7 FEBRUARY 1880, Page 24

A Year's Cookery. By Phillis Browne. (Cassell and Co.)—Mrs. Browne,

whose felicitous name suggests the "savoury messes" which her " neat-handed" prototype in Milton was wont to dress, has given us a very useful book. It contains a complete menu for every day in the year,—dishes, that is, for breakfast, luncheon, and dinner. The quantities to be bought every day are specified (the author has calculated for a family of six persons ), hints are sup- plied to guide the purchaser's choice, and directions for the cooking of the dishes suggested. Everything seems to show good-sense and thorough acquaintance with the subject. There is an incredi- ble amount of extravagance and silly prejudice in the ordinary English housekeeping, which a book of this kind may do something to counteract. Of course a housewife may have to modify the arrange- ments made for her in this volume. If one of her family have the misfortune of a weak digestion, she will not leave him with a veal and ham pie for the piece de resistance at dinner, or give him no alternative to minced pork at luncheon ; but she will certainly find her views enlarged, and the variety at her command vastly increased, by the abundance of suggestions which is here supplied.—Another volume of the same class, less comprehensive in its aim, is Breakfasts and Luncheons at Home, by Short. (Kerby and Endean.) " Short " is the author of a little volume "Dinner at Home, &e.," which has achieved a well-deserved success, and to which we have here an appropriate sequel.—Indian Household Management, by Mrs. Elliot James (Ward and Lock), gives hints or directions on the follow- ing matters :—Outfits, packing and voyage, bungalows, furnishing, Indian servants, domestic economy, compounds, Indian stable management, general management, and station life. A capital book, this, as far as we can judge as outsiders, and certainly written in a sensible way, not without liveliness and humour.