The following Receipts are not a mere marrow-less collection of shreds, and patches, and cuttings, and pastings, from obsolete works, but a bona fide register of practical facts, accumulated by a perseverance not to be subdued or evaporated by the igniferous terrors of a roasting tire in the dog-days, or a vote of censure from the Cooks' Company, for thus daring to promulgate the profound mysteries of the (till now, in the following pages, explained and elucidated to the humblest capacity,) occult art of cookery. The Receipts have been written down by the fire-side, "with a spit in one hand, and a pen in the other," in defiance of the combined odoriferous and califacient repellents of roasting and boiling, frying and broiling; the author submitting to a labour no preceding cookery-book-maker, perhaps, ever attempted to eucounter; and having not only dressed, but eaten each Receipt before he set it down in his book. As they have all been received with a hearty welcome by a sufficiently well educated palate, and a rather fastidious stomach; perhaps this certificate of the eatability of the respective preparations will partly apologize for the book containing a smaller number of them than some preceding writers on this gratifying subject have transcribed for the profit and amusement of "every man's master," the STOMACH*.

1 have endeavoured to describe each preparation in so plain and circumstantial a manner as I hope will be easily understood, even by the amateur who is wholly unacquainted with the practical part of culinary concerns. Old housekeepers may think I have been tediously minute on many points, which, to them, appear trifling, and former writers on this subject have deemed unworthy of attention. But these little delicate distinctions constitute all the difference between a common table and an elegant one, and are not trifles to the novice, who must learn them either from the communication of others, or blunder on till his own slowly-accumulating and dear-bought experience teaches him. A wish to save trouble and time to uninformed beginners, was my motive for publishing this book, and I could accomplish it only by supposing the reader, when he first opens my book, to be as ignorant of cookery as I was when I first thought of writing on the subject. By a careful attention to the directions herein given, the most ignorant will easily learn to prepare food', not only in an agreeable and wholesome, but in an elegant and economical manner.

* "The stomach is the grand organ of the human system, upon the state of which all the powers and feelings of the individual depend." - See Hunter's Culina, page 13.

The cardinal virtues of cookery, "cleanliness, FRUGALITY, NOURISHMENT, AND PALATEABLENESS," preside overeach preparation; for I have not presumed to insert a single composition without previously obtaining the "imprimatur" of an enlightened and most indefatigable "COMMITTEE OF TASTE," whose persevering and cordial co-operation I cannot too highly praise; and here most gratefully record the unremitting zeal they manifested during their arduous progress of proving the respective recipes, who were so truly philosophically and disinterestedly regardless of the wear and tear of teeth and stomach, that their labour appeared a pleasure to them. This laudable perseverance has enabled me to give the most inexperienced amateur this unerring guide how to excite as much pleasure as possible on the palate, with as little trouble as possible to the principal viscera.

Every attention has been paid in directing the proportions of the folk wing compositions, not merely to make them inviting to the appetite, but agreeable and useful to the stomach; nourishing without being inflammatory, and savoury without being surfeiting.

I have no new forms of luxury to communicate; no claims to the Roman Emperor's bounty for inventing a new pleasure; nor do I pretend to give any information to those grand masters and mistresses of the alimentary art, who are commonly called "profess cooks," whose greatest praise is in contriving dishes, not to allay the appetite, but to excite it, to gratify those who live upon sauces instead of food, and who see the sun rise with no other hope than that they shall fill their bellies before it sets. I have written for those who make nourishment the chief end of eating *, and do not "The term gourmand, or epicure, has been strangely perverted; it has been conceived synonimous with a gluttony like that of the great eater of Kent; or a fastidious appetite only to be excited by fantastic dainties, as the brains of peacocks or parrots, the tongues of thrushes and nightingales, or the teats of a lactiferous sow. In the liberal acceptation of the term epicure, and as I use it, it means only the person who relishes his food cooked according to scientific principles, so prepared that the palate is delighted, rendered of easy solution in the stomach, and ultimately contributing to health; exciting him, as an animal, to the vigorous enjoyment of those recreations and duties, physical and intellectual, which constitute the happiness and dignity of his nature." In this etydesire to provoke appetite beyond the power and necessities of nature; proceeding, however, on the purest Epicurean principles of indulging the palate as far as it can be done without injury or offence to the stomach. The pleasures of the table have always been highly appreciated and carefully cultivated in all countries and in all ages; and, in spite of the Stoics, every one will allow they are the first we enjoy, the last we leave, and those we taste the oftenest. A sound stomach may be said to be the mainspring of all our comfort; and there would be no difficulty in proving that this viscera influences (much more than people in general imagine) all our actions: the destiny of nations has often depended upon the more or less laborious digestion of a prime minister. The great philosopher Pythagoras, in his Golden Verses, shews himself to have been extremely nice in eating, and makes it one of his chief principles of morality to "abstain from beans." Our great English moralist, Dr. Johnson, (says Boswell,) was a man of very nice discernment in the science of cookery, and talked of good eating with uncommon satisfaction. " Some people," said he, "have a foolish way of not minding, or pretending not to mind what they eat; for my part, I mind mological illustration, I am indebted to my scientific friend, Apicius Coelius, junr., with whose erudite observations several of the pages of this work are enriched, as will be understood when the signature A. C. junr. is affixed. ray belly very studiously and very carefully, and I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind any thing else." Mr. B. adds, "I never knew a man who relished good eating more than he did: when at table, he was totally absorbed in the business of the moment: nor would he, unless in very high company, say one word, or even pay the least attention to what was said by others, till he had satisfied his appetite."