The Dixie Cook-Book

“The best is none too good.” Southern family receipts gathered across generations and printed in Atlanta in 1883 — and, in the same volume, everything else a household was expected to know: the laundry, the sick-room, dressmaking, babies, and a year's bill of fare.

Curious Facts

Everything below is in the book — each fact links straight to the page it comes from.

  1. You ruin twenty-five flour barrels of air every night just by breathing. Arguing against sealing up the house for winter, the book quantifies the damage: "An adult spoils one gallon of pure air every minute, or twenty-five flour barrelfuls in a single night, in breathing alone." A gas-burner eats eleven gallons a minute, a stove twenty-five. Read it in the book →
  2. The book blames three months of infant colic on the swaddling bandage. "Ignorance bandages the new-born child, as tight as a drum, from armpits to hips, compressing every vital organ," and then marvels that "infants are subject to colic for the first three months of their existence" — precisely as long as the bandage stays on. Nurses defended it by claiming a baby's bones would otherwise fall to pieces. Read it in the book →
  3. Blackheads were to be extracted with the hollow end of a watch-key. "Place over the black spot the hollow end of a watch-key, and press firmly. This forces the foreign substance out, so that it may be brushed off, and is a cure." Read it in the book →
  4. "Talked to death by well-meaning friends". The sick-room chapter bans visitors outright, observing that the necessary attendants are annoyance enough and that "many a tombstone might truthfully and appropriately be inscribed, 'Talked to death by well-meaning friends.'" Read it in the book →
  5. Swallowed a pin or broken glass? Eat suet pudding. The rule was emphatically no purgative. "Rather partake freely of suet pudding, or any solid farinaceous food, and it is possible that both may pass away together without injury being done." Read it in the book →
  6. How to cure a kicking cow, and keep your temper. Buckle a strap above each hock, tight enough to slightly compress the ham-string: "Then she can not kick. In fly time take in the tail with the leg and you will not swear." Read it in the book →
  7. A gentleman's hat doubled as a life-preserver. First item in the emergency list: "A felt or silk hat, held so as to keep the crown full of air, will sustain a person above water for a great length of time." Read it in the book →
  8. "It is a woman's book, compiled and sold by women". The preface signs off with a statement of ownership rare for its date, submitting the volume to Southern housekeepers as an aid "in their successful and happy reign in 'Woman's Kingdom'-the Home." Read it in the book →
  9. The standard snakebite treatment was whisky, administered to intoxication. For rattlesnake bite the reader is told to pinch the skin and suck out the blood — "if the skin of the lips and mouth is sound, no harm will be done" — after which "whisky or brandy should, however, be administered freely, to intoxication." The antidote table lists the same course for a mad-dog bite. Period practice, not sound medicine. Read it in the book →
  10. Poisoned wounds were cauterised with a large, red-hot nail. "The wound must be burned out by a stick of lunar caustic, or by inserting a large, red-hot nail." The poison table gives the same instruction for a mad-dog bite: "Apply fire in some form to the wound, thoroughly and immediately." A grim measure of pre-antiseptic medicine, and not to be imitated. Read it in the book →
  11. Count the leaves against your fingers to tell poison ivy from the harmless kind. Poison ivy grows in clusters of three, the innocuous kind in fives, and children were taught to "associate the five leaves in a cluster with the fingers on the human hand, and given to understand that when these numbers agree they can be brought into contact with perfect safety." Read it in the book →
  12. There is no such thing as escaping night air. Against the era's terror of the night atmosphere, the book is blunt: "People who shut up windows to keep out 'night air,' make a mistake. At night, the only air to breathe is 'night air.'" Read it in the book →
  13. Tar-water was recommended to public speakers. A quart of tar stirred six minutes into a gallon of water, a tumblerful four times a day, "is said to clear the lungs, and give greater ease in public speaking." Read it in the book →
  14. Two pairs of boy's knee-breeches out of one pair of father's trousers — but only up to a point. The dressmaking chapter concedes defeat to childhood vanity: "after a certain age, all the king's horses and all the king's men would be a force insufficient to compel a little boy to give up his inalienable right to have his trousers as long as his father's." Read it in the book →
  15. Keep matches from the mice — they carry them off and set them alight. Friction matches "should never be left where the mice will get them, as they carry them to their nests, and sometimes ignite them," and were also a hazard to women, who could strike them by stepping on them. Read it in the book →
  16. Some shop soap was three-quarters resin. "Some of the brown soaps sold in the market are seventy-five per cent. resin, and the buyer gets only twenty-five per cent of what he wants for his money." A modest amount was actually a virtue: "Fifteen per cent. of resin improves the quality, but any excess damages it." Read it in the book →
  17. In a panic, keep your seat. The advice for a crowded hall runs against instinct: "If in a public hall in a panic, keep your seat; even in case of fire the chance of life is greater if free from the crowd." Likewise in a runaway carriage — stay in the vehicle, since "the vehicle helps to break the shock of the final stop." Read it in the book →
  18. Digestion, explained by a loaf of bread. On the folly of eating between meals: "It would spoil a loaf of bread, half baked, to poke a lump of cold dough into the middle of it." Read it in the book →
  19. A cake-decorating gadget was advertised inside the pastry chapter. Mid-recipe, the book breaks off to sell "The Eclipse Ornamenter," price $2.50 by post from Prof. C. H. King of Orange, New Jersey — with a special arrangement whereby "any lady who is the owner of 'Practical Housekeeping' will be supplied at twenty per cent discount from the retail price." Read it in the book →
  20. Foul air was cleared out of a well with a peck of quicklime. "Throw down a peck of unslaked lime. The heat produced carries out the foul air with a rush." To see down the shaft afterwards, you reflected daylight in with a looking-glass; dropped metal was fished up with a magnet. Read it in the book →
Rights & ReuseThe complete text of The Dixie Cook-Book (1883) is in the public domain in the United States — like all works published before 1928 — and is free to read, download, quote, teach from, and reuse. This digital edition (its transcription, restored images, and site design) is © 2026 PhotoOpAI, and any editorial commentary we add is clearly marked as ours; the underlying public-domain text carries no such restriction.