DINNER DISCUSSION

Evening Star, Issue 23370, 13 September 1939, Page 13

DINNER DISCUSSION

"FIRST CATOH YOUR HARE" One day at dinner, the subject of cookery Laving very naturally been introduced, Dr Johnson said, says Boswell: " I could wiite a better book pi cookery than has ever yet been written; it should be a book upon philosophical principles." A person present suggested that " Mrs Glasse's cookery, which is the best, was written by Dr Hill." To which the doctor replied in his weighty manner: "Well, sir, this shows how much better the subject of cookery may be treated by a philosopher." Perhaps no quotation lias over been so misused in English literature, if one may call n cookery book literature, as has the instruction in the way to roast a hare, in the so-called Mrs Hannah Glasse's ' Art of Cookery.' My copy, states a correspondent in the ' Sydney Morning Herald,' which is dated 1750 •(the first edition was published in 1747), declares on itß title page that it was written by a lady, but opposite this title page is the full-page advertisement of Mrs Hannah Glasse, milliner and robe maker ,_ who thus secured the honour of being generally known as the authoress of the book. The recipe, " How to roast a hare," begins with the words: "Take your hare when it is cased," and to case anything meant to skin it and clean it ready for cooking. Undoubtedly the misquotation arose through some careless person reading the instructions as " Take your hare when it is catched," and this has finally been converted into " First catch your hare," as Mrs Glasse says. It is curious that this totally incorrect statement should have persisted so long, and that it should have been attributed to one who had nothing to do with the book in which it appeared, except as the inserter of an advertisement.