Enlarged And Revised.

During the last few years several large editions of this book have been called for, and much new matter has been added to three or four of them.

The last edition has, however, been exhausted, and the work is out of print. I propose in this, my final edition, to bring the subject up to the present date, and to utter my last words respecting it. For scientific research, never ceasing to progress, has naturally added something to our knowledge of the digestive processes, during the last few years, as well as of the value to man of certain food-principles from which his body derives nutrition.

The art of cooking also has, like other arts, been sedulously cultivated by a few, leading to improvements in appliances and in the methods to be adopted for the preparation of a wholesome and agreeable diet. Moreover, the selection of food and the preparation of it for the table are far more widely understood and appreciated now than they were when the little volume first appeared more than twenty years ago.

In the present and enlarged edition I have attempted to classify the various processes employed in cookery and its staple products in a more complete and natural order than heretofore, and to explain more fully the principles on which they are employed, the objects aimed at, and the rationale of each procedure.

The subject of "slow cookery" is one which I have long practically studied with much interest, and I have recorded the result of various experiments. I am satisfied that in cooking food derived from the animal kingdom the longer application of low temperatures will render it more easily digestible and nutritious, as well as more agreeable than the old methods. By these latter I mean the long-established custom of cooking "joints" by the highest temperature obtainable through boiling water, or by radiation from a fire in the course of two or three hours, viz. the familiar processes of "boiling" and "roasting" respectively. This subject is treated more fully here than in any previous edition.

I venture to hope that the numerous elementary observations and practical hints relating to the very wide subject of Food and Feeding which have thus been brought together may prove useful, and tend to promote a still wider appreciation of one of the most important and interesting branches of inquiry demanded by the necessities of life and social intercourse.

35, Wimpole Street, July, 1901.