The history of how one country can with profit to itself exchange its
superfluities for the superfluities of another country is almost the history
of civilisation itself. Vast changes have taken place in the domestic
life of the inhabitants of these islands during the last century. Indeed,
it may be said, in reference to what may be called the pleasures of the
table, that in many cases the luxuries of the eighteenth century have
become the necessaries of life in the nineteenth.
Great changes also have taken place in English society of late years.
Men in the present day work less with their muscles, but far harder
with their brains. The farmhouse pie cut into two-pound slices is not
adapted to the appetite of the weary merchant’s clerk any more than to
that of the merchant himself.
A certain variety of food is demanded, and with demand naturally
supply follows. To the hard-worked man who lives by the sweat of his
brain rather than his brow, a Yorkshire breakfast of the old style is
simply an impossibility. It is to this enormous middle class that
preserved meats, fruit, and vegetables are so acceptable.
The old-fashioned prejudice against preserved goods is now almost
a thing of the past. Throughout the length and breadth of the land
a dish of fresh green peas, or ripe, luscious apricots, is now to be
obtained at all seasons of the year. The wonder now is how our
ancestors did so well without them. But the same thing may be said
of railway travelling, telegrams, and gas. The chief point in which the
present work differs from the majority of those which have preceded it,
is that its directions are not so much as to how to make things as how
to use them. In ordinary works on cookery, for instance, we have
various headings of different kinds of jam, and we are told how to make
the jam. How few, however, direct us as to the various uses to which
jam may be put after it is once made. In the present day, probably, to
every one who makes his own jam there are a thousand who buy their
jam ready made. It is to these that the knowledge of the
V
INTRODUCTION.
numerous Avays of using jam will be most useful. Again, in the
case of potted meats, home-made potted meat is comparatively
rare; and, when home-made, is too often a makeshift for using
up the remains of a piece of boiled beef, or, still more often, the
almost bare bone of a ham that has got too rusty to be placed on the
table. Between the home- made article and the potted meat made by
the Avholesale manufacturer what a contrast exists ! Thanks to capital and
machinery, potted meats su ch as potted ham is there made by the ton ,
and the same extraordinary advantage of capital combined with skilled
labour is shoAvn as in the case of the cotton goods we buy in America.
Page 1
Presented as published in 1880. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
AI-modernized reading of the original text
The history of how one country can with profit to itself exchange its superfluities for the superfluities of another country is almost the history of civilisation itself. Vast changes have taken place in the domestic life of the inhabitants of these islands during the last century. Indeed, it may be said, in reference to what may be called the pleasures of the table, that in many cases the luxuries of the eighteenth century have become the necessaries of life in the nineteenth.
Great changes also have taken place in English society of late years. Men in the present day work less with their muscles, but far harder with their brains. The farmhouse pie cut into two-pound slices is not adapted to the appetite of the weary merchant’s clerk any more than to that of the merchant himself.
A certain variety of food is demanded, and with demand naturally supply follows. To the hard-worked man who lives by the sweat of his brain rather than his brow, a Yorkshire breakfast of the old style is simply an impossibility. It is to this enormous middle class that preserved meats, fruit, and vegetables are so acceptable.
The old-fashioned prejudice against preserved goods is now almost a thing of the past. Throughout the length and breadth of the land a dish of fresh green peas, or ripe, luscious apricots, is now to be obtained at all seasons of the year. The wonder now is how our ancestors did so well without them. But the same thing may be said of railway travelling, telegrams, and gas. The chief point in which the present work differs from the majority of those which have preceded it, is that its directions are not so much as to how to make things as how to use them. In ordinary works on cookery, for instance, we have various headings of different kinds of jam, and we are told how to make the jam. How few, however, direct us as to the various uses to which jam may be put after it is once made. In the present day, probably, to every one who makes his own jam there are a thousand who buy their jam ready made. It is to these that the knowledge of the
numerous ways of using jam will be most useful. Again, in the case of potted meats, home-made potted meat is comparatively rare; and, when home-made, is too often a makeshift for using up the remains of a piece of boiled beef, or, still more often, the almost bare bone of a ham that has got too rusty to be placed on the table. Between the home- made article and the potted meat made by the wholesale manufacturer what a contrast exists ! Thanks to capital and machinery, potted meats such as potted ham is there made by the ton , and the same extraordinary advantage of capital combined with skilled labour is shown as in the case of the cotton goods we buy in America.