148 On Cookery in general 



Our author has not only " la force de tele" to make a sauce, 

 but the genius of poetry to describe it. 



" A sauce, made according to the principles of the art, ex- 

 cites and restores the appetite, flatters the palate, is pleasing 

 to the smell, and inebriates all the senses with delight." What 

 can be more poetic ? Sauces are to food what action is to ora- 

 tory; and u the prodigy of a perfectly made sauce'" is, we 

 know not exactly why, considered amongst the proofs of the 

 immateriality of the soul ! But his prose often assumes the 

 loftiness of poetry, and the " Metamorphoses of Ovid" are out- 

 done by our author, who informs us that during the time of the 

 Regent of France, when spices were banished by the preva- 

 lence of sugar, " all the gods of the ancients came down from 

 Olympus upon tables in the form ofjnes." — Preface xlv. 



Like all great masters of arts, he is very unmerciful to pre- 

 tenders. Quin thought it would be a public benefit to hang a 

 cook or two ; " One skeleton of a cook," said he, " would save 

 us."" Dr. Johnson threatened to throw a rascally cook into the 

 river; Wenceslaus, Emperor of Germany, roasted his cook 

 alive, for a little peccadillo ; and our great master has such a 

 horror of the quacks in his learned profession, that he is ever 

 making them feel his raillery u piquante." 



It must nevertheless be confessed, that Ude has done more 

 to uphold the u nobility and dignity of his art" than any of 

 his predecessors ; and sincerely do we hope that he may long 

 continue to practise, for the well doing of his own animal ma- 

 chinery, and the comfort and health of all those who have the 

 good fortune, and are privileged, to partake of his entries, by 

 having the entree to " Crockford's House." He is, in good 

 truth, no ordinary person! As Pope said of Akenside, " he is 

 no every day writer," — " ilparle grec comme Homere," — the 

 pen, and the pan, are wielded by him like the spear of Diomed, 

 lAaivsrai sv TtaXxy.ot.Gi ; — we do not apologise for quoting ancient 

 Greek, considering that the subject in discussion is written by 

 a learned person, who sets us the example, and who, by his 

 intercourse with modern Greeks, is probably equally well ac- 

 quainted with their dialect. 



In our youthful days, we remember to have read of Marshal 

 Turene (or Turenne), and have a faint recollection that he 



