The following objects are aimed at in this work:

First, to furnish an original collection of receipts, which shall embrace a great variety of simple and well-cooked dishes, designed for every-day comfort and enjoyment.

Second, to include in the collection only such receipts as have been tested by superior housekeepers, and warranted to be the best. It is not a book made up in any department by copying from other books, but entirely from the experience of the best practical housekeepers.

Third, to express every receipt in language which is short, simple, and perspicuous, and yet to give all directions so minutely as that the book can be kept in the kitchen, and be used by any domestic who can read, as a guide in every one of her employments in the kitchen.

Fourth, to furnish such directions in regard to small dinner-parties and evening company as will enable any young housekeeper to perform her part, on such occasions, with ease, comfort, and success.

Fifth, to present a good supply of the rich and elegant dishes demanded at entertainments, and yet to set forth a large variety of what is both healthful and good, in connexion with warnings and suggestions which it is hoped may avail to promote a more healthful fashion in regard both to entertainments and to daily table supplies. No book of this kind will sell without receipts for the rich articles which custom requires, and in furnishing them, the writer has aimed to follow the example of Providence, which scatters profusely both good and ill, and combines therewith the caution alike of experience, revelation, and conscience, “choose ye that which is good, that ye and your seed may live.”

Sixth, in the work on Domestic Economy, together with this, to which it is a Supplement, the writer has attempted to secure in a cheap and popular form, for American housekeepers, a work similar to an English work which she has examined, entitled the EncyclopÆdia of Domestic Economy, by Thomas Webster and Mrs. Parkes, containing over twelve hundred octavo pages of closely-printed matter, treating on every department of Domestic Economy; a work which will be found much more useful to English women, who have a plenty of money and well-trained servants, than to American housekeepers. It is believed that most, in that work, which would be of any practical use to American housekeepers, will be found in this work and the Domestic Economy.

Lastly, the writer has aimed to avoid the defects complained of by most housekeepers in regard to works of this description, issued in this country, or sent from England, such as that, in some cases, the receipts are so rich as to be both expensive and unhealthful; in others, that they are so vaguely expressed as to be very imperfect guides; in others, that the processes are so elaborate and fussing as to make double the work that is needful; and in others, that the topics are so limited that some departments are entirely omitted, and all are incomplete.

In accomplishing these objects, the writer has received contributions of the pen, and verbal communications, from some of the most judicious and practical housekeepers, in almost every section of this country.