The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking by Helen Stuart Campbell


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Page 2

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
granted also a taste for French flavorings not yet common outside of our
large cities, and to no great extent within them. To utilize to the best
advantage the food-resources of whatever spot one might be in, to give
information on a hundred points suggested by each lesson, yet having no
place in the ordinary cook-book, in short, _to teach household science as
well as cooking_, became my year's work; and it is that year's work which
is incorporated in these pages. Beginning with Raleigh, N.C., and lessons
given in a large school there, it included also a seven-months' course at
the Deaf and Dumb Institute, and regular classes for ladies. Straight
through, in those classes, it became my business to say, "This is no
infallible system, warranted to give the whole art of cooking in twelve
lessons. All I can do for you is to lay down clearly certain fixed
principles; to show you how to economize thoroughly, yet get a better
result than by the expenditure of perhaps much more material. Before our
course ends, you will have had performed before you every essential
operation in cooking, and will know, so far as I can make you know,
prices, qualities, constituents, and physiological effects of every type
of food. Beyond this, the work lies in your own hands."

Armed with manuals,--American, English, French,--bent upon systematizing
the subject, yet finding none entirely adequate, gradually, and in spite
of all effort to the contrary, I found that my teaching rested more and
more on my own personal experience as a housekeeper, both at the South and
at the North. The mass of material in many books was found confusing and
paralyzing, choice seeming impossible when a dozen methods were given. And
for the large proportion of receipts, directions were so vague that only a
trained housekeeper could be certain of the order of combination, or
results when combined. So from the crowd of authorities was gradually
eliminated a foundation for work; and on that foundation has risen a
structure designed to serve two ends.

For the young housekeeper, beginning with little or no knowledge, but
eager to do and know the right thing, not alone for kitchen but for the
home as a whole, the list of topics touched upon in Part I. became
essential. That much of the knowledge compressed there should have been
gained at home, is at once admitted: but, unfortunately, few homes give
it; and the aim has been to cover the ground concisely yet clearly and
attractively. As to Part II., it does not profess to be the whole art of
cooking, but merely the line of receipts most needed in the average
family, North or South. Each receipt has been tested personally by the
writer, often many times; and each one is given so minutely that failure
is well-nigh impossible, if the directions are intelligently followed. A
few distinctively Southern dishes are included, but the ground covered has
drawn from all sources; the series of excellent and elaborate manuals by
well-known authors having contributed here and there, but the majority of
rules being, as before said, the result of years of personal experiment,
or drawn from old family receipt-books.

To facilitate the work of the teacher, however, a scheme of lessons is
given at the end, covering all that can well be taught in the ordinary
school year: each lesson is given with page references to the receipts
employed, while a shorter and more compact course is outlined for the use
of classes for ladies. A list of topics is also given for school use; it
having been found to add greatly to the interest of the course to write
each week the story of some ingredient in the lesson for the day, while a
set of questions, to be used at periodical intervals, fixes details, and
insures a certain knowledge of what progress has been made. The course
covers the chemistry and physiology of food, as well as an outline of
household science in general, and may serve as a text-book wherever such
study is introduced. It is hoped that this presentation of the subject
will lessen the labor necessary in this new field, though no text-book can
fully take the place of personal enthusiastic work.

That training is imperatively demanded for rich and poor alike, is now
unquestioned; but the mere taking a course of cooking-lessons alone does
not meet the need in full. The present book aims to fill a place hitherto
unoccupied; and precisely the line of work indicated there has been found
the only practical method in a year's successful organization of schools
at various points. Whether used at home with growing girls, in
cooking-clubs, in schools, or in private classes, it is hoped that the
system outlined and the authorities referred to will stimulate interest,
and open up a new field of work to many who have doubted if the food
question had any interest beyond the day's need, and who have failed to
see that nothing ministering to the best life and thought of this
wonderful human body could ever by any chance be rightfully called "common
or unclean." We are but on the threshold of the new science. If these
pages make the way even a little plainer, the author will have
accomplished her full purpose, and will know that in spite of appearances
there is "room for one more."

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Fri 29th Mar 2024, 13:12