A wish to save time, trouble and money to inexperienced housekeepers and cooks, and to bring the enjoyments and indulgences of the opulent within reach of the middle ranks of society, were my motives for publishing this book. I could accomplish it only by supposing the reader (when he first opens it) to be as ignorant of cookery as I was, when I first thought of writing on the subject.
I have done my best to contribute to the comfort of my fellow-creatures: by a careful attention to the directions herein given, the most ignorant may easily learn to prepare food, not only in an agreeable and wholesome, but in an elegant and economical manner.
This task seems to have been left for me; and I have endeavoured to collect and communicate, in the clearest and most intelligible manner, the whole of the heretofore abstruse mysteries of the culinary art, which are herein, I hope, so plainly developed, that the most inexperienced student in the occult art of cookery, may work from my receipts with the utmost facility.
I was perfectly aware of the extreme difficulty of teaching those who are entirely unacquainted with the subject, and of explaining my ideas effectually, by mere receipts, to those who never shook hands with a stewpan.
In my anxiety to be readily understood, I have been under the necessity of occasionally repeating the same directions in different parts of the book; but I would rather be censured for repetition than for obscurity, and hope not to be accused of affectation, while my intention is perspicuity.
Our neighbours of France are so justly famous for their skill in the affairs of the kitchen, that the adage says, “As many Frenchmen as many cooks:” surrounded as they are by a profusion of the most delicious wines, and seducing liqueurs offering every temptation to render drunkenness delightful, yet a tippling Frenchman is a “rara avis.”
They know how so easily to keep life in sufficient repair by good eating, that they require little or no screwing up with liquid stimuli. This accounts for that “toujours gai,” and happy equilibrium of the animal spirits which they enjoy with more regularity than any people: their elastic stomachs, unimpaired by spirituous liquors, digest vigorously the food they sagaciously prepare and render easily assimilable, by cooking it sufficiently,—wisely contriving to get half the work of the stomach done by fire and water, till
“The tender morsels on the palate melt,
And all the force of cookery is felt.”