e
cheese-press, placing them on the cheese-ladders, and constantly turning
and rubbing them. An old cheese-press, cheese-ladder, and cheese-basket
from Deerfield Memorial Hall are shown in the illustration.

In all households, even in those of great wealth and many servants,
assistance was given in all housewifery by the daughters of the
household. In the South it was chiefly by superintendence and teaching
through actual exposition the negro slaves; in the North it was by the
careful performance of the work.

The manuscript cooking receipt-book of many an ancient dame shows the
great care they took in family cooking. English methods of cooking at
the time of the settlement of this country were very complicated and
very laborious.

It was a day of hashes, ragouts, soups, hotch-pots, etc. There were no
great joints served until the time of Charles the First. In almost every
sixteenth-century receipt for cooking meat, appear some such directions
as these: "Y-mynce it, smyte them on gobbets, hew them on gobbets, chop
on gobbets, hew small, dyce them, skern them to dyce, kerf it to dyce,
grind all to dust, smyte on peces, parcel-hem; hew small on morselyen,
hack them small, cut them on culpons." Great amounts of spices were
used, even perfumes; and as there was no preservation of meat by ice,
perhaps the spices and perfumes were necessary.

Of course the colonists were forced to adopt simpler ways of cooking,
but as towns and commerce increased there were many kitchen duties which
made much tedious work. Many pickles, spiced fruits, preserves, candied
fruits and flowers, and marmalades were made.

Preserving was a very different art from canning fruit to-day. There
were no hermetically sealed jars, no chemical methods, no quick work
about it. Vast jars were filled with preserves so rich that there was no
need of keeping the air from them; they could be opened, that is, the
paper cover taken off, and used as desired; there was no fear of
fermentation, souring, or moulding.

The housewives pickled samphire, fennel, purple cabbage,
nasturtium-buds, green walnuts, lemons, radish-pods, barberries,
elder-buds, parsley, mushrooms, asparagus, and many kinds of fish and
fruit. They candied fruits and nuts, made many marmalades and
quiddonies, and a vast number of fruit wines and cordials. Even their
cakes, pies, and puddings were most complicated, and humble households
were lavish in the various kinds they manufactured and at