TRAINING THE IRISH. Following up on Ezra‘s post about the way successive waves of immigrants have been viewed throughout American history, I’d like to toss out this passage from Sarah Josepha Hale‘s 1841 The Good Housekeeper, an early American cookbook I hope to put to good use one day, if only to sample why it was that early American so loved nutmeg, raisins, mace, and cloves. Here Hale, who is described in the Dover edition introduction to the book as the leading arbiter of American taste for much of the 19th century, is decribing how to train an Irish maid in a passage that is remakable both for its defense of the Irish and its condescension:
I am aware that it is the fashion with many ladies to disparage Irish domestics, call them stupid, irgnorant, impudent, ungrateful, the plagues of housekeeping. That they are ignorant, is true enough; it does require skill, patience, and judgement, to teach a raw Irish girl how to perform
