"The White House Cookbook": Publisher's Preface

After the jump. Replete with commentary from moi.

Just a quick note: I can't scan these pages, at least not until the binding is repaired, so I will try and get as close to how it looks by manuevering fonts, etc.

PUBLISHERS' PREFACE

In presenting to the public the "WHITE HOUSE COOK BOOK," the publishers believe they can justly claim that it more fully represents the progress and present perfection of the culinary art than any previous work. In point of authorship, it stands preeminent. Hugo Zieman was at one time caterer for that Prince Napoleon who was killed while fighting the Zulus in Africa.

Methinks they couldn't be bothered to figure out which Napoleon died fighting the Zulus.

{...} He was afterwards steard of the famous Hotel Splendide in Paris. Later he conducted the celebrated Brunswick Cafe in New York, and still later he gave to the Hotel Richelieu, in Chicago, a cuisine which won the applause of even the gourmets of foreign lands. It was here that he laid the famous "spread" to which the chiefs of the warring factions of the Republican Convention sat down in June, 1888, and from which they arose with asperities softened, differences harmonized, and victory organized.

That must have been one heck of a meal if it could accomplish all that.

Mrs. F.L. Gillette is no less proficient and capable, having made a life-long and thorough study of cookery and housekeeping, especially as adapted to the practical wants of of average American homes.

Good to know that someone's life-long study of cookery and housekeeping paid off.

The book has been prepared with great care. Every recipe has been tried and tested, and can be relied upon as one of the best of its kind. It is comprehensive, filling completely, it is believed, the requirements of housekeepers of all classes.

How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm...

How sad is it that the mere mention of "social classes" sets the PC alarm bells to ringing?

It embodies several original and commendable features,

The publishers have that reek of desperation wafting off them, don't they? They're selling this thing pretty hard.

{...}among which may be mentioned the menus for holidays and for one week in each month of the year, thus covering all varieties of seasonable foods; the convenient classification and arrangement of topics; the simplified method of explanation in preparing an article, in the order of manipulation, thereby enabling the most inexperienced to comprehend it.

The subject of carving has been given a prominent place, not only because of its special importance in a work of this kind, but particularly because it contains entirely new and original designs, ans is so far a departure from the usual mode of treating the subject.

Ummm, how detailed do you have to get to teach someone how to cut up a ham?

Interesting information is given concerning the White House; how its hospitality is conducted, the menus served on special occasions, views of the interior, portraits of all the ladies of the White House, etc.

Convenience has been studied in the make-up of the book. The type is large and plain; it is sewed by patent flexible process, so that when opened it will not close of itself, and it si bound in enameled cloth, adapted for use in the kitchen.

The Publishers.

Posted by Kathy at January 1, 2006 11:42 PM | TrackBack