A new system of domestic cookery : formed upon principles of economy, and adapted to the use of private families / by a Lady (Mrs. Rundell).

  • Rundell, Maria Eliza Ketelby, 1745-1828.
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A new system of domestic cookery : formed upon principles of economy, and adapted to the use of private families / by a Lady (Mrs. Rundell). 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.

    18/656 (page 12)
    XU PllEFACK. •^vith this difference, bringing on lingering illness instead of sudden death, as the most solid kind of animal food; and ladles and gentlemen, afraid of becoming stout, have seriously injured their health by taking a cup of gruel or a piece of dry bread, immediately before dinner, in order to damp the appetite. The happy medium between injurious abstinence and injurious excess is unfortunately too seldom preserved; but there caimot be a doubt that light and nourishing food may be eaten, if the quantity be too large, with greater impunity than when its solid!tv renders it less easilv digestible. In England, cookery, in small respectable fa- milies, where it is necessary to study economy, has to contend with a prejudice concerning the vulgarity of certain viands—many portions of an animal, which in France are in great esteem, being rejected in this country upon very insufficient grounds. Vulgarity in eating can only be connected with grossness ; and sheep’s heads, shoulders of mutton, and even fat pork, may be so refined in the culinary process as to retain nothing offensive either to the eye or the palate, while the vulgarity must consist in the manner in which the viands are served and demolished, and not in the viands themselves. It is the province of the cook to render unsightly objects pleasing; and thus many things may be brought to table in disguise, which would not be admissible in their original forms.