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01. Introduction - Most of us like to dine on "fancy vittles," but few have time to prepare them. By taking wise advantage of processed foods now available, and by using a little ingenuity in preparing non-processed foods, such "vittles" are within reach of almost anyone's time budget. With few exceptions, each main dish in this book can be prepared and cooked within an hour, most of them in less. A few suggestions requiring a longer time are included to help use up leftovers or for use on Sundays and holidays when time does not press.

02. Hors D'oeuvre - Strictly speaking, of course, the recipes in this section are not hors d'oeuvre. Those, like an antipasto, are a collection of bits of various foods such as: sardines, anchovies, cooked celery, pickled beets, dressed eggs, thin slices of ham, bologna, and so forth. An antipasto is usually arranged in the kitchen and served on a plate to the diner; hors d'oeuvre are brought to the table in a little cart and selected by the diner to suit his fancy.

03. Soup - So many good soups—tinned, frozen, dehydrated—are on the market that it would seem idle to have a section on that subject in a book designed to assist in the rapid preparation of memorable menus. This is all the more true, if anything can be said to be all the "more true," because most good soups require a very long time to prepare.

04. Eggs - Consider the egg. Not only is it a universal food, rich in protein arid poor in calories, but without an egg Columbus might not have discovered America. Without eggs what would we do for old saws? We would have nothing to venture all of which in one basket; nothing to break without which we could not make an omelette; nothing with which to urge others on to questionable actions; nothing to show the impossibility of unscrambling, nothing indeed to scramble; and finally nothing not to teach your grandmother how to suck.

05. Cheese - What have cheese, mushrooms, and pasta in common which brings them together in the same section of a book on cookery? At first glance, not too much; at second glance, a few things—cheese, mushrooms, and spaghetti, along with other items—combine to make several good recipes, as for example, Chicken Tetrazzini. As a matter of fact, all pasta dishes are the better for cheese, and a great many pasta dishes call for mushrooms.

06. Seafood - It is always well to commence any thesis by defining one's terms. This section deals with food which comes out of the sea. Fish come out of the sea. Logically, therefore, recipes for cooking fish belong here, and here they are. Seafood, however, has another meaning, at least in the eastern part of the United States. It is a term which embraces all food that comes out of the sea, except fish. It includes: oysters, clams, lobsters, crayfish, scallops, shrimp, prawns, crabs, octopodes, and all other varieties of non-fish, except mammals which live in water.

07. Fowl - Fowl presents something of a problem in a book designed for the hurried cook. Except for chicken, most poultry is at its best when roasted at a low, even heat or turned on a spit under the same conditions. Either method is slow. Goose, turkey, domestic duck, peacock, swan, guinea, and the dodo, if you can find one, are large and need from two to six hours of cooking. Even to broil a duck or roast a pheasant is too time consuming for this book. In addition, most poultry requires some form of dressing, stuffing, or filling—depending on one's regional background—whose preparation will occupy you for some time before you can even start to cook the bird.

08. Meat - It is easier to make bricks without straw than to feed a hungry man without meat" is an old and bitter Afghan adage, coined probably by the first trader to come down from the Hindu Kush and find himself among the vegetarians of India. If that saying brings to mind great, clove-studded hams, slabs of tender beef, whole legs of mutton, or roasts of veal, consult another cookbook; all take too long for this one. Here are recipes, 'tis true, for beef, lamb, ham, and veal, but all save one are intended for quick cookery.

09. Salads - Salads are myriad in type and infinite in variety. Listed here are a few—a generous baker's dozen, or fourteen—suitable for following main courses at luncheon, dinner, and supper. Such things as chef's salad, crab, chicken, lobster, or tuna fish salad are or should be meals in themselves and have no place in a section dealing with an entirely different type. I have, therefore, omitted them. For a similar reason I have omitted varieties of fruit salad which are really desserts.

10. Sauces - This section deals with the sauces and dressings called for in other parts of the book. It contains some specific recipes for both and some general observations about preparing sauces. The putting together of dressings requires no general comment. The individual recipes which precede this section usually include directions for making the appropriate sauce or dressing, but when either is needed in several different dishes, the recipe for it will be found here.

11. Desserts - The quickest of all desserts, and one of the best after a hearty meal, is compounded of a bowl of fresh fruit, sharp knives, and finger bowls. Next comes store-boughten ice cream with some type of sauce or dressing. This in turn is followed by fresh fruit in combination, and/or dressed in one way or another. After these three, the field is wide open, ranging from sweet omelettes to fancy cakes and tarts made of esoteric doughs and decorated with figures in sugar of skiers slaloming down the Tyrolean Alps.

12. Drinks - This section could be called “Drinking on an Empty Stomach,” as all but one of the drinks in it are intended for serving on Sunday or holiday mornings before brunch. Brunches, of course, usually begin between eleven in the morning and one in the afternoon, so that about half the time your guests will arrive before the sun has crossed the yardarm. If you are superstitious about that sort of thing, it is easy enough to invite your guests to appear precisely at high noon.

13. Appendices - As its title suggests, this Appendix is intended to help you stock your larder with the ingredients called for in the recipes which precede it, and to store in your cellar the spirits and wines needed for cooking and drinking according to the same recipes and accompanying menus. Presumably you will always have such staples as flour, eggs, butter, lemons, and granulated sugar.

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