Culture and Cooking

A pickle jar gets hours of artistic attention; the meal beside it gets none. Catherine Owen asks why a carefully decorated table should end in heavy bread, burnt steak, and wilted potatoes.

Writing in the late nineteenth century, Owen challenges the genteel belief that cooking is dirty drudgery, unworthy of a refined woman’s mind. In American homes, she argues, good food need not mean costly food: a light loaf, a well-made cup of coffee, or a perfectly cooked potato can turn an ordinary meal into an art. With wit and a lively parade of gourmets, cooks, and unlikely fortunes made by a well-mixed salad, she makes the case that care—not wealth—is the secret ingredient. What might change if the kitchen were treated as a place for artistry, not mere feeding?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.