Cookery is introduced with words about "the progress of mankind from barbarism to civilization", with a mention of man "in his primitive state, upon roots and the fruits of the earth", rising to become in turn "a hunter and a fisher"; then a "herdsman" and finally "the comfortable condition of a farmer." It is granted that "the fruits of the earth, the fowls of the air, the beasts of the field, and the fish of the sea, are still the only food of mankind", but that: