Mrs. Roundell's Practical cookery book

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Mrs. Roundell's Practical Cookery Book (1898) is a comprehensive late-Victorian household manual that guides the reader from kitchen organization through nearly every category of English and French cookery of the period. Drawing on named authorities such as Wyvern and Sir Henry Thompson, the book blends practical household management, including scullery care and store-cupboard stocking, with an ambitious culinary range covering soups, fish, meats, poultry and game, vegetables, sauces, pastries, puddings, preserves, breads, and beverages. The author writes with a strong point of view, favoring simple, well-executed English cookery while still borrowing extensively from French technique and terminology. Invalid and infant cookery, curries, and a scattering of foreign, largely Italian, recipes round out the collection, alongside sandwiches, savouries, cheese, and a lengthy alphabetical index. With hundreds of anchored food records and only two medicinal entries, this is overwhelmingly a cookbook rather than a domestic medicine guide, though it occasionally strays into restorative cordials and sickroom fare. For the modern reader, it offers a detailed window into the equipment, provisioning, and culinary hierarchy of an affluent English household near the close of the nineteenth century, organized to be consulted chapter by chapter or searched through its closing index.

The book begins with prefatory material and a chapter of advice on the kitchen, scullery, and larder, plus weights and measures (section 1). It then moves through numbered chapters on soups and stocks (sections 2 to 4), sea fish, river fish, and shellfish (sections 5 to 8), and a substantial chapter on classic sauces (section 9). Meat cookery methods and detailed treatment of beef, mutton, lamb, veal, and pork follow (sections 10 to 14), along with salted and preserved meats, pies, puddings, and stews (sections 15 to 17). Poultry, small birds, and game including venison and wild fowl occupy sections 18 to 21. A long sequence on vegetable cookery runs from sections 21 to 26, followed by salads, herbs, and sandwiches (section 27), eggs (section 28), macaroni and rice (section 29), curries, beverages, and invalid and infant cookery (sections 30 to 31). Later chapters cover the history of cookery, pastry, and sweet dishes (section 32), pancakes, fritters, jellies, and creams (section 33), puddings (sections 34 to 35), preserves, jams, hors d'oeuvres, savouries, and cheese (sections 36 to 37), bread, cakes, and hot beverages (section 38), and foreign recipes followed by a full alphabetical index (sections 39 to 40).