Kettner's book of the table : a manual of cookery : practical, theoretical, historical.

  • Dallas, E. S. (Eneas Sweetland), 1828-1879.
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Kettner's book of the table : a manual of cookery : practical, theoretical, historical. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    INTRODUCTION HOEVER writes a. new book on cookery has to begin with an apology—there are so many, and most of them so bad. All contain good ideas, original or borrowed ; but most of them are chaotic and overlaid with rubbish,—the wildest con- fusion of receipts, distinctions without differences, and endless repetitions,—the result of stupidity, of vanity, and of slavish deference to authority. A trifling variation is given to a well-known dish ; a new name is bestowed upon it to flatter somebody’s vanity; and then follows another and another receipt to choke up the cookery books and to bewilder their readers. People run after novelties which are not novelties at all, and in the turmoil of details lose smht of the central idea which ought to govern the composition. Much as the folly of new names and the slavishness of imitation may have to do in producing such intolerable confusion, the worst part of it unhappily is due to sheer ignorance and stupidity, as a few examples will show. In the first place, we find a multitude of receipts where one is enough. There is a well-known soup which appears m cookery books under nine or ten different names— Hrunoise, Jardiniere, Printanier, Chiffonnade, Macedoine, ulienne, Faubonne, Paysanne, Flamande, Mitonnage ^ route au Pot. The same book may not use all these /yjxamcs, but it is puzzling to find one book using one name