Do not fancy, gentle reader, under this title to see a wonder of the
age, as regards grandeur and magnitude; but for comfort and convenience
you will find a correct miniature of the kitchen, the plan of which I
have just described, the room being only large enough for one or two
persons to work in instead of fourteen, and intended to supply parties
of from eight to ten instead of a hundred and above; whether of great or
little importance, everything, more or less, has its share of merit when
well contrived, and by the same rule, these two culinary departments,
although upon a very different scale, possess the same advantages.
In publishing my Plan of the Kitchen of the Reform Club, many persons
could not conceive my motive for so doing, saying that no private family
would ever be in want of so large a kitchen, and it would be madness to
go to such an expense, with which reason I fully concurred; but being
aware at the same time that all my new plans and discoveries might be
reduced to any scale, those just observations have induced me to make My
Kitchen at Home as complete in its way as the other, and to be able to
afford the facility to any man cook, if employed upon any extraordinary
occasions, to dress a first-rate dinner, as well from the Receipts
adapted for the Wealthy, as from those under the heading of My Kitchen
at Home. The completeness of the arrangements, although much smaller,
would at first become rather expensive, but would last almost for ever;
should they, however, be too expensive for some of my readers, a
reduction might be made in some of the fittings or apparatus, but still
keeping to the same style, and retaining the most useful and
serviceable; but, as any curtailing would disfigure this little model, I
will, for the convenience of some, present my readers with the plan of a
smaller one, under the denomination of the Bachelor’s Kitchen, which
unfortunate class are often individually deprived of any kind of real
homely comfort; and to be still more sociable, I have even added the
smallest of all kitchens, being that of the Cottage.
My intention, in giving the plans of several smaller kitchens, is to
prove what I have before advanced, that I could easily introduce any of
my plans, or apparatus, into kitchens of the smallest dimensions.
I now must politely beg of my readers to refer to page 633, where they
will see a correct plan of my small Kitchen at Home, under which title I
shelter myself from culinary criticisms, because every man is, or ought
to be, allowed to do anything he likes “at home.”