How to Cook Husbands

How to Cook Husbands is a classic marriage guide by Elizabeth Strong Worthington.

"A great many husbands are spoiled by mismanagement. Some women go about it as if their husbands were bladders, and blow them up; others keep them constantly in hot water; others let them freeze, by their carelessness and indifference.

Some keep them in a stew, by irritating ways and words; others roast them; some keep them in pickle all their lives. Now it is not to be supposed that any husband will be good, managed in this way--turnips wouldn't; onions wouldn't; cabbage-heads wouldn't, and husbands won't; but they are really delicious when properly treated"


Elizabeth Strong Worthington (October 5, 1851 - October 2, 1916) was a popular American writer during the latter part of the 19th century. Her first books When Peggy Smiled: A Love Story and The Biddy Club, were published in 1888.

Her next works The Little Brown Dog and How to Cook Husbands (arguably her most popular work), came along in 1898, and her final book was The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives in 1900. She sometimes wrote under the pen name Griffith A. Nicholas.