Temperance in the Kitchen.
By Julia Colman
THE kitchen is very often a stronghold of the drink habit in this country, from the fact that a great many of our inherited and imported recipes give flavorings of wine or brandy, to say nothing of gin, rum, and whisky. These are often carelessly copied, even by our religious papers, and as carelessly practiced by religious people. If they have their attention called to the matter, they may say that the heat drives away the alcohol, and nothing but the taste remains, never seeming to think of the absurdity of supposing we could taste the stuff if it were not there. But this taste itself is the very thing to be feared, whether it creates in children a familiarity with the liquor used, and thus makes them in after years an easy prey to the drink habit, or whether it re-awakens in the reformed man the appetite which has done him so much mischief, and which has been with so much difficulty subdued. A pleasing instance where this was happily avoided was lately related by Mrs. Dr. Stephen Smith at a meeting in the Broadway Tabernacle, New York, as follows:— "A guest, in whose welfare we were deeply interested, one day expressed to me a lively satisfaction because the mince-pie served at dinner had contained no trace of alcohol. He had feared the ordeal, for if it had tasted of brandy he would not have been able to control the awakened appetite. I had no suspicion that he had ever been addicted to drink, but he informed me that only a few years previous he had been its bond slave, and that he was obliged to watch continually against anything containing the poison. I was so thankful that my temperance principles had saved me from putting a 'stone of stumbling' in a brother's way that I determined to be more earnest than ever in calling attention to this matter; and I should be glad to get recipes recommended by any really good cook for the preparation, on a temperance basis, of various dishes which usually contain some kind of alcoholics."—Julia Colman.