Compiled by Polly Campbell
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Required reading

The Good Housekeeping Hostess (Hearst Books; $12.95) is a reprint of a guide to gracious living first published in 1904. It is part etiquette guide and part theme and menu suggestions for parties.

Reading it stimulates a mixture of alternating reactions. On one hand, there's regret for customs that our more vulgar world has let die, and on the other hand, there's relief that the old confining strictures, especially on women, have been abandoned.

It would be nice if people still followed this advice on children's parties: "If the occasion is a birthday, and the guests bring gifts, good taste demands that these be simple and inexpensive." And it could be fun and useful to go back to having social calling cards, to be left for the hostess on a silver platter.

But one wonders why people ever put up with advice like this prescription for young married women: "It is not strictly good form for a young matron to chaperon girls no younger or less experienced than herself; neither she nor her husband may be invited along to any function where both men and women are to be present, nor may one accept an invitation which the other declines, unless there is some unusual and very good reason, in which case the wife would go with her mother, or chaperoned like an unmarried woman." (Maybe they never did put up with it.)

But whether you or not you feel nostalgia for old-fashioned manners, it's hard to regret the old menus. A Chinese dinner calls for chop suey, pineapple fish, chrysanthemum petal fritters and candied potato slices. A Bachelor's Thanksgiving dinner lists 10 courses, starting with oysters and oxtail soup and ending with pumpkin fanchonettes, orange ice, hickory nut cakes, and roasted chestnuts.

Food tunes

If you feel your children are susceptible to propaganda, and you'd like to use that to influence their eating habits, you might want to add a new CD to the rotation in your house. Bon Appetit! by Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer (Rounder Records) is a collection of songs about kids staying healthy. There are songs about drinking water, getting enough exercise, where food comes from, and the food pyramid. There's a Mexican hat dance about potatoes, a march about germs and hand-washing and a big-band arrangement on "Hula Hoop."

The message of "A Little Taste of This, A Little Taste of That" is one that every parent of a picky eater wishes would sink in. There's also a banjo number called "Food Jokes" featuring yukkers such as:

Why did the student eat his homework? Because the teacher told him it was a piece of cake.

Uncommon knowledge

Question: What is clarified butter and is it really necessary in a recipe?

Answer: Clarified butter is nice, but not necessary. It doesn't burn as easily as regular butter, so it is useful for sauteing. A batch can be kept in the refrigerator for two weeks or so if properly covered.

To make clarified butter, melt butter in a saucepan, then pour the clear part into a container, leaving the milky solids behind. Discard the solids and use the clear portion.