Teaching experience has shown the need of a textbook approaching the study of foods and cookery through experimental work in chemistry, bacteriology, and biology. In this book, therefore, under each topic a considerable number of experiments will be found. The performance of these experiments and the answering of the questions which arise from them will give the student a firsthand acquaintance with the leading characteristics of each kind of food, will furnish a basis for the discussion of the procedures used in cookery, and should give her such a grasp of the principles involved as will enable her to work without recipes, or to develop her own. The attainment of such mastery on the part of the student is, however, greatly facilitated by practice with a considerable number of recipes which have already been thoroughly tested, just as in other experimental sciences, the student is taught in part through practice with explicit and workable laboratory directions. Hence, in addition to the experiments, the present work will be found to contain thoroughly tested recipes in adequate number and variety to permit of choice. It has also seemed wise to include a considerable number of "score cards" to facilitate judgment of the finished product; and of illustrative calculations of nutritive values of typical cooked foods. Each chapter has been made sufficiently complete in itself so that the topics may be taken up in any desired sequence and not necessarily in the order followed in the book.

This Laboratory Manual was worked out through the correlated experience of the authors at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, and Simmons College, Boston, and is amplified by their individual experiences in the Public Schools of New York City and New Haven; the State Normal School at Winona, Minnesota; The School of Education of The University of Chicago; and The Diet School of Johns Hopkins Hospital.

The authors desire to acknowledge the help given by Professor Ada Field of George Peabody College for Teachers, in the revision of the manuscript, and to express their appreciation of the encouragement received from Dr. Henry Clapp Sherman, of Columbia University.