About the Book
Snowdrift was a pure vegetable shortening made by the Southern Cotton Oil Company, one of the largest crushers and refiners of peanut, cottonseed and cocoanut oil for food. This book, copyright 1920, was written for them by Mrs. Ida C. Bailey Allen.
Allen was a genuine authority and not merely a hired name: founder of Mrs. Allen's School of Good Cookery, formerly director of the Y.W.C.A. School of Cookery at Worcester, and an editor at Good Housekeeping and Pictorial Review. Her foreword is candid — “it is by no means a comprehensive cook book, it merely offers a few suggestions.”
The selling argument runs through the whole thing: that freshness is the best quality a fat can have, that an airtight can preserves it, and — with a table of calories to prove it — that Snowdrift is richer than butter because butter is part salt, water and curd.