Cooking Books

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...

INTRODUCTION Once upon a time there was a little girl named Margaret, and she wanted to cook, so she went into the kitchen and tried and tried, but she could not understand the cook-books, and she made dreadful messes, and spoiled her frocks and burned her fingers till she just had to cry. One day she went to her grandmother and her mother and her Pretty Aunt and her Other Aunt, who were all sitting... more...

Introduction There are cook books and cook books, and their generation is not ended; a generation that began in the Garden of Eden, presumably, for if Mother Eve was not vastly different from her daughters she knew how to cook some things better than her neighbors, and they wanted to know how she made them and she wanted to tell them. Indeed, it has been stated that the very first book printed, a small... more...

Grace before Meat"Let me cook the dinners of a nation, and I shall not care who makes its laws." Women, if they did but know it, might well thus paraphrase a famous saying. Proper dinners mean so much—good blood, good health, good judgment, good conduct. The fact makes tragic a truth too little regarded; namely, that while bad cooking can ruin the very best of raw foodstuffs, all the arts of... more...

Medicines made of Lemmons. To take away the Spots, or red Pimpels of the face. Take halfe a pint of raine water, and halfe a pint of good Verjuice, seeth it till it be halfe consumed, then whilst it boils fill it up againe with juyce of Lemmon, and so let it seeth a pretty while; then take it from the fire, and when it is cold put to it the whites of four new laid Eggs, well beaten, and with this water... more...

I Remember Cheese Cheese market day in a town in the north of Holland. All the cheese-fanciers are out, thumping the cannon-ball Edams and the millstone Goudas with their bare red knuckles, plugging in with a hollow steel tool for samples. In Holland the business of judging a crumb of cheese has been taken with great seriousness for centuries. The abracadabra is comparable to that of the wine-taster or... more...

THE EARLY ENGLISHMAN AND HIS FOOD. William of Malmesbury particularly dwells on the broad line of distinction still existing between the southern English and the folk of the more northerly districts in his day, twelve hundred years after the visit of Caesar. He says that they were then (about A.D. 1150) as different as if they had been different races; and so in fact they were—different in their... 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...

THE BUGBEAR OF AMERICAN COOKERY—MONOTONY It is as strange as it is true that with the supplies that have lately proved sufficient to feed a world to draw upon the chief trouble with American cookery is its monotony. The American cook has a wider variety of foods at his command than any other in the world, yet in the average home how rarely is it that the palate is surprised with a flavor that... more...

PRACTICAL COOKERY. 1. Observations respecting Meat. Meat to be in perfection should be kept a number of days when the weather will admit of it. Beef and mutton should be kept at least a week in cold weather, and poultry three or four days. If the weather is hot, it will keep but a short time. It should be kept in a cool, airy place, away from the flies, and if there is any danger of its spoiling, a... more...