Miss Parloa's new cook book and marketing guide

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Miss Parloa's New Cook Book and Marketing Guide (1880) is a comprehensive American household cookbook by Maria Parloa, blending practical domestic guidance with elaborate French-influenced haute cuisine. The book opens with an extensive marketing guide instructing readers how to select meats, poultry, game, fish, shellfish, and vegetables in period markets, then moves through pantry management and kitchen equipment before launching into hundreds of recipes spanning soups, fish, shellfish, meats, poultry, game, sauces, vegetables, puddings, frozen desserts, cakes, preserves, breakfast dishes, breads, and beverages. The scope ranges from humble economical dishes made from leftovers to elaborate molded chartreuses, galatines, and pate de foies gras suited to formal dinner parties. Parloa closes with practical dinner-planning advice, sample menus for gatherings of various sizes, and a detailed alphabetical index. Modern readers will find this book valuable both as a working historical recipe collection and as a window into the domestic and social expectations of an affluent American household in 1880, one that required cooks to move fluidly between simple family fare and ambitious French-style entertaining. It is best approached as a hybrid of cookbook and household manual, reflecting an era when marketing knowledge, food preservation, and menu planning were considered inseparable from cookery itself.

The book begins with a marketing guide (section 2) covering meat, poultry, fish, and vegetable selection, followed by pantry staples and kitchen equipment guidance with early stock recipes (section 3). The bulk of the book (sections 4 through 17) proceeds through soups, fish and oyster cookery, shellfish and roasted meats, braises and stews, poultry and game, elaborate molded French preparations, cutlets and croquettes, salads and sauces, vegetables, pastries, puddings, frozen desserts, and cakes. Later sections address preservation and tea-time dishes (section 18), breakfast items and eggs (section 19), bread-making and beverages (section 20), and conclude with dinner planning guidance, sample menus, and an alphabetical index (sections 21 and 22).