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Table of Contents

The reasons for the publication of this Volume—the First of a Series of Practical Manuals which were to be called the “All About It” Books—were thus explained in a Prospectus issued a few months ago, and approved by the late Mrs. S. O. Beeton:—

MANY wishes have been expressed to the Authoress of the “Book of Household Management” that a volume of Recipes in Cookery should be written which could be sold at a price somewhere between the seven-and-sixpenny “Household Management” and the Shilling Cookery Book. Accordingly Mrs. Beeton has prepared a Collection of Recipes, and of other Practical Information concerning the Dressing and Serving of Family Fare, which, when completed, will be published, in serviceable binding, at the price of Three Shillings and Sixpence.

As Mistress, Cook, and Critic have declared that the details in Mrs. Beeton’s larger work are so easy to understand, the Authoress has followed, in every Recipe printed in the present Dictionary, the same simple plan she originally used. Regarding, however, the arrangement of the Recipes, the Authoress has chosen the Dictionary form, believing an alphabetical arrangement to be the best for a book that is being constantly referred to. By the adoption of a very intelligible system, all cross reference, and that very disagreeable parenthesis (See So-and-so) is avoided, except in a very few instances. Where any warning as to what should not be done is likely to be needed, it is given, as well as advice as to what ought to be done. No pains have been thought too great to make little things clearly understood. Trifles constitute perfection. It is just the knowledge or ignorance of little things that usually makes the difference between the success of the careful and experienced housewife or servant, and the failure of her who is careless and inexperienced. Mrs. Beeton has brought to her new offering to the Public a most anxious care to describe plainly and fully all the more difficult and recondite portions of Cookery, whilst the smallest items have not been “unconsidered trifles,” but each Recipe and preparation have claimed minute attention.