Title: Old Fashioned ‘How-To-Dos’

(Markham Hill's Evangeline Archer wrote an article for the November 22, 1957 issue of the Northwest Arkansas Times entitled “Cyclopedia of Information for the Home Full of ‘How-To-Dos,’ With Recipes and Helpful Hints”. Excerpts from the article follow.)

Mrs. Evangeline Archer the other day had occasion to look up a recipe in The White House Cookbook. She found what she was looking for, and indeed much else as well. She has written the following.

Some Recipes for Thanksgiving dinner and other facts worth knowing, from The White House Cookbook, A Comprehensive Cyclopedia of Information for the Home.

Family life was more leisurely, they say, in pre-packaged-ready-mixed days. At any rate, it was different; just how different for mother, father, and the children can be deduced from recipes and helpful hints in The White House Cookbook, copyright 1887. Try putting yourself in their place.

First, the turkey –

“Select a young turkey; remove all the feathers carefully, singe it over a burning newspaper on the top of the stove; then draw it nicely, being very careful not to break any of the internal organs; remove the crop carefully; cut off the head, and tie the neck close to the body by drawing the skin over it. Now rinse the inside of the turkey out with several waters, and in the next to the last mix a teaspoonful of baking soda; oftentimes the inside of a fowl is very sour, especially if it is not freshly killed. Soda acts as a corrective and destroys that unpleasant taste which we frequently experience in the dressing when fowls have been killed for some time…”

Since you’re going to be in the kitchen anyway, you might as well put by some head cheese – if you can find the ingredients.

“Boil the forehead, ears and feet, and nice scraps trimmed from the hams of a fresh pig, until the meat will almost drop from the bones. Then separate the meat from the bones, put in a large chopping bowl, and season with pepper, salt, sage, and summer savory. Chop it rather coarsely; put it back in the same kettle it was boiled in, with just enough of the liquor to prevent burning. Warm it through thoroughly, mixing it well together. Now pour it into a strong muslin bag, press the bag between two flat surfaces, with a heavy weight on top; when cold and solid it can be cut in slices. Good cold or warmed up in vinegar.”

If the weekend is to be a long one for Father, he may as well finish some of those chores he’s been putting off. If he hasn’t been able to locate that leak in the waste pipe here is a method.

“Shut yourself into the room from which the pipe starts. Put two or three ounces of peppermint into a pail of boiling water and pour down the pipe. Another person who has not yet inhaled the strong odor should follow the course of the pipe through the house. The peppermint will be pretty sure to discover a break that even an expert plumber might overlook.”

Or maybe it’s macassar oil Father is out of. [A kind of oil formerly used, especially by men, to make one’s hair shine and lie flat, and proclaimed to prevent baldness.] In which case –

“Take a quarter of an ounce of the chippings of alkanet root, tie this in a bit of coarse muslin and put it in a bottle containing eight ounces of sweet oil; cover it to keep out the dust; let it stand several days; add to this sixty drops of tincture of cantharides, ten drops of oil of rose, neroli and lemon each sixty drops; let it stand one week and you will have one of the most powerful stimulants for the growth of the hair ever known.”

But first make sure Mother has anti-macassars on all the furniture backs.

By the time the day is over and the dishes washed, Mother’s feet may hurt. This draught for the feet will be restful.

“Take a large leaf from the horse radish plant and cut out the hard fibers that run through the leaf; place it on a hot shovel for a moment to soften it, fold it, and fasten it closely in the hollow of the foot by a cloth bandage.”

If any of the children suffer from over-eating – and using the White House Cookbook recipes is apt to produce such good food as to promote over-indulgence – there is always:

“Slippery elm tea. Put a teaspoon of powdered slippery-elm into a tumbler, pour cold water upon it, and season with lemon and sugar.”

Fall is the time for getting out the ostrich plumes and making them ready for this season’s wear. They can be refurbished this way:

“Wash in warm soapsuds and rinse; dry in the wind. To curl, place a hot flat iron so that you can hold the feather just about it while curling. Take a silver knife, and draw the fibers of the feather between the thumb and the full edge of the knife, taking not more than three fibres at a time. The hot iron makes the curl more durable. After a little practice one can make them look as well as new feathers.”

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