SEPTEMBER 



RECEIPTS 



39 



I indiscreetly asked one of my rather intimate friends 

 whether he had read ' Pot-Pourri.' He said, rather 

 hastily : ' No, I gave it to my cook.' This impressed 

 me with the idea that a good number of people valued 

 the first ' Pot-Pourri ' a great deal more for its cooking 

 receipts than for anything else. Consequently the book 

 quickly leaves the library or the drawing-room for the 

 kitchen, and I think it would be a distinct assistance to 

 the cook if I keep these new receipts as much as possible 

 together, though I allot them a place in each month, as 

 the times and seasons have such a great influence on 

 food and garden produce. In this book I reserve to 

 myself the right to spell recipe ' receipt,' to which some 

 of my friends objected before. I was taught that recipe 

 meant a prescription, and it always seems to me a slight 

 affectation when I see it in a cookery book. I believe 

 1 receipt ' to be quite as old and good a word used in this 

 sense. In an old cookery book of mine which was 

 written by a lady and published in 1770 the word is 

 spelt ' receipt.' 



I take a great interest in cooks, and am always most 

 anxious to help them, having agreed from my youth 

 upwards with Owen Meredith's delicious lines in 

 ' Lucile ' : 



We may live without poetry, music, and art ; 



We may live without conscience, and live without heart ; 



We may live without friends ; we may live without books ; 



But civilised man cannot live without cooks. 



He may live without books what is knowledge but grieving ? 



He may live without hope what is hope but deceiving ? 



He may live without love what is passion but pining ? 



But where is the man that can live without dining ? 



There have been some complaints about the cooking 



