Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine

of friends, down to the middle of the last century. It was probably Charles, Duke of Bolton (1698-1722), who was at one time Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and who in the beginning of his ducal career, at all events, resided in St. James's Street, that possessed successively as head-cooks John Nott and John Middleton. To each of these artists we owe a volume of considerable pretensions, and the "Cook's and Confectioner's Dictionary," 1723, by the former, is positively a very entertaining and cyclopedic publication. Nott inscribes his book "To all Good Housewives," and declares that he placed an Introduction before it merely because fashion had made it as strange for a book to appear without one as for a man to be seen in church without a neckcloth or a lady without a hoop-petticoat. He congratulates himself and his readers on living in a land flowing with milk and honey, quotes the saw about God sending meat and somebody else sending cooks, and accounts for his omission of pigments by saying, like a gallant man, that his countrywomen little needed such things. Nott opens with _Some Divertisements in Cookery, us'd at Festival-Times, as Twelfth-Day, etc._, which are highly curious, and his dictionary itself presents the novelty of being arranged, lexicon-wise, alphabetically. He seems to have been a fairly-read and intelligent man, and cites, in the course of his work, many celebrated names and receipts. Thus we have:--To brew ale Sir Jonas Moore's way; to make Dr. Butler's purging ale; ale of health and strength, by the Viscount St. Albans; almond butter the Cambridge way; to dress a leg of mutton _à la Dauphine_; to dress mutton the Turkish way; to stew a pike the City way. Dr. Twin's, Dr. Blacksmith's, and Dr. Atkin's almond butter; an amber pudding, according to the Lord Conway's receipt; the Countess of Rutland's Banbury cake; to make Oxford cake; to make Portugal cakes; and so on. Nott embraces every branch of his subject, and furnishes us with bills of fare for every month of the year, terms and rules of carving, and the manner of setting