Louise Day (Crane) Ely (1875-1943)

[CULINARY MANUSCRIPT] Notes on Cooking; What to have for Breakfast, Lunch or Dinner - Cooking class of 1893

New York: 1892 - 1893. Louise Day Crane's manuscripts invite the reader into a moment when cooking was becoming a modern science as well as a domestic art. Louise grew up in an upper-middle-class family in New Jersey. Although her exact schooling is unknown, Louise was only seventeen when she began traveling to New York City for coursework in what was then called Domestic Science. This new field - soon to be known as Home Economics - sought to apply rational scientific thought to household management, food preparation, and nutrition. It was part of a larger cultural effort to bring academic respectability to women's traditional domestic roles at a time of rapid industrial and social change.

Notes on Cooking, Louise Day Crane, 1892
This manuscript begins with a comparative study titled Cost of Fuels, detailing expenses associated with the Atkinson Cooker, the Gasoline Stove, and the Coal Stove - all cutting-edge technologies of household efficiency. Subsequent pages include both recipes and practical kitchen lists, such as "Staple Articles to Keep in the Pantry." A separate sheet records the "Average Prices of Eatables." Also present are approximately twenty additional pages of handwritten recipes, two pages of clippings with recipes and household remedies pasted onto lined paper (annotated by Louise), one page from Housekeeper's Weekly with recipes and essays, and two small decorative notepads.

What to Have for Breakfast, Lunch or Dinner - Cooking Class of 1893. 9 University Place, New York 1893
Opening with quotations from Nathaniel Hawthorne and John Ruskin, the text outlines four principles of food science. Louise cites Professor Wilbur Olin Atwater (1844-1907) of Wesleyan University, a pioneering figure in early nutrition and home economics: "For an average person, the food he eats should have equal quantities of albuminoids and fats, and three and half times as much carbohydrates."
The lessons that follow mix theory with practice: eight breakfast menus, eight lunch menus, and five dinners, each paired with recipes that mirror both the sensibilities and scientific ambitions of the time. The class or seminar Louise attended was in the New York University neighborhood - it may have been connected or taught by someone from this institution or one of its neighboring institutions.

Louise married educator Charles Russell Ely in 1897 and later raised four college-educated daughters in Washington, D.C., linking these student notebooks to a family story of women's higher education. Together, the manuscripts document a key shift in American domestic life: the moment when young women like Crane began to approach cooking , budgeting, and housekeeping as subjects worthy of study and calculation. Lined paper with ribbon. Item #4923

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