Mrs. N.K.M Lee - The Cooks Own Book, and Housekeepers Register

OTHER BOOKS IN
THE AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY
COOKBOOK COLLECTION

1776-1876: The Centennial Cook Book and General Guide, by Mrs. Ella E. Myers

American Cookery, by Amelia Simmons

The American Family Keepsake, by The Good Samaritan

Apician Morsels, by Dick Humelbergius Secundus

The Art of Dining, and the Art of Attaining High Health, by Thomas Walker

California Recipe Book, by Ladies of California

The Canadian Housewifes Manual of Cookery

Canoe and Camp Cookery, by Seneca

The Compleat Housewife, by Eliza Smith

Confederate Receipt Book

The Cook Not Mad

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Dainty Dishes, by Lady Harriet E. St. Clair

Dairying Exemplified, by Josiah Twamley

De Witts Connecticut Cook, and Housekeepers Assistant, by Mrs. N. Orr

Every Ladys Cook Book, by Mrs. T. J. Crowen

Fifteen Cent Dinners for Families of Six, by Juliet Corson

The Frugal Housewife, by Susannah Carter

The Hand-Book of Carving

The Health Reformers Cook Book, by Mrs. Lucretia E. Jackson

The Housekeepers Manual

How to Mix Drinks, by Jerry Thomas

Jewish Cookery Book, by Esther Levy

Miss Leslies New Cookery Book, by Eliza Leslie

Modern Domestic Cookery, and Useful Receipt Book, by W. A. Henderson

Mrs. Hales New Cook Book, by Mrs. Sarah J. Hale

Mrs. Owens Illinois Cook Book, by Mrs. T.J.V. Owens

Mrs. Porters New Southern Cookery Book, by Mrs. M.E. Porter

The New Housekeepers Manual, by Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

The New England Cook Book

The Practical Distiller, by John Wyeth

The Physiology of Taste, by Jean A. Brillat-Savarin

Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats, by Eliza Leslie

The Times Recipes, by The New York Times

A Treatise on Bread, by Sylvester Graham

Vegetable Diet, by William Alcott

The Virginia Housewife, by Mary Randolph

What to Do with the Cold Mutton

The Young Housekeeper, by William Alcott

This edition of The Cook's Own Book, and Housekeeper's Register by Mrs. N.K.M. Lee was reproduced by permission from the volume in the collection of the American Antiquarian Society (AAS), Worcester, Massachusetts. Founded in 1812 by Isaiah Thomas, a Revolutionary War patriot and successful printer and publisher, the Society is a research library documenting the life of Americans from the colonial era through 1876. AAS aims to collect, preserve, and make available as complete a record as possible of the printed materials from the early American experience. The cookbook collection includes approximately 1,100 volumes.

The Cook's Own Book, and Housekeeper's Register copyright 2013 by American Antiquarian Society. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews.

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PREFACE.

T HE cook exercises a greater power over the public health and welfare than the physician, and if he should be a charlatan in his art, alas! for his employers. Hitherto, or until of late years, the cook has had to educate himself, while the physician appropriates all the knowledge of antiquity, and of every succeeding age; his individual cases are all classed according to general principles, while the rules that have regulated the preparation of our food, have been discordant and unnatural. In the present age, indeed, cookery has been raised to the dignity of an art, and sages have given their treatises to the world. Vry has a monument in the cemetery of Pre La Chaise, among the tombs of warriors, poets, and philosophers, recording of his life that it was consecrated to the useful arts. Virgil however, writes that the best delights of Elysium were showered upon those who received wounds for their country, who lived unspotted priests, who uttered verses worthy of Apollo, or who, like Vry, consecrated their lives to the useful arts. On the utilitarian principle the cook should be much elevated in public estimation, and were he to form a strict alliance with the physician, the patriarchal ages would return, and men would die of nothing but sheer old age.

After insanity, the most grievous affliction of Providence, or rather of improvidence and imprudence, is Dyspepsy: a malady that under different names has decimated the inhabitants of civilized countries, and of almost all countries, in which man is a cooking animal. To the dyspeptic, the sun has no cheering ray, the air no elasticity or balm; the flowers are without fragrance, music is without melody, and beauty without charms. Life is a blank; affection has lost its power to soothe, and the blessings scattered by Providence, are converted into ministers of torment. Food becomes a bane; the very staff that supports life, gives the flagellation that renders life a curse. All that can delight is lost, but all that can depress and sting, has a tenfold activity and power.

The dyspeptics May of life, has fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf. Sleep that should visit every pillow but that of guilt, is to him no friend; if he slumbers, it is to dream, like Clarence, of hideous forms of suffering, and to wake to their reality. This is but a faint picture of Dyspepsy.

Her gloomy presence saddens all the scene,
Shades every flower and darkens every green,
Deepens the murmur of the falling floods,
And breathes a browner horror on the woods.

This malady is beyond the science of the physician, but within the art of the cook; in the proverb, Doctor Diet is ranked above Doctor Quiet and Doctor Merryman; though all are good.

The late Mr. Abernethy referred almost all maladies to the stomach, and seldom prescribed any remedy but a proper diet. This it is the province of the cook to provide; and the design of this book to indicate. The work is not designed to spread a taste for pernicious luxuries: and every recipe has been sanctioned by custom. The responsibility of the cook is lightened, and his duty facilitated. He has here a dictionary of reference, an encyclopedia of his art. The details are full, and the authority is perfect. There were various works of merit that it was useful for the cook to study, but here are collected the best parts of all, with the convenience of alphabetical arrangement, and in the compass of s. moderate volume. If it is a sin to waste the best gifts of Providence, it should be little less than a felony to spoil them. When we have collected the materials for a house, we never trust the building to an unskilful architect: yet we are often obliged to commit the preparation of our feasts as well as of our common food, to agents without knowledge. This knowledge is now supplied.