By Eliza Smith ~ London 1758

It being grown as unfashionable for a book now to appear to people without a Preface, as for a lady to appear at a ball without a hoop-petticoat, I shall conform to custom for fashion sake, and not through any necessity: The subject being both common and universal needs no arguments to introduce it, and being so necessary for the gratification of the appetite, stands in need of no encomiums to allure persons to the practice of it, since there are but few now-a-days who love not good Eating and Drinking; therefore I entirely quit those two Topics; but having three or four pages to be filled up previous to the subject itself, I shall employ them on a subject I think new and not yet handled by any of the pretenders to the Art of Cookery and that is, the Antiquity of it; which, if it either instruct or divert, I shall be satisfied if you are so.

COOKERY, Confectionary, Etc. like all other arts, had their infancy, and did not arrive at a state of maturity but by slow degrees, various experiments, and long track of time; for in the Infant Age of the world, when the new inhabitants contented themselves with the simple provision of nature, viz. the vegetable diet, the fruits and productions of the earth, as they succeeded one another in their several peculiar seasons , the Art of Cookery was unknown. Apples, nuts, and herbs, were both meat and sauce, and mankind stood in no need of additional sauces, ragoos, etc. to procure a good appetite; for a healthful and vigorous constitution, a clear, wholesome, odoriferous air, moderate exercise, and an exemption from anxious cares, always supplied them with it.

We read of no palled appetites, but such as proceeded from the decays of nature by reason of an advanced old-age; but on the contrary, a craving stomach even upon a death bed, as in Isaac; nor no sicknesses, but those that were both the first and the last, which proceeded from the struggles of nature, which abhorred the separation of soul and body. No physicians to prescribe for the sick, nor apothecaries to compound medicines, for two thousand years and upwards. Food and physic were one and the same thing.

But when man began to pass from a vegetable to an animal diet, and feed on flesh, fowls and fish, then seasonings grew necessary, both to render it more palatable and savory, and also to preserve that part which was not immediately spent from stinking and corruption; and probably salt was the first seasoning discovered, for of salt we read, Gen. xiv.

And this seems to be necessary, especially for those who are advanced in age, whose palates, with their bodies, had left their vigor as to taste; whose digestive faculty grew weak and impotent, and thence proceeded the use of soops and savory messes; so that Cookery then began to be in use, tho' LUXURY had not brought it to the height of an ART. Thus we read, that Jacob made such palatable pottage, that Esau purchased a mess of it at the extravagant price of his birthright. And Isaac, before, by his last Will and Testament, he bequeathed his blessing to his son Esau, required him to make some savory meat, such as his soul loved; i.e. such as was relish able to his blunted appetite.