What to Eat, and How to Cook It

Cowan’s earlier works dealt with sexual hygiene and the evils of tobacco, but in What to Eat, and How to Cook It he turned to diet. Food and culinary practice had become more complex in American middle-class society by 1870, and Cowan’s cookbook blasted his countrymen for eating “conglomerate mixtures,” ingredients “mixed in all shapes, in all measures, and under all conditions.” He believed that ...