Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine

loss is to be borne with. The Doctor would have pitched his discourse in too high a key. Among the gastronomical enlargements of our literature in the latter half of the last century, one of the best books in point of classification and range is that by B. Clermont, of which the third edition made its appearance in 1776, the first having been anonymous. Clermont states that he had been clerk of the kitchen in some of the first families of the kingdom, and lately to the Earl of Abingdon. 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 informs his readers on the title-page, and repeats in the preface, that a material part of the work consists of a translation of "Les Soupers de la Cour," and he proceeds to say, that he does not pretend to make any further apology for the title of _supper_, than that the French were, in general, more elegant in their suppers than their dinners. In other words, the late dinner was still called supper. The writer had procured the French treatise from Paris for his own use, and had found it of much service to him in his capacity as clerk of the kitchen, and he had consequently translated it, under the persuasion that it would prove an assistance to gentlemen, ladies, and others interested in such matters. He specifies three antecedent publications in France, of which his pages might be considered the essence, viz., "La Cuisine Royale," "Le Maître d'Hôtel 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