We have taken Mary Burke Hughe's original classic and reformatted for modern print. Her book was read by many during the difficult times of World War I and the Great Depression. This modern reprint allows you to read the original in a new paperback. It brings old cooking and food preservation methods forward to today's world.

Mary Hughe's foreword:

Economic conditions make it imperative that we as a nation produce and conserve more food. Every house-keeper should prepare for the reconstruction period that will follow the war, when, owing to the demands to be made upon our markets by the whole world, and to the fact that the man power of civilization will be short and crippled, food will be less abundant and much higher in price than it is now.

Comparatively few housewives, up to the present time, have gone into the. fields to help in the production and harvesting of food supplies, yet the day is not distant when the American housewife will manage a hoe quite as easily as she handles her broom and duster now. By thus entering the ranks of producers, she will gain in health and happiness as well as materially.

The most practical way to conserve foods is to can or dry them for future use when the harvests are abundant and foodstuffs are low in price. To encourage housewives to do more canning, preserving, and drying, I have prepared this book, dealing with the problems of home canning as they developed at Mrs. Hemenway's Canning Kitchen for War Relief, in Boston. The conditions there, under which 8,000 jars were safely sealed for winter use, without loss, were the same as those found in the average household. Five years' experience canning my own garden surplus taught me many practical points which have been incorporated here, with the hope of aiding other housekeepers in their canning.