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Seventh Day: Mabel
The girls were delighted with the thought, and were in the kitchen half an hour before the time of serving, so as to be sure not to be late. There was a bright, clear fire, the largest egg was picked out and the loaf brought out of the bread-box, ready to cut. "Here's some lovely fresh bread," remarked Mabel, when her aunt came in. "Oh, fresh bread wouldn't toast well at all! It would be all rough and crumbly. Ask Rhoda if she hasn't some about two days old. If she hasn't any more stale than this, we must send round to the baker's."
Fortunately another visit to the bread-box disclosed some just in the right condition. "Now get the waiter ready; a clean napkin for it-not a great dinner napkin that will hang down ever so far over the sides a fringed one will be prettier; now the little tete-a-tete set that mamma had for a Christmas present. Ah! they are rather dusty, they haven't been used for so long; you must wash and wipe them. Where is a clean napkin? Don't put it in the ring; lay it by the side of the plate and get the smallest salt-cellar. Now fill the little sugar-bowl about half full of sugar and the cream-jug the same; a small knife and fork,-yes, I think that's all. Have a plate of butter on the table ready for the toast, and a large bowl for boiling water to dip it in; we'll make the tea first. The old rule is, a spoonful apiece and one for the pot, but that allows for two cups, and mamma will want only one, so one teaspoonful, a little heaped, will be plenty." "Shall we make it in the little tea-pot, Aunt Jane?" "No, we must take Rhoda's steeper, for this is English breakfast-tea, and must be boiled a few minutes. Oolong, or any kind of green tea, should only be steeped, but you cannot get the full flavor of this kind without boiling it. Scald the steamer first and throw out the water; now put in the tea and pour on about half a pint of boiling water from the tea kettle, then set it where it will simmer for five minutes. Now you may toast the bread, Mabel; you see Rhoda has cut a beautiful even slice. Grace, pour some boiling water into this frying pan, then break the egg very carefully into a saucer, and slide it off into the hot water."
Grace did so, and then her Aunt told her that she must not try to poach eggs in water that was boiling hard, or they would fly in pieces. The water must be boiling to begin with, but afterwards merely simmer until the white was cooked so that no liquid part remained; then the yolk would be sufficiently done. By the time this was done, Mabel's toast had been dipped and buttered and laid on the plate; the egg was then carefully lifted off with a skimmer and placed upon it, covered with a large bowl, the tea poured off the leaves into the little tea-pot, a small pitcher of hot water added in case it should be too strong, and then Grace, being the taller, started off with the waiter, Mabel going along for company. "Whatever else you do, girls," said Aunt Jane, as they were on the way, "don't make tea with water that doesn't boil! There is more wretched stuff drunk under the name of tea, from this cause, than from any other. Many a girl I have had say to me, 'Why, it has boiled!' when I saw from the looks of the tea that it hadn't been made with boiling water. The idea that it must actually be boiling hard at the moment it touches the leaves, is almost impossible to get into their heads." At the door of the sick room Mabel took off the bowl that had covered the toast and egg, and put it on a table AUNT JANE'S COOKING CLASS. 107 in the hall, and the little girls were rewarded by a smile from their mother, and by hearing her remark that nothing had tasted quite so good to her since she had been sick as this little meal of her daughters' preparation.
Buried in the narrative is a complete invalid's tray: a cup of black tea, dipped buttered toast, and a poached egg. The instructions are sound apart from one piece of tea lore that modern practice has abandoned.
- Do not boil the teaAunt Jane's rule that English breakfast tea "must be boiled a few minutes" reflects a nineteenth-century practice with heavily fired black teas; the reason usually offered for it is guesswork. Boiling extracts tannin and gives a harsh, flat cup; pour water at a full boil over the leaves and steep 3 to 5 minutes, covered, then strain off the leaves as she does. Her other point stands entirely: the water must be at a rolling boil when it hits the leaf, not merely hot.
- "Steeper" and "waiter"The steeper is a separate covered brewing pot kept in the kitchen; here the tea is brewed in it and poured off the leaves into the little tea-pot, so the leaves never sit in the serving pot. A waiter is a tray. The "tete-a-tete set" is a small china service for two -- teapot, small sugar bowl and cream jug with cups -- though only one place is laid on this tray.
- QuantitiesHalf a pint of boiling water is one cup, and one slightly heaped teaspoon of leaf is right for it. The whole tray serves one person.
- Two-day-old breadThe instruction is practical, not fussy. Fresh bread has too much free moisture to toast evenly and tears when cut thin. Day-old or two-day-old bread, cut in an even slice as Rhoda does, behaves as described.
- Dipped toastPlunging the finished toast into a bowl of boiling water and buttering it is the "water toast" method used for invalids -- it softens the crust and makes the toast easier to eat. A second or two in the water is plenty; longer and you have wet bread. Drain it against the side of the bowl before buttering.
- Poaching temperatureThe advice is correct and worth keeping: bring the water to a boil, then drop it to a bare simmer with only occasional bubbles before sliding the egg in from a saucer. Water at a hard boil shreds the white. A shallow pan gives you room to lift the egg out with a slotted spoon.
- Egg doneness"No liquid part remained" in the white gives a yolk that is still soft — three to four minutes. Since this tray is for someone ill, note that a soft yolk is not held at a temperature that kills salmonella; for anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immune-compromised, use pasteurized eggs or cook the yolk through.
- Keeping it hotThe inverted bowl over the plate is the period's answer to a plate cover, and it works; it also traps steam, so lift it the moment the tray arrives, as Mabel does at the door, or the toast sweats.
This comes from a chapter-a-lesson children's cookbook in which "Aunt Jane" teaches girls in a real kitchen, and the seventh day's lesson is invalid cookery — the branch of household knowledge that Victorian domestic manuals treated as a distinct skill, with its own chapters in Beeton and in the American manuals that followed. A sickroom tray was judged as much on its appearance as its contents: the fringed napkin instead of a dinner napkin, the smallest salt-cellar, the good china washed of its dust. The tea instructions preserve a distinction now largely lost, between green and oolong teas that were only to be infused and heavily fired black teas that some cooks preferred to boil; the boiling camp lost, but the insistence on water at a true rolling boil survives in every modern tea guide. Rhoda, who cuts the bread and owns the steeper, is the household cook — a reminder that the girls are learning to direct a kitchen as much as to work in one.