Tempting dishes for small incomes

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Tempting Dishes for Small Incomes (1891) is a household cookbook by Harriet Anne de Salis, written for families who could not afford elaborate entrees and savouries but still wanted variety and refinement on a limited budget. The preface sets out the book's purpose plainly: to show how modest means and a general servant's kitchen skills can still produce appealing meals, aided by inexpensive tools such as small cream jugs, Swiss milk, isinglassine, and specific cookware like Breden's nickel steel. The book moves through soups, fish, meat, poultry, and egg dishes before turning to vegetable dishes, organ meats, puddings, custards, fritters, and fruit preparations, and closes with sauces, cakes, cooking technique explanations, a French culinary glossary, and an index. Throughout, the recipes lean on economical ingredients, leftover meats, and canned fish, while retaining French dish names and Victorian presentation conventions such as garnishing with parsley and croutons. With 216 anchored food records, this is a substantial practical reference rather than a narrow specialty text, intended for daily use in a modest household kitchen of the period.

The book is organized as a sequence of recipe categories moving from savory to sweet to reference material. It opens with a preface explaining its economical purpose, then presents soups, fish, meats, poultry, and eggs (section 1); continues with more meat, organ meat, fish, and vegetable dishes followed by a long run of puddings, blancmanges, custards, fritters, and fruit dishes (section 2); proceeds through further desserts, egg and cheese dishes, and grain- and pasta-based mains (section 3); and concludes with sauces, cakes, a technical section on cooking methods (baking, boiling, broiling, frying, roasting, stewing), a glossary of French culinary terms, and a full recipe index (section 4).