Marion Harland's Complete Cook Book: A Practical and Exhaustive Manual of Cookery and Housekeeping

breast, near the neck, will open the crop with the stuffing usually placed there to plump the fowl. The main joint and the pinion of the wing may be severed by cutting the cartilage at the junction of the two bones. To carve fish There is an art in carving fish, and it is confined to a single direction. It is to open with a knife at the back, drawing the blade the whole distance from head to tail just above the backbone, and pressing the meat loose from its fastening. Portions may then be served by cutting transversely with the backbone. Fish so carved is freed from the intricate mass of small bones which are sure to mingle with the flesh if it be cut in any other way. The head, if not already removed, should first be taken off, and the collar or shoulder-bone lifted from the fish. SERVING AND WAITING If a butler be engaged to do the family serving and waiting, he understands his business, or he should not apply for the place. The rules written out here are for the benefit of households where but one or, at the most, two maids are kept. I assume that the waitress takes charge of the table after the mistress has once shown her how it is to be set. By the way, I hope you call her a “maid,” not a “girl.” The latter word has been so rubbed and soiled by persistent usage on the part of domesticated foreigners, who shed the name of “servant” as soon as they stamp upon American soil, and by the handling of would-be “genteel” housewives, that people of refinement hesitate to touch it. What the old-fashioned New Englanders called “hired help” would shake the dust off the soles of the shoes they are not yet quite used to wearing, were you to allude to them as “servants.” “Maid” sounds well, bearing to their tickled ears a certain dignity not unsuited to their new estate. Beginning with the first meal of the day, we will suppose a cereal, fruit, one dish