the present work has no pretensions to be a complete book on cooking, but is simply a series of papers (which originally appeared in cassell’s magazine) in which the endeavour has been, to impart a certain amount of useful knowledge of the art of cooking, by giving recipes at greater length than would be possible in any ordinary cookery book.

ordinary cookery books, though of the greatest utility, are, like dictionaries, seldom if ever read through. in the present work, which contains all the important elements and first principles of cookery necessary to be learnt, in order to render ordinary works on the subject intelligible, the attempt has been made to so mingle recipes with anecdote, that the perusal 6of the book may be a means of entertainment as well as of useful information.

the work is intended more for the drawing-room than for the kitchen, for the author believes that, among the great mass of the middle classes in this country—the class that is suffering most from the incapacity of domestic servants—the remedy lies with themselves.

a helpless mistress too often makes helpless servants. it is in the hope of curing some of this wide-spread helplessness amongst ladies that the following papers have been written.