HOUSEHOLD WORDS: Women Write from and for the Kitchen

from Choice Recipes
By Miss Maria Parloa and Miss Elizabeth K. Burr
Specially Prepared for Walter Baker & Company
Dorchester, Mass.: The Company, c1901

The introduction of new foods follows a familiar pattern: first as a medicinal and then as a luxury item. The last few pages of this little pamphlet are devoted to describing the medicinal value of chocolate and cocoa for women and children, as well as for infirm, nervous, and sick people. Just as the still-room books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries reflect the interest of Europeans in the exotic products of the new world and their original uses as medicinals, the same logic was used by industry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to advertise their new--high standard and easy-to-use--chocolate products.