Cooking Books

PREFACE. Among the multitudes of causes which concur to impair health and produce disease, the most general is the improper quality of our food: this most frequently arises from the injudicious manner in which it is prepared: yet strange, “passing strange,” this is the only one for which a remedy has not been sought; few persons bestow half so much attention on the preservation of their own health,... more...

SALADS AND SANDWICHES SALADS IN THE DIET 1. So much variety exists among salads that it is somewhat difficult to give a comprehensive definition of this class of foods. In general, however, salads may be considered as a dish of green herbs or vegetables, sometimes cooked, and usually chopped or sliced, sometimes mixed with fruit or with cooked and chopped cold meat, fish, etc., and generally served... more...

SOUPS. The following directions will be found generally applicable, so that there will be no need to repeat the several details each time. Seasonings are not specified, as these are a matter of individual taste and circumstance. Some from considerations of health or otherwise are forbidden the use of salt. In such cases a little sugar will help to bring out the flavour of the vegetables, but unless all... more...

SAVE WHEAT Reasons Why Our Government Asks Us to Save Wheat, with Practical Recipes for the Use of Other Grains A slice of bread seems an unimportant thing. Yet one good-sized slice of bread weighs an ounce. It contains almost three-fourths of an ounce of flour. If every one of the country's 20,000,000 homes wastes on the average only one such slice of bread a day, the country is throwing away... more...

CHAPTER I THE MILK PITCHER IN THE HOME   (Reprinted from The Farmer's Wife, by permission of the Webb Publishing Company.) There is a quaint old fairy tale of a friendly pitcher that came and took up its abode in the home of an aged couple, supplying them from its magic depths with food and drink and many other comforts. Of this tale one is reminded in considering the place of the milk pitcher in... more...

These charts are prepared for popular use, rather than for students of botanical science; all technical terms are, therefore, as far as possible, avoided. The names "mushroom" and "toadstool" are indefinite, are both applied with equal reason to any fleshy fungus, and are here used as synonymes, like the corresponding term "plant" and "vegetable," or "shrub" and... more...

THE PROBLEM OF FOOD 1. Without doubt, the greatest problem confronting the human race is that of food. In order to exist, every person must eat; but eating simply to keep life in the body is not enough. Aside from this, the body must be supplied with an ample amount of energy to carry on each day's work, as well as with the material needed for its growth, repair, and working power. To meet these... more...

PREFACE The following volume embraces the testimony, direct or indirect, of more than a hundred individuals—besides that of societies and communities—on the subject of vegetable diet. Most of this one hundred persons are, or were, persons of considerable distinction in society; and more than fifty of them were either medical men, or such as have made physiology, hygiene, anatomy, pathology,... more...

PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. Of all the frauds practised by mercenary dealers, there is none more reprehensible, and at the same time more prevalent, than the sophistication of the various articles of food. This unprincipled and nefarious practice, increasing in degree as it has been found difficult of detection, is now applied to almost every commodity which can be classed among either the necessaries or... more...

There is positive need of more widespread knowledge of the principles of cookery. Few women know how to cook an egg or boil a potato properly, and the making of the perfect loaf of bread has long been assigned a place among the "lost arts." By many women cooking is considered, at best, a homely art,—a necessary kind of drudgery; and the composition, if not the consumption, of salads and... more...