The gentleman's table guide and table companion to the art of dining & drinking, with table habits and curious dishes of the various nations, &c., &c., with practical recipes for wine cups, American drinks, punches, cordials, récherché bills of fare, with service of wines, &c / by Edward Ricket.

  • Ricket, Edward.
Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The gentleman's table guide and table companion to the art of dining & drinking, with table habits and curious dishes of the various nations, &c., &c., with practical recipes for wine cups, American drinks, punches, cordials, récherché bills of fare, with service of wines, &c / by Edward Ricket. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    literally an appendage, and not as at present, a distant and unconnected establishment. As I said before, I am now supposing the whole object to be the perfection of dinner parties, without reference to any other con- sideration, and therefore I put aside custom, fashion, and prejudice as enemies to the true theory and prac- tice, and I boldly advance my own opinions. I must beg the reader to bear in mind that I am speaking in reference to small parties, and that I am an advocate for dinners which, as nearly as can be calculated, are just enough and no more. I speak not of the bustle of preparation for twelve, sixteen, or twenty people, with about four times as much as they can possibly consume, and with a combination of overpowering heat and disagreeable scents. I have in view a quiet little kitchen, without noise, or annoying heat, or odour, save some simple savoury one provocative of the appetite and incapable of offending the most fastidious. Such an establishment would I have im- mediately adjoining my dining-room, and communi- cating with it by an entrance close to the sideboard, closed during the process of dinner by a curtain only, so that the dishes could be brought in without noise or current of air, or constant opening or shutting of a door. As Matthew Bramble, in “ Humphrey Clinker,” talks, in his delights of the country, of eating trout struggling from the stream, I would have my dishes served glowing, or streaming from the kitchen-stoves— a luxury not to be compensated, and a quality which gives a relish, otherwise unattainable, to the simplest