Pharmacy is now made much more simple. Cookery
may be made so too. A prescription which is now compounded of five
ingredients, had formerly fifty in it. So in cookery, if the nature of
the ingredients be well known, much fewer will do. Then as you cannot
make bad meat good, I would tell what is the best butcher's meat, the
best beef, the best pieces; how to choose young fowls; the proper
seasons of different vegetables; and then how to roast and boil, and
compound.' DILLY. 'Mrs. Glasse's _Cookery_, which is the best, was
written by Dr. Hill. Half the _trade_[834] know this.' JOHNSON. 'Well,
Sir. This shews how much better the subject of cookery may be treated by
a philosopher. I doubt if the book be written by Dr. Hill; for, in Mrs.
Glasse's _Cookery_, which I have looked into, salt-petre and
sal-prunella are spoken of as different substances, whereas sal-prunella
is only salt-petre burnt on charcoal; and Hill could not be ignorant of
this. However, as the greatest part of such a book is made by
transcription, this mistake may have been carelessly adopted. But you
shall see what a Book of Cookery I shall make! I shall agree with Mr.
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