Food is the most important of our wants; we cannot exist without it. Theman who does not use his brain to select and prepare his food, is notabove the brutes that take it in its raw state. It is to the physiquewhat education is to the mind, coarse or refined. Good and well-preparedfood beautifies the physique the same as a good and well-directededucation beautifies the mind. A cook-book is like a book on chemistry,it cannot be used to any advantage if theory is not blended withpractice. It must also be written according to the natural products andclimate of the country in which it is to be used, and with a perfectknowledge of the properties of the different articles of food andcondiments.
Like many other books, it is not the size that makes it practical; wecould have made this one twice as large as it is, without having added asingle receipt to it, by only having given separate ones for pieces ofmeat, birds, fishes, etc., that are of the same kind and prepared[4]alike. All cook-books written by mere compilers, besides giving the samereceipt several times, recommend the most absurd mixtures as being thebest and of the "latest French style."
Although cookery has made more progress within two or three years, inthis country as well as in Europe, than it had since 1830, and althoughall our receipts are complete, practical, wholesome, and in accordancewith progress, still they are simple. Our aim has been to enable everyhousekeeper and professional cook, no matter how inexperienced they maybe, to prepare any kind of food in the best and most wholesome way, witheconomy, celerity, and taste; and also to serve a dinner in as orderly amanner as any steward can do.
We did not intend to make a book, such as that of CARÈME, which cannotbe used at all except by cooks of very wealthy families, and with whichone cannot make a dinner costing less than twenty dollars a head. Such abook is to housekeepers or plain cooks what a Latin dictionary is to aperson of merely elementary education.
If we give so many different ways of preparing the same article of food,it is not with a view to complicate cookery, but people's taste is infood as in dress, differing not only in the selection of colors, butalso in shape; therefore, by our variety of dishes and our differentstyles of decorating them; by the ease that they can be prepared in the[5]cheapest as well as in the most costly way, we think we have met allwants and all tastes. The wealthy, as well as those in limitedcircumstances, can use our receipts with the same advantage.
Our division of cookery and the system of arranging bills of fare,contained in these pages, solve that great and perplexing question,especially for ladies, how to arrange a bill of fare for every season,to suit any