An annotated introduction exploring the contemporary importance of the book "The House Servants Directory", the identity and character of the author, and its significance in American history.

The House Servant's Directory or a monitor for private families comprising hints on the arrangement and performance of servants' work, with general rules for setting out tables and sideboards. In first order The art of waiting in all its branches and likewise how to conduct large and small parties with order with general directions for placing on table all kinds of joints, fish, fowl, etc with full instructions for cleaning plate, brass, steel, glass, mahogany and likewise all kinds of patent and common lamps: observations on servants' behaviour to their employers and upwards of 100 various and useful receipts chiefly compiled for the use of house servants, and identically made to suit the manners and customs of families in the United States

“In order to get through your work in proper time, you should make it your chief study to rise early in the morning; for an hour before the family rises is worth more to you than two after they are up.” These are Robert Roberts’s first words to his readers in this classic resource for those employed as domestic servants. More household-management manual than cookbook, the book does contain recipes for making beer and punch, salad sauce, mustard, currant jam, syrups, and fruit-flavored waters of all kinds. There are directions for carving, marketing, choosing meats, fish and poultry, and preserving, and how to complete household chores successfully, clean everything in the house, behave properly, and prepare and serve food for family dinners and parties of all sizes. The book has suggestions for employers on how to manage domestic help (very unusual for the time), but Roberts was more interested in teaching young black men how to succeed in their work and ensure their advancement. This edition of The House Servant’s Directory was reproduced by permission from the volume in the collection of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts. Founded in 1812 by Isaiah Thomas, a Revolutionary War patriot and successful printer and publisher, the society is a research library documenting the lives of Americans from the colonial era through 1876. The society collects, preserves, and makes available as complete a record as possible of the printed materials from the early American experience. The cookbook collection comprises approximately 1,100 volumes.

Home cooks and gourmets, chefs and restaurateurs, epicures, and simple food lovers of all stripes will delight in this smorgasbord of the history and culture of food and drink. Professor of Culinary History Andrew Smith and nearly 200 authors bring together in 770 entries the scholarship on wide-ranging topics from airline and funeral food to fad diets and fast food; drinks like lemonade, Kool-Aid, and Tang; foodstuffs like Jell-O, Twinkies, and Spam; and Dagwood, hoagie, and Sloppy Joe sandwiches.

Full of humor and wit, this book was offered in 1827 in order that servants be given a handbook by which they might more efficiently perform the duties for which they were being paid.