High living

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

High Living is a 1904 charity cookbook compiled by Linie Loyall McLaren to raise money for the Telegraph Hill Neighborhood Association, a San Francisco organization that provided dispensaries, education, and nursing care to poor immigrant communities. Rather than a simple household manual, this book is a cosmopolitan collection of recipes drawn from many cuisines, including Spanish, Italian, Hindustani, Creole, Mexican, Chilean, and Hawaiian traditions. It opens with a preface by Edward H. Hamilton describing the charitable mission behind the book, then moves into an extensive body of recipes covering soups, shellfish, fish, pasta, rice, vegetables, salads, desserts, and baked goods. The recipes range from humble peanut and bean dishes to elaborate preparations involving lobster, oysters, and refined cream sauces, reflecting the tastes of an affluent, well-traveled early twentieth century American household with a taste for international refinement. The book closes with tables of weights and measures and a detailed index. For modern readers, it offers a window into turn of the century high society dining in San Francisco, as well as an early example of a cookbook produced explicitly for charitable fundraising purposes.

The book is organized into four main sections. Section 1 opens with the charitable preface and mission statement, then launches into soups and shellfish recipes. Section 3 continues with pasta, rice, Spanish and Mexican dishes, vegetables, and salads. Section 4 concludes with desserts, baked goods, a beverage poem, a table of weights and measures, and a categorized index covering soups, shellfish, fish, eggs, entrees, poultry and game, macaroni and rice dishes, vegetables, and salads. The overall arrangement moves from savory to sweet, following a traditional menu progression, and ends with practical reference material for the cook.