The introductory texts reproduced here were written by the original Feeding America team to contextualize the books that were selected for inclusion as part of the 2001 digitization project.
Common Sense in the Household: A Manual of Practical Housewifery.
By Marion Harland (pen name)
Mary Virginia Terhune
New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co., 1873.
Marion Harland (Mary Virginia Terhune) was among the most popular cookery authors of her day, with at least 15 titles to her credit. Although she was a renowned Southern novelist with many regional recipes in her cookbooks, her appeal was nationwide. And no wonder! Both this book and the 1875 Breakfast, Luncheon and Tea are splendid collections of well-described recipes.
This volume is sub-titled A Manual of Practical Housewifery. And that it is. It begins with Familiar Talk with my Fellow-Housekeeper and Reader, which exemplifies the author's writing technique - a very personal contact with each and every reader. She tells the reader that she wishes she could bring her the volume, in person. She explains that she shares the same concerns and experiences. This is almost a forerunner of the "I feel your pain" phrase so popular in the last decade. She completes the introduction by commenting that she has "not said one-tenth of that which is pressing on my heart and mind."
This appeal obviously was most successful; the book sold over a million copies and had at least 10 printings (sometimes, revised) from its first in 1871 to 1892. It was also selected to be reprinted by Oxmoor House in 1985 as part of its Antique American Cookbooks series.
The recipes reveal the bounty of 19th century America: shad, oysters galore, terrapin, grouse, venison, woodcock, much on pork, vegetables, breads, and baking. Much of the cooking is simple, straight-forward, and savory. For her Southern readers, she offers Corn-meal Pone, Virginia Fried Chicken, Gumbo or Okra, Catfish, Barbecued Rabbit, Brunswick Stew, and Ambrosia. But, in reality, she offers the complete panoply of fine American cooking in her day for her "fellow-house-keepers, North, East, South and West" to whom she dedicates this volume.
