Pot-Luck ; or, The British Home Cookery Book. By May
Byron. (Hodder and Stoughton. 2s. 6d. net.)—So many cookery books have been written that it might seem a hopeless attempt to produce one on original lines. But Mrs. Byron has succeeded in doing so, and has given us a fascinating volume which ought to be in the possession of every intelligent housekeeper. She has drawn upon the manuscript recipe books which still exist in the possession of many families, and has thus printed over a thousand "specimens of the good plain cooking' which was done by our mothers, and grand.. mothers, and great-grandmothers—the old home cookery before tinned things and preservatives were invented." The culinary skill demanded by her pages is of an ordinary. common-sense character, and now that we are all trying to live a. simpler life such a book as this ought to be extremely welcome. Mrs. Byron's praise of "high tea," as "a. much more wholesome affair than late dinner," and "of all meals the most sociable, friendly, and satisfactory," will be appre- ciated by those who try some of the appetizing dishes which our ancestors knew and the modern age has forgotten in its Dodd-like tendency to "cultivate restaurant fat."—Tha Housewife's Book of Simple Cookery, by E. L. Crittall (St. Catherine Press, Is. net), is a practical and sensible little manual for the young wife who wishes to make her husband content with his meals.
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