Frizzled Beef and Ninnymuggins on Day 14

I tried to fight it, I did everything I could. I packed a new book, loaded my newest CD on the iPod...but it was no use. By the time I made it out to the coffee shop and into the leather chair by the fireplace, my domestic, June-Cleaver tendancies had taken over, and a cookbook was in my lap, opened to "Chapter XXXIII: Words of Comfort for a Discouraged Housekeeper".

Not that I, by any stretch of the imagination, am a discouraged housekeeper. On the contrary, I seem to be the most motivated cooker and cleaner this side of 1901. But this cookbook fairly screamed to be read tonight. It's fresh off the shelves of the Henry Ford Village book shop [courtesy Allie, my circa-1860's, 22-year old sister] Miss Beecher's Domestic Reciept Book.

It is delicously dated reading. It's got this great gravure picture on the cover of a woman (Catherine Beecher, I'm guessing) in a trustled, 1890's high-collared dress complete with cameo at nape of neck and a decorative ivory comb protuding from the hair piled neatly atop her head. She's got a flaming saucepot [oh, wow. I resolve to use that term as an insult at least 5 times tomorrow] in one hand and a teaspoon in her other hand, reaching delicately into a jar of some "tincture" or "alkaline" or some other outdated ingredient that I'm sitting over here trying to cook with, despite having NO idea what it could be called by today.

Catherine Beecher, who became published first in 1858, covers some fabulous topics, all intended for an audience she identifies as "housekeepers", "cooks and chambermaids", or most directly "women". My favorite is "domestics". She's pretty consistent in pluralizing it, which I think lends an air of added distain. Friendly Councils for Domestics is the title of the penultimate chapter in the book. Might as well have used "simpleton" or "ninnymuggin", Cathy. Real nice.

Our girl Beecher has got boatloads of yummy sounding recipes. "Rice Jelly" "Egg Gruel" and "Strawberry Acid" are a few staples I couldn't do without.

There are times when...how do I put this...I don't know what the hell she's talking about, but I'm never confused for more than a moment. She's great at demystifying her fancy-pants recipe titles:

Frizzled Beef

Sliver smoked beef, pour on boiling water to freshen it, then pour off water and frizzle the beef.

Oh! Frizzle! We call that......we call it.....okay, I won't try that recipe.

And, you know, the "Pickled Martinoes" recipe didn't clear anything up, nor did "Whip Syllabub", but the "Temperance Drinks" chapter was charming enough to make up for my confusion, and I got a particular kick out of her kitchen utensil descriptions:

Fig. 18 is a Saw Knife, being a saw and a knife.

Nailed it, Beecher!

She's got me hooked. Kate the Domestic, all the way. I've succumb to her line of thinkin--it's why I resolved to work late tonight when I read the opening line in her chapter "On Bread Making":

A woman should be ashamed to have poor bread, far more so, than to speak bad grammar, or to have a dress out of fashion. Perhaps it may be thought that all this is a gread drudgery, but it is worse drudgery to have sickly children, and a peevish husband.

How true. Not to mention, you know, if you were to get sick too. Oh, look at me! I've forgotten: Domestics don't get sick...they glisten! Or frizzle. Or Martinoe.