Harney would have added, had he needed to with his audience, that it would have to go without saying that the cook could disguise meat gone bad, flour gone weevilly, or cope with having inexplicably and unforgivably run out of salt or cream of tartar.

I collect old cookbooks, particularly ones prepared for the household cook rather than the master chef. Particularly, though by no means only, Australian ones, and ones focused on ordinary food rather than great delicacies. Only my Elizabeth Beeton, I think, has a recipe for larks' tongues, but though I have never found her reputed recipe starting ''first slaughter your ox'', I have more than a few with good butchering and food preparation hints likely to make the modern cook wince.

The NSW State Library has just opened a display of some of its thousands of Australian cookbooks. I daren't go, lest I get consumed with envy, or, worse, zeal to match it. I haven't really got much more room, even if gathering and keeping such things can be regarded as a form of trusteeship.

It's a collection I regularly add to, though not in expeditions, with settled intent, or with secret avarice about now ''only'' needing this, or that, to round things out. Like many of the things of which I have a modest collection, from dictionaries to Phantom comics and speculums, I began with one or two things only, on a whim, and accumulated slowly, and generally fairly cheaply.

The sort of thing I gather most, pamphlet-like books of the 1920s to '60s, are often in the $1 to $5 range in an op shop or near the throwout section of a second-hand bookshop. I adore them not only for their telling something about our diet and social history, including, often, the history of junk kitchen technology, but for their implicit assumptions about households, housewives and lifestyles in other times. In much the same way that one will learn more about what Australians were like in, say, 1925 by reading the advertisements (rather than the news items) in Australian newspapers or magazines of the period, little deconstruction is necessary with the average cookbook.

Here are a few, at random, from one shelf:

Fresh raw milk recipes with compliments from Langdale's Dairy, of Leichhardt, Sydney, some time in the '30s, and jolly sound too on milk, ginger, jam and rice puddings.

The Allied Forces Cookery Book, in aid of the Red Cross Fund, Ceylon, 1917, and, in spite of the land where it was born without a single recipe mentioning cumin, cardamom, coriander, garlic, or even curry or chutney. Sound food of empire, for Ladies of the Raj, untouched by the sun, pesky natives or local produce.

Principles of Home Cookery, published by the NSW School Cookery Teachers Association in 1939, which has a recipe for boiling an egg that could come in handy some day. The recipe follows. Place egg in saucepan of boiling water. Turn off gas. Allow egg to remain in saucepan for three to six minutes according to taste. Place small end downwards in egg cup.

The Kandy Koola Cookery book and housewives companion, published for the ''ladies of Victoria'' by the proprietors of Kandy Koola tea in 1898. Among its presumed horrors are beetroot beer. Add a tablespoon of ground ginger and a quarter of an ounce of hops to two gallons of water in a clean pot, put on the fire to boil. After 20 minutes, add three quarters of a pound of sugar and a medium sized beetroot; let all boil together for 20 minutes, allow it to stand until lukewarm, then strain and add half a teacupful of barm, bottle and cork tight. Ready to drink five days later.

Secret recipes compiled by the Wardmaster (late Army Medical Corps), some time after 1918, I guess. Its ''secret'' recipes for curing scabies, nits and worms would make Bronwyn Bishop blench, though I cannot guarantee its nostrum ''to cure habitual intemperance without the patient's knowledge''. It suggests 30 grains of potassium bromide and 70 grains of ''sugar of milk'', recommending that one secretly dissolve it in tea or some other liquid each time ''sufficient to cover a sixpence'' three times a day. I have a suspicion that it can quell sexual desire as well, and was on that account put into the tea of prisoners, soldiers and boarders.

The English cookery book comprising Mrs Rundle's Domestic Cookery revised, with several modern dishes added thereto (1854) was a popular predecessor of Mrs Beeton (first published 1861). Many of the dishes are easy enough to recognise (if well stocked with brawn, pig trotters and black puddings) but of a traditional English bent. It thinks broccoli, for example, should be boiled for 15 minutes ''then served without delay on a slice of toast with a boatful of butter''. Cabbage, on the other hand, needs at least 20 minutes.

I have an array of cookbooks put out by school P&Cs, CWAs and so on, not a few of which have recipes from relatives in them. Here's one from my Aunt Mona, (then) Miss Monica Perrottet, of the Quambone branch in the NSW Country Women's Association Calendar of Cake and afternoon tea delicacies of 1930. It's from those glorious days of yore when every country housewife made a cake, or cakes, each day, for morning and afternoon tea:

Yolande Cake: 1lb sugar, 12lb butter, 1lb flour, 4 eggs, 112 teacups of cold water, 1tsp cream tartar, 12tsp bicarb of soda, 1tsp vanilla, water. Beat butter and sugar to a cream, add well-beaten eggs, then carb soda dissolved in water; then flour and cream of tartar; add vanilla and beat all together for 3 minutes. Bake in moderate oven.

And here, 50 years later, is a recipe from one of her grandchildren, Vicki Wild, in the Quambone P&C Cookbook, telling something of how change had come ever to the Macquarie Marshes.

Stuffed capsicum: 6 large green capsicums; 1 large onion, grated; 2 tbsp parsley, chopped; 1 clove garlic, crushed; 2 tbsp tomato sauce; 12lb of minced steak; 1 bay leaf; 2 rashers bacon; 1 cup of beef stock; 1 cup boiled rice; 3 tbsp raisins or sultanas; grated well-flavoured cheese; and salt and pepper to taste.

Cut a slice from the top of each capsicum and carefully remove membrane and seeds; put in pan with cold water to cover, slowly bring to boil, then drain and rinse in cold water. Turn upside down to dry. Fry onion and bacon in little oil, add meat and garlic and stir till meat has changed colour. Cook gently for 15 minutes, pour off fat, stir in rice, raisins, salt, pepper and parsley. Fill some into each capsicum, stand them upright in a shallow casserole dish. Add tomato sauce and bay leaf to stock, heat and pour around capsicums. Bake in moderate oven 30 minutes or until tender, basting regularly. Sprinkle generous layer of cheese over top of each capsicum, 10 minutes before cooking is completed.

Any mug would know that capsicum, garlic and bay leaf were scarcely used in these parts in 1930. For me the revelation is ''a little oil'' and ''pour off fat''.

It would have been dripping or lard, not oil, in 1930, and, alas, the grease produced was rarely skimmed, even in the best households.

Jean Colhoun, of Waramanga, once gave me Dainty Dishes issued by Nestle, in which virtually every recipe involves a tin of condensed milk, and I have other books with frog recipes, road-kill recipes and for the cooking and eating of mutton birds and marsupials.

Slippery Bob, described as ''bush fare needing a good appetite and excellent digestion'' goes: Take kangaroo brains and mix with flour and water and make into batter; well season with pepper, salt etc; then pour a tablespoon at a time into an iron pot containing emu fat, and take them out when done.

Here's Freda's Five can casserole from White Trash Cooking: 1 small can of boneless chicken; 1 can cream of mushroom soup; 1 can of Chinese noodles; 1 can of chicken with rice soup; 1 small can of evaporated milk; 1 small onion, minced; 12 cup of diced celery; 12 cup slivered almonds: mix all ingredients, place in casserole, bake at 175 degrees for 1 hour.

And, from my American Frog Raising book:

Frog Pot pie: 2lb of cubed frog meat; 1 cup diced carrot; 112 cups of water; 1 cup of peas; 12 onion minced; salt and pepper to taste: Turn the frog meat into a shallow saucepan with the water, carrots, peas, onion, salt and pepper and cook slowly until tender. Thicken with cornstarch and pour into casserole. Cover with pie crust. Bake in moderate oven until pie crust is golden brown.