Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking, The.
An Early Home Ec Tract
[Domestic]. Campbell, Helen. The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking. Adapted to domestic use, or study in classes. New York: Fords, Howard & Hulbert, 1881.
8vo.; gutters cracked; brown cloth; stamped in gilt, black and blind; edgeworn.
First edition of this early cooking textbook by a noted feminist and suffragette, the author of “Chips from a north-western log,” “Unto the third and fourth generation,” etc., as noted on the title-page. With a loosely inserted color advertisement for cocoa. Divided into two parts; the first, in 12 chapters, provides tips for keeping house and preparing food. Some titles include, “The House: situation and arrangement;” “Fires, lights, and things to work with,” “The body and its composition,” and “The relations of food to health.” The second part, in 24 chapters, prints recipes divided according to food groups; the last five chapters, however, are “Hints to teachers,” “Lessons for practice class,” “Twenty topics for class use,” “List of authorities referred to,” and “examination questions.”
Campbell is clearly as witty as she is educated: on the title page she quotes lines from Shakespeare’s Scottish play as domestic advice: “If it were done, when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well / It were done quickly.”
In her Introduction, Campbell explains that she did not set out to write a cookbook, claiming, “another word is not only superfluous but absurd; in fact, an outrage on common sense, not for one instant to be justified” (p. 5). Campbell, however, was working as a teacher at the Raleigh Cooking School, and soon discovered the “inadequacies” of all available cookbooks; so, she set out “to teach household science as well as cooking” (p. 6). This book was used by teachers and students; Campbell concludes, “Whether used at home with growing girls, in cooking-clubs, in schools, or in private classes, it is hoped that the system outlined and the authorities referred to will stimulate interest, and open up a new field of work to many who have doubted if the food question had any interest beyond the day’s need” (p. 9).
A sort of 19th century Erma Bombeck, Campbell infuses her writing with both humor and practical advice. She begins the chapter, “The Day’s Work,” with the statement,
It is safe to say that no class of women in the civilized world is subjected to such incessant trials of temper, and such temptation to be fretful, as the American housekeeper. …The new home, prettily furnished, seems a lovely toy, and is surrounded by a halo, which, as facts assert themselves, quickly fades away. (p. 35)
The recipes she provides in Part II, as she explains in her Introduction, were culled from her own experiences as a housekeeper, and are meant for “the average family, North or South” (p. 8).
Campbell began her writing career by contributing children’s stories to Our Continent, St. Nicholas, Our Young Folks, New England Magazine and Harper’s. She later published several books; in addition to this cookbook, she wrote many books on social reform, including: The Problem of the Poor (1882); Prisoners of Poverty (1887); Women Wage Earners (1893); and Mrs. Herndon’s Income (1886).
Editor, educator, reformer and pioneer of the home economics movement, Campbell (1839-1918) was born in Lockport, New York. She attended the Gammell School in Warren, Rhode Island and Mrs. Cook’s Seminary in Bloomfield, New Jersey. In 1860 she married Grenville Mellen Weeks, and divorced him, childless, in 1871. For the rest of her life, Campbell pin-balled throughout the United States, working as a teacher, a journalist, and an editor; she taught at the Raleigh Cooking School in North Carolina in 1878, and at the University of Wisconsin in 1894 – she was listed as the instructor for two classes there, “Women wage-earning” and “Domestic Science” – and also was a professor of home economics at the Kansas State Agricultural College.
From 1882-1884 she was the literar
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