to your censures, hath been to testify my gratitude to your experienced society nor could I omit to direct it to you, as it hath been my ambition that you should be sensible of my proficiency of endeavours in this art. To all honest well-intending men of our profession, or other, this book cannot but be acceptable, as it plainly and profitably discovers the mystery of the whole art; for which, though I may be envied by some that only value their private interests above Posterity and the publick good, yet God and my own conscience would not permit me to bury these my experiences with my silver hairs in the grave: and that more especially as the advantages of my education hath raised me above the ambitions of others, in the converse I have had with other nations, who in this art fall short of what I have known experimented by you, my worthy, countrymen. Howsoever the French by their insinuations, not without enough of ignorance, have bewitcht some of the Gallants of our Nation with

epigram dishes, smoakt rather than drest, so strangely to captivate the gusto, their mushroom'd experiences for sance rather than diet, for the generality, howsoever called a la mode, not being worthy of taking notice on. As I lived in France and had the language, and have been an eye-witness of their Cookeries, as well as a peruser of their manuscripts and printed authors, whatsoever I have found good in them I have inserted in this volume. I do acknowledge myself not to be a little beholding to the Italian and Spanish Treatises, though without my fosterage and bringing up under the generosities and bounties of my noble patrons and masters, I could never have arrived to this experience. To be confined and limited to the narrownes of a Price, is to want the materials from which the Artist must gain his knowledge. Those Honourable Persons my Lord Lumley and my Lord Lovelace, and others with whom I have spent a

part of my time, were such whose generous costs never weighed the expence, so that they might arrive to that right and high esteem they had of their gustos. Whosoever peruses this volume shall find it amply exemplified in dishes of such high prices, which only their Noblesses hospitalities did reach to: I should have sinned against their to-beperpetuated bounties, if I had not set down their several varieties, that the Reader might be as well acquainted with what is extraordinary as what is ordinary in this Art; as I am truly sensible that some of those things that I have set down will amaze a not-thorowpaced Reader in the Art of Cookery, as they are delicates, never till this time made known to the World.

"As those already extant authors have traced but one common beaten road, repeating for the main what others have in the same homely manner done before them; it hath been my task to denote

some new Faculty or Science that others have not yet discovered; this the Reader will quickly discern by those new terms of art which he shall meet withal throughout this whole volume. Some things I have inserted of Carving and Sewing, that I might demonstrate the whole Art. In the contrivance of these my labours, I have so managed them for the general good, that those whose purses cannot reach to the cost of rich dishes, I have descended to their meaner expences, that they may give, though upon a sudden treetment, to their kindred, friends, allies, and acquaintance, a handsome and relishing entertainment in all seasons of the year, though at some distance from towns or villages.

"As for those who make it their business to hide their candle under a bushel, to do only good to themselves, and not to others, such as will curse me for revealing the secrets of this art, I value the discharge of mine own conscience in

doing good, above all their malice; protesting to the whole world that I have not concealed any material secret of above my fifty year's experience; my father being a Cook, under whom in my childhood I was bred up in this art To conclude, the diligent peruser of this volume gains that in a small time as to the theory which an apprenticeship with some masters could never have taught them. I have no more to do, but to desire of God a blessing upon these my endeavours, and remain

Yours in the most ingenuous ways of

friendship,

Robert May."

197. Snails.

That Mæcenas of Cookery, Sir Kenelm Digby, who is remembered for so many odd things, was one of the persons who introduced the great shell* snail into, this

* Helix Pomaria,