University of Virginia Library

CATALOGUE
OF
NEW BOOKS FOR FAMILIES
AND
PRESENTS FOR YOUTH,
PUBLISHED BY
Munroe and Francis,
NO. 128, WASHINGTON-STREET,
BOSTON.

The COOK'S OWN BOOK, and House-Keeper's
Register, being a complete Culinary Encyclopædia: comprehending all valuable
Receipts for cooking Meat, Fish, and Fowl; and composing every kind of Soup,
Gravy, Pastry, Preserves, Essences, &c. that have been known or invented to
the present time, with numerous original Receipts, and a Complete System of
Confectionery. By a Boston Housekeeper. To which is added, Miss Leslie's
SEVENTY-FIVE RECEIPTS for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats. The whole
alphabetically arranged. Also, Directions for the Management of Families, Cooking
Utensils, Diet, Boiling, Baking, Roasting, Frying, Broiling, Broths and Soups;
Observations on all articles used in Cookery, and how to keep them; Marketing Tables;
Directions for Pickled Fish; Weights and Measures, &c. &c. &c.

“The cook exercises a greater power over the public health and welfare than
the physician, and if he should be a charlatan in his art, alas! for his employers.
Hitherto, or until of late years, the cook has had to educate himself, while the
physician appropriates all the knowledge of antiquity, and of every succeeding age;
his individual cases are all classed according to general principles, while the rules
which have regulated the preparation of our food have been discordant and unnatural.
In the present age, indeed, cookery has been raised to the dignity of an art,
and sages have given their treatises to the world.—On the utilitarian principle the
cook should be much elevated in human estimation, and were he to form a strict
alliance with the physician, the patriarchal ages would return, and men would die
of nothing but sheer old age.”

“This book, by an excellent arrangement of its articles, and a judicious compactness
of page and type, contains more reading in its 350 pages than are usually
given in a thousand pages of other books, whilst its selling price is lower. Every
recipe is plain, and the proportions certain; little is left to discretion, that
could be reduced to measure; and every young housekeeper should make the volume
their first purchase, giving it precedence even to the indispensable brass warming-pan,
looking-glass, and iron pot. It is a guide to economy as well as perfection
in the culinary art, and a suitable present to assistants in families for the benefit
of the whole eating community.”

“The late Mr. Abernethy referred almost all maladies to the stomach, and seldom
prescribed any remedy but a proper diet. This it is the province of the cook

to provide; and the design of this book to indicate. Every recipe in it (amounting
to some four or five thousand) has been sanctioned by custom. The cook
and the housekeeper have here a dictionary of reference, an encyclopædia of their
art. The details are full, and the authority is perfect. There were various works
of merit that it was useful for the cook to study, but here are collected the best
parts of all, with the convenience of alphabetical arrangement, and in the compass
of a single volume. If it is a sin to waste the best gifts of Providence, it should
be little less than felony to spoil them. More than health depends on the preparation
of our food: our very virtues are the creatures of circumstances, and many a
man has hardened his heart, or given up a good resolution, under the operation of
indigestion. The natural and moral world are reciprocally dependent; soul and
body are so linked, that when one loses its tone, the other is deprived of its equanimity.
The system of morals therefore becomes identified with that of cookery.”

Life and Adventures of ROBINSON CRUSOE, of
York, mariner, with an Account of his Travels round three Quarters of the Globe.
Written by himself. With new Designs on wood by Anderson. pp. 600. square
16mo. being the whole complete edition, as written by the author. 22 plates.

“To the Editor of the Courier.

“Mr. Buckingham,

“It is a sight to make my green spectacles glisten, to look at the shelves of
Munroe & Francis. They have changed the whole system of juvenile reading.
Blue Beard and Tom Thumb have abdicated their high places in favour of better
people, and a child, while he seeks only amusement, may now learn history, and
the sciences, and avoid the silly tales that composed my own early library, and
which haunt the memory for evil, like stories of ghosts and spectres in the nursery.
If the children of the Commonwealth were to erect a monument to their
greatest benefactors, you would find it inscribed to our friends at the corner of
Water-Street. This may seem a strong assertion, but every schoolmaster, or parent
that educates his own children, knows it to be but faint praise. You, I think,
deserve well of your country, being the father of eight or ten sons; if, when the
season of Christmas comes, you shell out (as we say in the cornfield) to the urchins
with rosy cheeks, let them not make a profitless investment of half a dollar in a
whistle, or statues of men and horses in sugar; but let them purchase a book, that
if they read but once and throw it by, will yet leave a lasting impression on the
mind. This is my course with the young Doolittles, who have already a miniature
library of 87 volumes, and whose greatest treat it is to visit the bookstores of the
publishers.”

AMERICAN GIRL'S BOOK, or Occupation for Play
Hours. By Miss Leslie, author of Atlantic Tales, &c. &c.

“The American Girl's Book.—The person that makes a popular book for
children is certain of having an extended reputation. The authors of Blue-Beard
and Tom Thumb, whose names have not reached us, will yet survive to the latest
posterity in their works. What a child reads he never forgets—the impressions
thus made are as vivid as any that come through the senses. Of all sights there
is not one so pleasing to a benevolent and pure mind as the games of children;