Even for a historical text (The Economical Housekeeper was published in 1845) there is some seriously crackpot health stuff in this book.  For example, its injunction against eating bread fresh out of the oven.  We are told that this is safe for the young and healthy, but that older individuals must wait until the bread has finished off-gassing, lest they risk "doing harm to the digestive organs."  

The process of aging is called "ripening," and the book asserts that bread is up to five times more nutritious when it has properly ripened, compared to when it is fresh from the oven.  Not only is ripe bread healthier, we are informed, but it also "imparts a much greater degree of cheerfulness."

The instructions in The Economical Housekeeper are lacking in the extreme.  For example, it assumes that you know how to make bread, and simply gives you a list of the ingredients to use.  In many cases it doesn't even give you a measurement, as with the Brown Bread when you are instructed to "put in your rye, add two gills of lively yeast, and mix with water as stiff as you can knead it."  

How much rye are you supposed to use?  The recipe doesn't say.  I suppose the answer is, "The amount you would use to make bread."

Not to mention recipe 62, "Wafers," which simply says:

One pound of flour, quarter of a pound of butter, two eggs beat, one glass of quince preserve juice, and a nutmeg.

In fact I have to wonder about her sanity, as in her section on coffee. To make coffee, put ground coffee and a small piece of fish skin into boiling water.  She also asserts that roasted, ground peas are "an excellent substitute for coffee."  I can only assume that she had never actually had any coffee.

Not to mention the medical quackery at the end, which may well have been considered sound advice at the time.  I'm amazed that humanity ever survived, with advice like "use a mustard paste on the pit of the stomach for a serious head injury."  (Although I did like her recipe for "Elixir asthmatic" which is equal parts opium, anise, camphor, licorice, and alcohol.)

And then there are recipes which call for oddball ingredients like "saleratus" (baking soda) or "sour milk," or the Griddle Cakes recipe which exhorts you to "cut the cakes with the cover of your dredging-box."  I never was able to find out what a dredging-box was in this context - all of my searching turned up only the "gold panning" kind of dredging box.

One thing these recipe books demonstrate is the relative paucity of flavors available back in pioneer times.  Witness all of the cake and cookie recipes which are simply sugar, butter, flour, and eggs.  No vanilla extract, no spices of any kind were used in most of them.  If you were lucky, or it was a special occasion, you got raisins.

When the pioneer cooks did use flavor, it was in very strange ways.  As with "Carraway Cake" which calls for rosewater and ground caraway seeds.  I can't even begin to imagine what that might taste like.  Bad, I'm thinking.  Do let me know if you try it!