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How to Use Recipes

To become a good cook requires more than the blind following of a recipe. This is frequently illustrated when several women living in the same community, all using the same recipe, obtain widely differing results. It is the reason so many cooks say, "I had good luck with my cake to-day," or "I had bad luck with my bread yesterday." Happily, luck causes neither the success nor the failure of a product. To become a good cook means to gain a knowledge of foods and how they behave, and skill in manipulating them; in other words, good cooking is both a science and an art. The recipe by itself, helpful as it is, will not produce a good product; the human being using the recipe must interpret it and must have skill in handling the materials it prescribes.

Some of the lessons which the person desiring to become a good cook should learn while she is experimenting with recipes are given in the following pages. They will not be learned all at once; but if they are gradually mastered, luck will play a less important part in general conversation.