The introductory texts reproduced here were written by the original Feeding America team to contextualize the books that were selected for inclusion as part of the 2001 digitization project.
Practical Cooking and Dinner Giving
By Mary Newton Foote Henderson
New York: Harper & Brothers, 1877.
This is an interesting and useful book. Perhaps most valuable is the illustrated twelve page section of cooking utensils. See especially the Custard-kettle, Saratoga Potato-cutter, Can-opener, Cream-whipper, Fish-stand, Butter or Mashed-potato Syringe, Meat-squeezer for pressing out the Juice of Beef for Invalids, Jelly-stand, An Instrument for drawing Champagne, Soda, and other Effervescing Liquids at pleasure, leaving the last Glass as sparkling as the first, and A Meringue Decorator. These, and more, were considered necessary for the well-equiped household of 1876.
This alone would make the book an invaluable culinary resource, but there is so much more. There is a section on dinner giving and entertaining at all meals, from how to phrase invitations to the setting of tables. The author explains the distinction between Ladies' Lunches and Gentlemen's Suppers. "Gentlemen generally prefer more game and wine."
The recipes are quite sophisticated, with the author admitting to making use of the best of both European and American authorities. She herself studied with cooking teachers on both sides of the Atlantic.
She generously credits others for specific dishes. The French influence on this St. Louis author is evident both in the recipes and in the English and French glossary she provides. Her section on Bread and Breakfast Cakes is quite fine. She includes, as was typical, Cookery for the Sick, including Invalid's Bills of Fare, and Some Dishes for Baby. Her sections on rice dishes and on wine service are quite special. Her advice on wines can be followed today: "At dinners of great pretension, from eight to twelve different kinds of wines are sometimes served. This is rather ostentatious than elegant. In my judgement, neither elegance nor good taste is displayed in such excess. Four different kinds of wine are quite enough for the grandest occasions imaginable, if they are only of the choicest selection."
About ten years after the publication of this book, Mrs. Henderson wrote a second, Diet for the Sick. The same attention to detail and attempt to provide well-cooked and savory fare are evident, but this later book has as its major concern health, diet and nutrition. The author, a bit ahead of her time, believed that "the treatment of most chronic complaints is chiefly dietetical and hygienic, rather than medicinal."
