Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-09-28
ORIENTAL KITCHENS,
Curious Cook-Stoves on Which the
Food of the East Sizzles.
WASHER WOMEN OF TIE WORLD
The Lsistic Beauty Does Not Know the
Luxury Of the Mattress.
HOUSEHOLD DUTIES SHE ESCAPES

rooRREsPoNpENcE OF THE DIsPArcH1
WASHINGTON, September T.-I have
spent this week among the housewives OF
the world. The National Museum has
cooking utensils of every nation and every
tribe, and you may see within it how women
wash and iron, boil and bake, stew and
steam all the world over. A picture of a
Samoan kitchen has just been received and
there are complete outfits of Japanese and
Chinese houses, with models of the women
working away within them.
The Samoan range is hole In the ground
and the cooking is done with red hot stones.
When the people want feast they dig a
hole as big as q cider barrel, fill it full Of
wood and cover 1t with stones. They light
the wood and when the stones are red hot
they pull them off to one side and clean out
the hole. Then they put o layer of hot
stones in the bottom of IL, and upon this a
layer of bananas, chickens and vegetables
wrapped in leaves are laid. Another layer
of red hot stones Is put on top and on this is
another layer of eatables and so on till the
hole is filed. Upon the top fire is built
| and the whole steams and cooks away until
the lightly dressed Samoan lady pronounces
the dinner cooked. It is said to be feast
| for king.
HOW THE ALAsKANs COOK.
The Alaskans also cook with stones, and
there are boiling and baking baskets In the
| museum brought from the Esquimaux.
The boiling baskets are of course water
proof, and the water is heated by dropping
red-hot stones into them. They are of about
the size of peck measure and are as beau
tiful as any fancy work. basket you will find
in the United States. The baking baskets
are little larger. The food is put into
them and is roasted By hot stones being
rolled around over them. The shaking of
the basket keeps it from burning and the
people get fat upon such food.
Among some of the tribes small cast
iron stove has been lately introduced. 1t
stands in the center of the room and the fuel
Is often made of seal oil. The chief food is
fish and the kindling is grass. The women
are the wood-cutters of the family, but they
are the wash women only SO far as their own
clothes are concerned. Every man in
Alaska washes his own clothes and ironing
is practically unknown. Every nation
washes its dirty clothes differently from
every other nation. The hardest worked
washer women of the world are the Koreans
They have to wash about dozen dresses for
their husbands, and inasmuch as every man
wears pantaloons or drawers SO baggy that
they could come up to his neck, like those
of clown, they have plenty to do.
FOUNDED INSTEAD OF IRoNED.
The washing is usually done in cold
water, and often in running streams, and
there is here in the Museum q Korean IRON
ing board and irons. The board is moth
ing but q block of wood and the irons
are two paddles. The clothes are laid
on the wood and are pounded with
these paddles until they shine like shirt
bosom fresh from a Chinese laundry. The
best dressed people in Korea are the men.
They wear the most delicate colored gowns
of cotton and silk, of red, light blue, pink,
and green, and it takes a woman half her
time to do the washing. You hear this
pounding going on day and night in any
Korean town, and it is one of the queerest
characteristics Of the Korean people
The Japanese rip their clothes apart for
every washing and they iron their clothes
by spreading them out on fiat board and
leaning this up against the house to dry.
The sun takes the wrinkles out of the
clothes, and some of them have quite a
luster. The Japanese woman does her wash
ing out OF doors. Her washtub is not more
than six inches high and is about as big
round as the average dishpan. She has
dirt out of the clothes by rubbing them to
and fro between her hands. She sometimes
uses Japanese soap, which is full of grease
and she works away in her bare feet No
bluing is used and as for boiling out the
dirt in tin boiler this is unknown.
WASHING IN THE BATH.
The Chinese girls do their washing in
much the same way, and the pretty short
haired beauties of Siam wear their gowns on
them into the big river and wash them while
taking their bath. When they get through
they trot up the steps of their floating houses,
and wrapping clean sheet around their
bodies, they slip off the wet clothes from
under it and wiring them out to dry. Many
of the Indian girls bathe in the same way in
the Ganges, and the washing in Egypt is
usually done by the men. The Egyptian
washerman stands on the banks of the Nile
and slaps the wet clothes with noise like
the shot of pistol on the smooth stones at
the edge of the running water. The Scotch
girls tramp the dirt out OF the washing with
their shapely feet.
The Japanese kitchen is always supplied
with running water, and the cooking stoves
are little affairs about two feet square, and |
the average stove cooks but one dish at |
time. They are heated with charcoal, aud |
in both Japan and China a great deal Of |
cooking is done with little round balls made |
OF coaldust mixed with mud. The Chinese !
and the Koreans kang is an immense oven
like ledge built In one side of the house |
upon which the family sleeps during cold |
night, and in holes in which the cooking is |
done by day.
DOESN'T HELP THE APPETITE.
once stopped in Chinese inn and took |
a notion, to go into the kitchen where my |
meal was being cooked. found 20 dirty |
Tartars sleeping on one end of the stove, |
and though the mutton was sizzling away |
over the open fire my appetite rapidly dis
appeared at the sight. The Burmese cook
ing stove is a box filled with ashes in which
a fire is made and the food is cooked upon
the Goals. No meat is eaten and the |
Buddhists fear they may be masticating the
bodies of their reincarnated ancestors if they
eat anything that has had animal life. The
priests carry this to the extent of strainipg
all the water they drink, and the chief diet
is rice.
In both Turkey and Egypt the houses of
the better class have a sort of cooking range /
made of stones and consisting of number
of little holes under which fres may be
built. The floor is always Of stone, and the
cooking utensils are OF copper. An ordi-
dinary harem usually has two cooks and
the Sultan has about 500 cooks. The last
Sultan before this one took his meals at all
sorts Of hours and his chef was chained to
the cooking stove. Just now the meals of
the Sultan's palace are cooked about a mile
from where they are eaten and the average
beauty eats her soup cold. There are no
more hospitable people in the world.
WOULD KILL A TRAMP.
Some of the funniest kitchens I ever saw