What moved me, in the first instance, to attempt a work like this, was the discomfort and suffering which I had seen brought upon men and women by household mismanagement. I have always thought that there is no more fruitful source of family discontent than a housewife's badly-cooked dinners and untidy ways.

A good kitchen should be sufficiently remote from the principal apartments of the house, that the members, visitors, or guests of the family, may not perceive the odour incident to cooking, or hear the noise of culinary operations.

Frugality and economy are virtues without which no household can prosper. Whatever the income, waste of all kinds should be most sternly repressed ... Economy and frugality must never, however, be allowed to degenerate into meanness.

Spring is the usual period for house-cleaning and removing the dust and dirt which, notwithstanding all precautions, will accumulate during the winter months from dust, smoke, gas, etc.

there should be a place for everything, and everything in its place.

Dine we must and we may as well dine elegantly as well as wholesomely.

As in the fine arts, the progress of mankind from barbarism to civilisation is marked by a gradual succession of triumphs over the rude materialities of nature, so in the art of cookery is the progress gradual from the earliest and simplest modes, to those of the most complicated and refined.