nafter described in
the chapter of Sauces. With the help of this "MAGAZINE OF TASTE," every
one in company may flavour their soup and sauce, and adjust the
vibrations of their palate, exactly to their own fancy; but if the cook
give a decidedly predominant and _piquante gout_ to a dish, to tickle
the tongues of two or three visiters, whose taste she knows, she may
thereby make the dinner disgusting to all the other guests.

Never undertake more work than you are quite certain you can do well. If
you are ordered to prepare a larger dinner than you think you can send
up with ease and neatness, or to dress any dish that you are not
acquainted with, rather than run any risk in spoiling any thing (by one
fault you may perhaps lose all your credit), request your employers to
let you have some help. They may acquit you for pleading guilty of
inability; but if you make an attempt, and fail, will vote it a capital
offence.

If your mistress professes to understand cookery, your best way will be
to follow her directions. If you wish to please her, let her have the
praise of all that is right, and cheerfully bear the blame of any thing
that is wrong; only advise that all NEW DISHES may be first tried when
the family dine alone. When there is company, never attempt to dress any
thing which you have not ascertained that you can do perfectly well.

Do not trust any part of your work to others without carefully
overlooking them: whatever faults they commit, you will be censured for.
If you have forgotten any article which is indispensable for the day's
dinner, request your employers to send one of the other servants for it.
The cook must never quit her post till her work is entirely finished.

It requires the utmost skill and contrivance to have all things done as
they should be, and all done together, at that critical moment when the
dinner-bell sounds "to the banquet."

"A feast must be without a fault;
And if 't is not all right, 't is naught."

But

"Good nature will some failings overlook,
Forgive mischance, not errors of the cook;
As, if no salt is thrown about the dish,
Or nice crisp'd parsley scatter'd on the fish,
Shall we in passion from our dinner fly,
And hopes of pardon to the cook deny,
For things which Mrs. GLASSE herself might oversee,
And all mankind commit as well as she?"

Vide KING'S _Art of Cookery_.

Such is the endless variety of culinary preparations, tha