The complete cook book

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

The Complete Cook Book is a large American household cookbook published in 1900 by Mrs. Jennie Day Rees. It opens with a brief cultural framing of cooking history, from ancient Rome through French and Italian influences, plus verses on diet and domestic life, before settling into a thoroughly practical manual. The bulk of the text moves through soups, shellfish, fish, poultry, game, meats, vegetables, sandwiches, sauces, eggs, breads, desserts, preserves, pickles, candies, and wines. Many recipes are attributed to family members (My Mother's, Grandmother's, Sister Mollie's), giving the book a personal, domestic voice alongside more formal restaurant-style dishes like Boned Turkey a la Prosperity of America or Terrapin University Club Style. The scope suggests a household aiming to serve everything from economical family suppers to elaborate multi-course entertaining, including game birds, elegant sauces, and iced desserts. The book closes with an extensive alphabetical index covering all major categories. Readers today will find it a rich record of turn-of-the-century American middle- and upper-class domestic cookery, blending inherited family recipes with fashionable French and continental techniques, market advice tied to hunting and fishing seasons, and household preservation practices necessary before modern refrigeration and commercial canning were widespread.

The book is organized as a sequential household cookbook rather than a strict alphabetical dictionary. It begins with introductory material (history, verse, market and measurement guidance) in section 1, then proceeds through thematic culinary categories in a logical meal-planning order: soups and stocks, shellfish, fish, poultry and game, meats, vegetables, sandwiches and light dishes, sauces and eggs, breads and pastry, puddings and desserts, beverages and preserving, pickles and candies, and finally wines. The final section (16) provides a comprehensive alphabetical index organized by the same major categories, allowing readers to locate recipes by type. Headings within sections are often recipe titles themselves, indicating dense, recipe-by-recipe presentation rather than long explanatory prose.