Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine

asy, which far Exceeds Every Thing of the Kind Ever yet Published . . . By a Lady. London: Printed for the Author

th large lardoons they would not know what I meant; but when I say they must lard with little pieces of Bacon, they know what I mean.” I have been greatly charmed with Hannah Glasse’s “Art of Cookery,” 1747, and with her “Complete Confectioner” likewise in a modified degree. The latter was partly derived, she tells you, from the manuscript of “a v

The title is sufficiently descriptive: “E. Kidder’s Receipts of Pastry and Cookery, for the use of his Scholars, who teaches at his School in Queen Street, near St. Thomas Apostle’s, [Footnote: In another edition his school is in St. Martin’s Le Grand] on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, in the afternoo

her book, and it is this — that in Dr. Johnson’s day, and possibly in her own lifetime, a story was current that the book was really written by Dr. Hill the physician. That gentleman’s claim to the authorship has not, of course,

it should be a book upon philosophical principles. Pharmacy is now made much more simple. Cookery may be so too. A prescription, which is now compounded of five ingredients, had formerly fifty in it. So in Cookery. If the nature of the ingredients is well kno

which is the best, was written by

into, saltpetre and salt-prunella are spoken of as different substances, whereas salt-prunella is only saltpetre burnt on charcoal; and Hill could not be ignorant of this. However, as the greatest

ould be Hercules with

spin very well; but they canno

ond the stage of proposal; he did not, so far as we know, ever draw out a title-page, as Coleridge was fond of

bingdon. But elsewhere we find that he had lived very recently in the establishment of the Earl of Ashburnham, for he observes in the preface: “I beg the candour of the Public will excuse the incorrectness of the Language and Diction. My situation in life as an actual servant to the Earl of Ashburnham at the time of the first publication of this Book will I trust plead my Apology.” He inform

Royale,” “Le Ma?tre d’H?tel Cuisinier,” and “Les Dons de Comus”; and he expresses to some of his contemporaries, who had helped him in his researches, his obligations in the following terms:—“As every country produces many Articles peculiar to itself, and considering the Difference of Climates, which either forward or retard them, I would not rely on my own Knowledge, in regard to such Articles; I applied therefore to three Trad

upply any further particulars at present. Mrs. Rundell’s cookery book, according to the preface, was originally intended for the private instruction of the daughters of the authoress in their married homes, and specially prepared with an eye to housekeepers of moderate incomes. Mrs. Rundell did not write for professed cooks, or with any idea of emolument; and she declared that had such a work exist

e probable alternative — failure. The adage, “God sends meat, and the devil sends cooks,” must surely be of native parentage, for of no country is it so true as of our own. Perhaps, had it not been for the influx among us of French and Italian experts, commencing with our Anglo-Gallic relations under the Plantagenets, and the palmy days of the monastic orders, culinary science would not have arrived at the height of development which it has attained in the face of great obstacles. Perchance we should not have progressed much beyond the pancake and oatmeal period. But foreign chefs limit their efforts to those who can afford to pay them for their services. The middle classes do not fall within the pale of their beneficence. The poor know them not. So it happens that even as I write, the greater part of the community not only cannot afford p

y stores in 1821 with his “Cook’s Oracle,” which was v

as invariably attended each following edition” as a proof of the excellence of the work. I merely mention this, because in Kitchener’s own pr

owless collection of shreds and patches, of cuttings and pastings — but a bona-fide register of practical facts — accumulated by a perseverance, not to be subdued or evaporated by the igniferous Terrors of a Roasting Fire in the Dog-days:— in defiance of the odo

breath, and could discover how the learned Kitchener set down the receipts which he had previously devoured. But

the most Christian King Louis XVI. and the Right Honourable the Earl of Sefton, Louis Eustache Ude. Ude was steward to the United Service Club, when he printed his “French Cook” in 1822. A very satisfactory and amusing account of this volume occurs

er employer, the Duke of York, died. There is a story that, on hearing of the Duke’s ill

title of “The Cook and Housewife’s Manual,” veiling her authorship under the pseudonym of Mistress Margar

tory and origin, which, like most inventions of the kind, is scarcely consistent with the

is ennui and hypochondria by studying Apician mysteries; and it concludes with the syllabus of a series of thirteen lectures on cookery, which were to be delivered by the said Esquire. One

e. The title-page gives a London publisher as well as an Anglo-Athenian one, and Mrs. Johns

this revelation exercised such a terrifying effect he proceeds to explain. It was the incongruity of a cookery book in the temple of the Muses. But nevertheless, such is the frailty of our nature, that he gradually, on regaining his composure, and at such leisure intervals as he could command, prepared the “Gastronomic Regenerator,” in which he eschewed all superfluous ornaments of diction, and studied a simplicity of style germane to the subject; perchance he had looked into Kitchener’s Preface. He lets us know that he had made collections of the same kind at an earlier period of his career, but had destroyed them, partly owing to his arduous duties at the Reform Club, and partly to the depressing influence of the nineteenth edition of somebody else’s cookery book —

he was introduced, to his vast discomfort, “in a most superb library in the midst of a splendid baronial hall.” But the library of the Reform Club probably contained all this heterog

Club a prosperous venture. But he lost his wife, and was unfortunate in other ways, and the end was very sad indeed. “Soyez

a Acton’s “Modern Cookery in all its Branches reduced to an easy practice,” 16mo, 1845. I have heard this little volume highly

ceipts for Cooking Australian Meat, with Directions for preparing Sauces suitable for the same.” This still remains a vexed question; but the consumpti