Release date is 2026-05-16

Charlene Taylor, A Marshall, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

Grocers' manual by Anonymous is a practical trade handbook written in the late 19th century. It collects recipes, formulas, and step‑by‑step instructions for making and packaging grocery sundries and household preparations—both in their pure forms and as cost‑cutting imitations. The likely topic is small‑scale manufacture for grocers, covering baking powders, flavoring extracts, essences, condiments, candies, polishes, inks, soaps, and related goods.

The book outlines how to compound baking powders (alum, phosphate, cream of tartar), select fillers, use sifters and mixers, and blend self‑raising flours. It surveys starches and dextrine; teaches extract making (lemon, vanilla, almond, rose), vanillin shortcuts, and high‑strength artificial fruit flavors via compound ethers; and gives clear directions for filtering, packing, and labeling. It adds recipes for hair oils, laundry blueing, and multiple inks; seed and gravel mixes for birds; notes on desiccated cocoanut and household chemicals; candy techniques with precise boiling stages; artificial honey and chewing gum; catsup, curry, and both genuine and imitation Worcestershire. Practical sections cover sweetening rancid butter and coloring it, polishes and blackings, waxed paper, hektograph pads and inks, insect powders and fly papers, fruit canning methods and timings, cements and soaps, mustards and pickles, vinegar making, spice selection and mill care, soda syrups and foam, simple toilet and medicinal preparations, jellies and marmalades, dry hop yeast, salad dressings, chocolate (including adulteration), and whiting. Throughout, it stresses exact measures, economical substitutions, and straightforward, shop‑ready processes. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: Chicago: The Grocers' Manual Publishing Co., 1888