are" is as full of the "pith o' sense" to-day as in ye days of long
ago, for food either makes us physically fit and fully efficient, or
miserable failures with physical complications that keep us constantly
in the physician's hands.

The vital essences of that which we prepare for eating are "medicinal
messengers" bearing light to the eye, vigor to the limb, beauty to the
cheek and alertness to the brain, as vitamines, or distorted in the
misdirected process are the harsh heralds of pain and debility to the
human system. How great then is the influence of the one who prepares
it!

Influence, according to astrology, was "a power or virtue flowing from
the planets upon men and things," but from the kitchen, as a sun and
heat centre, there truly flows a planetary influence that makes or
mars us.

Scientific cooking means the elimination of waste, the preservation
of edible resources and conservation of their potential energy through
the preparation of attractive, vitalizing food with minimum cost and
labor, thus providing in wide, deep measure, for harmony, personal
comfort and domestic peace.

The preface of a book is too often a flat, spiritless excuse for
offering it to the public instead of being a hearty announcement in
welcome terms of the arrival of a much-desired provision for a real
need, so I will come to the essential point at once by saying that
gathered here, in these pages, are my best recipes, truly "tried in
the fire," the actual working results of many years' teaching and
lecturing, brought "up to the minute" in the interests of that