COOKERY FOE SPORTSMEN. 279 



COOKERY FOR SPORTSMEN. 



AMONG all the arts and sciences that improve, ele- 

 vate, or embellish society, or that contribute to the 

 pleasure and comfort of mankind, the one that is the 

 most necessary to health and happiness, has produced 

 the fewest great geniuses, and is the least under 

 stood, is cookery. Amid the thousands of men and 

 women who pretend to a knowledge of its mysteries, 

 how difficult is it among the former, and how im- 

 possible among the latter, to find a good cook 

 one who is devoted heart and soul to the intricate 

 science, who passes days in pondering and nights in 

 dreaming of these delicate combinations that consti- 

 tute pure and refined taste ! 



The world has produced in hundreds painters that 

 delight the eye, composers that enrapture the ear, 

 scholars that convince the intellect, poets that touch 

 the heart ; but of culinary artists that enchant the 

 stomach, the truly great may be counted on the fin- 

 gers. In ancient times more attention was paid to 

 gastrology, but the degraded taste that could em- 

 ploy an emetic to enable the repetition of indul- 

 gence, and the limited resources of restricted na- 

 tional intercourse, have left us little of value to be 

 gleaned for the experience of antiquity. The great 

 masters of the kitchen of those times have passed 



