Apicius redivivus; or The cook's oracle: wherein especially the art of composing soups, sauces, and flavouring essences is made so clear and easy, by the quantity of each article being accurately stated by weight and measure, that every one may soon learn to dress a dinner, as well as the most experienced cook; being six hundred receipts, the result of actual experiments instituted in the kitchen of a physician, for the purpose of composing a culinary code for the rational epicure ... [etc.].

  • Kitchiner, William, 1775?-1827.
Date:
1817
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Apicius redivivus; or The cook's oracle: wherein especially the art of composing soups, sauces, and flavouring essences is made so clear and easy, by the quantity of each article being accurately stated by weight and measure, that every one may soon learn to dress a dinner, as well as the most experienced cook; being six hundred receipts, the result of actual experiments instituted in the kitchen of a physician, for the purpose of composing a culinary code for the rational epicure ... [etc.]. 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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    This carelessness in the cook is the more surprising; as the confectioner is regularly attentive, in the descrip, lion of his preparations, to give the exact quantities, though his business, compared to cookery, is as unim- portant as the ornamental is inferior to the useful: yet the maker of blanchmange, custards, and trifles, and the endless and useless collection of pretty play-things for the palate, is scrupulously exact, even to a grain, in his ingredients, whilst the cooks affect to be most unin- telligibly indefinite, although they are intrusted with the administration of our food, upon the proper preparation of which all our powers of both body and mind depend ; the energy being invariably in the ratio of the perform- ance of the restorative process. Unless the stomach be in good humour, every part of the machinery of life will vibrate with languor. We may compare the human frame to a watch, of which the heart is the main spring, the stomach the re- gulator, and what we put into it the key by which the machine is set agoing; according to the quantity, quality, and proper digestion of what we eat and drink, will be the pace of the pulse, and the action of the system in general: and when a due proportion is preserved between the quantum of exercise and that of excitement, all goes well: when disordered, the same expedients are employed for its readjustment as are used by the watch maker; the machine requires to be carefully cleaned, and then judiciously oiled.