October 22, 1850.] THE COOK OR THE DOCTOR? 333
costs 1#. 3d, and affords a good meal to six hard-
working persons, leaving some over: viz. , two
pounds of beef (the sticking-piece), one quart of
groats, a pint of peas, and seasoning. Surely these
dinners are better than bread, even if there is
butter or cheese with it.
Cheese is, however, excellent food. It is all nourishment, and no waste. Butter is good too: but they are not meat, and can never supply the place of it. Yet, amidst all our improvements, it . does not appear that the consumption of meat bears an increasing proportion to the population. The strangest thing is that we do not make more use of fish than we do. In the Catholic days of this country, everybody ate fish; and there seems to have been enoughf or everybody. But within this century, when our fisheries were languid, and fishing was a precarious vocation, many tons of fine fish have been habitually buried in the sands whenever “the take” was larger than common. There was no demand for more than a small quantity. The railways have since opened up the markets of the interior, so that in the very heart of the island fine fresh herrings may be had in the season at a shilling a score: yet the demand falls very far short of what might be expected of a people whose labouring classes rarely taste meat. It seems probable that the obstacle is the inability of the women to cook. Fish is a luxury when intelligently cooked; but it is easy to spoil it in the dressing. Fish which is overdone has lost its nutritive quality: but when one does meet with a woman who understands when to buy mackerel, herrings, whitings, and skate, and how to treat them when bought, one sees that varied and excel- lent meals may be had at no greater cost than mere dry bread.
This brings us again to the point of how different households live.
Leaving the rural districts for a moment, let us look into a street of one of the towns where fine fresh herrings may be had in season at a shilling a score. In one small house in a court, where the family work together at a trade, the women pay five shillings and sixpence each for board and lodging and the warmth of the fire, candles being extra. They get their pay on Saturday night, and pay down their week’s money on Monday morning, when the mother gets two pecks of flour, which make eight loaves, or what is equivalent to them; and tea for the week; and meat — liver and bacon, or cheap pieces to make stews and pies of; and a little lard and sugar. The bread is made at home, and baked at the baker’s for a halfpenny a loaf. On Sundays there is always a piece of meat, baked, with potatoes in the dish, and a pudding. There is never any milk seen in the house, nor butter, rarely any cheese, and, oddly enough, no rice. The family keep fowls, as they live in a yard. In a street it does not answer, as the chickens get stolen or run over; but in a court they can be kept in the heart of a town. But not an egg, much less a chicken, do the family ever eat, though an egg beat up would serve them as a substitute for milk in their tea. Eggs bring a penny or twopence a-piece; and they are too valuable to be indulged in at home. However strange this seems in regard to a commodity so easily produced, it is the reason assigned by many a family for abstain- ing from so excellent an article of food.
While these good people, who pay their way, and are a superior family in their station, are having breakfast and tea of bread without butter and tea without milk, and a dinner at twopence or threepence a-head, a neighbour proceeds some- what differently, lie husband is a workman in a factory, the wife keeps one of the thousand huckster’s-shops in the town, and their mode of living is like that of thousands of their class. They have hot rolls and ham for breakfast; salmon and peas, or a spring goose, or a Christmas turkey at dinner; and buttered muffins and beef- steak at tea. Sometimes they have prime beef- steak three times in one day. They, with their double resources, may keep it up for a time; but many of the shop-customers cannot. If you ask where all those piles of hot rolls and muffins that you see can possibly go to, you find that the largest baskets come out empty from the narrow crowded streets where the workmen’s families live. They begin the week with stuffing themselves with greasy hot bread, at a cost whioh would supply dinners of meat and vegetables; and before the week is out they have no bread. Look into the huckster’s shop, and you will see a workman’s wife, or the man himself, buying a pound of ham, out of the very heart of the joint, for a shilling, and tea enough for a single cup for himself and his wife, and a pinch of sugar. Day after day scores of people may be seen buying quarter and half-quarter ounces of tea, morning and afternoon, paying on each occasion for the shopkeeper's time, and for paper and string. They pay also for the sins of debtors. The huckster pays himself in his prices for bad debts, long credit, and an infinity of paper and string, odd minutes, and waste in weighing and measuring; and these heavy fines, as we may call them, are levied upon customers who, if they knew how to buy and dress their food, might have as good a table for the same money as health and enjoyment could require. Instead of this con- stant comfort, they make waste which they do not enjoy, aware that a time of hunger cannot be far off. They are often underfed, never thoroughly well fed, and always in danger from every wander- ing sickness. The huckster gets into difficulties in the same way, and almost forgets the sight of beef-steak and salmon.
As these hucksters sell everything, they have customers for an article which is also sold all along the streets, as often as children pass to and from school and work, namely, “goodies” or “sweets,” or, what sensible people call “sweet trash.” The amount of bad toffy, comfits, and tarts consumed by the children of the working- classes, and of the very poor, is beyond the belief of all who have not attended to the fact. It is enough to say that in hundreds of families, where meat is seldom or never seen on the table, the mothers are in the constant habit of giving the children halfpence for “goodies ” to an amount which would supply each child with half a pound of good mutton per week.
One method, and perhaps the best, of recon- ciling these vagaries, and establishing a steady
practice of good diet, would be to make good