Page:Browne - The Plain Sailing Cook Book.djvu/8

 that recipe, and a list of the utensils that will be needed for the preparation, mixing, and cooking of those materials. Each stage of the ensuing process is then separately described as simply and plainly and fully as my use of words will permit. I have tried to leave nothing to the imagination, nothing to be guessed at, nothing to be decided from previous experience. In a word, I have tried to do as I would be done by, if I were the user of the book instead of the author.

A glance through these pages will show that they are confined to the simpler every-day dishes that make up the staple menu of the average American family. In cookery, as in other things, one should begin at the beginning and serve one's apprenticeship before passing on to the more complex mysteries of the craft. Any one who has mastered the recipes here given will then, and not until then, be competent to attempt the numberless more elaborate dishes described in the almost numberless more elaborate cook books. My little volume is for the tyro, the beginner, and for no other. Its aim is to provide "plain sailing" for the wholly inexperienced mariner in culinary waters.

It only remains to add in this place that, as the beginner in cookery is usually the feminine half of a recently arranged matrimonial partnership, the recipes in this book are in nearly all cases designed to serve two persons only. If a larger family must be provided for, the amount of materials called for in any recipe should, of course, be increased in direct proportion to the additional number of persons in the family.

S. S. B.