Patent sauces not real cookery-Soups and vegetables not to be peppered in the kitchen-Pure wine only, no " cooking" wine-(hilling preferable to frying for fish and fowl, as well as for meat-Caution as to overcooking.

Do not allow your cook to send up meats unseasoned. Salt and freshly ground black pepper should be judiciously used while cooking, if the flavour of the meat is to be fully developed; but do not, on any account, admit nutmeg, mace, and hot sauces of the Peppershire kind into your kitchen. No condiments to be used, except such as may develop or heighten, none such as are apt to disguise, the natural flavour of each dish, while all peppering of soups and vegetables in the kitchen should be altogether prohibited. If any wine be used, it must be sound, pure, grape-juice out of your own cellar, and not so-called " cooking wine," bought by the cook. It is only too often an adulterated article.

Persuade your cook to substitute the grill for the frying-pan, as to fish and fowl as well as for meat. I am sure both your palate and your digestion will be the gainers by that change.

Caution your cook in regard to overcooking. As a rule, fish and fowl are cooked more than necessary, much to the detriment of flavour and delicacy, not to mention both thereby being rendered tough and indigestible. This remark applies in particular to shell-fish and to the sauces of which shell-fish are the basis. Nothing could be worse than overcooked shrimp or lobster sauce; and many a time, when you thought your fish was not fresh, I am sure it was simply overcooked. (See page 73 for my suggestions as to the preparation of such sauces.)