A Friend in the Kitchen; Or, What to Cook and How to Cook It. Sixteenth Edition

"A Friend in the Kitchen; Or, What to Cook and How to Cook It" by Anna L. Colcord is a late 19th-century cookbook intended to teach families how to cook. It contains around 400 recipes, easy-to-understand cooking steps, advice for combining foods in a healthy way, and nutritional tips for general better eating. The first part of the book talks about why healthy cooking matters in our daily lives and that what we eat affects how we feel physically and mentally. Colcord pushes for preparing easy, healthy meals instead of complicated ones, and the author's goal is to help housewives make smart choices about what they cook so they can feed meals that are both good and healthy. She also underlines how important it is to teach young people how to cook well.