HOUSEKEEPING AS A SCIENCE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 191, 10 February 1912, Page 10 (Supplement)

HOUSEKEEPING AS A SCIENCE.

Housekeeping as a science demands an exact training which has only recently been opened up to women. Perhaps the nearest approach to this training hitherto obtainable has been that of the stewards of large establishments,including private houses, baracks, hotels, Poor Law institutions or hospitals. TheTe, is an immense deal to learn in the new science (says the London paper, the Hospital). It comprises a knowledge of foodstuffs, with their chemical constitution, their food value, their market price, their varying grades of quality, the forms of adulteration against which it is necessary to guard the best processes of cooking, and the alterations produced by cooking processes. It includes a knowledge of the ! processes connected with the cleaning of structures, of furniture and equipment, of utensils, and of clothes, together with the principles of aseptims and acquaintance with the properties of substances used in disinfection and in cleaning. It involves a knowledge of the right methods of securing efficient service, of a just scale of wages, and of the adjustment of the household staff to the size of the establishment, so that there may be neither the confusion of under nor the wastefulness of over staffing.