Lowney's Cook Book

Howard, Maria WillettProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.2
Word count
565K words
Chapters
57

Tags

English Originals Food and Drink Healthy EatingHome CookingFamily LifeCooking TechniquesRecipe CollectionLife WisdomStep-by-Step GuidePractical GuideFood CultureBeginner Friendly

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.Lowney's Cook Book by Maria Willett HowardAuthor: Howard, Maria Willett,Language: English, Class: TX: Technology: Home economics, Release Date: Aug 14, 2016

Editor's review

Written by Maria Willett Howard, this cookbook is a practical product of early twentieth-century American home economics and cooking education. It centers on baking and everyday cooking and bears clear marks of its time: the recipe style, measurements, and choice of ingredients all reflect the actual conditions of the period's home kitchens, while preserving the orderliness and discipline of early domestic-science instruction. For today's readers its value lies not in following it recipe by recipe but in its readability as a piece of culinary-cultural history—a window onto the structure of everyday American eating in the early industrial era, the era's habits of sugar and fat use, and the way recipe texts were organized as teaching tools. Many methods in the book do not match modern kitchen equipment, and precisely for that reason readers can directly sense how cooking techniques have changed. It suits readers interested in food history and the history of domestic education for leisurely browsing, as well as those who enjoy the texture of old recipe texts as bedside reading.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Begin with the table of contents and preface to understand the book's structure, then select chapters on baking or everyday dishes for close reading.
  2. Treat the recipes as historical texts: note the ingredients and measurement features, and do not rush to reproduce them under modern kitchen conditions.
  3. Read alongside other cookbooks of the same period to compare differences and similarities in recipe style and ingredient use.
  4. If attempting to reproduce a recipe, start with simple entries, convert old-style measurements yourself, and adjust heat and equipment.

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
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57

FAQ

Can the recipes in the book be followed directly? Not advisable. Old-style measurements, stoves, and ingredient specifications differ considerably from today's, and some steps depend on the conditions of the time. If you try, convert the measurements first, adjust temperature and timing, and be prepared for results that differ from expectations.
What is the main value of this cookbook? It is closer to a historical source on food culture and domestic education than a modern practical cookbook. Readers can learn about early twentieth-century American everyday eating patterns, recipe-writing conventions, and kitchen technology; it is best read with a historical perspective.
Can someone with no cooking foundation read it? It can be read as cultural material, but cooking from it would be difficult. The terminology and steps address household readers of the time and lack modern explanation; beginners are better off using it as a window onto the food of an earlier era rather than as an operating guide.

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

Howard, Maria Willett Author · American

Maria Willett Howard was an American culinary writer and cooking teacher. Public information about her is limited, and neither the dates of her birth and death nor the details of her life are known. Only one work by her survives, Lowney's Cook Book, which is her most representative title. Judging from the title and the author's identity, the book belongs to the category of household cookbooks, aimed at everyday cooking practice: its contents center on handling ingredients and preparing dishes to meet the needs of American home kitchens of the time. As a cooking teacher, Howard wrote with a didactic purpose, stressing clear steps so that readers could follow the recipes with ease. Her name is linked with this cookbook, placing her within the tradition of practical American culinary writing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Because sources are scarce, the book's specific editions, circulation, and later influence remain to be further verified.