A Home Haven Homemaking Lesson

May you have a Blessed Day!

Every September I am reminded that another school season begins. 
A time to concentrate on school studies and learn what I can.

With that in mind I think since I'm a homemaker reading a vintage book will be entertaining and informative for lil ole me that sometimes struggles with all that I need to do.

This may take some time to share all that this 1926 book has to say.

A little every Monday.

Think that will be just fine as I dedicate MONDAYS to this book.

Let's read and see what it was like in some households from the 1920's.

THE ART OF

Cooking and Serving

by Sarah Field Splint
CHAPTER 1

Table Service

in the Servantless House

THREE things a meal must be when you are your own cook and waitress: it must be nourishing, it must be reasonably easy to prepare and it must give your family pleasure in the way it is served.

Since well-bred people avoid display, especially display that is out of keeping with their means, the mistress of the serventless house does not attempt the formalities of table service observed by the Richest-Family-in-Town. The old proverb that advises us to bite off only as much as we can chew applies very abtly to serving. It is a sign of good taste to do only as much as we can do well, and to leave the extreme expressions of style to those who have money and servants to carry them out.

The intelligent woman fits her service to her pocketbook and strength. Certain fundamental rules she observes to the letter, of course, but beyond that she is given a wide latitude to work out her own taste and convenience. She may choose, for instance, to bring broiled chops to the table in a covered earthenware casserole, instead of on the platter which matches her dinner set, but what sane person would find fault with this method when it is the only way of keeping the food piping hot on the long journey from her particular kitchen?

This matter of serving hot foods hot and cold foods cold happens to be one of those fundamental rules which no woman who aspires to be a good housekeeper can make light of. It just has to be done, however it is accomplished.

Quite as hard and fast is the edict about clean linen and shining silver. Better never to use anything but doilies, and keep them immaculately fresh, than to cover the table for even one meal with a cloth having a single spot on it. In many homes of wealth tablecloths, as a matter of fact, are no longer seen; lace or even linen runners and place mats have supplanted them. This type of linen demands a well-finished tabletop, of course, either of paint or of natural wood smoothly polished. Probably the latter is the more practical, as hot dishes will not mar it if it is left unvarnished and rubbed down frequently with oil or wax.

Table silver will always be bright if washed in hot suds made with Ivory Soap and dried at once with a soft clean towel. Silver polish should be kept close to the kitchen sink so that stained pieces may be rubbed up after each meal. This plan consumes only a few extra minutes each day, but how it reduces the labor of the weekly silver cleaning!

Just one more adamantine law. Each place, or cover, as one sometimes sees it called, must be carefully set with the knife at the right of the place plate and the fork at the left. The sharp edge of the knife must be turned toward the plate and the fork must be placed with its prongs pointing upward. The water glass takes its stand about one inch above the point of the knife, while the bread-and-butter plate goes to the opposite side of each plate just above the fork. The small butter knife is placed on the bread-and-butter plate, either across the top or the right-hand edge.

This is the skeleton arrangement of a place. Additional silver and glass is added to it according to the meal and the kinds of food to be served, and a napkin always puts in its appearance, sometimes on the plate, at other times to the left of the fork. But these are details which are easily remembered once you understand the reasons for them. And it is high time to discuss them now.

NEXT WEEK...BREAKFAST

God Bless,

~Deanna~