=PART FIRST=—Some Articles for the Show Case. The
Lunch Counter. Restaurant Breakfasts, Lunches and
Dinners. Hotel Breakfasts, Dinners and Suppers. Oyster
and Fish House Dishes. The Ice Cream Saloon. Fine Bakery
Lunch. Quaker Dairy Lunch. Confectionery Goods, Homemade
Beers, etc.
=PART SECOND=—Eight Weeks at a Summer Resort. _A
Diary. Our daily Bill of Fare and what it costs._ A
Party Supper of Forty Cents per Plate. The Art of
Charging Enough. A School Commencement Supper. Question
of How Many Fires. _Seven Fires for fifty persons vs.
one Fire for fifty._ The Round of Beef for Steak. A
Meat Block and Utensils. Bill of Groceries. _A Month’s
Supply for a Summer Boarding House, with Prices._
A Refrigerator Wanted. _About keeping Provisions;
Restaurant Patterns._ A Good Hotel Refrigerator.
_Cost of Ice to supply it._ Shall we have a Bill of
Fare? _Reasons why: a Blank Form._ Is Fish Cheaper
than Meat? Trouble with the Coffee. How to Scrub the
Kitchen. Trouble with Steam Chest and Vegetables.
Trouble with the Oatmeal. Building a House with Bread
Crusts. Pudding without Eggs. A Pastry and Store Room
Necessary. A Board on a Barrel. First Bill of Fare.
Trouble with Sour Meats. Trouble with the Ice Cream.
The Landlord’s Birthday Supper. _Showing how rich and
fancy Cakes were made and iced and ornamented without
using Eggs._ The Landlady’s Birthday Supper. Trouble in
Planning Dinners. Trouble with Captain Johnson. Trouble
in Serving Meals. Trouble with the Manager. Breakfasts
and Suppers for Six Cents per Plate. Hotel Dinners
for Ten Cents per Plate. Hotel Dinners for Seventeen
Cents per Plate. Supper for Forty for Eight Cents per
Plate. Breakfast for Forty for Nine Cents per Plate.
An Expensive Wedding Breakfast, _for the Colonel and
the Banker’s Daughter_. Four Thousand Meals. Review.
Groceries for 4,000. Meat, Fish and Poultry for 4,000.
Flour, Sugar and Coffee for 4,000. Butter and Eggs
for 4,000. Potatoes, Fresh Vegetables and Fruits for
4,000. Canned Fruits and Vegetables for 4,000. Milk and
Cream for 4,000. Total Cost of Provisions for 4,000.
How to Save Twenty Dollars per Week. How Much we Eat.
How Much we Drink. How Much to Serve. Work and Wages.
Laundry Work. Fuel, Light and Ice. Total Cost of Board.
How Much Profit? How Many Cooks to How Many People?
Boarding the Employees. Boarding Children. Meals for Ten
or Fifteen Cents. Country Board at Five Dollars. If—a
Bundle of Suppositions. Keeping Clean Side Towels. How
Many Fires—Again. A Proposal to Rent for next Season.
Conclusion.
=THE CONTENTS ALSO INCLUDE:=
=One Hundred Different Bills of Fare=, of Actual
Meals, all with New Dishes; the Amount and the
Cost per Head.
=Eleven Hundred Recipes.= All live matter that
every Cook needs—both by Weight and by Cup and
Spoon Measure.
=A Dictionary of Cookery=, Comprised in the
Explanations of Terms and General Information
contained in the Directions.
=Artistic Cookery.= Instructions in Ornamentation,
with Illustrations, and Notes on the London Cookery
Exhibition of 1885.
It is thoroughly analytical, practical, readable, and the first
book of the principles of the systematic hotel keeping. =PRICE $3.00.=
Address the Publisher, or any Hotel Paper.
Preface to Whitehead’s No. 4 Cooking for Profit.
This book is in many respects a continuation of the preceding volumes
in the series, it fulfills the designs that were intended but not
finished before, more particularly in the second part which deals
with the cost of keeping up a table. It is not an argument either for
or against high prices, but it embodies in print for the first time
the methods of close-cutting management which a million of successful
boarding house and hotel-keepers are already practising, in order that
another million who are not successful may learn, if they will, wherein
their competitors have the advantage. At the time when the following
introduction was written, which was about four years before the finish,
I was just setting out, while indulging a rambling propensity, to
find out why it was that my hotel books which were proving admirably
adapted to the use of the ten hotels of a resort town were voted “too
rich for the blood” of the four hundred boarding-houses; also, it
was a question how so many of these houses running at low prices are
enabled to make money as easily as the hotels which have a much larger
income. At the same time some statistician published a statement that
attracted attention showing that the vast majority of the people of
this land have to live on an income of less than fifty cents a day. At
the same time also an English author published a little book, which,
however, I have not seen and did not need, with the title of “How to
live on sixpence a day,” (twelve cents) which was presumptive evidence
that it could be done. In quest of information on these points I went
around considerably and found a good many “Mrs. Tingees” who were not
keeping boarding-houses, and I honor them for the surpassing skill that
makes the fifty cents a day do such wonders; but the right vein was not
struck until the opportunity occurred to do both the buying and using
of provisions from the very first meal in a Summer Boarding House.
In reference to unfinished work I take the liberty here of saying that
the bills of fare in this book with the quantities and proportions and
relative cost from the continuation and complete illustration of an
article entitled “The Art of Catering” in _Hotel Meat Cooking_. Knowing
how much to cook, how much to charge, how to prevent waste and all such
questions raised there are carried out to an answer in these pages. In
regard to the use of French names for dishes it is necessary that a
statement should be made. A great reform has taken place in the last
ten years in the composition of hotel bills of fare, and the subject
matter of these books having been widely diffused by publication
in the hotel newspapers, has undoubtedly had much to do with the
improvement that is now observable. My own design was, however, to
explain French terms, give their origin and proper spelling, and to
that end I had a mass of anecdotes, historical mention and other
such material collected to make the explanations interesting. As a
preliminary, I began exposing the absurdities committed by ignorant
cooks and others trying to write French, and before this had proceeded
far the newspapers took up and advocated the idea that French terms
should be abolished altogether. If that was to be the way the knot of
misspelling and misnaming dishes was to be cut, there was no use for my
dictionary work and the material was thrown away; I followed the new
path and it proves a plain and sensible one. At the same time there is
an aspect of the subject which cooks seeking situations perceive and
editors of newspapers may never think of, and that is that there are
many employers whom the reform has not reached who will pay a hundred
dollars for a cook who can give his dishes imposing foreign names more
willingly than fifty dollars to a better cook who can only write United
States. First class hotels which have all the good things that come to
market avoid French terms. They that have turkey and lamb, chicken,
peas and asparagus, oysters and turtle and cream want them shown up
in the plainest reading; to cover them up with French names would be
injudicious; but if we have but the same beef and mutton every day, the
aid that a few ornamental terms can give is not to be despised. First
of all it is requisite that those who use such terms should know what
they are intended to indicate and how they should be spelled and then
they can be taken or left according to the intelligent judgment of
those concerned.