Ai/o-. 13, 1874] 



JVA TURE 



283 



LADY BARKER'S "LESSONS ON COOKING" 



Eirxf Lissoiis in the Principles of Cooking. By Lady 



Barker (London : Macniillan and Co., 1874). 



IN this little volume the authoress has proved beyond 

 all manner of doubt how completely she is the right 

 woman in the right place. Surely nowhere could the 

 Committee for the National Training School for Cooking 

 have found a lady superintendent better fitted than Lady 

 Barker to put life .and spirit into the scheme which 

 they advocate, or one more thoroughly qualified to 

 train and marshal the feminine bands that are now 

 being drilled under her supervision in the South Ken- 

 sington Schools of Cookery to invade and revolutionise 

 the kitchens of the future in every part of the empire. 



In the introductory chapter of her " First Lessons in 

 the Principles of Cooking " the author at once grapples 

 with the chief difficulty of the question at issue, 

 and admitting the fact that fuel and food cost nearly twice 

 as much as they did ten years ago, she tells her readers that 

 this is precisely the reason why it has become the im- 

 perative duty of every mistress of a house, and indeed of 

 every member of the community, to learn how materials 

 for warmth or cooking may be made to go twice as far as 

 they have done hitherto. Audit ii this problem which 

 she here attemjits to solve by help of her own practical 

 experience, which was gained in that best of all training. 

 schools, the school of necessity, as it existed in earlier 

 days in the colony in which she learnt her first lessons of 

 cooking. The theoretical knowledge of the " why" and the 

 "how'' has, as she informs us, been a far more recent 

 acquisition in her case ; but it is evident from the manner 

 in which she discourses on the chemical composition of 

 different articles of food, their various assimilative and 

 other properties, and the confide ice with which she tests, 

 by the laws of science, every function of her ovens, pans 

 and kettles, that she has mastered the scientifically theo- 

 retical branches of culinary knowledge as successfully as, 

 in bygone times, she overcame its empirically practical 

 difficulties. 



Her lessons on b.rking, roasting and frying, boiling and 

 stewing, and her remarks on fuel and fire, and on the 

 advantages, economical and others, of cleanliness, are so 

 sensible that wc may commend them to the cartful study 

 of all housekeepers, young and old, who are actuated by 

 the laudable ambition of combining economy and com- 

 fort downstairs, with good digestion and its concomitant, 

 good humour, upstairs. Wlien we say that Lady Barker 

 is actually aiming at the daring innovation of making 

 thermometers and " friometers " as indispensable to the 

 cook as the compass is to the helmsman, we need ex- 

 patiate no further on the debt of gratitude due to her 

 from all long-suffering payers of heavy coal and 

 meat bills. It might be supposed that Lady Barker's 

 book was intended solely for htr own sex, but this 

 is not the case ; for, more widely expansive in her 

 desires than Mr. Ruskin, who wishes to see " every 

 girl taught at a proper age to cook all food exqui- 

 sitely," she considers that " a knowledge of cooking is 

 every whit as necessary for a man," although she would 

 not insist, in his case, on anything beyond the simplest 

 forms of the art ; and she evidently hopes to see the day 

 when boys and girls will compete together for prizes 



in the National Cooking Schools. More practically im- 

 portant and worthy of serious consideration is the 

 strongly expressed conviction that " no schoolboy ever 

 gets as much nourishing food as he requires, and that 

 this is the secret why boys of fourteen or fifteen years 

 old scarcely ever look anything but thin and pinched." 

 Furthermore, she wishes their parents and schoolmasters 

 to understand that if they desire to sec boys with 

 clear complexions, bright eyes, and active limbs, " every 

 game of football and cricket and every sharp run across 

 country on a paperchasc ought to be followed by a hearty 

 meal of good beef or mutton, and not merely by weak 

 tea, poor milk, and bread and butter." 



The author's experience of \ the enormous amount ol 

 meat— uncontaminated by stimulants, it must be remem- 

 bered — which growing boys and young men consumed 

 in New Zealand in the early times of the colony, has also 

 led her to form the opinion that, in spite of all tables and 

 dietary reports, our soldiers and sailors are not allowed 

 food enough for healthy men with good appetites. This, 

 however, is a point that we must leave her to settle with 

 her Majesty's Inspectors of military and naval affairs, to 

 whose notice we would strongly commend her book, as 

 well as to that of all other persons interested in the prac- 

 tical and economical bearing of the relations existing 

 between the consumption of food and of fuel, and the 

 hygienic condition of the consumers. It is quite certain, 

 however, that until the general masses — and consequently 

 all those who have hitherto monopolised the direction 

 and practice of cookery — shall become better acquainted 

 with the ordinary laws of physiology and chemistry, it 

 will be hopeless to look for any radical improvement in 

 the manner of using food and fuel to the best advantage 

 in our households. Hitherto our kitchens have been 

 managed haphazard, without system ; the time for allow- 

 ing such a wasteful condition of things to continue undis- 

 turbed is evidently drawing to a close. High prices and 

 diminished supplies require to be met by a new system, 

 based on true scientific principles ; and considered from 

 this point of view, we think that this lit'.le volume 

 may fairly claim to be considered as supplying the 

 thin end of the wedge, and indicating the manner in 

 which the questions of practical cookery will in future 

 have to be considered. 



MAUNDER'S "TREASURY OF NATURAL 

 mSTORY" 

 The Treasury of Natural History. By Samuel Maunder. 

 Edited by E. W. H. Holdsworth, F.L.S., F.Z.S. 

 (London : Longmans, Green, and Co., 1874). 



THERE are few tasks more thankless and disagreeable 

 than that of having to re-edit an encyclop;i;dia or a 

 dictionary, especially when it relates to a subject like 

 Zoology, which is still so much in its infancy. A 

 "Treasury of Biogr.aphy," or a "Treasury of Bible 

 Knowledge," in each fresh edition cannot, from the nature 

 of its contents, need much modification ; the manner in 

 which the points that are dealt with have become stereo- 

 typed on the minds of mankind at large, makes the same 

 operation having been performed on the letterpress a com- 

 paratively unimportant drawback to its reappearance in a 



