The Way to a Man’s Heart ("The Settlement" Cook Book)

Lizzie Black Kander

1901

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The Settlement Cook Book, first published in 1901 as a pamphlet, soon became a mainstay of American domestic culture and was published in more than forty editions before its final publication in 1991. The idea for the book and its five hundred recipes grew out of cooking and household management lessons at the Settlement House in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, one of the many houses established in cities by the settlement movement to bring middle-class volunteers together with immigrants and lower-income women. The popularity of the book soon extended outside its original target group. Many of the early recipes were adaptations of East European Jewish recipes that introduced Jewish cooking into American cuisine.

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First Lesson

  • To Build a Fire

  • Measuring

  • Scalloped Apples

  • Coffee

  • Setting the Table

  • Washing Dishes

Second Lesson

  • Soft Cooked Eggs

  • Hard Cooked Eggs

  • White Sauce

  • Toast

  • Egg Vermicelli

Third Lesson

  • Poached Eggs

  • Steamed Eggs

  • Creamy Omelet

  • Foamy Omelet

  • Orange Omelet

Fourth Lesson

  • Vegetables with Sauce

  • Tomatoes, Cabbage

  • Onions, Carrots

  • Mashed Potatoes

Fifth Lesson

  • Cream of Potato Soup

  • Potato Soup

  • Cream of Tomato Soup

  • Tomato Soup

  • Croutons

Sixth Lesson

  • Rolled Oats

  • Rolled Wheat

  • Cornmeal Mush

  • Fried Mush

  • Sugar Syrup

Seventh Lesson

  • Steamed Rice

  • Rice Pudding

  • Rice Snow Balls

  • Stewed Prunes

  • Apple Sauce

Eighth Lesson

  • Sterilized Milk

  • Orange Custard

  • Lemon Whey

Ninth Lesson

  • Cottage Cheese

  • Noodles

  • Noodles with Cheese

  • Cheese and Crackers

Tenth Lesson

  • French Salad Dressing

  • Boiled Dressing

  • Potato Salad

  • Cabbage Salad

  • Water Lily Salad

Eleventh Lesson

  • Baking Powder Biscuits

  • Boiled Biscuits

  • Short Cake

  • Chocolate

Twelfth Lesson

  • Muffins

  • Popovers

  • Griddle Cakes

Thirteenth Lesson

  • Bread (Small Loaf)

  • Rolls

  • Peanut Candy

Fourteenth Lesson

  • Kuchen (Coffee)

  • Schnecken

  • Kuchen Tarts

  • Apple Kuchen

  • Cranberry Jelly

Fifteenth Lesson

  • Sauted Fish

  • Baked Fish

  • Broiled Fish

  • Planked Fish

  • Potato Balls

Sixteenth Lesson

  • Boiled Fish

  • Sharfe Fishe

  • Filled Fish

  • Fish with Mayonnaise Sauce

Seventeenth Lesson

  • Plain Cake

  • Cheap Sponge Cake

  • Plain Frosting

  • Boiled Chocolate Frosting

Eighteenth Lesson

  • Apple Pie

  • Lemon Pie

  • Cookies (White)

  • Fruit Cookies

Nineteenth Lesson

  • Vanilla Ice Crem No. II

  • Lemon Milk Sherbet

  • Kisses

Twentieth Lesson

  • To Render Fat

  • French Fried Potatoes

  • Saratoga Potatoes

  • Doughnuts

Twenty-First Lesson

  • Soup

  • Boston Brown Potatoes

  • Scraped Beef

  • Hamburg Steak

  • Pot Roast

Twenty-Second Lesson

  • Stewed Mutton and Gravy

  • Pan Broiled Chops

  • Lyonnaise Potatoes

Twenty-Third Lesson

  • Casserole of Rice and Meat

  • Tomato Sauce

  • Rissoules1

Twenty-Fourth Lesson

  • Roast Chicken and Gravy

  • Franconia Potatoes

  • Apple Snow

Notes

More commonly rissole, a croquette of meat or fish that is breaded or covered in a pastry, and fried.

Credits

Lizzie Black Kander, The Way to a Man’s Heart (Milwaukee: The Settlement [House], 1901), pp. i–ii, iv–v, ix–x.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 7.

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Creator Bio

Lizzie Black Kander

1858–1940

The American social activist Lizzie Black Kander graduated valedictorian from Milwaukee East Side High School in 1878. In her commencement address, titled “When I Become President,” she satirized American politicians and considered what she would do were she elected president. After completing her formal education, she was involved with immigrant aid organizations primarily serving Russian Jews arriving in Milwaukee. She married local politician Simon Kander in 1881 and in 1900 helped form the Milwaukee Jewish Mission, known as the Settlement, the first of a network of social welfare agencies that developed in her city at the turn of the century. Kander’s Settlement cookbook, which raised millions of dollars for charities, has been revised more than forty times.

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