For my friends who like history and cooking, I have a curious double book from 1909. This book is actually two books bound together into one volume. The first 740 pages are Household Discoveries by Sidney Morse, and the concluding 280 pages are Mrs. Curtis's Cook Book by Isabel Gordon Curtis.
The volume was published by Success Magazine in New York, and according to a notice in the front of Household Discoveries "it is not offered for sale through book stores and can only be obtained of our regular authorized solicitors or from the publishers direct." I have heard of "Salesman Samples:" these special volumes had the complete double book plus information about binding styles and handwritten client notes.
"Household Discoveries" is subtitled "An Encyclopaedia of Practical Recipes and Processes" and is dedicated to "the thousands of practical housekeepers, readers of Success Magazine, and others, whose discoveries are embodied in this volume." The author super-stuffs his book with more than 25,000 tips: everything from typical household chores including soap making; to tasks associated with "the family workroom," such as how to make glue and how to do electroplating; hairdressing ("for both men and women"); health emergency and nursing advice; and four chapters on food including candy making and meat preservation.
Although I haven't found any info about Sidney Morse, I have found quite a bit about Isabel Gordon Curtis. By the time she had started working for Success Magazine, Mrs. Curtis had published several cookbooks, including the Good Housekeeping Everyday Cook Book. You can read more about her here on Michigan State University library's website.
Mrs. Curtis's Cook Book has the typical chapters covering meats, soups, vegetables, salads, and desserts. After reading what MSU writes about her disaster with bread-baking, I admit to chuckling at the in-depth treatise at the beginning of her bread chapter. She also includes a chapter called "Some Kitchen Kinks," which is a collection of kitchen tips such as adding vinegar to the poaching water for eggs to help the whites keep their shapes (something I've done since my mom taught me 50 years ago ).
Most of the pages are closely set text with the occasional drawing, typical design for books of this era. Mrs. Curtis's recipes use standardized measurements which at this time have become common, but follows the style of being brief on instruction with the implication that cooks already know the methods. There are just three full-page color illustrations in Mrs. Curtis's Cook Book, with the credit "Courtesy, The Kellogg Fruit Co."
With my 21st century eyes, I think it's a travesty that an author as established as Mrs. Curtis was shoved to the back of the double volume with barely a quarter of the pages that Sidney received. But, there is a clue found within Sidney's self-congratulatory Introduction to Household Discoveries. He writes: "A favorite way of padding books of recipes has been to occupy more space boasting about the wonders the recipes will do than it takes to give the recipe and the directions. Nearly half of one of the most celebrated books of recipes is thus taken up with "Remarks" that are of no possible use to anybody. If the mass of trivialities contained in some of the most widely known books of recipes now in use could be struck out and the contents 'boiled down' or 'churned' or 'winnowed' in a thorough manner, it would surprise everyone to find how little space the recipes themselves take up."
Ol' Sidney doesn't realize the value of cooks handing down their insight and advice. I'd much rather read Mrs. Gordon's informed comments about how to be a successful bread baker than wade through his exhaustive lists.