PREFACE
One should be prepared with an uncommonly good excuse for adding still another cook book to the legion already in existence. My own excuse will, I hope, be considered sufficient. So far as I am aware, no cook book of all the multitude now in use is successfully adapted to the needs of the person who has never before attempted to cook. It is not merely that most of the standard cook books take for granted more or less actual experience over the kitchen table and range; even those whose special appeal is to the novice and beginner usually fail in their purpose because the persons who write them, however versed in the lore of cookery, have little or insufficient skill in simple, concise, unequivocal expression. Knowing how and telling how are two very different things; and the common notion that any one who knows how is therefore and thereby fully qualified to tell how has led to endless confusion in cookery as in many other subjects.
What I have tried to do in this book is to tell how in such a way as to leave no possible room for doubt or misunderstanding on any point. In preparing and arranging each recipe, I have tried to keep continually in mind the person who has never before cooked anything, and who is as entirely dependent upon not only what I tell, but how I tell it, as one would be in attempting to concoct a chemical formula upon one's first visit to a laboratory.
At the beginning of each recipe there is a list of the kinds and amounts of the various materials required for
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