This is a high quality book of the original classic edition. It was previously published by other bona fide publishers, and is now, finally, back in print. This is a freshly published edition of this culturally important work, which is now, at last, again available to you. Enjoy this classic work. These few paragraphs distill the contents and gives you a short overview and insight of this work and the author's style: We have aimed also to give special precedence of space to those most important foods, the legumes, and grains and their products, which in the majority of cook books are given but little consideration or are even left out altogether, believing that our readers will be more interested in learning the many palatable ways in which these especially nutritious and inexpensive foods may be prepared, than in a reiteration of such dishes as usually make up the bulk of the average cook book. For reasons stated elsewhere (in the chapter on Milk, Cream, and Butter), we have in the preparation of all recipes made use of cream in place of other fats; but lest there be some who may suppose because cream occupies so frequent a place in the recipes, and because of their inability to obtain that article, the recipes are therefore not adapted to their use, we wish to state that a large proportion of the recipes in which it is mentioned as seasoning, or for dressing, will be found to be very palatable with the cream omitted, or by the use of its place of some one of the many substitutes recommended. ...Of the carbonaceous elements,-starch, sugar, and fats,-fats produce the greatest amount of heat in proportion to quantity; that is, more heat is developed from a pound of fat than from an equal weight of sugar or starch; but this apparent advantage is more than counterbalanced by the fact that fats are much more difficult of digestion than are the other carbonaceous elements, and if relied upon to furnish adequate material for bodily heat, would be productive of much mischief in overtaxing and producing disease of the digestive organs. The fact that nature has made a much more ample provision of starch and sugars than of fats in man's natural diet, would seem to indicate that they were intended to be the chief source of carbonaceous food; nevertheless, fats, when taken in such proportion as nature supplies them, are necessary and important food elements. ...Proper Combinations of Foods.-While it is important that our food should contain some of all the various food elements, experiments upon both animals and human beings show it is necessary that these elements, especially the nitrogenous and carbonaceous, be used in certain definite proportions, as the system is only able to appropriate a certain amount of each; and all excess, especially of nitrogenous elements, is not only useless, but even injurious, since to rid the system of the surplus imposes an additional task upon the digestive and excretory organs.