, that it is sufficient to
engross the entire attention of one person.

"If we take a review of the qualifications which are indispensable in
that highly estimable domestic, a GOOD COOK, we shall find that very few
deserve that name."[27-*]

"The majority of those who set up for professors of this art are of mean
ability, selfish, and pilfering every thing they can; others are
indolent and insolent. Those who really understand their business (which
are by far the smallest number), are too often either ridiculously
saucy, or insatiably thirsty; in a word, a good subject of this class is
a _rara avis_ indeed!"

"God sends meat,"--who sends cooks?[28-*] the proverb has long saved us
the trouble of guessing. Vide _Almanach des Gourmands_, p. 83.

Of what value then is not this book, which will render every person of
common sense a good cook in as little time as it can be read through
attentively!

If the masters and mistresses of families will sometimes condescend to
make an amusement of this art, they will escape numberless
disappointments, &c. which those who will not, must occasionally
inevitably suffer, to the detriment of both their health and their
fortune.

I did not presume to offer any observations of my own, till I had read
all that I could find written on the subject, and submitted (with no
small pains) to a patient and attentive consideration of every preceding
work, relating to culinary concerns, that I could meet with.

These books vary very little from each other; except in the preface,
they are

"Like in all else as one egg to another."

"_Ab uno, disce omnes_," cutting and pasting have been much oftener
employed than the pen and ink: any one who has occasion to refer to two
or three of them, will find the receipts almost always "_verbatim et
literatim_;" equally unintelligible to those who are ignorant, and
useless to those who are acquainted with the business of the kitchen.

I have perused not fewer than 250 of these volumes.

During the Herculean labour of my tedious progress through these books,
few of which afford the germ of a single idea, I have often wished that
the authors of them had been satisfied with giving us the results of
their own practice and experience, instead of idly perpetuating the
errors, prejudices, and plagiarisms of their predecessors; the strange,
and unaccountable, and uselessly extravagant farragoes and heterogeneous
compositions which fill their pages, are comb