There are already a good many vegetarian cookery books, ranging in
price from one penny to half-a-crown, but yet, when I am asked, as not
unfrequently happens, to recommend such a book, I know of only one which
at all fulfils the requirements, and even that one is, I find, rather
severely criticised by ladies who know anything about the matter.
To have to live by some of them would almost make a vegetarian turn
meat-eater. Most are compilations from other books with the meat dishes
left out, and a little porridge and a few beans and peas thrown in. All
of them, I believe, contain a lot of puddings and sweets, which certainly
are vegetarian, but which can be found in any ordinary cookery book.
What is required is a book that will enable us to provide something to
take the place of meat, which, while nourishing, shall at the same time
be palatable. This the present book aims at doing. Of the 221 recipes
given, upwards of 200 are absolutely original, having been carefully
thought out and tested by the author herself, and not hitherto published
anywhere. Many of them are as nourishing, weight for weight, as ordinary
dishes made with meat, those containing beans, peas, eggs, and the
various sorts of grain, being the most nourishing. If they are not all
found to be palatable, the fault must be in the individual cook, who
cannot have put in the important ingredient of _feeling_, without which
no work can be wholly good.
The thorough-going vegetarian, to whom abstinence from meat is part of
his ethical code and his religion,--who would as soon think of taking
his neighbour's purse as helping himself to a slice of beef,--is by
nature a man of frugal habits and simple tastes. He _prefers_ a plain
diet, and knows that the purest enjoyment is to be found in fruits of
all kinds as nature supplies them. He needs but little cookery, and that
of the simplest. To him this book will be of little use, except when he
wishes to entertain his friends.
But there are others who, while not feeling that any moral principle
is immediately involved in the matter of diet, yet would like to be
relieved from the necessity of eating flesh, possibly on aesthetic
grounds, or it may be from hygienic reasons, or in some cases, I hope,
because they would willingly diminish the sufferings involved in the
transport and slaughter of animals, inevitable as long as they are used
for food. To these it is hoped that this little book may act as an
encouragement and help.
Nor need our carnivorous friends be afraid of it. A good deal of nonsense
is talked (by meat-eaters I mean, of course) about the properties of
food, and they would have us believe that they eat a beef-steak mainly
because it contains 21.5 per cent. of nitrogen. But we know better. They
have eaten steaks for many years, but it was only last week, in working
up for a debate, that they found out about the nitrogen. It is not the
chemical ingredients which determine the diet, but the _flavour_; and it
is quite remarkable, when some tasty vegetarian dishes are on the table,
how soon the percentages of nitrogen are forgotten, and how far a small
piece of meat will go. If this little book shall succeed in thus weaning
away a few from a custom which is bad--bad for the suffering creatures
that are butchered--bad for the class set apart to be the slaughterers--bad
for the consumers physically, in that it produces disease, and morally,
in that it tends to feed the lower and more ferocious qualities of mind,
and also for ever prevents our treating the animal creation with that
_courtesy_ (as Sir Arthur Helps put it) which is their due--then I know
that it will not have wholly failed in carrying out the author's
benevolent intention.