The following Receipts for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats, are
original, and have been used by the author and many of her friends
with uniform success. They are drawn up in a style so plain and
minute, as to be perfectly intelligible to servants, and persons
of the most moderate capacity. All the ingredients, with their
proper quantities, are enumerated in a list at the head of each
receipt, a plan which will greatly facilitate the business of
procuring and preparing the requisite articles.
There is frequently much difficulty in following directions in
English and French Cookery Books, not only from their want of
explicitness, but from the difference in the fuel, fire-places,
and cooking utensils, generally used in Europe and America; and
many of the European receipts are, so complicated and laborious,
that our female cooks are afraid to undertake the arduous task of
making any thing from them.
The receipts in this little book are, in every sense of the word,
American; but the writer flatters herself that (if exactly
followed) the articles produced from them will not be found
inferior to any of a similar description made in the European
manner. Experience has proved, that pastry, cakes, &c. prepared
_precisely_ according to these directions will not fail to be
excellent: but where economy is expedient, a portion of the
seasoning, that is, the spice, wine, brandy, rosewater, essence of
lemon, &c. may be omitted without any essential deviation of
flavour, or difference of appearance; retaining, however, the
given proportions of eggs, butter, sugar, and flour.
But if done at home, and by a person that can be trusted, it will
be proved, on trial, that any of these articles may be made in the
best and most liberal manner at _one half_ of the cost of the
same articles supplied by a confectioner. And they will be found
particularly useful to families that live in the country or in
small towns, where nothing of the kind is to be purchased.