Books

a review of

The Impoverished Students’ Book Of Cookery, Drinkery, & Housekeepery by Jay F. Rosenberg. New York: Doubleday. $1.25.

Not so different from Chaucer’s scholar, students today are usually poor and this book is meant to ease the pains and help the limited budget. An impoverished student is defined as an individual who loves to eat, bates to cook, and cannot really afford to do either.

The book offers a lot of common sense suggestions stuck among humorous remarks and pictures. Suggestions are included on how to set up a kitchen and housekeeping, how to keep a budget, and how to cook.

Instructions for making beer are included which give a list of all equipment and ingredients needed plus instructions for brewing and bottling.

Another useful section gives instructions on acquiring a Spice Rack. The theory being that “98% of all good cooking being grounded in proper seasonings anyway, since you cannot afford to buy top-quality expensive food, buy inexpensive food and put top-quality seasoning on it. No one will ever know the difference.”

In “A Brief Essay on Horse-meat” the author undertakes to explore the principles underlying the commonly-found aversion toward eating the flesh of the horse. The author concludes that not only is horse-meat cheap, it tastes similar to beef with most people being unable to tell the difference and any recipe that specifies beef can be made with horse-meat.

Cooking instructions include casseroles, rice (rice is cheap), chicken, beef, stew, fish, garlic bread, sandwiches and others.

The book is very useful but as the author notes the really impoverished student can’t afford to buy a cookbook.