Cookery for every household

From the librarian's dossier · AI-generated, grounded in the scanned text

Cookery for Every Household (1914) is a comprehensive domestic cookbook by Florence B. Jack, former principal of the School of Domestic Arts in Edinburgh. Spanning over 2,700 anchored food records across 99 gated sections, it is designed as a complete household reference rather than a narrow recipe collection. The book opens with kitchen management: choosing and cleaning a kitchen, selecting stoves (coal range, gas, oil, and the newly emerging electric cooker), marketing, and larder care. It then moves through soups, fish, vegetables, sauces, meat, poultry, game, eggs, pastry, puddings, cold sweets, ices, sandwiches, invalid cookery, breads, cakes, icings, confectionery, and beverages, before closing with chafing-dish and paper-bag cookery, condiments, table service, carving, menu planning, and an extensive index. The recipes range from humble family fare to elaborate French-influenced entrees, reflecting the aspirations of an Edwardian household that wanted both economy and refinement. Costs are frequently given in old British currency, and many dishes carry French names alongside English titles, showing the strong influence of classical French cuisine on domestic British cooking of the period. Modern readers will find this book valuable both as a practical historical recipe source and as a window into the daily operations, technology, and social expectations of an early twentieth-century household kitchen.

The book is organized as a sequential household manual rather than a strict alphabetical dictionary, though a substantial back-of-book index (sections 106-110) allows alphabetical lookup. It begins with kitchen infrastructure and equipment (sections 1-4), then marketing and storage (section 5), followed by a very large soup section spanning stock-making through elaborate clear soups (sections 6-13). Fish cookery follows in extensive detail by species (sections 13-20), then vegetables organized alphabetically by vegetable (sections 20-28), salads and sauces (sections 28-31), and a long meat section moving from cuts and butchery through beef, veal, pork, offal, and elaborate French entrees (sections 32-44). Poultry and game follow (sections 44-50), then eggs, omelets, and pastry-based savory and sweet dishes (sections 51-60), breakfast dishes, milk and steamed puddings, souffles, cold sweets, jellies, creams, and ices (sections 61-79), hors-d'oeuvre and savouries (sections 79-84), sandwiches and invalid cookery (sections 84-88), and an extended baking section covering breads, scones, cakes, icings, and confectionery (sections 88-99). The book closes with beverages, chafing-dish and paper-bag cookery, condiments and preserves, French culinary term glossaries, table service, carving, menu planning, and the index (sections 99-110).