A calendar of dinners, with 615 recipes

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

A Calendar of Dinners, with 615 Recipes (1913) by Marion Harris Neil is both a household cookbook and an extended advertisement for Crisco, the newly introduced vegetable shortening. The book opens with a promotional narrative explaining Crisco's origins and supposed superiority over butter and lard, then moves into practical guidance on selecting meats, fish, and vegetables, and on core cooking methods such as roasting, boiling, braising, and frying. From there it offers foundational recipe sections on soups, fish, meats, vegetables, salads, sandwiches, pastries, breads, and cakes, before settling into its central conceit: a literal calendar of daily dinner menus running from January through December, each with multiple courses and marked recipes, including regular rotation of vegetarian menu days. The result is a hybrid text, part instructional manual, part corporate showcase, part year-long meal-planning guide for the early twentieth-century American household. Modern readers will find a vivid record of formal, multi-course home dining and of how a new industrial food product was marketed directly through domestic recipe use.

The book begins with introductory material (section 1) combining Crisco promotion with meat and poultry selection guidance, followed by a broader section on cooking methods, carving, and stock (section 2). Sections 3 through 8 present themed recipe categories in sequence, soups, fish, and meats, then vegetables and salads, sandwiches and pastries, breads and cakes, more cakes, and finally vegetarian dishes, eggs, and candies. From section 8 onward the book shifts into its titular structure, a continuous Calendar of Dinners organized by specific calendar dates from January through December (sections 8 through 15), each date offering a full multi-course menu with starred or marked recipes, including recurring vegetarian menu days interspersed throughout the year.