The New century cook book

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The New Century Cook Book (1899) is a charity compilation assembled by women contributors from Chicago and other cities to benefit the Wesley Hospital. Rather than being the work of a single author, it gathers over a thousand recipes credited to named contributors, reflecting the community fundraising cookbook tradition of the late nineteenth century. The book moves through the full arc of a household's culinary needs, opening with the staff of life, breads, rolls, and griddle cakes, before proceeding through soups, fish and shellfish, meats and poultry, vegetables, pickles and condiments, salads, eggs, and an enormous run of cakes, cookies, pies, and puddings. It closes with ice creams, candies, beverages, household hints, invalid cookery, and finally a block of period Chicago advertisements. Throughout, recipes are practical and terse, giving ingredients and steps with contributor names attached, and often include multiple competing versions of the same dish, such as more than twenty lemon pies or dozens of ginger cookies. For the modern reader this is less a curated authorial vision than a communal snapshot of American home cooking at the turn of the century, useful both as a culinary record and as a document of domestic and commercial life in Chicago at that time.

The book is organized into clearly labeled thematic sections that mirror a traditional household cookbook progression. It begins with breads and morning breads (section 1 and part of section 2), then moves into soups and fish (sections 2 to 3), shellfish and meats and poultry (sections 3 to 4), vegetables and sauces (section 4), pickles, catsups, and preserved condiments (sections 5 to 6), salads and salad dressings (sections 6 to 7), eggs and miscellaneous savory dishes (section 7), an extended run of cakes spanning fruit cakes, chocolate cakes, layer cakes, and cookies (sections 8 to 11), preserving and canning (section 11), desserts including a very large lemon pie run and other pies (section 12), puddings both cream-based and steamed or boiled (sections 13 to 14), mince meat, ice creams, and candies (sections 14 to 15), household hints and invalid cookery (section 15), and finally advertisements from Chicago businesses (section 16). Within sections, recipes are frequently presented as multiple named variants on the same dish contributed by different individuals, rather than a single standardized version.