Food is the most important of our wants; we cannot exist without it. The
man who does not use his brain to select and prepare his food, is not
above the brutes that take it in its raw state. It is to the physique
what education is to the mind, coarse or refined. Good and well-prepared
food beautifies the physique the same as a good and well-directed
education beautifies the mind. A cook-book is like a book on chemistry,
it cannot be used to any advantage if theory is not blended with
practice. It must also be written according to the natural products and
climate of the country in which it is to be used, and with a perfect
knowledge of the properties of the different articles of food and
condiments.
Like many other books, it is not the size that makes it practical; we
could have made this one twice as large as it is, without having added a
single receipt to it, by only having given separate ones for pieces of
meat, birds, fishes, etc., that are of the same kind and prepared
alike. All cook-books written by mere compilers, besides giving the same
receipt several times, recommend the most absurd mixtures as being the
best and of the "latest French style."
Although cookery has made more progress within two or three years, in
this country as well as in Europe, than it had since 1830, and although
all our receipts are complete, practical, wholesome, and in accordance
with progress, still they are simple. Our aim has been to enable every
housekeeper and professional cook, no matter how inexperienced they may
be, to prepare any kind of food in the best and most wholesome way, with
economy, celerity, and taste; and also to serve a dinner in as orderly a
manner as any steward can do.
We did not intend to make a book, such as that of CAREME, which cannot
be used at all except by cooks of very wealthy families, and with which
one cannot make a dinner costing less than twenty dollars a head. Such a
book is to housekeepers or plain cooks what a Latin dictionary is to a
person 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 in
food as in dress, differing not only in the selection of colors, but
also in shape; therefore, by our variety of dishes and our different
styles of decorating them; by the ease that they can be prepared in the
cheapest as well as in the most costly way, we think we have met all
wants and all tastes. The wealthy, as well as those in limited
circumstances, 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 number of guests, at a greater or less expense, as they may
desire. Every one knows that money alone cannot make good dishes;
however good the raw materials may be, they require proper preparations
before being palatable and wholesome.