In short, we want common sense in cookery, as in most other things.  Food should be used, and not abused.  Much of it is now absolutely wasted, wasted for want of a little art in cooking it.  Food is not only wasted by bad cooking; but much of it is thrown away which French women would convert into something savoury and digestible.  Health, morals, and family enjoyments, are all connected with the question of cookery.  Above all, it is the handmaid of Thrift.  It makes the most and the best of the bounties of God.  It wastes nothing, but turns everything to account.  Every Englishwoman, whether gentle or simple, ought to be accomplished in an art which confers so much comfort, health, and wealth upon the members of her household.

“It appears to me,” said Mrs. Margaretta Grey, “that with an increase of wealth unequally distributed, and a pressure of population, there has sprung up amongst us a spurious refinement, that cramps the energy and circumscribes the usefulness of women in the upper class of society.  A lady, to be such, must be a lady, and nothing else....  Ladies dismissed from the dairy, the confectionery, the store-room, the still-room, the poultry-yard, the kitchen-garden, and the orchard” [she might have added, the spinning-wheel], “have hardly yet found for themselves a sphere equally useful and important in the pursuits of trade and art, to which to apply their too abundant leisure.

“When, at any time, has society presented, on the one hand, so large an array of respectably educated individuals, embarrassed for want of a proper calling, and, on the other, so ponderous a multitude of untrained, neglected poor, who cannot, without help, rise out of their misery and degradation?  What an obstruction to usefulness and all eminence of character is that of being too rich, or too genteelly connected, to work at anything!"[1]

[Footnote 1:  Memoir of John Grey, of Dalston. p. 290.]

Many intelligent, high-minded ladies, who have felt disgusted at the idleness to which “society” condemns them, have of late years undertaken the work of visiting the poor and of nursing—­a noble work.  But there is another school of usefulness which stands open to them.  Let them study the art of common cookery, and diffuse the knowledge of it amongst the people.  They will thus do an immense amount of good; and bring down the blessings of many a half-hungered husband upon their benevolent heads.  Women of the poorer classes require much help from those who are better educated, or who have been placed in better circumstances than themselves.  The greater number of them marry young, and suddenly enter upon a life for which they have not received the slightest preparation.  They know nothing of cookery, of sewing or clothes mending, or of economical ways of spending their husbands’ money.  Hence slatternly and untidy habits, and uncomfortable homes, from which the husband is often glad to seek refuge in the nearest public-house.  The following story, told by Joseph Corbett, a Birmingham operative, before a Parliamentary Committee, holds true of many working people in the manufacturing districts.