Post by brittonfaith on Oct 24, 2007 3:37:22 GMT 12.75
I'm sure folks have been cooking for the masses since the dawn of time. But as far as actual standardized recipes go, I found this excerpt interesting. It's from "Quantity Food Service Recipes: Assembled Under the Auspices of the American Dietetic Association", 1940.
PROLOGUE
"The Collection of Domestic Receipts now presented to the public, could not have been formed in any age but the present. The wisdom of this age has been to bring science from her heights down to the practical knowledge of every-day concerns; and the number of its inventions and discoveries have kept pace with the increasing wants of man. Of the past, we preserve what experience has sanctioned, and what improvement has rendered more perfect; but we can add much more from our own stores."
Thus reads a preface to "The New Family Receipt Book" written in 1818. Although almost one hundred and twenty-five years have passed since it was written, we still say that our objective is "to bring science from her heights down to the practical,' and that such a collection of recipes as is here presented "could not have been formed in any age but the present."
Family-sized recipes have been in existence for at least two thousand years as evidenced by the various collections of Apicius, probably begun about 100 B.C. Large quantity recipes are of comparatively recent invention, however. For the first standardized quantity recipes we are undoubtedly indebted to Alexis Soyer, the noted French chef, who went to the Crimean War in 1855 for the express purpose of improving the "dieting of the Hospitals of the British Army in the East, as well as the soldiers' rations in the Camp before Sebastapol."1 Before going on with this mission, he was interviewed by high ranking government officials as to his plans for accomplishing his purpose. He replied to this effect, "by my system of diet, every receipt will be printed, framed, and hung in the kitchen, so that any person, even a soldier (provided he can read) will be capable of executing them." Shortly after his arrival at Scutari where there were forty-five hundred sick and wounded, he started his work by posting his recipes. Later he writes: "So simple was the plan, that it was as easy to cook for thousands as it had been for hundreds, and to do it to perfection....Had there been room in the hospital we could have accommodated as many patients with the greatest ease, the receipts being regulated by weight and measure....I earnestly recommend the adoption of this plan in every public institution, civil or milirary.".............................
1Soyer, Alexis: Culinary Campaign, London: G. Routledge and Co., 1859.
PROLOGUE
"The Collection of Domestic Receipts now presented to the public, could not have been formed in any age but the present. The wisdom of this age has been to bring science from her heights down to the practical knowledge of every-day concerns; and the number of its inventions and discoveries have kept pace with the increasing wants of man. Of the past, we preserve what experience has sanctioned, and what improvement has rendered more perfect; but we can add much more from our own stores."
Thus reads a preface to "The New Family Receipt Book" written in 1818. Although almost one hundred and twenty-five years have passed since it was written, we still say that our objective is "to bring science from her heights down to the practical,' and that such a collection of recipes as is here presented "could not have been formed in any age but the present."
Family-sized recipes have been in existence for at least two thousand years as evidenced by the various collections of Apicius, probably begun about 100 B.C. Large quantity recipes are of comparatively recent invention, however. For the first standardized quantity recipes we are undoubtedly indebted to Alexis Soyer, the noted French chef, who went to the Crimean War in 1855 for the express purpose of improving the "dieting of the Hospitals of the British Army in the East, as well as the soldiers' rations in the Camp before Sebastapol."1 Before going on with this mission, he was interviewed by high ranking government officials as to his plans for accomplishing his purpose. He replied to this effect, "by my system of diet, every receipt will be printed, framed, and hung in the kitchen, so that any person, even a soldier (provided he can read) will be capable of executing them." Shortly after his arrival at Scutari where there were forty-five hundred sick and wounded, he started his work by posting his recipes. Later he writes: "So simple was the plan, that it was as easy to cook for thousands as it had been for hundreds, and to do it to perfection....Had there been room in the hospital we could have accommodated as many patients with the greatest ease, the receipts being regulated by weight and measure....I earnestly recommend the adoption of this plan in every public institution, civil or milirary.".............................
1Soyer, Alexis: Culinary Campaign, London: G. Routledge and Co., 1859.