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Dear Miss Frere

I have asked you to stand sponsor for the publication of a selection from a number of cookery and household recipes, collected by my late wife this for two reasons, firstly, because I know you to be yourself not a little interested and versed in the science of Brillat Savarin; and secondly, and mainly, because, from your intimate acquaintance with her for many years, you can bear testimony to her having been, not the mere "housewife" on culinary things intent, but an exceptionally widely - read woman, gifted with fine literary taste and judgment, a singularly retentive and accurate memory, and great conversational powers, never degraded to mere culinary talk which she particularly disliked! In fact, a cultivated and accomplished woman, with many other and larger interests than such as are indicated by the collection of these recipes. How she originally came to be so interested in them was that her father, Mr. Justice Coltman, had been in early life intimately acquainted with some of the leading emigrés of the First great French Revolution, and acquired, from living a good deal with them, a considerable knowledge and appreciation of the French cuisine, then, as now even perhaps more then than now - so superior to our own; and, although himself the most abstemious of men, he always insisted on having a good table for his family and guests.

The knowledge and appreciation thus handed on to his only daughter were stimulated, doubtless, by the experience of both French and Italian cookery acquired in the annual holiday of some weeks spent in travel on the Continent with him and Lady Coltman, and still further cultivated during the three years which, after our marriage in 1851, she passed at Paris, Brussels, and Turin, while I was still in the Diplomatic Service.

At the last place especially we had one or two excellent men cooks, both French and Italian (Milanese, who are the best), and she never failed, when any dish interested her, to cross - examine the artist the next day, who, perceiving the intelligent appreciation she evinced in his art, rarely failed to give her the best of his knowledge and experience. In the forty years of our subsequent home life in London, Birk Hall, Bagshot Park,* and here, she pursued, when opportunity offered, the same system; and what constitutes the value of these recipes is that by far the greater number of them were taken down directly from the lips of the artists themselves under her own acute cross-examination.

During all these years she was practically the presiding genius, with a moderate establishment, over a not inhospitable house; and while conceiving it her duty, as such, to secure, as far as in her lay, the material as well as mental and social comfort and well-being of those around her, she maintained that no mistress of any establishment could do so without making herself mistress of every branch of her duty as a hostess and what she felt it her duty to do she did with all her might. * Lent to Sir John Clark's father, Sir James Clark, for his life by Her Majesty the Queen. It has not been without great reluctance that I have consented, at the earnest request of several friends who know their value, to give these records of my wife's labour of love to the public, lest they should give a wrong impression of her other many-sided qualities and interests; but having so consented, I do so with every confidence in the skill, tact, and judgment which you will show in their publication. In this confidence, and in the hope and belief that they may prove of service to many a young matron of like mind with her who made it, I confide the collection to you for your supervision and for publication.

Yours sincerely,