Preface
Facts concerning the values of fruits have been widely scattered, hidden behind masses of figures or buried in scientific works. Figures and scientific terms are necessary in their places, but those included here are only as matters of reference. To be vitally interested is the first requisite for learning "more and more." Everyone has not the gift for remembering figures and names, and to be so burdened is often to stop one at the outset or detract seriously from interest.
Many foundation recipes are included and explanations, because this collection is meant quite as much for men who are "batching it" (perhaps having their first experiences in cooking where strange fruits have to be dealt with) as for women who rightly believe variety to be the spice of life; and I have given as far as possible just what I myself would many times have valued could someone have saved my having to hunt through a great many volumes for all I wished to know concerning the preparation of some particular fruit, or for some general formula which each book usually takes for granted one already knows in exact proportion.
I have included also a few old-time recipes because of their great interest, from their age, to this generation, or the superior results to be obtained from their use. The housekeeping of earlier centuries seems elaborate and heavy by contrast with the lighter, modern methods, but life as a whole was simpler then than now and in attempting to improve upon the old-fashioned ways we have dropped a little too much, for there were certain quaint touches of housewifely care which exercised untold charm in many directions. Were the old-time still-rooms in vogue to-day, with their fragrant atmosphere of aromatic herbs, fruitcordials, brandies, and wines, patent medicines would find few victims; the murderously adulterated liquors of foreign and domestic markets so generally used as mild tonics as well as stimulants, would not be countenanced or would be rated at their real standing and money value from strict analysis. Fruits have medicinal or tonic value which in cordials "go to exactly the right spot"; the old fruit brandies were used for flavouring, and were far superior to the average, adulterated or cheap, weak stuffs we have to buy to-day and which as a matter of course include alcohol. As authorities I have consulted Haig's "Diet and Foods"; Burnett's "Foods and Dietaries"; Holbrooks's "Food and Work"; Williams's "Chemistry of Cookery"; Fownes's "Manual of Chemistry"; Remington's "Practice of Pharmacy"; the Dispensatory of the U. S. (Wood and Bache), the encyclopedias, American, Britannica, and Chambers's; Gray's Botany; Helen Harcourt's "Florida Fruits and How to Raise Them"; Country Life in America, Table Talk, What to Eat, Harper's Bazar, The Delineator, the New England and all other of the leading periodicals pertaining to the table and to health, and dozens of "cook books." Most of my recipes, however, are original or long since adopted and adapted by family habit or traditions of cooking of friends-Scotch, English, German, and American (to whom I am much indebted), but endless consultation and comparison for years has resulted in agreeing with Solomon that, with national or individual exceptions, change of name, or proportion of ingredient, "there is no new thing under the sun."
I wish also to express my thanks to Dr. Wiley, chief chemist of the Agricultural Department, and to William A. Taylor, H. E. Van Deman, G. B. Brackett, H. Harold Hume, P. H. Rolfs, H. J. Webber, W. T. Swingle, R. B. Handy, W. H. Evans, M. E. Jaffa, W. O. Atwater, Fred V. Colville, and Deborah G. Passmore of this greatest of the government departments as well as to the Department in general. Such work, scientific, practical, and artistic, cannot be overestimated, whether one is little or much dependent upon it; for the results of these investigations reach people who might never be reached in any other way and yet influence those who have every other opportunity and scientific authority at hand, helping to simplify everyday affairs; and we must-men and womenlive with eyes open to the practical power of the products of the earth if we expect to live the sweetest, the simplest, and so, the fullest lives.
R. M. FLETCHER BERRY.
NOTE: Bicarbonate of potash in proportion of "about an eggspoonful to a pound of ripe fruit, rather more in the case of unripe fruits"-(Burnett) is now given patients of gouty and other types of cases with fruit-even with lemons and tartest gooseberries-that they may have fruit-diet, although until very recently it was supposed they must be denied fruit.
R. M. F. B.