Miss Parloa's new cook book and marketing guide

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

Miss Parloa's New Cook Book and Marketing Guide (1880) is a comprehensive American household cookery manual by Maria Parloa, one of the most influential domestic science authors of her era. The book opens uniquely with an extended marketing guide, teaching readers how to select meats, poultry, game, fish, shellfish, and vegetables in the marketplace before ever reaching a recipe. From there it proceeds through pantry stocking and kitchen equipment, soups, fish, shellfish, meats, poultry and game, elaborate French-influenced molded and aspic dishes, sauces, vegetables, pastries, puddings, frozen desserts, cakes, preserves, breakfast fare, breads, beverages, and finally menu planning with sample dinners. The scope ranges from plain family cooking to elaborate haute cuisine suitable for large formal suppers, reflecting the aspirations of an upwardly mobile American household of the period. Readers will find both homely comfort foods like hominy and muffins alongside pate de foies gras and chartreuses molded with forcemeat. The book closes with a detailed alphabetical index and a list of illustrations, underscoring its role as a practical, referenceable kitchen companion rather than a narrative work. It stands as a valuable record of the ingredients, techniques, and social occasions of well-off American domestic life in 1880.

The book is organized as a sequential household manual rather than a strict alphabetical dictionary. It begins with a marketing guide (section 2) covering how to judge and purchase meats, poultry, fish, shellfish, and vegetables, followed by pantry and equipment guidance and stock recipes (section 3). It then moves through soups (section 4), fish and oyster cookery (sections 5-6), meats and poultry (sections 6-8), elaborate French-style molded and aspic preparations (sections 8-9), sauces and salads (sections 10-12), vegetables and pastry doughs (sections 12-13), puddings and sauces (sections 13-14), frozen desserts and creams (section 15), further desserts, jellies, and cakes (section 16), preserves, potting, and tea-service dishes (section 18), breakfast and egg dishes (section 19), bread and beverages (section 20), and concludes with dinner and menu planning guidance plus a full alphabetical index and list of illustrations (sections 21-22). Chapter headings within sections often list individual recipe names, reflecting the book's function as both instructional text and lookup reference.