A little cook book for a little girl — Inside the Classic

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In Category - Recipes

Authors: Benton, Caroline French, -1923 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2005 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Cooking -- Juvenile literature Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 30,598

Reading time 134 min

Text sections 4

For A little cook book for a little girl — Inside the Classic, the stored edition analysis reports 30,598 words, 2 hr 14 min estimated reading time, and 4 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 17.4 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Cooking -- Juvenile literature,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #16514

A 1905 cookbook for children, framed by a story about a girl named Margaret who wants to cook simple dishes herself. Recipes use plain language and basic techniques, but the book also includes more advanced 'cooking-school' items, revealing a tension between child-friendly instruction and adult culinary standards.

Editorial Edition Score 4.5/5

★★★★★ ★★★★★

Calculated from edition completeness, EPUB availability, text structure and catalogue metadata. Not a user rating.

How this score is calculated

Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg16514

Read the Text

This was a very delicious dish, and Margaret only made it for company. She prepared the mushrooms just as in the rule above, and added twelve olives, cut into small pieces, and spread the omelette with the whole when she turned it.

Eggs Baked in Little Dishes

Margaret's mother had some pretty little dishes with handles, brown on the outside and white inside. These Margaret buttered, and put one egg in each, sprinkling with salt, pepper, and butter, with a little parsley. She put the dishes in the oven till the eggs were firm, and served them in the small dishes, one on each plate.

6 eggs. 2 heaping tablespoonfuls Parmesan cheese. 1/2 teaspoonful salt. Pinch of red pepper.

Beat the eggs without separating till light and foamy, and then add the cheese, salt, and pepper. Put a tablespoonful of butter in the frying-pan, and when it is hot put in the eggs, and stir till smooth and firm. Serve on small pieces of buttered toast.

Parmesan cheese is very nice to use in cooking; it comes in bottles, all ready grated to use.

Take some bacon and put in a hot frying-pan, and cook till it crisps. Then lift it out on a hot dish and put in the oven. Break six eggs in separate cups, and slide them carefully into the fat left in the pan, and let them cook till they are rather firm and the bottom is brown. Then take a cake-turner and take them out carefully, and put in the middle of the dish, and arrange the bacon all around, with parsley on the edge.

Ham and Eggs, Moulded

Take small, deep tins, such as are used for timbales, and butter them. Make one cup of white sauce; take a cup of cold boiled ham which has been put through the meat-chopper, and mix with a tablespoonful of white sauce and one egg, slightly beaten. Press this like a lining into the tins, and then gently drop a raw egg in the centre of each. Stand them in a pan of boiling water in the oven till the eggs are firm,--about ten minutes,--and turn out on a round platter. Put around them the rest of the white sauce. You can stand the little moulds on circles of toast if you wish. This rule was given Margaret by her Pretty Aunt, who got it at cooking-school; it sounded harder than it really was, and after trying it once Margaret often used it.

One day some small, cunning little fish came home from market, and Margaret felt sure they must be meant for her to cook. They were called smelts, and, on looking, she found a rule for cooking them, just as she had expected.

Put a deep kettle on the fire, with two cups of lard in it, to get it very hot. Wipe each smelt inside and out with a clean wet cloth, and then with a dry one. Have a saucer of flour mixed with a teaspoonful of salt, and another saucer of milk. Put the tail of each smelt through its gills--that is, the opening near its mouth. Then roll the smelts first in milk and then in flour, and shake off any lumps. Throw a bit of bread into the fat in the kettle, and see if it turns brown quickly; it does if the fat is hot enough, but if not you must wait. Put four smelts in the wire basket, and stand it in the fat, so that the fish are entirely covered, for only half a minute, or till you can count thirty. As you take them out of the kettle, lay them on heavy brown paper on a pan in the oven, to drain and keep hot, and leave the door open till all are done. Lay a folded napkin on a long, narrow platter, and arrange the fishes in two rows, with slices of lemon and parsley on the sides.

Continue Reading →

This book opens with a story about Margaret, a little girl who wants to cook but finds standard cookbooks baffling. She asks her family about terms like "roux" and "mousse," but they tell her to wait. Eventually, her grandmother suggests making a small cookbook of "plain, easy things anybody can make," with help from her aunts. The result is a collection that mixes simple recipes with occasional "cooking-school things." The narrative frames the recipes as a gift: Margaret receives a small table, aprons, and shiny tins. This framing suggests the book is meant to empower young cooks, yet the inclusion of advanced techniques hints at adult expectations.

A Story That Sets the Table

The introduction is a short story, not a standard preface. Margaret's frustration—"I don't want to do cooking-school cooking, but little girl cooking, all by myself"—establishes the book's premise. Her family's initial reluctance and eventual support create a narrative arc that justifies the recipes. The gifts she receives (a table with casters, gingham aprons, measuring cups) are described in detail, grounding the fantasy in practical objects. This story is not just a frame; it shapes the reader's expectations. The book promises to be different from adult cookbooks, but the aunts' offer to "put in just a few cooking-school things" already signals a compromise between child-friendly and professional approaches.

Recipes Between Two Worlds

The excerpts show recipes that vary widely in complexity. Some are genuinely simple: Cream of Clams soup uses only clams, milk, butter, flour, and pepper, with instructions like "drop in the clams and cook three minutes." Others, like Plain Meat Soup, require hours of simmering, skimming, and straining through a flannel bag—hardly "little girl cooking." The book includes both basic dishes (Oyster Soup, which is "not thickened at all") and more elaborate ones (Cream of Spinach, which demands sieving and double straining). This mix suggests the book tries to serve two audiences: children who want immediate results and adults who want proper technique. The tension is visible in the recipes themselves, where simple steps are sometimes followed by optional refinements like "a cup of cream, whipped, either put on top or stirred in."

Voice and Vocabulary

The recipes use direct, imperative language: "Wipe the meat and cut off all the bone." But they also include explanatory asides, like "the soda prevents the milk from curdling." The voice is that of an experienced cook teaching a novice, but the assumed knowledge varies. For example, the recipe for Cream of Tomato Soup (called Tomato Bisque) lists ingredients precisely but assumes the reader knows how to make "white sauce as usual." The book occasionally addresses the young cook directly, as in the introduction, but the recipes themselves rarely use the word "little." Instead, they adopt a neutral, instructional tone. This contrast between the story's child-centered framing and the recipes' matter-of-fact style suggests that the book expects its reader to rise to the occasion—or to have an adult nearby.

Readers should note that the book's catalog subject, "Cooking -- Juvenile literature," accurately describes its intended audience, but the excerpts reveal a more complex reality. The recipes are not uniformly simple; some demand patience and skill. The story of Margaret provides a charming entry point, but the cooking itself often requires adult-level techniques. This book is best used as a historical artifact of early 20th-century domestic education, where the line between child's play and serious instruction was deliberately blurred.

Margaret’s steady little hands, measuring and stirring in that 1905 kitchen, always make me wistful for an unhurried time. I sometimes think of her reaching for a longer tradition, one where household knowledge passed quietly between women, as it did in Miss Leslie's Lady's New Receipt-Book, 3rd ed. A Useful Guide for Large or Small Families, Containing Directions for Cooking, Preserving, Pickling... — A Closer Reading. That older book feels like a grandmother’s shelf, sturdy and patient, asking only to be consulted, never rushed.