Cargoes for Crusoes

by Grant M. Overton

The book opens with a simple scientific account of the kinds of food (food being “anything which nourishes the body”) and follows with a chapter on cookery including invaluable timetables. After a chapter on beverages with its recipes there are chapters on everything from bread to ice cream, from soup to jam and jelly-making and drying fruits. Then comes a long selection of menus, a chapter on food values with the necessary tables, and a forty-eight page index which has all the utility of an absolute, all-inclusive bill-of-fare.

The chief thing, of course, is that every teaspoonful and every direction in the book is exact, and standard. Nor, without going into the more recondite French cookery, or into special Italian, Spanish, German and other foreign dishes, is it possible to think of any dish which The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book omits. The variety of each kind of dish is often extraordinary. For example, I have just counted seventy hot puddings. In every case there is first the table of ingredients, then the simple directions. If a personal word will add anything to the force of what has been said, I will say that the superb cook who honored me by becoming my wife tells me that in no case when following The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book formula has she failed to cook with success.

Specialized, or partly specialized, cook books are many, and one of the best and most recent is Fannie Fox’s Cook Book, by Fannie Ferber Fox, with the assistance of Lavinia S. Schwartz. Mrs. Fox is a sister of Edna Ferber, and the novelist has written an introduction for Fannie Fox’s Cook Book which has all the richly human interest of her own fiction. In a paragraph which need hurt no feelings, Miss Ferber points out the tendency to over-emphasis in one or another direction which characterizes the cookery of most lands; and she gives with humorous eloquence her personal tribute to the toothsome torte, that cake of rich and crumbling particles which is included in Mrs. Fox’s recipes. This is a cook book that covers all kinds of foods but is distinctive by its preservation of the finest recipes from Jewish cookery.

Another valuable addition to the kitchen bookshelf is Bertha E. L. Stockbridge’s Practical Cook Book, in which a notable feature is the great number of practical suggestions for menus.

ii

The Care and Feeding of Children appeared in 1894 and was also revised last year. More than a million mothers have used it, and beyond question it has saved thousands of lives in infancy. Within the last half-dozen years, a generation which was raised on the book has, in turn, begun to raise its own children with its aid. It constituted its author, Dr. L. Emmett Holt, the foremost authority on babies in America; and as the years passed he returned to the book, in its various revisions, the fruit of a wonderful experience which its prestige had brought to him. Physicians have for years bought The Care and Feeding of Children in quantity to present to their patients. The hundreds of questions that every mother must have answered are all answered in this marvelous work. Bathing, nursing, artificial feeding, changes in food, substitutes for milk, under-nourishment, health habits, weaning, diet after weaning, the training of older children, children’s diseases—nothing is left out. This, to be sure, is largely possible because of the nation-wide and prolonged use of the book, and the constant additions and slight reconstructions it has undergone. The book has always been kept of handy size and at a low price. The thought of what Dr. Holt’s book has done and is doing tempts to eloquence; but the only eloquence which is tolerable is the eloquence of the immense fact. We talk about services to humanity; but the writing and publishing of this book was possibly the greatest service to humanity in our time.

The Home Care of Sick Children, by Dr. Emelyn Lincoln Coolidge, is likely to be as helpful to mothers who have the care and feeding of sick children as Dr. Holt’s book has been to mothers generally. Dr. Coolidge lived for many years in the Babies’ Hospital, New York, and worked there under the personal direction of Dr. Holt. As editor of the department on babies of the Ladies’ Home Journal she has had an enormous correspondence with mothers throughout America and even in foreign countries. And The Home Care of Sick Children has one great merit: it does not stop where most other books of its kind stop, with: “Give a dose of castor oil, and call a doctor.” It tells in every instance what a mother can and should do, and it invariably tells when to call the doctor in. Not only does it avoid calling the doctor unnecessarily, but it gives many detailed instructions that a physician generally has not time to give. Recipes to tempt the sick child’s appetite, amusement, clothing and the hygiene of the sick-room are all dwelt upon.

There is a book with which it would be wise to precede Dr. Holt’s. Healthy Mothers is by Dr. S. Josephine Baker, consulting director, Children’s Bureau, United States Department of Labor, an authority on babies, whose articles regularly appear in the Ladies’ Home Journal and who is constantly asked for advice by women throughout the country. Healthy Mothers deals almost entirely with the mother’s care of herself, and tells explicitly how she may best meet her responsibility to her baby, how she may have better health for herself, and the finer mental attitude that comes with physical well-being. The relation of a mother to her unborn child implies a responsibility greater than that entailed in any other human relationship. It is very largely within the power of the mother to determine not only her own condition and future health, but to decide whether or not her baby is to be healthy and strong. Healthy Mothers, without going into technical discussion, sufficiently explains the general course of pregnancy and childbirth so that the mother may have an intelligent understanding of how to care for herself, safeguard her child, and make every requisite preparation.