Barbara Swell

Log Cabin Cooking by Barbara Swell is a major disappointment. First, some of the measurements in her list of equivalents are clearly wrong; second, she uses ingredients that were not available during the time period in question; third, some of the photos are recent; and fourth, worst of all, she does not attach sources to the recipes (although she has an alphabetized list of credits in the back of the book). In my opinion, the ONLY way to do such books is to have an image of the original recipe, plus translation or other such clarification of the ORIGINAL recipe, if necessary; PLUS the redacted recipe. These should be on facing pages, if possible, so the modern recipe and the original recipe can be easily compared, and the reader can draw his or her own conclusions as to how faithful the new version is to the original. Also nice: explanations of WHY substitutions were made and prose re now-unfamiliar ingredients. Obviously, I should have looked more carefully at this book ere I bought it, but I guess I figured at 50 cents, it was more important to move on to other offerings.… (more)