The cook and housewife's manual, containing the most approved modern receipts for making soups, gravies, sauces, ragouts, and all made-dishes ... / by Margaret Dods [pseud].

  • Johnstone, C. I. (Christian Isobel), 1781-1857.
Date:
1827
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The cook and housewife's manual, containing the most approved modern receipts for making soups, gravies, sauces, ragouts, and all made-dishes ... / by Margaret Dods [pseud]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    that. Those jolly monks knew something of the mystery. Their warm, sunny old orchards still produce the best fruit in the country. You English gentlemen never saw the Grey-gudewife pear. Look out here, sir. The Abbot’s haugh yonder—the richest carse-land and fattest beeves in the country. Their very names are genial, and smack of milk and honey ! But here comes a brother of the reformed order whom I have never yet been able to teach the difference be- tween Bechamel and butter-milk, though he understands ten languages. Dr Redgill:—give me leave to present to you, Doctor, Mr Josiah Cargill, the minister of this parish. I have been telling my friend that the Reformation has thrown the science of cookery three centuries back in this corner of the island. Popery and made-dishes, Mr Cargill,—Episco- pacy, roast-beef, and plum-pudding,—and what is left to Presbytery, but its lang-kail brose and mashlum bannocks?” “ So I have heard,” replied Mr Cargill; “ very whole- some food, indeed.” “ Wholesome food, sir ! Why, your wits are wool-gather- ing. There is not a barefoot monk, sir, of the most beggarly, abstemious order, but can give you some pretty notions of tossing up a fricassee or an omelet, or of mixing an olio. Scotland has absolutely retrograded in gastronomy; yet she saw a better day, the memory of which is savoury in our nostrils yet. Doctor. In old Jacobite families, and in the neighbourhood of decayed monasteries,—in such houses as this, for instance, where long succeeding generations have followed the trade of victuallers, a few relics may still be found. It is for this reason I fix my scene of experiment at the Cleikum, and choose my notable hostess as high priestess of the mysteries. But here comes Mr Winterblossom.—No word of Jekyl ? Never mind.—Serve dinner there. I allow five minutes for difference of time-pieces, and wait a half- minute more for my tardy guest. No man shall call me un- civil—and then proceed to the main business of the day,— eh. Doctor?—were King George expected.”