The importance of a proper and competent knowledge of the true and rational principles of cookery, must be obvious, when it is considered that there is scarcely an individual, young or old, in any civilized country, who has not some time or other suffered severely from errors committed in the practice of this art. “A skilful and well directed cookery abounds in chemical preparations highly salutary. There exists a salubrity of aliments suited to every age. Infancy, youth, maturity, and old age, each has its peculiar adapted food, and that not merely applicable to the powers in full vigour, but to stomachs feeble by nature, and to those debilitated by excess.”[11] [11] Ude’s Cookery, p. 25.--Ibid, 23. Without abetting the unnatural and injurious appetites of the epicure, or the blameable indulgences of the glutton, we shall not perhaps be far out in our reckoning, if we assert, that almost every person is an epicure in his own way. There are amateurs in boiling potatoes, as particular in the details, as others in dressing beaf-stakes to the utmost nicety of a single turn. Lord Blainey, still more nice, informs us, that hams are not fit to be eaten unless boiled in Champaign. _Helluos_ are not confined to salmon’s bellies, but are to be found among the rudest peasants who love porridge or frumenty-- A salmon’s belly, _Helluo_, was thy fate; The doctor call’d, declares all help too late; “Mercy!” cries _Helluo_, “mercy, on my soul! Is there no hope?--Alas! then bring the jowl.” _Pope’s Moral Essays._ Precision in mixing ingredients is as often and as closely laid down for the coarsest dish of the peasant as for the most guarded receipe of the Lady Bountiful of the village. The pleasures of the table have always been highly appreciated and sedulously cultivated among civilized people of every age and nation; and, in spite of the Stoic, it must be admitted, that they are the first which we enjoy, the last we abandon, and those of which we most frequently partake. “Cookery is the soul of every pleasure, at all times and to all ages. How many marriages have been the consequence of a meeting at dinner; how much good fortune has been the result of a good supper, at what moment of our existence are we happier than at table? there hatred and animosity are lulled to sleep, and pleasure alone reigns.” Pythagoras, in his golden verses, gives complete proof, that he was particularly nice in the choice of food, and carefully points out what will occasion indigestion and flatulency. He is precise in commanding his disciples to “_abstain from beans_.” Apicius, declares that he never knew a philosopher who refused to partake of a feast.