Of recent English and American books that have come to me for review I liked particularly Nicolas Soyer's Standard Cookery, Marvin H. Neil's How to Cook in Casserole Dishes and Practical Cooking and Serving, by Janet McKenzie Hill, which is a complete manual of not only how to cook food, but how to select and serve it. The author is the editor of the "Boston Cooking School Magazine," and she has a great deal of interesting and valuable information to impart.
In 1911 Soyer's Paper Bag Cookery was published. In it the famous chef who originated paper bag cookery—which has many advantages provided the right kind of paper is used—explained his method. His Standard Cookery includes the substance of the smaller book while at the same time covering all the branches of cooking, with over four hundred pages of menus. Hors-d'Œuvres are here treated more fully than in any other English book, fifteen pages being given to them. No fewer than seventy pages are given to this subject in Escoffier's excellent Le Guide Culinaire.
Chafing dish cooking
French raffinement is shown in many of Soyer's recipes. Under "Fried Eggs," for example the average American cook will read with astonishment that they should be dealt with one at a time and that, with a wooden spoon, the yolk should be quickly covered up with the solidified portions of the white in order to keep the former soft. Imagine Bridget taking so much trouble. She might, perhaps, be induced to heed these directions in making an omelette: "Heat the pan until nearly a brown color. This will not only lend an exquisite taste to the omelette but will be found to ensure the perfect setting of the eggs." Such seeming trifles make perfection.
Casserole Cookery is quite important enough to have a book to itself; it is the cookery of the future, and Mme. Neil's monograph of 252 pages should be, like the Century Cook Book and Soyer's Standard Cookery, or Mme. Hill's book, in every kitchen.
In French restaurants more is always charged for casserole dishes than for others and they are decidedly worth it. The Flavor of food is particularly rich and appetizing when it has been cooked slowly in earthenware pots. For braising, pot roasting, and stewing, which are slow-cooking processes, the casserole is far superior to metal pans in every way.
Chafing Dish Cooking is treated in Chapter XIV of the Century Cook Book, and there are several smaller volumes specially devoted to this interesting branch of the art—dining-room cooking it might be called—one by Alice L. James.
Who has not enjoyed a welsh rarebit made in a chafing dish—or terrapin, or lobster à la Newburg, or chicken livers, or crab toast, smelts, venison, etc.?
For housekeepers of moderate means who want to know what wonders of palatable cooking can be achieved with scraps and left-overs, among other things, no guide is better than The Helping Hand Cook Book by Marion Harland and Christine Terhune Herrick. It contains menus for every breakfast, lunch and dinner from the first of January to the last of December.