The book offered elaborate dishes, described with French terminology such as bisque, entrées, entremets, vol-au-vent, timbale and soufflé.

The book, written for upper middle-class housewives, is illustrated with 60 engravings, often showing how to present carefully decorated centrepiece dishes such as "Salmon à la Chambord" for large dinner parties.

[4] The Modern Cook is the first published record in England of filling wafer cornets, which Francatelli called gauffres, with ice cream.

[4] The royal dinners are described almost entirely in French, with the exception of the heading, the phrase "Side Board", and a few specifically British dishes such as "Roast Mutton" and "Haunch of Venison".

[9] Editions included: Kettner's Book of the Table of 1877, describing Francatelli as "a type of all the great French cooks", asserted that he "gives a most elaborate recipe for aspic jelly; and he is so satisfied with it that, having to prepare a cold supper for 300 people, he works it up in every one of his 56 dishes which are neither sweet nor hot.

"[10] George H. Ellwanger wrote in his Pleasures of the Table in 1902 that Francatelli's Modern Cook was "still a superior treatise, and although little adapted to the average household, it will well repay careful study on the part of the expert amateur.

"[11] The New Zealand Herald of 1912 commented that Francatelli was "an earnest and gifted worker in the cause of gastronomy" and that The Modern Cook faithfully reflected Victorian dining habits.

The review opined that the great joints of meat "decorated with their silver hatelet skewers bearing cock's combs and trufflets, were attended by the most appetizing ragouts and garnishes."

"[12] M. F. K. Fisher, writing in The New York Times, stated that millions of American women in the 19th century organised "every aspect of their lives .. as much as possible in imitation of the Queen", and that The Modern Cook sold almost as well in America as it did in England.

Advice Books, Manuals and Journals for Women, states that Francatelli was writing for the "upper middle-class housewife" in The Modern Cook, explaining to her how to serve the "socially important" dinner in English, French and "à la Russe" styles.

Panayi notes that Francatelli's preface to the first edition was scathing about ignorant "English writers on gastronomy", comparing them unfavourably to the "great Professors" of cuisine in France.

Panayi observes further that while most of Francatelli's chapters are not grouped by national origin, he does distinguish English, Foreign, and Italian soups.

He notes that it would have taken years to eat all the dishes listed, and that it is impossible to tell how often middle-class families may have eaten "fillets of haddocks, à la royale".

Panayi concludes that Francatelli represents "perhaps the most extreme example" of the nineteenth-century British habit of giving dishes French descriptions.