Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine

summer and winter, first and second courses, &c. "As for the receipts for medicines, salves, ointments, good in several diseases, wounds, hurts, bruises, aches, pains, &c., which amount to above two hundred, they are generally family receipts, that have never been made publick; excellent in their kind, and approved remedies, which have not been obtained by me without much difficulty; and of such efficacy in distempers, &c., to which they are appropriated, that they have cured when all other means have failed; and a few of them which I have communicated to a friend, have procured a very handsome livelihood. "They are very proper for those generous, charitable, and Christian gentlewomen that have a disposition to be serviceable to their poor country neighbours, labouring under any of the afflicted circumstances mentioned; who by making the medicines, and generously contributing as occasions offer, may help the poor in their afflictions, gain their good-will and wishes, entitle themselves to their blessings and prayers, and also have the pleasure of seeing the good they do in this world, and have good reason to hope for a reward (though not by way of merit) in the world to come. "As the whole of this collection has cost me much pains and a thirty years' diligent application, and I have had experience of their use and efficacy, I hope they will be as kindly accepted, as by me they are generously offered to the publick: and if they prove to the advantage of many, the end will be answered that is proposed by her that is ready to serve the publick in what she may." COOKERY BOOKS. PART II. SELECT EXTRACTS FROM AN EARLY RECEIPT-BOOK. The earliest school of English Cookery, which had such a marked Anglo-Norman complexion, has been familiarised to us by the publication of Warner's _Antiquitates Culinaricae_, 1791, and more recently by the appearance of the "Noble Book of Cookery" in Mrs. Napier's edition, not to mention other aids in the same way, which are accessible; and it seemed to be doing a better service, when it became a question of selecting