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At that simple period, the lady was expected to enter deeply into the arrangement and provision of the whole affair; and from a little gallery, which communicated with her own private apartment, and looked down upon the kitchen, her shrill voice was to be heard, from time to time, like that of the warning spirit in a tempest, rising above the clash of pots and stewpans the creaking spits the clattering of marrowbones and cleavers the scolding of cooks and all the other various kinds of din which form an accompaniment to dressing a large dinner.
The three-legged copper pot which was the most common vessel for cooking purposes was supplemented by stewpans with condensing-lids, and a variety of other forms of saucepan, while the number of different types of perforated vessels for straining and other purposes shows the care with which the art of cooking was attended to.
A fowl and a leg of mutton were turning on the spit, and the hostess was very busy with stewpans and other utensils on various parts of her broad hearth. I soon learnt that a party of several persons had arrived before me, and that all these preparations were for them.
Thus eating together, after madame had finished dinner, they did not even draw the table into the middle of the kitchen, but contented themselves with sitting side by side, with their noses turned towards the wall. A glorious prospect of stewpans was before them. A bunch of laurel and thyme hung near, and a spice-box exhaled a piquant perfume.
If it is not provoking!" she continued, in a scolding tone, visiting her stewpans one after another, "everything is dried up; a fillet that was as tender as it could be will be scorched! This is the third time that I have diluted the gravy. Catherine! bring me a dish. Now, then, make haste." "One thing is certain," interrupted the artist, "that Gerfaut is making a fool of me.
Stewpans especially, should never be used without first washing them out with boiling water, and rubbing them well with a dry cloth and a little bran, to clean them from grease and sand, or any bad smell they may have contracted since they were last used. In short, cleanliness is the cardinal virtue of the kitchen; and next to this, economy.
If it is not provoking!" she continued, in a scolding tone, visiting her stewpans one after another, "everything is dried up; a fillet that was as tender as it could be will be scorched! This is the third time that I have diluted the gravy. Catherine! bring me a dish. Now, then, make haste." "One thing is certain," interrupted the artist, "that Gerfaut is making a fool of me.
After some vigorous moments in the kitchen, evidenced by the sound of a creaking bread-board, sharp blows at the stove lids and an unabashed slamming of the stewpans, Belle passed again through the room carrying a plate covered with a napkin, and evidently going somewhere. Kate felt compelled to take notice: "Where you bound for, Belle?" she asked. "Not far.
It was necessary to learn, as the result of painful and humiliating experiment, that you are not at liberty to obey all nature's laws without distinction in the dwelling of the gods; to recognize that the kitchen is the privileged and most agreeable spot in that divine dwelling, although you are hardly allowed to abide in it because of the cook, who is a considerable, but jealous power; to learn that doors are important and capricious volitions, which sometimes lead to felicity, but which most often, hermetically closed, mute and stern, haughty and heartless, remain deaf to all entreaties; to admit, once and for all, that the essential good things of life, the indisputable blessings, generally imprisoned in pots and stewpans, are almost always inaccessible; to know how to look at them with laboriously-acquired indifference and to practise to take no notice of them, saying to yourself that here are objects which are probably sacred, since merely to skim them with the tip of a respectful tongue is enough to let loose the unanimous anger of all the gods of the house.
I should not be at all surprised if some day she decked her kitchen range with wreaths of roses and hung up works of art between the stewpans. I am really glad I did not bring Samuel the footman with me.
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