As the conditions of living improve, there are greater demands upon
time in new directions, and it is not only convenient, but a saving of
both time and money to have at ready command the simplest and
best recipes in cookery and instructions in the best methods in every
department of housekeeping. Failures are costly, and experience is
always so dearly bought that it is economy to buy the results of
thousands of carefully conducted experiments, packed between the
covers of a book, rather than waste time and money in trials that
may or may not prove successful.
The arrangements of subjects treated, whenever practical, has
been made in the simple order of the alphabet, and for the sake of
still more ready reference a very full alphabetical index has been
PREFACi;.
added; Whenever a recipe is given within another, by an addition
of ingredients, it is indexed and marked by italics; when one recipe
which appears elsewhere in the book is referred to in another recipe
the foimer begins with a capital letter. The instructions which pre-
cede the recipes of each department have been carefully made up^
and are entirely trustworthy, and the recipes themselves are mostly
new to print and well indorsed. The instructions should be care-
fully read before any recipe, following them, is attempted. Several
suggestive articles have also been introduced, which, though not be-
longing strictly to cookery, bear such close relations to it that the
fiUiess of their apppearance in the connection is evident.
What is offered in this volume is practical and useful, the direc-
tions are simple and may easily be understood and followed, and the
index is so foil and the arrangement so simple that anything wanted
may be readily found. It is submitted to the housekeeping public,
and more especially to those who have found valuable help in "Prac-
tically Housekeeping,'* with confidence that it will be found worthy
of constant use in their daily round of duties.
BREAD-MAKING.
It is said that the original Saxon form of our English word
**Lady" meant "Loaf-giver." Essentially, there can be no higher
dignity than that which attaches to the woman who is the loaf-
giver to th«se who are dependent on her good sense and skill for
the daily food which sustains physical life, and it is one of the best
indications of the present time, that never more than to-day have
women been interested in the quality of the household bread.
Everywhere the housewife puts this foremost, as the one thing that
must be "good," whatever of failure may be tolerated in other
things. It is a commercial fact of the first importance that the
American workingman insists (unquestionably at the dictate of his
"better half,") upon the first quality of flour in his provision for
family needs. That this is sometimes carried to a wasteful and
absurd excess is merely due to lack of knowledge, and a consequent
wrong standard of excellence. The idea that "whiteness" is the
thing in bread, which is primary and fundamental, has led and is
constantly leading, to unnecessary expenditure. It depends upon
too great a confidence in the sense of sight, as a guide in the choice
of food, and is a part of the same delusion which makes us choose
the red apple or peach, even when decidedly inferior to less showy
sorts.
Page 2
Presented as published in 1890. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
AI-modernized reading of the original text
As the conditions of living improve, there are greater demands upon time in new directions, and it is not only convenient, but a saving of both time and money to have at ready command the simplest and best recipes in cookery and instructions in the best methods in every department of housekeeping. Failures are costly, and experience is always so dearly bought that it is economy to buy the results of thousands of carefully conducted experiments, packed between the covers of a book, rather than waste time and money in trials that may or may not prove successful.
The arrangements of subjects treated, whenever practical, has been made in the simple order of the alphabet, and for the sake of still more ready reference a very full alphabetical index has been
PREFACi;.
added; Whenever a recipe is given within another, by an addition of ingredients, it is indexed and marked by italics; when one recipe which appears elsewhere in the book is referred to in another recipe the foimer begins with a capital letter. The instructions which precede the recipes of each department have been carefully made up and are entirely trustworthy, and the recipes themselves are mostly new to print and well endorsed. The instructions should be carefully read before any recipe, following them, is attempted. Several suggestive articles have also been introduced, which, though not belonging strictly to cookery, bear such close relations to it that the fitness of their appearance in the connection is evident.
What is offered in this volume is practical and useful, the directions are simple and may easily be understood and followed, and the index is so full and the arrangement so simple that anything wanted may be readily found. It is submitted to the housekeeping public, and more especially to those who have found valuable help in Practical Housekeeping,"* with confidence that it will be found worthy of constant use in their daily round of duties.
It is said that the original Saxon form of our English word "Lady" meant "Loaf-giver." Essentially, there can be no higher dignity than that which attaches to the woman who is the loaf-giver to those who are dependent on her good sense and skill for the daily food which sustains physical life, and it is one of the best indications of the present time, that never more than to-day have women been interested in the quality of the household bread. Everywhere the housewife puts this foremost, as the one thing that must be "good," whatever of failure may be tolerated in other things. It is a commercial fact of the first importance that the American workingman insists (unquestionably at the dictate of his "better half,") upon the first quality of flour in his provision for family needs. That this is sometimes carried to a wasteful and absurd excess is merely due to lack of knowledge, and a consequent wrong standard of excellence. The idea that "whiteness" is the thing in bread, which is primary and fundamental, has led and is constantly leading, to unnecessary expenditure. It depends upon too great a confidence in the sense of sight, as a guide in the choice of food, and is a part of the same delusion which makes us choose the red apple or peach, even when decidedly inferior to less showy sorts.