Excerpt from The Thorough Good Cook: A Series of Chats on the Culinary Art, and Nine Hundred Recipes
Every one of the Recipes in this work has been carefully studied, and tested from personal experience, and compared with cognate formulas in the culinary manuals of such eminent authorities as Laguipiere, Beauvilliers, Ude, Careme, Soyer, Franeatelli, Urbain Dubois, Jules Gouffe, Kettner, Chandelier (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.
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