people overrun with cook-books, and only anxious to relegate the majority
of them to their proper place as trunk-linings and kindling-material. The
minority, admirable in plan and execution, and elaborate enough to serve
all republican purposes, are surely sufficient for all the needs that have
been or may be. With Mrs. Cornelius and Miss Parloa, Marion Harland and
Mrs. Whitney, and innumerable other trustworthy authorities, for all
every-day purposes, and Mrs. Henderson for such festivity as we may at
times desire to make, another word is not only superfluous but absurd; in
fact, an outrage on common sense, not for one instant to be justified.

Such was my own attitude and such my language hardly a year ago; yet that
short space of time has shown me, that, whether the public admit the
claim, or no, one more cook-book MUST BE. And this is why:--

A year of somewhat exceptional experience--that involved in building up
several cooking-schools in a new locality, demanding the most thorough
and minute system to assure their success and permanence--showed the
inadequacies of any existing hand-books, and the necessities to be met in
making a new one. Thus the present book has a twofold character, and
represents, not only the ordinary receipt or cook book, usable in any part
of the country and covering all ordinary household needs, but covers the
questions naturally arising in every lesson given, and ending in
statements of the most necessary points in household science. There are
large books designed to cover this ground, and excellent of their kind,
but so cumbrous in form and execution as to daunt the average reader.

Miss Corson's "Cooking-School Text-Book" commended itself for its
admirable plainness and fullness of detail, but was almost at once found
impracticable as a system for my purposes; her dishes usually requiring
the choicest that the best city market could afford, and taking for