A little girl's cookery book — Reading Companion

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In Category - Historical Cookbooks

Authors: Benton, Caroline French, -1923, Hodge, Mary Florence Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2022 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 26,145

Reading time 114 min

Text sections 11

A little girl's cookery book — Reading Companion can be approached with a clearer sense of reading commitment from its source measurements: 26,145 words, 1 hr 54 min estimated reading time, and 11 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 16.8 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 #69364

This 1911 cookbook uses a narrative frame—young Margaret learning to cook—to introduce recipes organized by meal. The structure moves from breakfast through dinner, with precise instructions and occasional personal notes from the authors.

Editorial Edition Score 4.7/5

★★★★★ ★★★★★

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: pg69364

Read the Text

, it was so easy. But the little biscuits were good enough for grown people to like. This was it:

Quarter-pound of flour, yolks of two eggs; beat them well with a quarter of a pint of cream and pinch of salt. Stir into the flour, roll out very thin, cut into any shape with a knife, prick with a fork, and bake a few at a time in a good oven. They must be straw colour. In a good oven they should take five minutes. Put on a sieve till cold.

2 eggs. 1 cup of milk. 1½cups of flour. 2 teaspoonfuls of baking-powder. ½ teaspoonful of salt.

Put the eggs in a bowl without separating them, and beat them with a spoon till light. Put in the milk, then the flour mixed with the salt, and last the baking-powder all alone. Bake on a hot, buttered griddle. This recipe makes delicious cakes, especially if eaten with sugar and thick cream.

Last of all the things Margaret learned to make for breakfast came coffee, and this she could make in two ways; sometimes she made it this first way, and sometimes the other, which is called French coffee.

First be sure your coffee-pot is shining clean; look in the spout and in all the cracks, and wipe them out carefully, for you cannot make good coffee except in a perfectly clean pot. Then get three heaped tablespoonfuls of ground coffee, and mix in one tablespoonful of cold water. Pour in one quart of boiling water, and let it boil up once. Then stir down the grounds which come to the top, put in two tablespoonfuls of cold water, and let it stand for a minute on the back of the stove, and then strain it into the silver pot for the table. This pot must be made very hot, by filling it with boiling water and letting it stand on the kitchen table while the coffee is boiling. If this recipe makes the coffee stronger than the family like it, take less coffee, and if it is not strong enough, take more coffee.

Get one of the pots which are made so that the coffee will drip through; put three tablespoonfuls of very finely powdered coffee in this, and pour in a quart of boiling water. When it has all dripped through, it is ready to put in the hot silver pot.

_LUNCHEON OR SUPPER DISHES_

So many things in this part of Margaret’s book called for white sauce, or cream sauce, that the recipe for that came first of all.

1 tablespoonful of butter. 1 tablespoonful of flour. 1 cup hot milk or cream. ⅓ teaspoonful of salt.

Melt the butter, and when it bubbles put in the flour, shaking the saucepan as you do so, and rub till smooth. Put in the hot milk, a little at a time, and stir and cook without boiling till all is smooth and free from lumps. Add the salt, and, if you choose, a little pepper.

Cream sauce is made exactly as is white sauce, but cream is used in place of milk. What is called thick white sauce is made by taking two tablespoonfuls of butter and two of flour, and only one cup of milk.

1 pint of oysters. 1 large cup of cream sauce.

Make the sauce of cream if you have it, and if not use a very heaping tablespoonful of butter in the white sauce. Keep this hot.

Drain off the oyster juice and wash the oysters by holding them under the cold-water tap. Strain the juice and put the oysters back in it, and put them on the fire and let them just simmer till the edges of the oysters curl; then drain them from the juice again and drop them in the sauce, and add a little more salt (celery-salt is nice to use if you have it), and just a tiny bit of cayenne pepper. You can serve the oysters on squares of buttered toast, or put them in a large dish, with sifted bread-crumbs over the top and tiny bits of butter, and brown in the oven. Or you can put them in small dishes as they are, and put a sprig of parsley in each dish.

Take the oysters from their juice, strain it, wash the oysters, and put them back in it. Put them in a saucepan with a little salt--about half a teaspoonful to a pint of oysters--and a little pepper, and a piece of butter as large as the end of your thumb. Let them simmer till the edges curl, just as before, and put them on squares of hot buttered toast.

These were great fun to make, and Margaret often begged to get them ready for company.

15 large oysters. 15 very thin slices of bacon.

Continue Reading →

A Little Girl's Cookery Book (1911) by Caroline French Benton and Mary Florence Hodge is structured as a practical guide framed by the story of a child named Margaret who wants to cook. The book is divided into three parts—Breakfast Dishes, Luncheon or Supper Dishes, and Dinner and Tea Dishes, Sauces and Sweets—each building on the previous. The authors adopt a direct, instructional voice, often addressing the reader as “you” and including specific measurements and techniques, such as “three shakes of pepper” or “butter the size of a walnut.” The narrative frame appears only in the introduction and occasional asides, such as when Margaret’s mother shares a recipe learned in Paris. This blend of story and instruction gives the work a distinctive character among early twentieth-century juvenile cookbooks.

A Narrative Frame for Kitchen Lessons

The book opens with a fairy-tale line—“Once upon a time there was a little girl named Margaret”—but quickly shifts into a practical cooking manual. The narrative frame is used sparingly: Margaret appears in the introduction and resurfaces in a few recipe headnotes, such as when her mother contributes a macaroni recipe “got … in Paris.” This framing device serves to personalize the instructions without overwhelming the recipes. The authors maintain a consistent second-person address (“you”) throughout the recipe steps, creating a sense of direct guidance. The result is a hybrid text that moves between storytelling and instruction, a structure that would have appealed to young readers learning to cook at home.

Recurring Images of Precision and Care

Across the excerpts, certain phrases and images recur, emphasizing careful measurement and observation. The instruction to use “three shakes of pepper” appears in multiple recipes, suggesting a standardized seasoning method. The phrase “butter the size of a walnut” is another repeated image, offering a visual, non-standard unit of measure. Vegetables are described with attention to their state: peas are done when they “have little dents in their sides,” and carrots must be “stewed until very soft.” These recurring details create a consistent sensory language—touch, sight, and taste—that guides the young cook through each step. The authors also stress timing, from “fifteen minutes, if they are fresh from the garden” to “half an hour or more” for older peas, acknowledging variable ingredients.

Movement Between Meals and Techniques

The book’s three-part structure mirrors the progression of a day’s meals, from breakfast to dinner. Within each section, recipes are grouped by course or ingredient, but the authors also move between techniques: boiling, stewing, frying, baking, and making sauces. For example, the vegetable recipes in Part II include both boiled and stewed preparations, while the macaroni dish requires layering and baking. The salad section mentions both French dressing and mayonnaise, with a note that mayonnaise “seemed too heavy for dinner.” This movement between methods and meals gives the book a pedagogical arc, as the young cook learns increasingly complex skills. The authors occasionally cross-reference recipes, such as when they refer to “white sauce” used in multiple dishes, reinforcing a cumulative learning experience.

The Role of the Adult Assistant

Although the book is addressed to a child, the presence of an adult helper is implied throughout. The introduction suggests that Margaret “wanted to cook” and presumably had an adult nearby. In the recipes, steps such as “put some bacon dripping into an iron frying-pan” or “fry in deep fat till brown” would require adult supervision for a young girl in 1911. The authors occasionally include notes that seem directed at the adult, such as the detailed instructions for cleaning asparagus or the caution to “draw the pan to a hotter part of the stove.” The macaroni recipe’s aside about Margaret’s mother further underscores the collaborative nature of the cooking process. This implicit partnership between child and adult is a structural feature of the book, shaping both its tone and its practical use.

Readers approaching A Little Girl's Cookery Book should pay attention to the interplay between the narrative frame and the recipe instructions. The book rewards a sequential reading, as techniques introduced early reappear in later dishes. The authors’ use of recurring phrases and visual measurements creates a consistent, memorable language that helps build confidence in the kitchen. While the book is clearly intended for a young audience, its precise methods and occasional adult asides make it a document of early twentieth-century domestic education.

Reading about Margaret's careful measurements, I remembered my own first kitchen attempts, a clumsy rhubarb pie. Cookbooks then felt like quiet companions, not just instructions. That same patient, reassuring spirit lingers in 30 Tempting Spaghetti Meals: Easy, Economical, Delicious — Key Ideas to Explore, a kind of warmth in the promise of something simple made well.