Mary Eaton - The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, Adapted to the Use of Private Families

AIR. Few persons are sufficiently aware, that an unwholesome air is the common cause of disease. They generally pay some attention to what they eat and drink, but seldom regard what goes into the lungs, though the latter often proves more fatal than the former. Air vitiated by the different processes of respiration, combustion, and putrefaction, or which is suffered to stagnate, is highly injurious to health, and productive of contagious disorders. Whatever greatly alters its degree of heat or cold, also renders it unwholesome. If too hot, it produces bilious and inflammatory affections: if too cold, it obstructs perspiration, and occasions rheumatism, coughs, and colds, and other diseases of the throat and breast. A damp air disposes the body to agues, intermitting fevers, and dropsies, and should be studiously avoided. Some careful housewives, for the sake of bright and polished stoves, frequently expose the health of the family in an improper manner; but fires should always be made, if in the height of summer, when the weather is wet or cold, to render the air wholesome; and let the fire-irons take care of themselves. No house can be wholesome, unless the air has a free passage through it: dwellings ought therefore to be daily ventilated, by opening the windows and admitting a current of fresh air into every room. Instead of making up beds as soon as people rise out of them, a practice much too common, they ought to be turned down, and exposed to dry fresh air from the open windows. This would expel any noxious vapours, and promote the health of the family. Houses surrounded with high walls, trees, or plantations, are rendered unwholesome. Wood, not only obstructs the free current of air, but sends forth exhalations, which render it damp and unhealthy. Houses situated on low ground, or near lakes and ponds of stagnant water, are the same: the air is charged with putrid exhalations, which produce the most malignant effects. Persons obliged to occupy such situations should live well, and pay the strictest regard to cleanliness. The effluvia arising from church-yards and other burying grounds is very infectious; and parish churches, in which many corpses are interred, become tainted with an atmosphere so corrupt, especially in the spring, when the ground begins to grow warm, that it is one of the principal sources of putrid fevers, which so often prevail at that season of the year. Such places ought to be kept perfectly clean, and frequently ventilated, by opening opposite doors and windows; and no human dwelling should be allowed in the immediate vicinity of a burying ground. – The air of large towns and cities is greatly contaminated, by being repeatedly respired; by the vapours arising from dirty streets, the smoke of chimneys, and the innumerable putrid substances occasioned by the crowd of inhabitants. Persons of a delicate habit should avoid cities as they would the plague; or if this be impracticable, they should go abroad as much as possible, frequently admit fresh air into their rooms, and be careful to keep them very clean. If they can sleep in the country, so much the better, as breathing free air in the night will in some degree make up for the want of it in the day time. Air which stagnates in mines, wells, and cellars, is extremely noxious; it kills nearly as quick as lightning, and ought therefore to be carefully avoided. Accidents occasioned by foul air might often be prevented, by only letting down into such places a lighted candle, and forbearing to enter when it is perceived to go out. The foul air may be expelled by leaving the place open a sufficient time, or pouring into it a quantity of boiling water. Introducing fresh air into confined rooms and places, by means of ventilators, is one of the most important of modern improvements. – Dyers, gilders, plumbers, refiners of metals, and artisans employed over or near a charcoal fire, are exposed to great danger from the vitiated state of the air. To avert the injury to which their lungs are thus exposed, it would be proper to place near them a flat open vessel filled with lime water, and to renew it as often as a variegated film appears on the surface. This powerfully attracts and absorbs the noxious effluvia emitted by the burning charcoal. – But if fresh air be necessary for those in health, much more so for the sick, who often lose their lives for want of it. The notion that sick people require to be kept hot is very common, but no less dangerous, for no medicine is so beneficial to them as fresh air, in ordinary cases, especially if administered with prudence. Doors and windows are not to be opened at random; but the air should be admitted gradually, and chiefly by opening the windows of some other apartment which communicates with the sick room. The air may likewise be purified by wetting a cloth in water impregnated with quick lime, then hanging it in the room till it becomes dry, and removing it as often as it appears necessary. In chronic diseases, especially those of the lungs, where there is no inflammation, a change of air is much to be recommended. Independently of any other circumstance, it has often proved highly beneficial; and such patients have breathed more freely, even though removed to a damp and confined situation. In short, fresh air contains the vitals of health, and must be sought for in every situation, as the only medium of human existence.

ALABASTER. The proper way of cleaning elegant chimney pieces, or other articles made of alabaster, is to reduce some pumice stone to a very fine powder, and mix it up with verjuice. Let it stand two hours, then dip into it a sponge, and rub the alabaster with it: wash it with fresh water and a linen cloth, and dry it with clean linen rags.

ALAMODE BEEF. Choose a piece of thick flank of a fine heifer or ox. Cut some fat bacon into long slices nearly an inch thick, but quite free from yellow. Dip them into vinegar, and then into a seasoning ready prepared, of salt, black pepper, allspice, and a clove, all in fine powder, with parsley, chives, thyme, savoury, and knotted marjoram, shred as small as possible, and well mixed. With a sharp knife make holes deep enough to let in the larding; then rub the beef over with the seasoning, and bind it up tight with a tape. Set it in a well tinned pot over a fire, or rather a stove: three or four onions must be fried brown and put to the beef, with two or three carrots, one turnip, a head or two of celery, and a small quantity of water. Let it simmer gently ten or twelve hours, or till extremely tender, turning the meat twice. Put the gravy into a pan, remove the fat, keep the beef covered, then put them together, and add a glass of port wine. Take off the tape, and serve with vegetables; or strain them off, and cut them into dice for garnish. Onions roasted, and then stewed with the gravy, are a great improvement. A tea-cupful of vinegar should be stewed with the beef. – Another way is to take about eleven pounds of the mouse-buttock, or clod of beef, or a blade bone, or the sticking piece, and cut it into pieces of three or four ounces each. Put two or three ounces of beef drippings, and two large onions, into a large deep stewpan; as soon as it is quite hot, flour the meat, put it into the stewpan, and keep stirring it with a wooden spoon. When it has been on about ten minutes, dredge it with flour, and keep doing so till you have stirred in as much as will thicken it. Then cover it with about a gallon of boiling water, adding it by degrees, and stirring it together. Skim it when it boils, and then put in a dram of ground black pepper, and two drams of allspice. Set the pan by the side of the fire, or at a distance over it, and let it stew very slowly for about three hours. When the meat is sufficiently tender, put it into a tureen, and send it to table with a nice sallad.

ALE, allowing eight bushels of malt to the hogshead, should be brewed in the beginning of March. Pour on at once the whole quantity of hot water, not boiling, and let it infuse three hours close covered. Mash it in the first half hour, and let it stand the remainder of the time. Run it on the hops, half a pound to the bushel, previously infused in water, and boil them with the wort two hours. Cool a pailful after it has boiled, add to it two quarts of yeast, which will prepare it for putting to the rest when ready, the same night or the next day. When tunned, and the beer has done working, cover the bung-hole with paper. If the working requires to be stopped, dry a pound and a half of hops before the fire, put them into the bung-hole, and fasten it up. Ale should stand twelve months in casks, and twelve in bottles, before it be drank; and if well brewed, it will keep and be very fine for eight or ten years. It will however be ready for use in three or four months; and if the vent-peg be never removed, it will have strength and spirit to the very last. But if bottled, great care must be taken to have the bottles perfectly sweet and clean, and the corks of the best quality. If the ale requires to be refined, put two ounces of isinglass shavings to soak in a quart of the liquor, and beat it with a whisk every day till dissolved. Draw off a third part of the cask, and mix the above with it: likewise a quarter of an ounce of pearl ashes, one ounce of salt of tartar calcined, and one ounce of burnt alum powdered. Stir it well, then return the liquor into the cask, and stir it with a clean stick. Stop it up, and in a few days it will be fine. See Beer, Brewing.