250°° Just published by D. Appleton & Co. Price $1. OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. "GOOD wine will not make bad Latin, says Rabelais, and by the same rate we may take it for true, that a good cook will not make a poor cookery-book, any more than he would serve up a bad dinner; therefore the Ménagère of M. Soyer must be a capital receipt (or recipe) book, for he is reported to be the best of living cooks. We need say no more in praise of the handsomely printed and sizeable volume open before us; but we will add, that having looked through it, and read a good deal of it, we have conceived a vast idea of the capacity of the author to benefit the human race; and believing that a good cook is of more consequence than a bad doctor, whether of law, physic, or divinity, we think that the public are under peculiar obligations to the American publishers for reproducing at so cheap a rate a work of such excellent tendencies. It is a curious fact, that no country but France has ever produced a great cook; but even France has produced but three, viz., Vatel, Ude, and Soyer. Vatel was the hero of the tribe; every body who has read Madame de Maintenon's letters, and a good many who have not, remember the circumstances of Vatel's suicide, how he spitted himself with his sword, because he was disappointed in receiving some fish he had ordered for his master's dinner. As for Ude, he was merely the cook of that voluptuary, George the Fourth, and the author of a very bulky receiptbook, which would bring an alderman to death's door before he could eat his way half through it. But M. Soyer is a philanthropist and an artist, who takes into the kitchen the knowledge of a chemist, and dignifies his humane art by elevating it to a science. He takes up a saucepan as an alchemist does a crucible, for the purpose of discovering the means of converting base things into golden values, and of adding to the elements of human enjoyment. Like the author of Sir Charles Grandison, he conveys his lessons in culinary lore in the pleasing form of epistolary communications, and gives the charm of the novelist to his details about pot au feu,' and other mysteries, by the introduction of fictitious characters, whose experiences in cookery are more romantic than half the adventures we read about in fashionable novels. Not being professed cooks, we cannot pronounce with the authority of a savant, as to the correctness of the whole of M. Soyer's recipes; but being professed and practical eaters, we confess to entire faith in his principles, and commend his work to all good wives, who wish to make home attractive to husbands. Among the rest of the good things which it contains are directions for nursery dinners, and the compounding of comforts for invalids. "The American editor appears to have done his duty well, and has, very properly, abstained from any attempt to gild the refined gold of M. Soyer, by the addition of any of his, or her own ideas, except in one instance, and that is mply by including among the recipes of soups, directions for making 'crap soup,' a dish that we don't remember having eaten. One of the best criticisms that we have seen on the Ménagère,' was in Punch; it was in the form of a letter from a wife, and told how she had made a home-loving youth' of her husband, who had once been greatly addicted to club-life, merely by studying M. Soyer's recipes, and acting upon them in her kitchen.”—Mirror. "We need no more than announce this volume. M. Soyer's reputation as a skilful culinary artist is almost world-wide, and moreover, it is understood that he can show how some things can be made economically as well as expensively. In this volume we have one thousand recipes for preparing palatable dishes for every meal in the day; said recipes being so far remodelled as to suit this climate, where so many articles of food, which are rare and expensive in England, are accessible to all. Sensible men and women enjoy food all the better for being well prepared, and it will be all the better prepared if those charged with that duty consult M. Soyer's book.-Com'l Adv. 1 SOYER'S MODERN HOUSEWIFE.-Opinions of the Press. "This is the most admirable receipt-book for the use of families, that has ever been given to the public, and too high an appreciation cannot well be placed upon its merits. The author, as every one will discover by the use of this book, has an experience that makes him an accomplished master of the art, which may, with entire propriety, be called the 'preservative of all arts.' M. Soyer's receipts are so accurately and simply set forth, that no other instruction in the art of preparing the many excellent dishes peculiar to the American people, will be necessary, in order to give the most inexperienced a knowledge of the different modes of preparing food in a tasteful and at the same time palatable style. In the Modern Housewife of M. Soyer our housekeepers will find a reliable guide and an invaluable friend."―Journal of Commerce. "We take up this volume of Mons. Soyer in the spirit with which the student sets down to the study of Cosmos; that is to say, with an alarming sense of our own incapacity and littleness, and an overpowering conviction of the knowledge and capabilities of the author before us. Alex. Humboldt grasps universal nature; Alexis Soyer exhausts cookery. *** The Ménagère possesses this advantage over Cosmos-and indeed over every other work with which we are acquainted -that it comprises almost every style of composition known to mortal writer. It is at once a grave essay in prose, and a most felicitous poem; it deals with that undoubted reality the human stomach, yet with a pen essentially romantic and imaginative. It is at once didactic and dietetic, dramatic and culinary. Here we are moved by a sentiment, there we are brought face to face with pig's cheek,' and sternly taught how to boil it with split-peas in a stewpan.' Now we are beguiled by a tender correspondence between My dear Hortense' and 'cette cherè Eloise; and now we are rudely torn from the society of those admirable ladies, to stand confounded and amazed in the presence of the bill of fare of a dinner given by Bass, Esq., M. P., at the Reform Club, the other day.' To be sure, the transitions are at times somewhat violent and sudden, but art, as Rembrandt knew, and Soyer still remembers, works by contrast."-Extract from a review in the London Times. "This is a work unlike the thousand humbugs of the day. It is the work of one of the highest professors of the gastronomic art. It contains directions for the different meals, with economical hints too often neglected by our American ladies, but familiar to those of highest rank in England. The directions for meals for the nursery, and for comforts for the sick room, are not found in any other book of the kind we have met with. They are invaluable. One receipt for making coffee, is worth twice the price of the book to any one who values that * delicious beverage. When this becomes familiarly known and practised, scolding of cooks will be a historical reminiscence. We have tried the coffee-receipt, and found it wanting-not the receipt, but the coffee for it disappeared magically. Don't take our word for it, but try it for yourselves."-Brooklyn Daily Freeman. "THE MODERN HOUSEWIFE is the title of a book from the press of the Appletons, by Alexis Soyer. Besides a perfect cornucopia of receipts for the economic and judicious preparation of every meal of the day, with those of the nursery and sick-room, it also contains very particular directions for family management in all the branches of domestic industry and taste connected with eating and drinking, from the culinary processes of the kitchen to the last act of the dinner-table, including appropriate rules for conducting such affairs in commendable style. Dietetic maxims, and the science of the preparation of food so as to effect the greatest amount of nutriment and enjoyment, are here artistically elaborated.”— Prot. Churchman. 2 |