The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking | Page 3

to their proper place as trunk-linings and
kindling-material. The minority, admirable in plan and execution, and
elaborate enough to serve all republican purposes, are surely sufficient
for all the needs that have been or may be. With Mrs. Cornelius and
Miss Parloa, Marion Harland and Mrs. Whitney, and innumerable other
trustworthy authorities, for all every-day purposes, and Mrs. Henderson
for such festivity as we may at times desire to make, another word is
not only superfluous but absurd; in fact, an outrage on common sense,
not for one instant to be justified.
Such was my own attitude and such my language hardly a year ago; yet
that short space of time has shown me, that, whether the public admit
the claim, or no, one more cook-book MUST BE. And this is why:--
A year of somewhat exceptional experience--that involved in building
up several cooking-schools in a new locality, demanding the most
thorough and minute system to assure their success and
permanence--showed the inadequacies of any existing hand-books, and
the necessities to be met in making a new one. Thus the present book
has a twofold character, and represents, not only the ordinary receipt or
cook book, usable in any part of the country and covering all ordinary
household needs, but covers the questions naturally arising in every
lesson given, and ending in statements of the most necessary points in
household science. There are large books designed to cover this ground,
and excellent of their kind, but so cumbrous in form and execution as to
daunt the average reader.
Miss Corson's "Cooking-School Text-Book" commended itself for its
admirable plainness and fullness of detail, but was almost at once found
impracticable as a system for my purposes; her dishes usually requiring
the choicest that the best city market could afford, and taking for
granted also a taste for French flavorings not yet common outside of
our large cities, and to no great extent within them. To utilize to the

best advantage the food-resources of whatever spot one might be in, to
give information on a hundred points suggested by each lesson, yet
having no place in the ordinary cook-book, in short, _to teach
household science as well as cooking_, became my year's work; and it
is that year's work which is incorporated in these pages. Beginning with
Raleigh, N.C., and lessons given in a large school there, it included also
a seven-months' course at the Deaf and Dumb Institute, and regular
classes for ladies. Straight through, in those classes, it became my
business to say, "This is no infallible system, warranted to give the
whole art of cooking in twelve lessons. All I can do for you is to lay
down clearly certain fixed principles; to show you how to economize
thoroughly, yet get a better result than by the expenditure of perhaps
much more material. Before our course ends, you will have had
performed before you every essential operation in cooking, and will
know, so far as I can make you know, prices, qualities, constituents,
and physiological effects of every type of food. Beyond this, the work
lies in your own hands."
Armed with manuals,--American, English, French,--bent upon
systematizing the subject, yet finding none entirely adequate, gradually,
and in spite of all effort to the contrary, I found that my teaching rested
more and more on my own personal experience as a housekeeper, both
at the South and at the North. The mass of material in many books was
found confusing and paralyzing, choice seeming impossible when a
dozen methods were given. And for the large proportion of receipts,
directions were so vague that only a trained housekeeper could be
certain of the order of combination, or results when combined. So from
the crowd of authorities was gradually eliminated a foundation for
work; and on that foundation has risen a structure designed to serve two
ends.
For the young housekeeper, beginning with little or no knowledge, but
eager to do and know the right thing, not alone for kitchen but for the
home as a whole, the list of topics touched upon in Part I. became
essential. That much of the knowledge compressed there should have
been gained at home, is at once admitted: but, unfortunately, few
homes give it; and the aim has been to cover the ground concisely yet

clearly and attractively. As to Part II., it does not profess to be the
whole art of cooking, but merely the line of receipts most needed in the
average family, North or South. Each receipt has been tested personally
by the writer, often many times; and each one is given so minutely that
failure is well-nigh impossible, if the directions are intelligently
followed. A few distinctively Southern dishes are included, but the
ground covered has drawn from all sources; the series of