Paul Richards' book of breads, cakes, pastries, ices and sweetmeats

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

Paul Richards' Book of Breads, Cakes, Pastries, Ices and Sweetmeats (1907) is a large professional and household baking reference covering nearly the entire sweet side of the American and European bakeshop tradition. With 568 anchored food records and only a single medicinal note, this is overwhelmingly a working culinary manual rather than a domestic remedy book. Its scope runs from pies, tarts, and cakes through puddings, molded creams, frozen desserts, breads and rolls, coffee cakes, candies, and preserved fruits, closing with an index and publisher advertisements for companion Hotel Monthly Handbook volumes. The recipes draw heavily on continental European traditions, especially German and Viennese baking, alongside American regional specialties such as New England, Boston, and Southern items. Numbered recipes and cross-references between mixtures, fillings, and icings suggest the book was designed as an integrated system for both hotel bakeshops and ambitious home kitchens. Readers will find detailed technical instruction on fermentation, oven heat, gelatin setting, and sugar work, indicating an audience with some existing kitchen skill. As a period document, it offers a rich window into turn-of-the-century American commercial and domestic baking, including holiday-themed confections, restaurant plating conventions, and early attention to bread economy and industrial baking equipment like Pullman pans.

The book proceeds through a sequence of dessert and baking categories: pies and tarts, then icings; cakes, tourtes, and cookies; small fancy cakes and pudding sauces; an extended run of hot and cold puddings including frozen and gelatin-based varieties; molded creams, jellies, and charlotte preparations; frozen creams and ice creams leading into a substantial breadmaking treatise; specialized European and American rolls; yeast-raised coffee cakes, doughnuts, muffins, and griddle items; advanced candy and sugar work; a miscellany of practical notes and an alphabetical index; and finally publisher advertisements for related professional handbooks. Numbered recipe entries and headings recur throughout, with later recipes frequently referencing earlier numbered mixtures, fillings, and sauces, suggesting a deliberately cross-linked reference system rather than a simple sequential cookbook.