PREFACE.
In issuing this little volume the publisher is aware that the market is already deluged with “cook-books,” both good and bad; but the aim in this instance is to utilize the experience of a caterer, who has spent twenty-five years of his life in the service of leading hotels and restaurants all over the country, besides catering to the appetites of thousands of private families. The well-known and unsurpassed cuisine of the hotels where he has been employed would of itself form testimony conclusive of his culinary ability, but he possesses besides numerous flattering letters from private parties, many of high standing in the community. As a salad-maker his reputation is wide-spread, and his receipts under this head are numbered among the hundreds, any one of which is a masterpiece of epicurean art and taste. It is my intention shortly to issue a book containing these receipts.
In writing receipts for this volume Mr. Murrey has kept economy constantly in mind, and has endeavored to present some of the most appetizing formulas in such a shape as to be within the reach of all families of moderate means. Each and every receipt has been personally tested and can be implicitly relied upon. The arrangement is that of a regular bill of fare or ménu. It will be understood, of course, that the contents of this book do not pretend to cover the field of cookery. Some idea of the magnitude of such a task can be had when you are informed that Mr. Murrey possesses probably the largest library on gastronomic art in this country, numbering many thousand volumes. Like all men who have made this art a study, he has aimed to so construct his formulas as to ward off indigestion and dyspepsia. Apropos at this point is a story illustrating the philanthropy of that prince of French chefs, Carême. Meeting one day a woman bitterly weeping at the door of a wine-shop, his commiserating question was answered by saying her husband was within; all his earnings were spent there and his family left to starve. Close questioning revealed the fact that the culprit liked good living, and that the wife condemned him to boiled beef every day. “No man cares to go abroad,” said Carême reproachfully, “for a bad meal, if his wife can cook him a good one, particularly if a silversmith and earning money.” Carême visited the house the next morning, and ordered a silver cup to be repaired, and, while waiting for its completion, offered to cook his own breakfast, which the man and wife shared. It was woodcock cooked in a way to electrify an Apicius. Carême called again for his cup with some wild duck. Meantime, the wife made rapid progress in the chef’s art. The husband ceased wasting his money. The delicate fare improved his intellect; he became an artist in his trade, and finally one day Carême received a box containing a silver woodcock exquisitely carved, carrying in its beak a tiny silver cup, with the inscription, “To Carême, from a friend who was saved by good cooking.”