The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

The present work has no pretensions to be acomplete book on Cooking, but is simply aseries of papers (which originally appeared inCassell’s Magazine) in which the endeavourhas been, to impart a certain amount of usefulknowledge of the Art of Cooking, by givingrecipes at greater length than would be possiblein any ordinary Cookery Book.

Ordinary Cookery Books, though of thegreatest utility, are, like dictionaries, seldom ifever read through. In the present work, whichcontains all the important elements and firstprinciples of Cookery necessary to be learnt, inorder to render ordinary works on the subjectintelligible, the attempt has been made to somingle recipes with anecdote, that the perusal6of the book may be a means of entertainmentas well as of useful information.

The work is intended more for the drawing-roomthan for the kitchen, for the Authorbelieves that, among the great mass of themiddle classes in this country—the class that issuffering most from the incapacity of domesticservants—the remedy lies with themselves.

A helpless mistress too often makes helplessservants. It is in the hope of curing some ofthis wide-spread helplessness amongst ladiesthat the following papers have been written.