Before we get started, a little recipe (for disaster maybe?)
Dough-nuts
For dough-nuts, take one pint of flour, half a pint of sugar, three eggs, a piece of butter as big as an egg, and a tea-spoonful of dissolved pearlash. When you have no eggs, a gill of lively emptings will do; but in that case, they must be made over night. Cinnamon, rose-water, or lemon-brandy, if you have it. If you use part lard instead of butter, add a little salt. Not put in till the fat is very hot. The more fat they are fried in, the less they will soak fat.
Before you rush out to make these stop and figure out what you are using for leavening. What exactly is "pearlash"? And how do "emptings" (whatever they are) replace eggs. Oddly, I wasn't the first to highlight this particular recipe out of the hundreds in this book. It looks deceptively simple until you decipher it all. Once you realize that "pearlash" is a leavening made from lye, you need to think about this again. I thought a bit too hard it seems and the results are dubious
No rainbows and unicorns here!
Or continuity it seems! Here is a tidbit from the very first page to get us started. I have not edited this at all. It just all spills out just as I show you here:
Children can very early be taught to take all the care of their own clothes.
They can knit garters, suspenders, and stockings; they can make patchwork and braid straw; they can make mats for the table, and mats for the floor; they can weed the garden, and pick cranberries from the meadow, to be carried to market.