The Thorough Good Cook. By George Augustus Sala. (Cassell and
Co )—There is something pathetic, if pathos can attach to a cookery-book, about the appearing of this book. It had been published but a few days Lefore the author's death. Mr. Sala was great as a diner-out, a raconteur, an after-dinner speaker. An unfailing bonhomie distinguished him, and there is something at once melancholy and appropriate in the fact that his last con- tribution to letters was this volume. Not impossibly it may aurrive itis fellows. When the thousands of articles which he wrote are buried in obsolete newspaper files, when his novels cease to amuse, and his recollections lose their savour as the personalities with which they are concerned are forgotten, this book may well continue to interest mankind. na,rotw, a dun Seervoerciev might be the author's epitaph. On the merits of the recipes which are here given we cannot pretend to decide. If any amateur knew the subject, it was Mr. Sala. This collection is the result of a long personal experience, and we should be inclined to put an implicit trust in the suggestions which are the outcome of so much study. Nor must it be forgotten that the ex- pression of this culinary knowledge has a certain literary flavour about it. Mr. Sala does not pretend that his recipes are suited to slender purses. They are to relieve the monotony of an upper middle class and an aristocratic cuisine,—a monotony which even the employment of a chef does not always guard against. —With this we may mention Fifty Dinners, by Colonel Kenney Herbert (E. Arnold). Colonel Herbert has earned the gratitude of the public by his "Fifty Breakfasts," and he now adds to the obliga- tion: The recipes are for dishes "either new or prepared in a new manner," while they keep "well within the margin of a reasonable economy."
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