Temperance cook book

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The Temperance Cook Book (1887) is a substantial late-nineteenth-century American household cookbook, credited on its catalog record to Mary G. Smith but attributed within its own preface to a Mrs. A. Lefty of St. Cormier, published in San Jose. As its title announces, it is organized around temperance principles, meaning its recipes for beverages, flavorings, and sauces are deliberately built without alcohol, and the preface frames the entire book as a rejection of extravagance in favor of practical, economical housekeeping. Within that framing, however, the book is a full general-purpose kitchen manual, covering soups, fish and shellfish, meats and game, poultry, sauces and condiments, vegetables, breads, pastry, puddings, cakes, confectionery, frozen desserts, hot and cold beverages, canning and preserving, pickling, invalid cookery, and thrifty use of leftovers. With 731 anchored food records across sixteen sections, it captures the breadth of an 1880s American household's culinary repertoire. Modern readers will find it a useful window into period ingredients, techniques, and domestic values, including its explicit stance against alcohol and its attention to economy, freshness, and proper technique. The book closes with an alphabetical index, confirming its intended use as a working reference rather than a narrative text.

The book proceeds through a logical progression of course types and kitchen tasks, beginning with a preface and a large soup section (section 1), then moving through fish and shellfish (section 2), meats (section 3), sauces, condiments, and poultry (section 4), game and salads (section 5), vegetables (section 6), pasta, grains, and yeast breads (section 7), quick breads and pastry with pies (sections 8 to 9), puddings and the start of cakes with a weights and measures table (section 10), an extensive run of cake recipes spanning sections 11 and 12 along with cookies, doughnuts, and confectionery, custards, frozen desserts, and hot beverages (section 13), temperance beverages and preserving (section 14), pickling and invalid cookery with economical cooking (section 15), and finally a combined recipe list and alphabetical index (section 16). Recipes are frequently numbered as multiple versions of the same dish (for example, Sally Lunn No. 1 and No. 2, or Pumpkin Pie No. 1 and No. 2), and commercial advertisements appear embedded within section 9.