The Mary Frances Cook Book or, Adventures Among the Kitchen People

Fryer, Jane Eayre, 1876-Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.5
Word count
154K words
Chapters
16

Tags

English Originals Children's LiteratureFood and Drink Family TableCooking TechniquesLearning by FunChildlike FunKitchen StoryIllustrated GuideParent-Child ReadingChildren CookingBeginner FriendlyYouth Reading

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971, and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today. The Mary Frances Cook Book; Or, Adventures Among the Kitchen People by Fryer. Author: Fryer, Jane Eayre, 1876-. Language: English. Class: TX: Technology: Home economics. Release Date: Dec 4, 2011

Editor's review

The Mary Frances Cook Book; Or, Adventures Among the Kitchen People is a children's cookery story by Jane Eayre Fryer, typical of early twentieth-century American readers on home life and practical education. It personifies kitchen utensils as the "Kitchen People," who accompany and guide young Mary Frances as she learns to cook, weaving instructions into the narrative. This approach turns cooking knowledge from a cold list of recipes into a reading experience with characters and plot, and is well suited to kindling a child's interest in the kitchen. This English ebook edition is released by Project Gutenberg and classified under home economics; the language is simple, and illustrations are important in the original edition. As a work a century old, its ingredients, stoves, and kitchen safety ideas differ from those of today; readers should enjoy it as a piece of children's literature and a document in the history of home economics education rather than as a modern cookbook. It suits parent-child reading or use as English reading material, and is also worth browsing for researchers interested in the evolution of children's educational books.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. For parent-child reading, read the story first, then try a few simple steps together with adult supervision.
  2. Use it as a graded English reader and make a glossary of kitchen utensil words.
  3. While reading, note the differences between century-old kitchen tools and ingredients and today's kitchen, and discuss the contrast.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16

FAQ

Can the recipes in the book still be followed today? They can serve as reference, but should not be followed directly. The book reflects early twentieth-century kitchen conditions, ingredients, and stoves, with measurements and safety ideas different from today's. If you want to try them, an adult should first assess the steps, substitute modern equipment and ingredients, and pay attention to fire and electrical safety.
What age of child is this book suitable for? The English is simple, but it contains many kitchen utensil words and historical background. As a story, it is better suited to upper-elementary children with some English foundation; younger children should have it read and explained by a parent, with discussion of the kitchen characters.
Can the illustrations be seen in the Project Gutenberg ebook edition? The Project Gutenberg edition usually retains the original illustrations, but the presentation depends on the format you download; plain-text versions may have only captions. To see the complete illustrations, choose the HTML or EPUB version of the book for a reading experience closer to the original.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Fryer, Jane Eayre, 1876- Author

Jane Eayre Fryer (1876– ) was an early American author of children's books whose biographical details are limited; her exact dates and nationality still require further verification from public sources. Eight of her works are held in the collection, most notably the Mary Frances series, including The Mary Frances Cook Book, The Mary Frances Garden Book, The Mary Frances Sewing Book, The Mary Frances Knitting and Crocheting Book, The Mary Frances Story Book, and The Mary Frances First Aid Book. The series weaves practical household knowledge—cooking, gardening, and sewing—into fairy-tale adventures, in which personified characters such as the Kitchen People, Garden People, and Thimble People help children learn everyday skills. She also wrote civic-education readers such as Our Home and Personal Duty and Our Town and Civic Duty. Her warm, simple style, combining instruction with entertainment, gives her a representative place among early twentieth-century American books on practical life education for children.