18 French Cuokeri/. [^July, 



tings, unless they " unfold the tale" with which practice has made them 

 perfect, and disclose those secrets of the dinner-table whose mental taste 

 is accompanied by present pleasure, though it may be too frequently 

 followed by pain. 



The reader will possibly conclude, from these observations, that 

 there are but two sets of persons qualified to be critics in cookery — ■ 

 namely, those who give dinners, and those who partake of them ; but 

 of the two, the latter are by far the most useless members of society. 



He who gives dinners is a benefactor of his race. He is the friend of 

 the butcher, the baker, the wine-merchant, and the green-grocer. 

 The productive powers of mankind are tributary to him ; and the 

 animal and vegetable kingdoms are ransacked to grace his board. Sel- 

 dom, however, does the host become the historian of his own exploits, 

 unless in the " IMorning Post ;" and then the tale is told in half-a-dozen 

 lines, full of " sound," it is true, but " signifying nothing." It is 

 merely stated that Mr. Such-a-one, or Lord So-and-so, gave a grand 

 dinner to half-a-dozen persons of distinction — that it consisted of all the 

 delicacies of the season — but what these delicacies were, and in what 

 order they were served, the record is altogether silent. Often, indeed, 

 in England does the butler, or the steward, or the groom of the cham- 

 ber, become the chronicler of the feast in some of the " broad sheets'' 

 with which the metropolis abounds ; but he giveth but a " brief ab- 

 stract" of the fare on which his betters fatten ; and should Ude himself 

 take pen in hand, it is not to be expected that he shall make the 

 unitiated as wise and all-learned as his savoury self. 



The desideratum, then, is, that some of those who have a thirty- 

 conversation power — whose wit sparkles with the champagne — and 

 whose conversation is as creamy and as current as the best Mousseux 

 d' At — the desideratutn is, that some of these persons should put pen to 

 paper. But, alas ! with this tribe the great business of the morning is 

 preparing for the dinner of the day. Besides, the gems of the table are 

 as " rare" as they are " rich ;" for, in the course of our lives, we have 

 met but with four such men. 



Alas ! poor Tom Aikin ! with all the gay vivacity of George Selwjm 

 —with all the point and polish of Tickell — with much of the wit of 

 Sheridan, and all his ready change of small-talk, why is it that you 

 have retired from your thousand-and-one feasts, without letting forth 

 freely that accumulative current of cookery, which, like the Prepontic, 

 might flow on, and on, " nor feel retiring ebb ?" In iht/ silence, what a 

 loss has society sustained ! Th// lessons might have been directed to all 

 ages and to all nations ; for cookery is alike essential to republics and 

 monarchies, to democracies and oligarchies. Cosmopolite she is by 

 nature ; and whether she exercise her powers at Persia or at Paris, she 

 is worshipped by an always grateful and sometimes a wondering 

 world. 



Yet we are not sure that the rich fruit of thy experience woidd not 

 require codification and arrangement. To doubt thy knowledge were 

 worse than heresy, but men sometimes become " fat-witted with drinking 

 of old sack ;" and if this be sin, all we say is, with good Sir John, 

 " Heaven help the wicked." But a truce with both episode and apos- 

 trophe ! 



To cookery, be it said, arrangement is as necessary as to any other of 

 the sciences. We have in our almanacks — in which, by the by, we are 



