The leading consideration about food ought always to be its wholesomeness. Cookery may produce savoury and elegant looking dishes, without their possessing any of the real qualities of food. It is at the same time both a serious and a ludicrous reflection, that it should be thought to do honour to our friends and to ourselves to set out a table where indigestion with all its train of evils, such as fever, rheumatism, gout, and the whole catalogue of human diseases, lie lurking in almost every dish. Yet this is both done, and taken as a compliment. The practice of flavouring custards, for example, with laurel leaves, and adding fruit kernels to the poison of spirituous liquors, though far too common, is attended with imminent danger: for let it be remembered, that the flavour given by laurel essence is the most fatal kind of poison. Children, and delicate grown-up persons, have often died suddenly from this cause, even where the quantity of the deleterious mixture was but small. How infinitely preferable is a dinner of far less show, where nobody need to be afraid of what they are eating; and such a one will always be genteel and respectable. If a person can give his friend only a leg of mutton, there is nothing of which to be ashamed, provided it is good and well dressed. Nothing can be of greater importance to the mistress of a family, than the preservation of its health; but there is no way of securing this desirable object with any degree of certainty, except her eye watches over every part of the culinary process. The subject of cookery is too generally neglected by mistresses, as something beneath their notice; or if engaged in, it is to contrive a variety of mischievous compositions, both savoury and sweet, to recommend their own ingenuity. Yet it is quite evident that every good housewife ought to be well acquainted with this important branch of domestic management, and to take upon herself at least its entire direction and controul. This is a duty which her husband, children, and domestics, have a right to expect at her hands; and which a solicitude for their health and comfort will induce her to discharge with fidelity. If cookery has been worth studying as a sensual gratification, it is much more so as the means of securing the greatest of human blessings. A house fitted up with clean good furniture, the kitchen provided with clean wholesome-looking cooking utensils, good fires, in grates that give no anxiety lest a good fire should spoil them, clean good table-linen, the furniture of the table and sideboard good of the kind without ostentation, and a well-dressed plain dinner, bespeak a sound judgment and correct taste in a private family, that place it on a footing of respectability with the first characters in the country. It is only conforming to our sphere, not vainly attempting to be above it, that can command true respect.