bracelet, a 
package of chewing-gum, one of my 
neckties, two of papa’s, a lace scarf, an 
old collar, a pair of white gloves, a 
buckle, a belt, and a letter without an 
envelope, which says: 
Dear Sophie. —Paul and I are going to 
Washington on Saturday. Father doesn’t 
know. Don’t tell a soul. Destroy this. 
Yours, Julia. 
A bundle of letters tied with blue rib¬ 
bon, a horseradish-oottle with a pickle 
in it, two postal-cards, more handker¬ 
chiefs, a bundle of sweet powder, a box 
of college pins, a piece of rope, a small 
diary, a card-case, a feather boa, a half- 
filled box of Huyler’s, a bicycle tool-bag, 
a bunch of samples, a dried rose, a pic¬ 
ture of the man she likes least of all, 
some visiting-cards, an old coin, a lump 
of sugar, two spools of cotton, a receipt 
for home-made caramels, Jack’s last let¬ 
ter, a slipper-bag, a package of cigar¬ 
ettes (unopened, with “He swore off 
June 25” written across it), a false mus¬ 
tache, more of papa’s neck-ties, another 
one of mine, a golf-ball, a meerschaum 
pipe, a package of hair-pins, one white 
slipper, a book, two tintypes, something 
in an envelope marked “From Thoreau’s 
grave,” a theatre programme, an um¬ 
brella-cover, a watch chatelaine, a shirt¬ 
waist, some embroidery, more gloves, a 
monogram fan, a pair of opera-glasses, 
and a curling-iron. 
This is a true story. L. it doesn’t beat 
the other, I’ll go under. dick bell. 
—Harper’s Bazar. 
B.*B. 
We call this shelf-emptying because 
it’s a sacrifice to empty shelves for new 
season's goods. 
But for you it means opportunity to 
get good goods at ^lowest prices nyet 
known—right now when the market’s 
advancing, too. 
50-inch all-wool Ladies’ cloth—odd, 
good colors and black, 35c. 
Double width, 36-inch medium colored 
Dress goods mixtures 20c.—half price. 
Lot of 27-inch, well-made Cotton Suit¬ 
ings—dark effects—7 %C. 
Excellent quality and neat styles 
fleeced back wrapper goods, reduced to 
5c. and (5)£c. 
A throw-away of broken lines of 
choice Dress goods 50c. 
black silk sacrifice. 
—vigorous mark-down when, according 
to present values, they should be 
marked up. 
27-inch, rich quality Black Taffetas 
75c , 19-inch 50c. 
Dollar Black Duchesse, 20 inches wide, 
75c. $1.25 quality, 24-inch, 85c. 
Fine Evening Silks and surplus lots, 
choice novelty silks with equally inter¬ 
esting prices on. 
BOCCS & BUHL, 
Department C c 
ALLEGHENY. PA, 
GOUGHS 
Bronchitis, Hoarseness, 
Sore Throat 
Effectively Relieved. 
John I. Brown & Son, Boston. 
■ M l —III —" Hf—»W—MW '■■' I II 1 Ml IIIi 
For the} 
Baby ! 
The fifty-cent size is just | 
right for the baby. A little j 
of it in the bottle three or | 
four times a day will supply I 
precisely the fat all thin ba- j 
bies need. If your baby does | 
not gain in weight as fast as | 
you would like, try 
Scott's Emulsion 
The result will please you. If 
the baby nurses, the mother 
should take the emulsion. 
It makes the baby’s food 
richer and more abundant; 
only buy the dollar size-it’s 
more economical. 
Both mother and child will feel at 
once its strengthening, upbuilding 
and fat-producing properties. 
I 
At all druggists ; 50c. and $ 1 . 00 . 
• SCOTT & BOWNE, Chemists, New York. 
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AMERICA. 
YANKEE DOODLE. 
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FREE ON APPLICATION. 
This set of five patriotic songs, words 
and music, with accompaniment, complete. 
Send us your request on a postal card; 
write your name and address very plainly, 
give street and number, if a city; give 
county, if a small town. 
Address THE PISO COMPANY, 
Warren, Penn’a. 
The Means to the End. 
The best inventive talent on both sides the Atlan¬ 
tic is constantly used to improve Singer sewing- 
machines ; thus they are always “ up-to-date.” 
Only the best materials and the most modern 
automatic machinery are used in the manufacture 
of Singer sewing machines. 
THEY ARE 
“ BUILT LIKE A WATCH.” 
Sold on Instalments. 
Every genuine machine carries the trade-mark. 
You can try one Free. Old machines taken in exchange- 
SINGER SEWING-MACHINES ARE MADE AND SOLD ONLY BY 
The Singer Manufacturing Co. 
OFFICES IN EVER/ CITY IN THE WORLD. 
