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IMPORTANCE OF GOOD COOKING

Table of Contents

Healthful cookery is not receiving the attention which its importance demands. Although we are living at a time when eating and drinking are carried to excess, and when elaborate bills of fare are frequently placed before us, yet plain, simple, and healthful cookery occupies but a comparatively small place in the culinary world to-day.

Good food is of primary importance. We live upon what we eat. It is not sufficient, however, merely to select good food. To be well digested and thoroughly assimilated the food must be properly prepared. The best food may be spoiled in cooking. The kind of food upon which we live, and the manner in which it is prepared, determines largely our physical well-being, and consequently much of our happiness or misery in this life.

“For love, nor honor, wealth, nor power,

Can give the heart a cheerful hour

When health is lost. Be timely wise;

With health all taste of pleasure flies.”

Moreover, the mind is affected by the condition of the body, and the morals by the state of the mind. As, therefore, cooking determines to a large degree the condition of the body, it must also affect to a considerable extent our moral and spiritual welfare. It is not too much to say, therefore, that there is religion in good cooking.

It has been truly said that “the cook fills an important place in the household. She is preparing food to be taken into the stomach, to form brain, bone, and muscle. The health of all the members of the family depends largely upon her skill and intelligence.” As the lives of those on a steamship are in the hands of the helmsman, so the lives and the health of the members of the family are, to a great degree, in the hands of the one who prepares their meals.

Thousands are dying annually as the result of poor cooking. Food poorly prepared is not nutritious, and can not, therefore, make good blood.

Some may say they have no natural ability to cook; but any one having ordinary intelligence, with a little effort, care, and proper directions, can learn to cook well. And surely the health of the family ought to be of sufficient importance to inspire every mother with ambition to learn how to cook.

Mothers should also teach their daughters the mysteries of good cooking. They should show them that this is an essential part of their education,—more essential than the study of music, fancy work, the dead languages, or the sciences. The knowledge of these latter without the knowledge of how to care for the body and provide it with suitable nourishment, is of little worth. Meredith hit upon a great truth when he said:—

“We may live without music, poetry, and art;

We may live without conscience, and live without heart,

We may live without friends; we may live without books;

But civilized man can not live without cooks.”

No young woman should contemplate marriage until she has first acquired a practical knowledge of simple cookery, for this is essential, whether she expects to do the cooking herself, or supervise the maid. Although bread is the staff of life, it is a sad fact that a large proportion of the daughters of the present generation do not know how to make a good loaf of bread. They have not been instructed in the useful art of cookery, so that when they have families of their own they can provide for their tables a well-cooked dinner, prepared with nicety, so that they would not blush to place it before their most esteemed friends.

There has never been an age so noted for dyspeptics as the present, and there was perhaps never before a time when there was a greater scarcity of good cooks.

“Though we boast of modern progress as aloft we proudly soar

Above untutored cannibals whose habits we deplore,

Yet in our daily papers any day you chance to look

You may find this advertisement: ‘Wanted—A Girl to Cook.’”

Good cooking does not consist in the preparation of highly seasoned foods to pamper a perverted appetite, but in cooking with simplicity, variety, and skill natural foods in a palatable and wholesome manner. To assist in this direction is the object of this little work.

But no workman can work without materials and tools. The necessary materials for cooking are indicated in the recipes given in this book. Illustrations of many of the most necessary and useful cooking utensils will be found scattered throughout the work.

A very convenient and easily constructed wall rack, which may be placed over the kitchen work table, is shown in the following cut: