The handy dictionary of cookery

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The Handy Dictionary of Cookery is an 1890 alphabetical culinary reference by Mary A. Everard, containing approximately five hundred recipes organized as a dictionary running from apple dishes through Yorkshire pudding and whitebait. Rather than following a menu-course structure, the book presents food terms and preparations in alphabetical order, prefaced by substantial technical instruction on cooking methods, nutrition, and household economy. The preface establishes cookery as a science demanding cleanliness, punctuality, and economy, and outlines seven core cooking methods with attention to temperature and timing. The recipes themselves range from everyday fare like scalloped potatoes and Scotch broth to elaborate entertaining dishes such as Chaud-Froid of Chicken, galantine of fowl, and clear turtle soup. A recurring thread is invalid cookery, with beef tea, arrowroot preparations, and other easily digested foods given detailed treatment for feeding the sick. Modern readers will find a window into late Victorian domestic priorities: precise technique, economical use of ingredients, and dishes meant to display culinary skill for both daily meals and special occasions. The dictionary format, combined with its breadth of categories from breads and creams to game and puddings, makes it a useful record of the period's culinary vocabulary and household expectations.

The book opens with a preface and foundational material (section 1) covering the seven cooking methods, nutritional classifications, and dietary guidance before the recipes proper begin. From there the work proceeds as an alphabetical dictionary of foods and dishes, moving from apple preparations through bread, sauces, soups, cakes, creams, poultry, fish, meats, puddings, and vegetables, ending with entries under S, T, V, W, and Y such as Yorkshire pudding and whitebait (sections 2 through 11). Entries are organized by headword rather than by course or meal, so related dishes such as puddings or soups reappear scattered across multiple sections depending on their alphabetical position.