COMMON OR GARDEN • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Common or garden

... I am a good cook—though limited. I profess only to cook the things I care to cook well. Hence I have set my hand to this, a real cook's book. Most cook books are written by folk who cook by hearsay—it is the fewest number of real cooks who can write so as not to bewilder the common or garden variety of mind. The bulk of what follows has an old-time Southern foundation, with such frillings as experience approves. To it there will be added somewhat of Creole cookery, learned and proved here in New York town by grace of Milly, the ...

— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams