ON SOME TABLE PREJUDICES.
MANY people have strong prejudices against certain things which they
have never even tasted, or which they do frequently take and like as a
part of something else, without knowing it. How common it is to hear and
see untraveled people declare that they dislike garlic, and could not
touch anything with it in. Yet those very people will take
Worcestershire sauce, in which garlic is actually predominant, with
everything they eat; and think none but English pickles eatable, which
owe much of their excellence to the introduction of a _soupçon_ of
garlic. Therefore I beg those who actually only know garlic from hearsay
abuse of it, or from its presence on the breath of some inveterate
garlic eater, to give it a fair trial when it appears in a recipe. It is
just one of those things that require the most delicate handling, for
which the French term a "_suspicion_" is most appreciated; it should
only be a suspicion, its presence should never be pronounced. As Blot
once begged his readers, "Give garlic a fair trial in a _rémolade_
sauce." (Montpellier butter beaten into mayonnaise is a good _rémolade_
for cold meat or fish.)
Curry is one of those things against which many are strongly prejudiced,
and I am inclined to think it is quite an acquired taste, but a taste
which is an enviable one to its possessors; for them there is endless
variety in all they eat. The capabilities of curry are very little known
in this country, and, as the taste for it is so limited, I will not do
more in its defense than indicate a pleasant use to which it may be put,
and in which form it would be a welcome condiment to many to whom "a
curry," pure and simple, would be obnoxious. I once knew an Anglo-Indian
who used curry as most people use cayenne; it was put in a pepper-box,
and with it he would at times pepper his fish or kidneys, even his eggs.
Used in this way, it imparts a delightful piquancy to food, and is
neither hot nor "spicy."
Few people are so prejudiced as the English generally, and the
stay-at-home Americans; but the latter are to be taught by travel, the
Englishman rarely.
The average Briton leaves his island shores with the conviction that he
will get nothing fit to eat till he gets back, and that he will have to
be uncommonly careful once across the channel, or he will be having
fricasseed frogs palmed on him for chicken. Poor man! in his horror of
frogs, he does not know that the Paris restaurateur who should give the
costly frog for chicken, would soon end in the bankruptcy court.
"If I could only get a decent dinner, a good roast and plain potato, I
would like Paris much better," said an old Englishman to me once in that
gay city.
"But surely you can."
"No; I have been to restaurants of every class, and called for beefsteak
and roast beef, but have never got the real article, although it's my
belief," said he, leaning forward solemnly, "that I have eaten _horse_
three times this week." Of course the Englishman of rank, who has spent
half his life on the continent, is not at all the _average_ Englishman.
Americans think the hare and rabbits, of which the English make such
good use, very mean food indeed, and if they are unprejudiced enough to
try them, from the fact that they are never well cooked, they dislike
them, which prejudice the English reciprocate by looking on squirrels as
being as little fit for food as a rat. And a familiar instance of
prejudice from ignorance carried even to insanity, is that of the Irish
in 1848, starving rather than eat the "yaller male," sent them by
generous American sympathizers; yet they come here and soon get over
that dislike. Not so the French, who look on oatmeal and Indian meal as
most unwholesome food. "_Ça pêse sur l'estomac, ça creuse l'estomac_," I
heard an old Frenchwoman say, trying to dissuade a mother from giving
her children mush.
The moral of all of which is, that for our comfort's sake, and the
general good we should avoid unreasonable prejudices against unfamiliar
food. We of course have a right to our honest dislikes; but to condemn
things because we have heard them despised, is prejudice.