“If you search the world round, each profession, you’ll find,
Hath some snug little secrets, which the Mystery[30-*] they call.”
My receipts are the results of experiments carefully made, and accurately and circumstantially related;
The TIME requisite for dressing being stated;
The QUANTITIES of the various articles contained in each composition being carefully set down in NUMBER, WEIGHT, and MEASURE.
The WEIGHTS are avoirdupois; the MEASURE, Lyne’s graduated glass, i. e. a wine-pint divided into sixteen ounces, and the ounce into eight drachms. By a wine-glass is to be understood two ounces liquid measure; by a large or table-spoonful, half an ounce; by a small or tea-spoonful, a drachm, or half a quarter of an ounce, i. e. nearly equal to two drachms avoirdupois.
At some glass warehouses, you may get measures divided into tea and table-spoons. No cook should be without one, who wishes to be regular in her business.
This precision has never before been attempted in cookery books, but I found it indispensable from the impossibility of guessing the quantities intended by such obscure expressions as have been usually employed for this purpose in former works:—
For instance: a bit of this—a handful of that—a pinch of t’other—do ’em over with an egg—and a sprinkle of salt—a dust of flour—a shake of pepper—a squeeze of lemon,—or a dash of vinegar, &c. are the constant phrases. Season it to your palate, (meaning the cook’s,) is another form of speech: now, if she has any, (it is very unlikely that it is in unison with that of her employers,) by continually sipping piquante relishes, it becomes blunted and insensible, and loses the faculty of appreciating delicate flavours, so that every thing is done at random.
These culinary technicals are so very differently understood by the learned who write them, and the unlearned who read them, and their “rule of thumb” is so extremely indefinite, that if the same dish be dressed by different persons, it will generally be so different, that nobody would imagine they had worked from the same directions, which will assist a person who has not served a regular apprenticeship in the kitchen, no more than reading “Robinson Crusoe” would enable a sailor to steer safely from England to India.[32-*]