The Cincinnati Cookbook: Household Guide Embracing Menu, Daily Recipes, Doctors Prescriptions and Various Suggestions for the Coming Generation

The Queen City, Cincinnati is known for its geographical, economic, political, cultural, and culinary diversity, a diversity reflected in the recipes, advice, and advertisements contained in The Cincinnati Cookbook. Here you will find hundreds of recipes for breads, cookies, cakes and icings, salads, salad dressings, oysters, crabs, sardines, veal loaf, Spanish cream, cream salmon, cream puffs, soups, and pickles. Accurate measures are given throughout, though you may need to experiment with the prescribed cooking temperatures, which include "slow oven," "rather cool oven," "moderate oven," "hot oven," "rather a quick oven," "steady, but not quick, oven," and "quick oven." Also included are household hints (with a warning about washing your face in ordinary lake water), medicinal remedies, and recipes for dealing with insects, laundry, and other chores.
The advertisers, representing Cincinnati's "most prominent and successful concerns," offer much advice in the form of the conventional wisdom of the time. The financial wisdom: "Start now to get a home of your own, because success or failure in life depends upon grasping opportunities." Heron & Co. urges readers to "Start right when you begin housekeeping. Be sure that you get started right. The rest will then be easy." The original publisher's own motto: "Opportunities come to all men who hustle."
The Cincinnati Cookbook contains many photographs of a number of the city's geographical areas, buildings, schools, and monuments to and portraits of several generous and important donors to the city's cultural institutions. It is a feast for the senses and a nostalgic journey on a grand scale.