Royal baker and pastry cook

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

The Royal Baker and Pastry Cook is a 1913 promotional cookbook issued by the Royal Baking Powder Company to showcase the versatility of its flagship product. Structured as a general household cookbook, it moves from breads and breakfast items through an extensive run of cakes, cookies, pies, and frozen desserts, before broadening into puddings, preserving, fish, meat, vegetables, sauces, salads, eggs, and finally candy and a culinary glossary. Throughout, the text is less a neutral recipe collection than a sustained argument for cream of tartar baking powder over alum-based or yeast-and-soda alternatives, with testimonials from chefs and government chemists woven directly into the recipe pages. Modern readers will find hundreds of anchored recipes reflecting early twentieth-century American home cookery, including elaborate multi-egg cakes, suet puddings, oyster preparations, and restorative dishes for the sick. The book doubles as both a practical kitchen manual and a piece of corporate advertising, making it a useful artifact for understanding how commercial interests shaped domestic cookbook publishing of the era. Its recipes assume a well-stocked early 1900s kitchen and reward readers interested in period baking science, ingredient substitution debates, and the material culture of American food marketing.

The book opens with an index and general directions on baking and oven testing (section 1), then proceeds through breakfast breads and griddle items into a long, multi-section treatment of cakes, cookies, fillings, and fried cakes (sections 2 through 4). It then turns to dumplings, puddings, and pudding sauces heavily interspersed with Royal Baking Powder testimonials (section 5), followed by pies, other desserts, frozen desserts, canning and preserving, and soups (section 6). The latter half shifts away from baking entirely into fish and meat cookery (section 7), then sauces, salads, cheese, eggs, and vegetables (section 8), and closes with candy recipes, a glossary of cooking terms, and further promotional testimonials for Royal Baking Powder (section 9).