HEALTH DEPENDENT ON COOKERY.
So say the promoters of the schools of cookery, and they are undoubtedly right. Cooking is both an art and a science. For its progress as an art we are not greatly concerned, although the medical profession would undoubtedly suffer in pocket should fine-art cookery go out of fashion. “Elegant” dishes are generally whited sepulchers, and the forerunners of blue pills and other disagreeable correctives. We hope then that these schools will busy themselves mainly in imparting a knowledge of the scientific principles of cooking, and will teach their cooks that the quality par excellence which all food should have is wholesomeness. Those unfortunates who spend their days in dark office 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 effort from a jaded stomach; but let us hope that the national disgrace of indigestion 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.