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Once the young mind has tasted of the delight of the literary side of cookery a demand would spring up for the re-publication of many earnest, eloquent and scientific Cookery books of olden time. The eighteenth century was a golden age in the literature of cookery, and the works of Charlotte Mason, Sarah Harrison’s “Housekeeper’s Pocket Book,” and Elizabeth Marshall’s “Young Ladies’ Guide in the Art of Cookery,”—these are books that should be in every polite library. For myself I prefer what may be called the Archæology of Cookery and the study of “The Proper New Book of Cookery, 1546,” or Partridge’s “Treasury of Commodious Conceits and Hidden Secrets, 1580?” will have a charm for all who like to pierce the veil that hides the old world from us. We have moved on since then it is true, but for my part I like to learn how to “pot a Swan” or “make an Olio Pye,” though such learning is no longer practical.

To those who have not access to the original editions of the classics, let me commend that charming volume of the Book Lovers’ Library, Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt’s “Old Cookery Books.” Problems are there touched upon that when we have a serious business Government untrammelled by party ties will be solved by Royal Commissions dealing with the various aspects of cookery which, as an old writer says, is “The Key of Living.” It was Tobias Venner, as long ago as 1620, who endeavoured to dissuade the poor from eating partridges, because they were calculated to promote asthma. Many Poor Law Commissions have sat since then, but the truth of Venner’s theory has never yet been subjected to modern scientific criticism, and every year from September to February the poor continue to remain under the shadow of asthma. The Government give us volumes of historical records, but I search in vain among them for the way to make Mrs. Leed’s Cheesecakes and “The Lord Conway, His Lordship’s receipt for the making of Amber Pudding.” Thus are we trifled with by our rulers, few of whom I think could tell us without research why the porpoise and the peacock no longer grace the tables of Royal persons.