In reference to unfinished work I take the liberty here of saying that the bills of fare in this book with the quantities and proportions and relative cost from the continuation and complete illustration of an article entitled “The Art of Catering” in _Hotel Meat Cooking_. Knowing how much to cook, how much to charge, how to prevent waste and all such questions raised there are carried out to an answer in these pages. In regard to the use of French names for dishes it is necessary that a statement should be made. A great reform has taken place in the last ten years in the composition of hotel bills of fare, and the subject matter of these books having been widely diffused by publication in the hotel newspapers, has undoubtedly had much to do with the improvement that is now observable. My own design was, however, to explain French terms, give their origin and proper spelling, and to that end I had a mass of anecdotes, historical mention and other such material collected to make the explanations interesting. As a preliminary, I began exposing the absurdities committed by ignorant cooks and others trying to write French, and before this had proceeded far the newspapers took up and advocated the idea that French terms should be abolished altogether. If that was to be the way the knot of misspelling and misnaming dishes was to be cut, there was no use for my dictionary work and the material was thrown away; I followed the new path and it proves a plain and sensible one. At the same time there is an aspect of the subject which cooks seeking situations perceive and editors of newspapers may never think of, and that is that there are many employers whom the reform has not reached who will pay a hundred dollars for a cook who can give his dishes imposing foreign names more willingly than fifty dollars to a better cook who can only write United States. First class hotels which have all the good things that come to market avoid French terms. They that have turkey and lamb, chicken, peas and asparagus, oysters and turtle and cream want them shown up in the plainest reading; to cover them up with French names would be injudicious; but if we have but the same beef and mutton every day, the aid that a few ornamental terms can give is not to be despised. First of all it is requisite that those who use such terms should know what they are intended to indicate and how they should be spelled and then they can be taken or left according to the intelligent judgment of those concerned.