"The idea of being called a tell-tale has occasioned many good servants to shut their eyes against the frauds of fellow-servants.
"In the eye of the law, persons standing by and seeing a felony committed, which they could have prevented, are held equally guilty with those committing it."--Dr. TRUSLER'S _Domestic Management_, p. 12, and _Instructions to Servants_.
To reduce our culinary operations to as exact a certainty as the nature of the processes would admit of, we have, wherever it was needful, given the quantities of each article.
The measure, the graduated glass of the apothecaries. This appeared the most accurate and convenient; _the pint_ being divided into sixteen ounces, _the ounce_ into eight drachms. A middling-sized _tea-spoon_ will contain about a drachm; four such tea-spoons are equal to a middling-sized _table-spoon_, or half an ounce; four table-spoons to a common-sized _wine-glass_.
The specific gravities of the various substances being so extremely different, we cannot offer any auxiliary standards[65-*] for the weights, which we earnestly recommend the cook to employ, if she wishes to gain credit for accuracy and uniformity in her business: these she will find it necessary to have as small as the quarter of a drachm avoirdupois, which is equal to nearly seven grains troy.
Glass measures (divided into tea and table-spoons), containing from half an ounce to half a pint, may be procured; also, the double-headed pepper and spice boxes, with caps over the gratings. The superiority of these, by preserving the contents from the action of the air, must be sufficiently obvious to every one: the fine aromatic flavour of pepper is soon lost, from the bottles it is usually kept in not being well stopped. Peppers are seldom ground or pounded sufficiently fine. (See N.B. to 369.)
N.B. The trough nutmeg-graters are by far the best we have seen, especially for those who wish to grate fine, and fast.
[65-*] A large table-spoonful of flour weighs about half an ounce.
This most simple of culinary processes is not often performed in perfection. It does not require quite so much nicety and attendance as roasting; to skim your pot well, and keep it really boiling (the slower the better) all the while, to know how long is required for doing the joint, &c., and to take it up at the critical moment when it is done enough, comprehends almost the whole art and mystery. This, however, demands a patient and perpetual vigilance, of which few persons are capable.