Crash Kitchen Aprons

1895

An excellent use for crash is in making kitchen aprons. We somehow have the idea if an apron is for the kitchen it must necessarily be of either dark gingham or calico or something wholly unattractive. As a matter of fact, a neat person will not wear a kitchen apron after it is soiled, and dark material keeps clean no longer than light. It only conceals its unclean condition longer. There is no reason, then, why a kitchen apron should not be attractive as well as useful, and any one who has once used for this purpose a fine, pretty piece of delicately checked linen crash will scarcely want to return to the ugly, dark aprons of former days. — Demorest's Magazine.


Those Who Live In Cottages

A boy, reading the verse, "And those who live in cottages are happier than those who sit on thrones," startled the crowd by reading thus, "And those who live in cottages are happier than these who sit on thorns."

Sanitary Lid for Teakettle

1916

Safety Device That Prevents Burns When Refilling.

Many a housewife has sustained a bad burn from lifting the hot lid of the kettle she was attempting to refill. A teakettle lid has been invented which will render this impossible. The lid has an automatic valve in the center which opens as the flow of water is turned upon it and closes when the water is shut off. This valve is at the bottom of a depression in the lid, and the concave thus formed is a convenient place to set a cup or other small vessel containing butter to be melted or other ingredients requiring gentle heat. The lid is of aluminum, thoroly sanitary and indorsed by the cooking experts who have seen it.



Chickens and Electricity

1916

By treating young chickens with high frequency, high voltage currents of electricity a London experimenter has made them grow more rapidly than those of the same age reared without the treatment.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 9.

An Ample Kitchen

1901

What is said to be the largest kitchen in England is that of Raby castle, the seat of the Duke of Cleveland. It is 30 feet square, having three chimneys, one for the grate, a second for the stoves and the third for the great cauldron. The roof is arched, with a small cupola in the center. It has five windows, from each of which steps descend, but only in one instance to the floor, and a gallery runs round the whole interior of the building. The ancient oven has a diameter of 15 feet.

Vast as this kitchen is, it must have been sometimes taxed by the hospitality of former ages, for in one of the apartments of the castle 700 knights were upon one occasion entertained at the same time, and the knights of that day were men of brawn and sinew, who would think lightly of demolishing, each man of them, five pounds of beef, half a suckling pig and a venison pasty or two, washed down with huge flagons of brown October.

The Fabulous Leonard "Foodarama" Refrigerator

Read this doc on Scribd: The Fabulous Leonard "Foodarama" Refrigerator

Refrigerator advertisement recreated, combining a color postcard photograph and an old newspaper ad. The original ad is from 1955.

Why Restaurants Are Sometimes Insanitary

1916

By Woods Hutchinson
The World's Best Known Writer on Medical Subjects

There is little actual reason for the public to become wildly alarmed over this 99½% per cent badness in the official scoring of restaurants and lunch counters, because conditions in public eating places have probably always been just as bad as they are now since the time when memory of man runneth not back to the contrary — and we still survive in a moderate state of preservation. The only reason why we didn't know of them was that no private individual had the stomach, and no public official took the trouble to penetrate those steamy and smelly regions of mystery behind the battered and sweat-marked swinging door at the back of the eating room. The occasional whiffs which escaped from there when the wind was in the right quarter were quite enough.

In the language of the hymn, there are some things which "'tis better not to know." But now that their nauseating secrets have been discovered and dragged out into the pitiless light of day and published broadcast, there is only one thing to be done, and that is, wipe them out of existence, as the restaurateurs have crestfallenly recognized and are proceeding to do with the best grace they may. Of twenty-two reinspected over half were found to have made marked improvement.

Not Finicky Verdict

Nor can it fairly be claimed that this extraordinary low rating of a great group of successful restaurants is due to finicky and unattainable standards of healthfulness. This was the not unnatural conclusion suggested in a good many of the first comments upon the findings. There is nothing superfine or fantastic about the shortcomings reported, nothing that requires a microscope to see or a chemical reaction to detect. Just an ordinary eye and an unspoiled nose and an average sense of decency and cleanliness are all that is required.

No scrapings were made from walls or refrigerators, or the cuffs and lapels of waiters' jackets, no bacteriologic counts made of the platings, no analyses for tenths of a per cent of some adulterant, or for the use of wood vinegar in place of cider vinegar in the dressings. Every fault found was perfectly visible to the naked eye. Food was found standing or stored on the floor. Cooks were found preparing dishes with unwashed hands and in filthy, ragged clothing.

Scraps and leavings from the plates were resurrected in the next day's soups and stews and minces. "Spot" eggs and low grade, that is, rancid, butter, were used in the pastry and puddings which could not be sold upon the delicatessen counters in open daylight was sent back to the restaurant and concocted into goulashes and ragouts and hamburger steaks. The phrase "in the soup" has acquired a new and sinister significance. Dishes and plates were only half cleaned in greasy, reeking dishwater, or wiped upon slimy, filthy dish towels. Dish washers, scullery men, and even cooks and waiters were found with skin diseases of the hands and face, catarrh, tuberculosis, even typhoid, and other disgusting or communicable disorders.

Dark Kitchens Menace

In fact, as Inspector Brown quietly remarks, "The requirements for scoring the grade 'good' are only such as any citizen would wish and expect for the handling of his own food." They are nothing more than would be expected as a matter of course, in any decent private kitchens. Not that all home kitchens do come up to these standards, but a good many of them do.

One of the reasons why public kitchens have got into this slipshod, unhygienic custom of the trade way of doing things is partly because they are Over-crowded and badly lighted, and either on account of high rents, or of the desirability of using as much as possible of the front and well lighted, attractive parts of their space for dining rooms, show windows and display purposes generally, the kitchens and sculleries are crowded into back rooms or driven underground into cellars or basements.

Anything can happen and usually will happen in the dark or in a bad light, and practically every dark corner sooner or later becomes dirty and unsanitary. Commercialism and cooking don't mix well and when the cook's eye is chiefly on profits, stomachs are apt to suffer.

Economy in Small Ways

1896

The little leaks in the household expenses, says the Jenness-Miller Monthly, are the most mischievous. The big ones are prominent enough to compel attention. Do you not, for example, trust all your tradespeople implicitly? You can't afford to do so.

The head servants in the Vanderbilt and Astor, and other wealthy families have among their chief duties that of weighing the household supplies. Dry goods measurements in the large shops are generally very accurate because the employes are under strict orders to be exact. But grocers and butchers will bear watching. Get for yourself or your kitchen priestess a set of measures and some scales, and after you and she have learned to use them, you will be amazed to see how much you have been paying for that you haven't had.

Even in the most reliable shops — so called — the weighing is very lax. Butchers claim that the deficiencies in their weights are all due to the waste in trimming. Very well, order the meat sent untrimmed. You will get fresher meat, and what you trim off will often give you nice bits for the stock pot, suet, etc. Try it and be convinced.

A quick-witted housekeeper says she has earned many a dollar in plumbers' bills by buying a force cup and learning to handle a wrench. Despite washing soda and potash, now and then something unmeltable slips through the sink strainer and clogs the pipe. All the more modern plumbing has a nut at the bottom of the "goose-neck," just below the sink. By setting a pan beneath this, and with a wrench loosening and then removing the cap, the obstruction will generally be found right there. Sometimes the force-cap applied over the strainer in the sink will be sufficient to clear the pipe without taking the cap off the gooseneck. If both fail, no harm will have been done, but one or the other, or both, succeeds often enough to make it worth while to exercise one's ingenuity a bit.

The Household Garbage Consumer

1896

A Boston physician has invented a vice by which all kitchen garbage may be utilized as fuel. The material is put into a dryer through which the hot air from the range circulates until all the moisture is evaporated. The receptacle then contains a quantity of refuse that is highly inflammable and will make excellent kindling, or may be thrown upon the fire and speedily burns out.

This, of course, is practicable only where people burn coal fires. In wood-stoves the heat is not of the right quality unless the fire is kept up to a raging pitch. Where gas or electricity or oil is used for heating, this way of disposing of garbage is out of the question. There are, however, enough coal-stoves used in our large cities to make this a matter of very great importance. It would pay the Board of Health to furnish these garbage dryers to every family, and pass the most stringent laws compelling their use and proper care.

The most useful plan would be to use the garbage as a fertilizer for worn out lands, but this involves great cost and great danger. Decaying animal and vegetable matter must be carted through the streets, drippings fall upon the pavements, are dried and whirled by the wind into the nostrils of pedestrians.

Where it is possible, garbage should be consumed, and, by the way, a great deal of this is done when nothing is said about it. Many families put into the kitchen range everything of a waste character, and find great economy in fuel in consequence. — New York Ledger.

Why Some People Are Poor

1879

Silver spoons are used to scrape kettles.

Coffee, tea, pepper and spice are left to stand open and lose their strength.

Potatoes in the cellar grow, and sprouts are not removed until the potatoes become worthless.

Brooms are never hung up, and are soon spoiled.

The flour is sifted in a wasteful manner, and the bread-pan is left with the dough sticking to it.

Clothes are left on the line to whip to pieces in the wind.

Tubs and barrels are left in the sun to dry and fall apart.

Dried fruits are not taken care of in season, and become wormy.

Bags, strings and paper are thrown into the fire.

Pork spoils for want of salt, and beef because the brine wants scalding.

Bits of meat, vegetables, bread and cold puddings are thrown away, when they might be warmed, steamed, and served as good as new.

—The Bucks County Gazette, Bristol, Pennsylvania, Feb. 20, 1879, p. 1.

Things You Shouldn't Oughta Do For Good Economy

1916

Anti-Economical Don'ts

Don't save too many paper boxes.

Don't save all your paper and string.

Don't save cracked or mutilated dishes.

Don't save dirty rags. It does not pay to wash them out.

Don't have the kitchen drawer littered with paper bags; you might use one, but you can't use a dozen.

Don't save too much dry bread. Keep a supply of bread crumbs, but the chances are that you will not use all your stale bread for bread pudding.

Don't save many bottles. The amount of space they occupy is not compensated for by the amount of money you receive if you sell them.

Don't save opened bottles of liquids without going over them to see if they still are good; many lose strength or spoil after being opened. The too-careful housewife is apt to clutter her shelves with iodine that has grown too strong, oil that has become rancid, or furniture polish that is merely dregs.

Motor-Drive Egg Beater

A small electric motor, which had become unfit for shop work, was used by one of the mechanics in his home kitchen, where it rendered good service in beating eggs, whipping cream, and even churning butter. He screwed it to the kitchen wall, with the drive shaft in a vertical position, and as this adjustment threw all the weight of the armature onto the lower thrust bearing, he placed two mica washers between the bearing and the shoulder of the armature. The power was transmitted to the egg beater by means of a collar, pinned permanently to the lower end of the shaft, and the top of the egg beater was thrust into the collar and held firmly with a thumbscrew, so that it revolved with the shaft. The beater was made from a piece of fairly coarse iron wire, twisted into spirals at its lower end, where it entered the dish or pan containing the eggs. To prevent the weight of the thumbscrew from causing the shaft to turn unevenly, a small lump of solder was used as a counterweight on the collar, opposite the screw. Several wire beaters were made and twisted into different shapes, so as to adapt the machine to the nature of the work which was to be done.

Mirror Bait for Raccoon Trap
To catch a raccoon without using edible bait, use a steel trap of medium size, with a mirror, or piece of tin foil, laid flat on the bait pan and secured in position with solder or wire. Set the trap, in water if possible, by some creek, or in some gully, where the tracks of a raccoon have been found. He is a very inquisitive animal, and when he sees light reflected from any surface, he is apt to paw it with his foot -- in this case to his own destruction. - J. W. Reynolds, Mason, Ill.

--Popular Mechanics, August 1919