American Cookery

VariousProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.4

Word count: 231K words
Chapters: 24

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.American Cookery by VariousAuthor: Various,Language: English, Class: TX: Technology: Home economics, Release Date: Jul 11, 2008

Editor's review

As an early public-domain eBook released by Project Gutenberg, this American Cookery has value not in the originality of a single fixed author but in its compilation-like preservation of the linguistic features of early American culinary writing. Readers can see the concise structure of recipe style, period traces in ingredient descriptions and kitchen instructions, which is especially useful for those studying the evolution of English recipe texts and household-economy literature. As a free eBook it is suited to quick searching and excerpting rather than page-by-page close reading; it is better used as a source collection or sample library, consulted with questions about terminology and units of measure, than read straight through. Note that the electronic edition's layout and pagination do not match the printed book; when quoting, be sure to verify the original edition and the source of page numbers.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Students and scholars studying early English recipe texts and culinary writing
Readers who need public-domain English corpus material for analysis of vocabulary and units of measure
Amateur researchers interested in old household-economy documents
Food-culture enthusiasts who want to expand their reference library with low-cost electronic editions

Not a good fit for

Beginners hoping for modern step-by-step instructions and illustrations
Advanced researchers who need a rigorously collated edition or textual notes
Casual readers who only want narrative food essays

Reading tips

Skim the table of contents and format first, noting repeated recipe structures and common verbs, then decide which entries to read closely.
Prepare a comparison list of unfamiliar words and old units of measure, adding to it as you read to avoid repeated pauses.
If using it for citation in writing, record the source information of the electronic text item by item and verify the printed edition and page numbers.
Use it as a reference work, searching by topic for ingredients or dish names, rather than trying to read it all through.

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.

FAQ

Was this book written by a famous chef?

The information shows the author credited as Various; it is a compilation-type public-domain text, not the personal work of a single well-known chef. It should be read as a sample collection of recipe writing from a period, not as a narrative work centered on one author.

Can the electronic edition be used directly for academic citation?

It can be used as a lead, but the Project Gutenberg edition is an electronic transcription whose layout and pagination differ from the original printed book. Before formal citation, verify the original edition on which it is based and check the specific page numbers and wording, so as not to mistake transcription differences for the original text.

Can readers with only basic English manage it?

Recipe texts have short sentences, but old spellings, ingredient names, and units of measure pose obstacles. It is advisable first to read a few entries with a dictionary and comparison list, and to expand the range only after confirming you can adapt; otherwise the density of detail may lead to giving up.

Comments

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About the author

Various Author

Various is not a real person but a collective attribution used in book cataloging and databases for works with multiple authors, commonly applied to anthologies, compilations, or publications with too many contributors to list individually. On this Chinese book site, this attribution covers as many as 3,387 titles, spanning encyclopedic entries, historical documents, and trial records. Representative works include several volumes of the 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the record of the trial of the major war criminals before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. Available public information is limited: nationality, birth and death dates, and common categories are not clearly recorded, making it difficult to summarize a unified writing style or personal biography. Readers should understand it as a cataloging convention rather than a single author.