Ask the "Household Guide -or- Domestic Cyclopedia", c1900

[Sigmagirl]

@dhkendall

… I’m perplexed that I’ve been reading the paper wrong all these years! Pray tell, what is the correct method? (It seems to be only one page devoted on the subject, so it shouldn’t be much to divulge.)

It seems that boustrophedon is no longer au courant. Movable type and all.

[Colophon]

Incidentally, it seems old Prof Jefferis is something of a dark horse. Check out his other works on Amazon.

As well as a number of treatises on eugenics there’s an intriguing tome entitled Light on dark corners : a complete sexual science & guide to purity containing advice to maiden, wife & mother how to love, how to court, how to marry, &c.&c.

[Chronos]

I also looked up gelsemium, ignatia, and pulsatilla, in case you were curious.

Actually, I’m pretty sure that WhyNot probably knew what all those were already.

(BTW, welcome back, WhyNot, we didn’t see you around for a while there)

[alicorn2]

@Sigmagirl

Please consult Page 373 and tell me how to break a string. I have a string. I wish to have two strings.

Hilarious! I’m reading this at work and had a VERY hard time not laughing out loud at that one In fact, I had to register just so that I could say to you: Sigmagirl, you made me laugh!

I am curious about this entry too!

[salinqmind]

After our family has suffered an ague or influenza, is it a wise precaution to have my maid of all work disassemble the beds, wash the frames thoroughly with carbolic, and take the mattresses out into the sun? Also, should I instruct her to gather new downy feathers to restuff the pillows or will beating them thoroughly, along with the mattresses, be sufficient?

[Sigmagirl]

Wow. I’ve never made anyone register before.
Do I get a bonus?

[Level3Navigator]

@BlackKnight

That’s right - a 110 year old recipe for tutti frutti ice cream. I shouldn’t be surprised, really. I mean, once ice cream has been invented, why not throw a bunch of fruit in it? And what else should you call such a thing than the Italian phrase for “all fruits”? (Thank you Wikipedia.)

My favorite reference to tutti frutti ice cream, since we are dealing with old, classic stuff. The flavor has been around a while.

[Mr.Moto]

@Colophon

Incidentally, it seems old Prof Jefferis is something of a dark horse. Check out his other works on Amazon.

As well as a number of treatises on eugenics there’s an intriguing tome entitled Light on dark corners : a complete sexual science & guide to purity containing advice to maiden, wife & mother how to love, how to court, how to marry, &c.&c.

Get them both here free!

[Colophon]

@Mr.Moto

Get them both here free!

Usually marriage is consummated within a day or two after the ceremony, but this is gross injustice to the bride. In most cases she is nervous, timid, and exhausted by the duties of preparation for the wedding, and in no way in a condition, either in body or mind, for the vital change which the married relation bring upon her. Many a young husband often lays the foundation of many diseases of the womb and of the nervous system in gratifying his unchecked passions without a proper regard for his wife’s exhausted condition.

Not that old excuse :rolleyes:

[BlackKnight]

Good heavens, how the questions pile up! I regret that I was not able to attend to this thread yesterday, as I was doing computer work for a relative. On the plus side, I have commandeered a scanner, and if I can get it to work, I will scan some of the more amusing pictures.

Now where was I?

Oh yes - apollonia, I hope you haven’t had that dinner with your parents yet, because I neglected to give you instruction as to the most important part of meals: proper etiquette. The Cyclopedia lists rules of etiquette for general life, etiquette in speech, “Etiquette of Dress and Habits”, “Etiquette on the Street”, and “Etiquette of Calls”. Then there are the sections on “Social Duties” and “Politeness”. But right now we’re interested in “Practical Rules on Table Manners”. I’ll assume you’re well-bred enough to know the obvious ones such as not speaking with your mouth full, so here’s an abbreviated list:

Practical Rules on Table Manners

1. Help ladies with a due appreciation; do not overload the plate of any person you serve. Never pour gravy on a plate without permission. It spoils the meat for some persons.
   …
2. As soon as you are helped, begin to eat, or at least begin to occupy yourself with what you have before you. Do not wait till your neighbors are served - a custom that was long ago abandoned.
3. Should you, however, find yourself at a table where they have the old-fashioned steel forks, eat with your knife, as the others do, and do not let it be seen that you have any objection to doing so.
4. Bread should be broken. To butter a large piece of bread and then bite it, as children do, is something the knowing never do.
   …
5. Whenever you use your fingers to convey anything to your mouth or to remove anything from the mouth, let it be the fingers of the left hand.
6. Tea, coffee, chocolate and the like are drank from the cup and never from the saucer.
   …
7. Should you find a worm or insect in your food, say nothing about it.
   …
8. Do not hesitate to take the last piece on a dish, simply because it is the last. To do so is to directly express the fear that you would exhaust the supply.
   …
9. If an accident of any kind soever should occur during dinner, the cause being who or what it may, you should not seem to note it.
10. Should you be so unfortunate as to overturn or to break anything, you would make no apology. You might let your regret appear in your face, but it would not be proper to put it in words.

To sum up: don’t wait for others to be served before eating, ignore the worms, take the last biscuit, and for Pete’s sake - no apologizing!

[alicorn2]

@Sigmagirl

Wow. I’ve never made anyone register before.
Do I get a bonus?

Sounds fair to me!

[BlackKnight]

I’ve just spent the past hour and twenty minutes trying to figure out why my Internet suddenly stopped working. (And cursing like a sailor.)

@Superfluous_Parentheses

I’m giving a party for friends. How much booze should I get per head?

Ah, I haven’t pondered questions of booze per head since my college days. (As I recall, the exchange rate was not in my favor.)

I can find nothing positive in the Cyclopedia about alcohol. The index lists “Alcohol, effects of 185” and “drink, best 45”. The latter looks a bit more promising, so let’s check that out first:

Water the Best Drink.- Many have found a cure for dyspepsia …

Wait, let’s back up a bit and get some context. Most of page 45 is under a heading of “Tea and Coffee. Why Do We Drink It?” After describing the problems of immoderate tea and coffee imbibing, we get the subheading of “Water, the Best Drink”. I think you see where I’m going with this. If the guide just barely approves of coffee and tea, it’s probably not the best place to go for liquor recommendations. But I’ll let the Cyclopedia do the talking:

TEA AND COFFEE.
WHY DO WE DRINK IT?
That fragrant cup of tea, the still more alluring cup of coffee, or the delicious and enticing cocoa or chocolate - what is it makes them each and all so indispensable to their votaries?

One says, “I drink tea because it is so refreshing, it rests me when I am tired.” “I take coffee for the reason that I can’t do without it,” another honestly confesses; and “I drink chocolate because it is so soothing,” explains a third.

Not Essential to Health.- These beverages, physiologists declare, are in no sense to be considered as food or as essential to health. They partake of the nature and effects of alcohol, that is, they are stimulating, exhilarating, sometimes sedative, but never nourishing, and they are taken for a similar reason that the whisky drinker takes the still more stimulating liquor. All are unnatural props and false supports seeming to afford strength and in reality giving none.

Disease Producing.- One of the most common causes of dyspepsia and nervousness is the immoderate use of tea and coffee. These drinks contain a poison which, although not fatal in small doses, nevertheless produces a decidedly injurious effect. While chocolate and cocoa are less powerful, they produce the same effects.

The tea and coffee drinkers say “Oh, it doesn’t hurt me. I’ve taken it for years.” But the end is not yet and when the reckoning is suddenly summed up, there is a painful and fatal deficit, and when it is too late to change the habits of a lifetime, the sad fact becomes apparent that these indulgences in strong tea and coffee are not conducive to the best results.

Water the Best Drink.- Many have found a cure for dyspepsia, nervousness, sick headache and other diseases in discarding tea, coffee and all their substitutes. After all has been said that can be said in favor of these drinks it remains true that nature’s drink, pure water, is best.

Cripes, I feel like I’m in D.A.R.E class again! All that’s missing is an olde timey Publice Service Announcemente about the dangers of alcohol and cigarettes.

So what’s on page 185? Actually, nothing relevant. Apparently it was harder to update an index when you weren’t using word processing software. For whatever reason, what we’re looking for got bumped to page 186. Here we find … well, I’m glad I got that scanner working. The woodcuts really add to the effect.

This is your stomach, liver, kidneys, heart and lungs.

This is your stomach, liver, kidneys, heart, and lungs on drugs.

Any questions?

Yes?

Oh, good! Because in addition to Ye Olde Public Service Announcement, we also get Ye Old After-School Special:

The Destructive Effects of Cigarette Smoking.
Cigarettes have been analyzed, and most physicians and chemists were surprised to find how much opium is put into them. A tobacconist himself says that “the extent to which drugs are used in cigarettes is appalling.” “Havana flavoring” for this same purpose is sold everywhere by the thousand barrels. This flavoring is made from the tonka-bean, which contains a deadly poison. The wrappers, warranted to be rice paper, are sometimes made of common paper, and sometimes of the filthy scrapping of ragpickers bleached white with arsenic. What a thing for human lungs!

That habit burns up good health, good resolutions, good manners, good memories, good faculties, and often honesty and truthfulness as well.

Cases of epilepsy, insanity and death are frequently reported as the result of smoking cigarettes, while such physicians as Dr. Lewis Sayre, Dr. Hammond, and Sir Morell Mackenzie of England, name heart trouble, blindness, cancer and other diseases as occasioned by it.

Leading physicians of America unanimously condemn cigarette smoking as “one of the vilest and most destructive evils that ever befell the youth of any country,” declaring that “its direct tendency is a deterioration of the race.”

Look at the pale, wilted complexion of a boy who indulges in excessive cigarette smoking. It takes no physician to diagnose his case, and death will surely mark for his own every boy and young man who will follow up the habit. It is no longer a matter of guess. It is a scientific fact which the microscope in every case verifies.

I admit I was momentarily surprised to see that this esteemed volume had an index entry for “toasts 480”. It didn’t seem fitting to promote toasting one’s health with what would presumably be a beverage inclined to ruin that health. But my faith in the book’s moral rectitude was restored when I turned to page 480 and found the following:

Milk Toast.
Toast graham bread or gems slit in two. Boil one pint …
…
Oyster Toast.
Pour stewed oysters over graham gems or bread toasted. Excellent for breakfast.
…
Eggs on Toast.
Soften brown bread toast with hot water. Serve on a platter with poached or scrambled eggs.
…
Asparagus on Toast.
Stew tender asparagus thirty minutes. Add half a cup of cream, salt and butter to taste. Turn over graham toast.

While nothing I found in the Cyclopedia specifically endorsed complete teetotalism, anyone who recommends asparagus on toast while warning against too much coffee is clearly operating on a different plane.
(Full page scans: Kidney, Lung, Stomach, Liver, Destructive Effects of Cigarette Smoking)

Hopefully all those links work. It seems that PhotoBucket took my beautiful 6mb scans and reduced them significantly. If anyone knows a free site for uploading big picture files, let me know. Otherwise you’ll just have to make due with moderate quality.

[thirdwarning]

@apollonia

Twelve egg whites??? The beef hearts, well, I have to do SOMEthing with them after the slaughter, but twelve egg whites??? The day I can use twelve egg whites for a cake is the day I become a Rockefeller bride. My stars.

According to my mom, my grandmother sometimes used to make an angel food cake to sell (I assume by order), using twelve egg whites, and then use the yolks to make sponge cakes, also to sell. It would have been a little later than this book, probably some time between 1910 and 1930 or so.

[WhyNot]

Asparagus on Toast.
Stew tender asparagus thirty minutes. Add half a cup of cream, salt and butter to taste. Turn over graham toast.

Bolding mine.

30 minutes?! For “tender asparagus”?! Eeeeeeeew! :eek:

[alicorn2]

@WhyNot

Bolding mine.

30 minutes?! For “tender asparagus”?! Eeeeeeeew! :eek:

Yuck… you’d end up with asparagus mush. But maybe that was the idea, something spreadable, like jam, but gross? (I love asparagus, but not overcooked!)

[Giles]

@WhyNot

30 minutes?! For “tender asparagus”?! Eeeeeeeew! :eek:

Yes, I cook asparagus for more like 30 seconds.

[emmaliminal]

@Giles

Yes, I cook asparagus for more like 30 seconds.

When we make asparagus, I later use the cut-off tough ends to make asparagus broth for our dog (no, we don’t spoil our pets – why do you ask?) and the longest I cook it is about 15 minutes. I once left it on the burner for more like 30 minutes by mistake and it came out seriously nasty – the smell changes completely, to something vaguely garbagey or rotten. Of course, the dog still liked it that way…

[Acsenray]

@BlackKnight

Homeopathy is an olde-timee set of quack medical ideas believed by simpler people from a simpler time because they were dumb. It was debunked long ago and so nobody knows what it is anymore.

If only that last bit were true.

[Deeg]

@BlackKnight

Most of the books looked awful because they were over a hundred years old and were falling apart; the last looked awful because it was by Dan Brown.

Well played, sir.

[alicorn2]

So I searched online for how to break a string, and after filtering out how to split strings into arrays in Java (I didn’t think that’s what the book was talking about, but perhaps it was ahead of its time) I found this:
http://familyfun.go.com/playtime/pulling-strings-863590/

Wonder if it’s the same thing? A kids’ trick?