Plasmon cookery book

From the librarian's dossier · AI-generated, grounded in the scanned text

The Plasmon Cookery Book (1904) is a promotional and instructional cookbook built entirely around Plasmon, a granulated, flavorless milk albumen powder marketed as a nutritional supplement. Issued by International Plasmon Limited, the book combines commercial advocacy with practical kitchen guidance, showing cooks how to incorporate this protein product into everyday dishes without altering their taste. It opens with explanatory material on what Plasmon is and an official Jurors' Report praising its exhibition performance, then moves into recipes spanning soups, meat and fish dishes, vegetables, puddings, custards, jellies, ices, and sauces. Throughout, the emphasis falls on nutrition and digestibility, with special attention to feeding invalids and infants alongside general family fare. The final section shifts from recipes to commerce, cataloging the wider Plasmon product line including cocoa, chocolate, arrowroot, biscuits, and specialty items for travelers and athletes, closed out with an alphabetical index. Modern readers will find this less a conventional cookbook than a hybrid of dietary treatise and product manual, offering a window into early twentieth-century food science marketing and domestic cookery alike. It rewards attention as both a culinary and commercial artifact of its era.

The book is organized into four sections, though only three survive in the summarized material (sections 1, 2, and 4). Section 1 opens with a preface, introduction, and explanation of what Plasmon is, followed by an exhibition report and instructions for preparing Plasmon in various forms, then moves into soup, meat, fish, and vegetable recipes. Section 2 continues with savory meat and vegetable dishes before transitioning into an extensive sweets section covering puddings, custards, jellies, ices, and decorative desserts, marked by the heading PART III.--SWEETS. Section 4 concludes the book with sauce recipes, followed by a detailed product catalog listing Plasmon's commercial goods with prices, and ends with an alphabetical index organizing all recipes by category with page references.