Modern cookery, in all its branches; reduced to a system of easy practice / [Eliza Acton].

  • Acton, Eliza, 1799-1859
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Modern cookery, in all its branches; reduced to a system of easy practice / [Eliza Acton]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    PKEFACE. The proper and wholesome preparation of our daily food, though it may hold in the estimation of the world hut a very humble place among the useful arts of life, can scarcely be considered an altogether unimportant one, involving so entirely, as it does, both health and comfort. England is, beyond most other countries, rich in the varied and abundant produce of its soil, or of its commerce^ which in turn supply to it all that the necessities or the luxury of its people can demand; yet, until within very recent years, its cookery has remained far inferior to that of nations much less advanced in civilization; and foreigners have been called in to furnish to the tables of our aristocracy, and of the wealthier orders of the community, those refinements of the art which Avere not to be obtained from native talent. Our improvement was for a long time opposed by our own strong and stubborn prejudices against innovation m general, and against the innovations of strangers in particular; but these, of late, have fast given way before the more rational and liberal spirit of the times: happily for ourselves, we have ceased to be too bigoted, or too proud to profit by the superior information and experience of others upon any subject of utility. The pre- sent age is one of rapid and universally progressing knowledge;