The True Meaning of Grace and Charm

If you ever find yourself in an upstate New York used bookstore hunting down old recipes, you'll be forgiven for missing this book. That frou frou flower on the jacket does not exactly  telegraph food.

I'm so glad I gave it a chance. On the first page we discover that this purported etiquette book, published in 1946,  is in fact a product of the Westmorland Sterling Division of the Aluminum Cooking Utensil Co., of New Kensington, Pennsylvania. Its author: Nancy Prentiss, Director, Westmorland Sterling Advisory Service.

Here she is:

Her noble mission:

And now for the food. (We'll talk silverware tomorrow.) Here are a few casual menu ideas for occasions large and small:

But the "Round the World Menus" were what most fascinated me. Would the (suburban, white) readers of this manual know what a preserved egg was? Or where to buy birds nests. And where would they ever find the manioc to make farofa? Amazing!