and of
such efficacy in distempers, &c., to which they are appropriated, that
they have cured when all other means have failed; and a few of them
which I have communicated to a friend, have procured a very handsome
livelihood.

"They are very proper for those generous, charitable, and Christian
gentlewomen that have a disposition to be serviceable to their poor
country neighbours, labouring under any of the afflicted circumstances
mentioned; who by making the medicines, and generously contributing
as occasions offer, may help the poor in their afflictions, gain
their good-will and wishes, entitle themselves to their blessings and
prayers, and also have the pleasure of seeing the good they do in this
world, and have good reason to hope for a reward (though not by way of
merit) in the world to come.

"As the whole of this collection has cost me much pains and a thirty
years' diligent application, and I have had experience of their use
and efficacy, I hope they will be as kindly accepted, as by me they
are generously offered to the publick: and if they prove to the
advantage of many, the end will be answered that is proposed by her
that is ready to serve the publick in what she may."

COOKERY BOOKS.

PART II.

SELECT EXTRACTS FROM AN EARLY RECEIPT-BOOK.

The earliest school of English Cookery, which had such a marked
Anglo-Norman complexion, has been familiarised to us by the
publication of Warner's _Antiquitates Culinaricae_, 1791, and more
recently by the appearance of the "Noble Book of Cookery" in Mrs.
Napier's edition, not to mention other aids in the same way, which are
accessible; and it seemed to be doing a better service, when it became
a question of selecting a few specimens of old receipts, to resort
to the representative of a type of culinary philosophy and sentiment
somewhere midway between those which have been rendered easy of
reference and our own. I have therefore given in the few following
pages, in a classified shape, some of the highly curious contents of
E. Smith's "Compleat Housewife," 1736, which maybe securely taken to
exhibit the state of knowledge in England upon this subject in the
last quarter of the seventeenth century and first quarter of the
succeeding one. In the work itself no attempt at arrangement is
offered.

I.--MEAT, POULTRY, ETC.

_To make Dutch-beef_:--Take the lean part of a buttock of beef raw;
rub it well with brown sugar all over, and let it lie in a pan or