I 
Cookery. SOB 
plates, well printed, and so forth. Now if I know you well, (and I 
think I do) you will stuff it full of matter of fact ; condensed, and 
screwed, and pressed, and packed into as small a compass as possi- 
j hie ; containing as much solid meat for the mind as a hard stuffed 
Bologna sausage for the body ; and almost as indigestible to the 
generality of readers. You will be apt to forget the wholesome 
]| advice of Horace, omne tulit fiunctum , qui miscuit utile dulcu 
You will make the useful useless, by neglecting the agreeable* 
j You are anxious to instruct your readers ; if you succeed you will 
do well : try to amuse them ; if you succeed you will do better* 
| Remember, when we leave school, we seldom allow any thing but 
the bottle, to pang us fu * o * knowledge. 
I have thought of this : and as you well know that I most sin- 
cerely wish success to you and to your undertaking, I will, with 
your permission, tax my brains once every now and then, to give 
you aid in 7ny way. 
/ 
You have somewhere extolled the great importance of the 
art of cookery, which I regard as the first in importance among 
our domestic manufactures : and I therefore presume, that you 
will not object to a little theoretical, and a little practical know- 
ledge being occasionally offered to the palates of your readers, on 
a subject that I am strongly inclined to think, both they and you 
hold in higher estimation than either of you choose to confess. 
If you allow me a few pages of your Emporium for this pur- 
pose, I shall follow the advice I have given to you, and serve up 
my courses in a very desultory way ; sometimes learnedly dissert- 
ing on the history of this manufacture, sometimes treating it phi- 
losophically and chemically, sometimes popularly, and some- 
times with practical recipes for the poor as well as the rich ; for 
the art of cookery 
JEque pauperibus prodest locupletibus seque 
and presides as scientifically over the processes of the benevolent 
soup shops of England, as over the matelots of Paris, or the cali- 
pash and calipee of the West Indies. 
Nor is the next line of the poet less true 
jEque neglectum pueris senibusque nocebit* 
that is, a bad cook is the worst of plagues both to old and young* 
But Cookery as you well know, is not only a chemical manufac- 
ture in every part of It, but I shall take occasion hereafter to show, 
that much statistical knowledge, and many abstruse questions in 
Q 
