GOOD AND BAD COOKERY.

Grey River Argus, Volume XV, Issue 1896, 3 September 1874, Page 3

GOOD AND BAD COOKERY.

There is no more important branch of "preventive medicine," the "Lancet," asserts, "than cooking. Bad cooking may cause a dwindling of the race, ruination of the temper, and deterioration of the morals. Good cooking, on the other hand, is accompanied by national prosperity and domestic bliss. So say the promoters of the National Training School for Cookery, who are undoubtedly right in the main, and are deserving of all imaginable success. Now, cooking is both an art and a science. For its progress as an art we are not greatly concerned, although ourprofession wouldundoubtedly suffer in pocket should fine-art cookery go out of fashion. "Elegant" dishes are 1 generally whited sepulchres, and the fore- ] runners of blue pills and other disagreeable correctives. We hope thifc the school will busy itself mainly in imparting a knowledge of the scientific principles of cooking, and will teach their cooks that the one quality par excellence which all food should have is wholesomeness. The bulk of the English people live in big citie3, and if we were asked to name the most predominating characteristic of our urban population, we shonld say " dyspepsia." These who spend their days in dark offices chambers, or consulting rooms, and keep their noses everlastingly upon their respective grindstones, seldom know that good digestion which should wait on appetite. Hitherto their dinners have not been so skilfully prepared as to demand the least possible offort from a jaded stomach ; but let us hope that the national disgrace of indigestibility will no longer dim the brightness of our hospitality, and the number of patent medicines which are sold so largely in this country as aids to digestion will undergo a rapid diminution."