The thorough good cook

.4^^< >?^ m #" & '4W W^ W^^ ^^■x \-'^7 1-E" .K"*&00'\A95' "^S^" f^ '^ Le_ Boston Public Library This book is to be returned to the Library on or before the date last stamped below. n. 1 » » f ' ■> • > 1 Q f J AN '-«i <^'- • FORM NO. 609: 10.2,51. 100M. THE THE THOROUGH GOOD COOK A SERIES OF CHATS ON THE CULINARY ART AND NINE HUNDRED RECIPES BY GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA BRENTANO'S CH1CAG0_ PARIS WASHINGTON PREFACE. — I. To the General Reader. Every one of tlie Kecipes in this work has been carefully studied, and tested from personal experience, and compared Avith cognate formulas in the culinary manuals of such eminent authorities as Laguipiere, Beauvilliers, Ude, Careme, Soyer, Francatelli, Urbain Dubois, Jules Goufte, Kettner, ChandeHer (Napoleon's last chef at St. Helena), Garlin, Suzanne, and Durand, together with the English experts, Hunter, Kitchiner, Brand, Simpson, and Dolby. A lady to whom I once mentioned that I had tried practically all the dishes which I have enumerated in the following pages, observed, with a smile, half of incredulity and half of disdainful compassion, that it was a wonder I had not died of apoplexy years ago; and should such a contingency suggest itself to the minds of my readers, I may respectfully inform them that my study of the Art of Cookery extends over a period of fifty-five years ; and that ever since I was a boy I have been, not only theoretically but practically, a cook. In a work of mine called " Things I have Seen and People I have Known," I incidentally remarked that my dear mother had all her children taught systematically to cook, as an integral part of their education ; and that although, from the circumstance of my having been a delicate child, I was absolved from the ruder labours of roasting, boiling, and baking, I was early initiated into the mysteries of preparing soups, entrees, sauces, and sweets. Further, I may just hint that although I fully appreciate the attributes of a gourmet, I certainly do not wish to claim the status of a gourmand. I delight in the genesis, as well as in the analysis and the moderate degustation, of artistically concocted plats; but it so happens that I have always had a very small appetite — that my favourite dishes have been boiled chicken and rice, Irish stew, macaroni, and haricot beans, and that for the last few years I have been almost a vegetarian. It is because I wish others to live "well, and to satisfy a cultured appetite without injuring their digestion, that I have written this book. In composing it I have kept three objects m view. First, to avoid padding my pages with quasi-scientific disquisitions on the chemistry of cookery. Nothing would be easier than to tell the public that which they have been told over and over again — that in making the pot-aii-feu, or fundamental beef broth, the heat of the fire swells the muscular fibres of the meat, dissolving the gelatinous substances therein contained, and that by these means the osmazome, which is the most savoury part of the meat, gently adds " its unction to the broth, while the albumen, which is the muscular part producing the scum, rises to the surface." To harp on such a string would be not only to waste the time but to exhaust the patience of my rea