This book is written primarily for the family to help solve the meat
problem and to augment the food supply. Producing and preserving meats
for family meals are sound practices for farm families and some city
folks as well-they make possible a wider variety of meats, which can be
of the best quality, at less cost. Meat is an essential part of the
American diet. It is also an ex- pensive food. With the costs high, many
persons cannot afford to buy the better cuts; others are being forced to
restrict the meat portion of the diet to a minimum, or to use
ineffectual substitutes. Commercially in the United States, meat means
the flesh of cattle, hogs, and sheep, except where used with a
qualifying word such as reindeer meat, crab meat, whale meat, and so on.
Meat in this book is used in a broader sense, although not quite so
general as to com- prise anything and everything eaten for nourishment
either by man or beast. To be sure, it includes the flesh of domestic
animals and large and small game animals as well; also poultry, domestic
fowl raised for their meat and eggs, and game birds, all wild upland
birds, shore birds, and waterfowl; and fish.