Temperance cook book

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

The Temperance Cook Book (1887) is a substantial household cookery manual compiled for American home cooks who wished to avoid alcohol and extravagance in their kitchens. Attributed on the catalog record to Mary G. Smith, the preface itself credits a Mrs. A. Lefty of St. Cormier, and the book was published in San Jose, California. With over 700 anchored food records, it moves through the full range of a late nineteenth-century domestic repertoire: soups and stocks, fish and shellfish, butcher's meats and organ meats, sauces and condiments, poultry and game, vegetables, breads and yeast preparations, pastries and pies, an enormous body of puddings and cakes, custards and frozen desserts, non-alcoholic beverages, home canning and pickling, invalid cookery, and economical use of leftovers. The book closes with a detailed alphabetical index. Throughout, the author explains techniques carefully for practical housekeepers, offering multiple versions of popular dishes and substituting temperance-friendly ingredients for wine, brandy, and other spirits common in comparable cookbooks of the era. It stands as both a working kitchen reference and a document of the temperance movement's reach into everyday domestic life.

The book proceeds in a broadly conventional cookbook sequence: soups (section 1), fish and shellfish followed by beef selection and cookery (sections 2-3), sauces, condiments, and poultry (section 4), game and salads (section 5), vegetables (section 6), pasta, grains, and breads (sections 7-8), pies and puddings (sections 9-10), an extensive run of cakes, cookies, doughnuts, and confectionery (sections 10-12), custards, frozen desserts, and hot beverages (section 13), cold beverages and preserving (section 14), pickling, invalid cookery, and economical cooking (section 15), and finally a comprehensive alphabetical index (section 16). A weights and measures reference table appears within section 10. Commercial advertisements from San Jose businesses are interleaved in section 9, and section 16 also contains a scattering of additional recipes alongside the index proper.