by intelligent observers--the English cook did not understand her
business, and the English mistress, as a rule, was equally ignorant.

One of the engravings in the "French Gardener" represents women
rolling out paste, preparing vegetables, and boiling conserves.

There is a rather quaint and attractive class of miscellaneous
receipt-books, not made so on account of any particular merit in
their contents, but by reason of their association with some person
of quality. MS. Sloane 1367, is a narrow octavo volume, for instance,
containing "My Lady Rennelagh's choice Receipts: as also some of Capt.
Gvilt's, who valued them above gold." The value for us, however, is
solely in the link with a noble family and the little touch about the
Captain. There are many more such in public and private libraries, and
they are often mere transcripts from printed works--select assemblages
of directions for dressing food and curing diseases, formed for
domestic reference before the advent of Dr. Buchan, and Mrs. Glasse,
and Mrs. Rundell.

Among a valuable and extensive assemblage of English and foreign
cookery books in the Patent Office Library, Mr. Ordish has obligingly
pointed out to me a curious 4to MS., on the cover of which occurs,
"Mrs. Mary Dacres her booke, 1666."

Even in the latter part of the seventeenth century the old-fashioned
dishes, better suited to the country than to the Court taste, remained
in fashion, and are included in receipt-books, even in that published
by Joseph Cooper, who had been head-cook to Charles I, and who styles
his 1654 volume "The Art of Cookery Refined and Augmented." He gives
us two varieties of oatmeal pudding, French barley pudding, and hasty