Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine

dishes; but it is not entirely clear whether these refer to the 38 dinner parties of importance, or to the 25,000 of inferior note, or to both. The feeling of dismay at the nineteenth edition of somebody must have been sincere, for he winds up his preface with an adjuration to his readers (whom, in the "Directions for Carving," he does not style Gentle, or Learned, or Worshipful, but HONOURABLE) not to place his labours on the same shelf with "Paradise Lost." Soyer had also perhaps certain misgivings touching too close an approximation to other _chefs_ besides Milton and Shakespeare, for he refers to the "profound ideas" of Locke, to which he was introduced, to his vast discomfort, "in a most superb library in the midst of a splendid baronial hall." But the library of the Reform Club probably contained all this heterogeneous learning. Does the "Gastronomic Regenerator," out of respect to the fastidious sentiments of its author, occupy a separate apartment in that institution with a separate curator? It seems only the other day to me, that Soyer took Gore Lodge, and seemed in a fair way to make his removal from the Reform Club a prosperous venture. But he lost his wife, and was unfortunate in other ways, and the end was very sad indeed. "Soyez tranquille," was the epitaph proposed at the time by some unsentimental wagforpoor Madame Soyer; it soon served for them both. But nearly concurrent with Soyer's book appeared one of humble pretensions, yet remarkable for its lucidity and precision, Eliza Acton's "Modern Cookery in all its Branches reduced to an easy practice," 16mo, 1845. I have heard this little volume highly commended by competent judges as exactly what it professes to be; and the quantities in the receipts are particularly reliable. The first essay to bring into favourable notice the produce of Colonial cattle was, so far as I can collect, a volume published in 1872, and called "Receipts for Cooking Australian Meat, with Directions for preparing Sauces suitable for the same." This still remains a vexed question; but the consumption of the