|
SEVENTY-FIVE RECEIPTS FOR
PASTRY CAKES, AND SWEETMEATS
BY MISS LESLIE, OF PHILADELPHIA.
1832
PREFACE.
The following Receipts for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats, are original,
and have been used by the author and many of her friends with uniform
success. They are drawn up in a style so plain and
minute, as to be perfectly intelligible to servants, and persons of the
most moderate capacity. All the ingredients, with their proper quantities,
are enumerated in a list at the head of each receipt, a plan which will
greatly facilitate the business of procuring and preparing the requisite
articles.
There is frequently much difficulty in following directions in English and
French Cookery Books, not only from their want of explicitness, but from
the difference in the fuel, fire-places, and cooking utensils, generally
used in Europe and America; and many of the European receipts are, so
complicated and laborious, that our female cooks are afraid to undertake
the arduous task of
making any thing from them.
The receipts in this little book are, in every sense of the word,
American; but the writer flatters herself that (if exactly followed) the
articles produced from them will not be found inferior to any of a similar
description made in the European manner. Experience has proved, that
pastry, cakes, &c. prepared precisely according to these directions will
not fail to be excellent: but where economy is expedient, a portion of the
seasoning, that is, the spice, wine, brandy, rosewater, essence of lemon,
&c. may be omitted without any essential deviation of flavour, or
difference of appearance; retaining, however, the given proportions of
eggs, butter, sugar, and flour.
But if done at home, and by a person that can be trusted, it will be
proved, on trial, that any of these articles may be made in the best and
most liberal manner at one half of the cost of the
same articles supplied by a confectioner. And they will be found
particularly useful to families that live in the country or in small
towns, where nothing of the kind is to be purchased.
|