CHAPTER XVII
THE ANCIENT WOOD IMPLEMENTS
In these days of metals, electricity and enamels, you are very prone to forget that there is still virtue in the ancient wood, which with true aristocratic gentleness, has given way to those more parvenu products that boast their sanitary qualities.
To-day there are still things of wood for the kitchen, pantry and laundry which are retained to advantage and other things which can be kept, if not with advantage, at least for utility.
Some purchasers have wasted time in their zeal to kill entirely the wood tradition and substitute metals in every instance. To save this time, this article is written and dedicated to you who would have the right thing, be it of the darker ages or of this so-called sanitary or enlightened era.
For example, could you ever use a metal plank for planked fish or meats? Of course not! The wood itself in this case gives up its own essence as it combines, through the medium of heat, with the juices of the food cooked on its surface. What metal could do this without imparting the metallic taste to the bill of fare?
These planks come in different sizes and shapes. The best are of oak. Some cost more than others. But the thing to remember is that a plank is like wine, the older it is, that is, the more it is used and becomes impregnated with the empyreumatic flavors of the food stuffs, the more exquisite become its quality and the better flavor it imparts to the food.
According to Nicholas Sabatini, Chef of Delmonico’s the best thing to do with a plank when you buy it is to keep it for at least six weeks, to be sure that it is seasoned sufficiently. After using a plank, do not soak it in water, but clean it off with a damp cloth only. Then keep it under a weight of some sort to prevent any probable warping of the wood. Mr. Sabatini was very insistent about the plank being of oak, as any other wood imparts too definite a flavor of its own to the food stuffs cooked on it.
Ironing boards have never been replaced with metal to any large extent. It is their “give” when swathed in “white stuff” that makes them comforting and usable. Even the modern bracketed ironing boards are wooden with the exception of their metal joints and arms, enabling them to be folded against the walls or put out of the way. So, too, the sleeve and skirt board. Time would be wasted in hunting for a more modern material to use for these staples.
Ironing folding tables are neat little things for the small house. These are made of white wood. They will not last a lifetime but they are inexpensive and useful.
Skirt boards come from 3′ to 6′ long and the sleeve board around 18″ to 20″ long.
In some cases where there is available both a wooden article and a china or metal, it is often better to get the non-wooden. For example, the wooden salt box; good enough in its way but it is out-ranked by the china, porcelain or composition boxes, because these materials look better, wear better and cannot help being smoother and less fibrous than the wooden variety. So would you rather buy sharpeners, flour sieves, some of the pot racks and sink racks in metal garb than wood, although there are some sink racks of wood which not only have a porcelain lining but save breakage of china.
Chopping bowls of sugar maple (not southern maple) are kitchen necessities. These do not splinter and they make the din of chopping less obnoxious. The rotary chopping machine is not always analogous to the chopping bowl, for who could chop parsley as well in a chopper as with blade and bowl?
Wooden bread boards and cake boards, of course, are invaluable (pie “boards” are better of marble, porcelain or their cognates). These must be of hard wood such as maple or birch and so made as to be knotless, crackless and long grained. A damp cloth will remove traces of material used thereon.
The onion should have its own little chopping board for obvious reasons.
Noodle boards are oblong, usually of white wood and come from 14″×20″ to 20″×30″. These have a descending ledge at the near side to hold fast to the table and an ascending ledge on the far side to keep the dough from sliding off. Bread boards are round and are from 10″ to 11″ in diameter. Pastry boards can be had from 12″×16″ to 20″×30″.
The wooden step, non-rickety and solid, is of inestimable value in the kitchen where the worker is too short for the tables or tubs, or where things must needs be on high shelves. The step chair which readily is changed from ladder to chair combines a 2-in-1 arrangement, that makes room in a kitchen by obviating extra chairs and extra space for a pair of steps or ladder.
We would warn purchasers against the salesman of wood garbage buckets or pails. In no case are they as sanitary as regular metal containers.
But the oak pail, keg or bucket for cider, vinegar, preserves or water is a good culinary adjunct. They are hard, firm and well constructed in the best makes. Often these things have been quite forgotten and yet they are quite useful in kitchen economy.
Wooden pails come for various uses--scrubbing pails, water pails, jelly pails and flour pails. They are made with two or three hoops and are of pine, cedar, oak grain or oak. The flour pails hold from 12¹⁄₂ to 50 pounds of flour. The jelly pails hold from 5 to 30 pounds of jelly and are a convenience to the house-keeper who puts up a lot at a time and who has a large menage.
The large wooden spoon for use in acid cookery--preserves and the like--is indispensable to the epicurean household and should be on every kitchen utensil list.
The clothes-horse is practically an extinct animal. In its place has come a different species of varying kinds. Some fold up against the wall, some are pulleyed up to the ceiling and get the ascending heat of the room for drying and some don’t fold at all. Some are built for porch use, garden use and roof use. But all are less aggressive than the extinct “horse.”
A close relation to the clothes rack is the towel rack and hand towel roller, usually of wood and made as well of this material as any other.
The bread and pastry roller is usually of wood and is quite efficient. There are glass rollers on the market but, of course, these can chip. Special noodle rollers are made now of maple and birch and are long and thin, giving quick contact like a low gear! Some rollers have designs cut in them for finishing off a bit of dough with a pattern.
Potato, slaw and bread cutters are merely wood receptacles with cutting blade insertions.
Knife drawers or racks with grooves to keep the knife blade inviolate are too little used. This is one of the things that will make the kitchen a more proper tool chest, prolong the life of cutlery and save time in the search for wanted knives on the part of the worker. These are being made in compact, useful fashion to meet the needs of the well ordered kitchen. We can’t stress the housing of cutlery hard enough--and it is a real housing problem.
The pot cover rack for those who do not hang up their pots is a great comfort. It is inexpensive and easily installed. With these cover racks you easily identify the cover and it doesn’t get lost in a dark closet, although many folks think quite the contrary and deplore the newer methods of hanging up pots and their covers to the public gaze.
The question of serving butter delightfully is taken care of by keeping it in the ice box in a stone crock, and making butter balls with little wooden butter pats. There are also wooden butter prints, which enable one to serve butter in forms with a probable little raised design on its top surface. These come in a flattened butter ball size and also in ¹⁄₂-pound print moulds.
The question of wood in the kitchen becomes acute in the handle situation. Brushes, brooms and mops of all kinds have wooden handles, and the handle makes for comfort and comfort for efficiency. Therefore it is not out of place here to give a few suggestions as to what a handle ought to be:
1. Smooth--no splinters--hard non-porous.
2. Easily held in hand (if on scrubbing brush, sink brush, etc.).
3. Long enough to do the work (if on wall or ceiling or radiator brush).
4. Set firmly in its socket and easily set in (if on mop, wall brush, etc.).
5. Non-snapping, not brittle (if on a wall duster).
6. Enameled to resist heat and water.
The mallet and the potato masher are heavy tools and quite necessary. The former is usually of hickory or lignum vitae, the latter of maple. The potato masher’s function is obvious, but the mallet is often needed for cracking a bone, or ice. For fixing lobster and making a chicken go a long way a mallet is quite a little “fixer.”
The coffee mill and the sink rack can be as well made of wood as of metal. Yet this does not need to preclude the metal ones for those wanting them. The wooden ones themselves are really more of hardware than of wood.
The mouse trap of wood used once and then to be thrown out is rather a pleasanter idea than using the same impregnated trap over and over again. These are cheap and ready to use at any time.
The wooden salad set, knife, spoon, fork, are rather epicurean but seem to be passing out of fashion.
Tables of wood are so common that they need little description, yet a few suggestions may be of real value. The table with the stove is all important in the kitchen. It is so valuable, indeed, that it has been lately combined with the dish-washer and the effete refrigerator in order to make it possible in limited spaces to install these quite noble but less royal things.
Tersely said, the table must be large enough for the work to be done, steady on its legs, simple in construction and easily kept clean and wholly sanitary.
If possible metal capped legs will prevent the legs becoming unlevel by swelling when the floor is washed or shifting through general use. The table top would easily take a whole story; the main requisite is that it be hard, easily cleaned and scraped--be it of wood, composition, marble, metal or of the porcelain family.
Kitchen tables 3′ to 7′ long, with and without shelves beneath and also with or without closets and drawers below.
The wooden top of maple is most satisfactory and probably, of all the table tops, most used. Yet for those that can afford the wooden table with marble top and German silver trimmings, nothing could be more perfect even though the price soars.
Finally, if there be benefit in this article take from it suggestions for the wooden wedding gift. Few people think of the kitchen as a realm for gifts. In our experience presents of culinary use have been a boon to many householders, especially at the wooden wedding period.
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