Host and Guest

by A. V. Kirwan

LONDON:

BELL AND DALDY, YORK STREET,

COVENT GARDEN.

PREFACE.

There is no want of cookery books in the principal languages of Europe, and least of all in the English language, in which, even in our own generation, several hundreds have been compiled and published. This volume, however, is not a cookery book, nor what the French call a dispensaire. It is a household book on the subject of Dinners, Desserts, Wines, Liqueurs, and on foods in general; and is the result of reading, observation, and a great deal of experience in foreign countries. I have been myself, during a life now nearly prolonged to threescore years, a diner out of some magnitude, and, as far as my means allowed, a giver of dinners; and have often when younger and less experienced, felt the want, and have heard my friends express their sense of the want, of some work of the kind now first presented, so far as I am aware, in an English dress.

Born in a country house—a messuage producing, to use a legal phrase, within the curtilage, beef, mutton, fruits, and vegetables—I have ventured to speak of the choice and quality of these good things from an early and practical acquaintance with the subject. So much needs to be said on a matter on which all are eloquent, though few agreeable—I mean self. It is necessary to state that it is not from reading, but actual practical experience, that I have learned all about the farm, the garden, and the poultry-yard.

There are several works of a cognate character to this in Latin and French, and some in Italian and Spanish. But these are scarce, costly, old, and obsolete. Few are acquainted with the treatises of Nonnius, Taillevant, cook to Charles VII., Champier, physician to Francis I., Bélon, Patin, Charles Etienne, Lémery, La Varenne, Schookius, Le Grand, De Serres, and L’Etoile, some of them written in indifferent Latin, and others in old French. I have extracted from these works a good deal curious, and something valuable in the choice and preparation of foods. I have endeavoured to show how the traditions of cookery have occasionally survived codes and constitutions, and how these traditions have been, in turn, occasionally set aside and overturned by some new culinary fashion. The work presented to the reader is therefore, in certain parts, historical, anecdotical, gossipping, and somewhat discursive; but the main object of the author has been to induce well informed and sensible people in England to adopt all that is good in the excellent cookery, and agreeable and social life of our neighbours of France, without in any wise abandoning the best of our British customs, or the simplicity of our substantial food.

It is not for the author to say in how far he has succeeded. That he leaves to the judgment, and they are a great majority, of those who criticise in a fair and candid spirit. All, however, who affect to criticise are not candid; but it may be said of a critic who deliberately misrepresents a work, that he is unworthy of his vocation, and as heinously criminal as the man who in social or commercial life gives a false character of a servant, or a false warranty of goods or merchandise.