The Dinner Year-Book

_“COMMON SENSE IN THE HOUSEHOLD” SERIES._


THE

DINNER YEAR-BOOK

  BY
  MARION HARLAND,
  AUTHOR OF “COMMON SENSE IN THE HOUSEHOLD,”
  “BREAKFAST, LUNCHEON AND TEA,” ETC.


  NEW YORK:
  CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS,
  1883.




  COPYRIGHT BY

  CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS.

  1878.


  TROW’S
  PRINTING & BOOKBINDING CO.,
  _205-213 East 12th St._,
  NEW YORK.




Familiar Talk with the Reader.


“Do not laugh when I tell you that one of the most serious perplexities
of my every-day life is the daily recurring question, ‘What shall we
have for dinner?’” writes a correspondent.

I do not smile at the naïve confession. I feel more like sighing as
I recollect the years during the summers and winters of which the
same query advanced with me into the dignity of a problem. There were
several important ends to be compassed in the successful settlement
of the question. To accomplish an agreeable variety in the family
bill of fare; to accommodate appetites and individual preferences
to the season and state of the local market; to avoid incongruous
associations of meats, vegetables, sauces, _entrées_ and desserts; to
build fragments into a structure about which should linger no flavor
of staleness or sameness; so to manage a long succession of meals
that yesterday’s repast and the more frugal one of to-day should not
suggest the alternation of fat and lean in the Hibernian’s pork, or
the dutiful following of penance upon indulgence; to shun, with equal
care, the rock of parsimony and the whirlpool of extravagance;—but
why extend the list of dilemmas? Are they not written in the mental
chronicles of every housewife whose conscience—be her purse shallow or
deep—will not excuse her from a continual struggle with the left-overs?
Such uncompromising bits of facts do these same “left-overs” appear
in the next day’s survey of ways, means, and capabilities, that timid
mistresses are the less to blame for often winking at the Alexandrine
audacity with which the cook has disposed of the knotty subject by
emptying platters and tureens into the swill-pail,—which should stand
for the armorial bearings of her tribe wherever found,—or satisfied
indolence, and what goes with her for humanity, by tossing crusts,
bones, and “cold scraps” into the yawning basket of the beggar at the
basement door.

One of these days I mean to write an article, scientific and practical,
upon the genus, “basket-beggar.” For the present, take the word of one
who has studied the species in all its varieties,—who has suffered
long, and certainly not been _un_kind in the acquisition of experience
upon this head,—and prohibit their visits entirely, and at all seasons.
“Cold cuts” and the “heels” of loaves belong to you as certainly as do
hot joints and unmutilated pies. Issue your declaration of independence
to the effect that you choose to dispense charity in your own way,
and that, as an intelligent Christian woman, you can better judge by
what methods to relieve want and aid the really worthy poor, than
can the ignorant, irresponsible creature who lavishes what costs her
nothing upon every chance speculator whose lying whine excites her
pity. Sympathy which, by the way, would generally lie dormant, were the
listener to the piteous tale obliged to satisfy the petitioner from her
own purse or wardrobe.

Returning from what is not, although it may seem to be a digression,
let us talk together more briefly than is our wont in these familiar
conferences, of the considerations that have moved and sustained me
in the preparation of this volume, and which will, I hope, make it a
welcome and useful counsellor to you. First, then, the suggestion
and interrogation of sincere seekers for helpful advice pertaining to
that most important of the triad of daily meals—“THE FAMILY DINNER,”
superadded to my own observation and experience of the difficulties
that beset the subject. Secondly, the discovery, that so far as I have
been able to push my investigations—and my searching has been keen and
extensive—no directory upon this particular branch of culinary endeavor
has been published, at least none in the English language. We have
had books, some of them admirable helps to skilful, no less than to
inexperienced housekeepers, upon dinner-giving, and company dinners,
and “little dinner” parties, not to refer to the mighty mountain of
manuals upon cookery in general; but, up to the time of the present
writing, I have found nothing that, to my appreciation, meets the case
stated by the friend whose plaint heads this chapter.

My aim has been to write out, for seven days of four weeks in each
month, a _menu_ adapted, in all things, to the average American
market; giving meats, fish, vegetables, and fruits in their season,
and, so far as I could do so upon paper, rendering a satisfactory
account of every pound of meat, etc., brought, by my advice, into the
kitchen. I have taken the liberty accorded me by virtue of our long
and intimate acquaintanceship, of inspecting not only the contents
of your market-basket, but each morning the treasures of larder and
refrigerator; of offering counsel concerning crumbs, bones, and such
odds-and-ends as are held in contempt by many otherwise thrifty
managers—to wit, other cold vegetables than potatoes, and dry crusts of
bread and cake, while of gravy and dripping I have made specialties.