And Notes on the London Cookery and Food Exhibition of 1885.

By Jessup Whitehead.

The thousands of intelligent and progressive workers who are now using Whitehead's Hotel Books are reminded of a promise written some years ago in the American Pastry Cook, at No. 221, to give at a subsequent time certain illustrated instructions in cake ornamentation, and also some further details of the method of preparing stands and socles for meat dishes named at No. 802j. Under the styles of table service at present prevailing, there is not much demand for work of that kind, however beautiful it may be; still, whenever the holiday season approaches, with its banquets and decorated tables, some letters always come with reminders that those promises remain unredeemed. The completion of a new volume in the series now furnishes the desired opportunity.

Had these lines been written a few months earlier, it would probably have been with the impression that a revival of what is called artistic cookery, which is really only ornamental cookery, was taking place; the rather unsatisfactory result of the recent cookery and food exhibition at the Royal Aquarium, London, has a tendency to dispel that idea, however, and seems to show that there is but little recompense to be expected for any efforts in that line, the times being too thorougly practical in their tendency to allow much demand for such fragile and transitory work as the cooks can put upon their cold dishes. A resort hotel in the United States may go through a season's business, entertain ten thousand guests, and pay a chef the highest salary, and yet never require a single ornamental dish beyond a turkey in jelly to be sliced before served, or some other such simple dish. Still, as

"Beauty Is Its Own Excuse For Being," we must pursue the ornamental branch as a labor of love, because we take pleasure in showing such work, as the cooks of the largest cities yearly make displays of pieces that cost them nights and days of patient toil, simply keeping up the fashions of other times for their own pride and gratification. Numbers of the British aristocracy patronize and encourage the ornamental work that perpetuates old customs, such as boar's head banquets, and the Englishman who eats five meals a day will have the buffet or sideboard, where the early lunch or late cold supper is displayed, decorated in his chef's best style, if he can afford it, for there it does not interfere with the newer floral fashions which rule the dinner table. At some American hotels, where a specialty is made of serving banquets to order, this ornamental work frequently comes in place, and on many occasions, such as holidays and anniversaries, the cook can bring in his little surprises for the benefit of his own reputation, if for nothing else.