One has heard much condemnation of the English kitchen. Our typical cook
is spoken of as a gross, unimaginative creature, capable only of roasting
or seething. Our table is said to be such as would weary or revolt any
but gobbet-bolting carnivores. We are told that our bread is the worst
in Europe, an indigestible paste; that our vegetables are diet rather for
the hungry animal than for discriminative man; that our warm beverages,
called coffee and tea, are so carelessly or ignorantly brewed that they
preserve no simple virtue of the drink as it is known in other lands. To
be sure, there is no lack of evidence to explain such censure. The class
which provides our servants is undeniably coarse and stupid, and its
handiwork of every kind too often bears the native stamp. For all that,
English victuals are, in quality, the best in the world, and English
cookery is the wholesomest and the most appetizing known to any temperate
clime.
As in so many other of our good points, we have achieved this thing
unconsciously. Your ordinary Englishwoman engaged in cooking probably
has no other thought than to make the food masticable; but reflect on the
results, when the thing is well done, and there appears a culinary
principle. Nothing could be simpler, yet nothing more right and
reasonable. The aim of English cooking is so to deal with the raw
material of man's nourishment as to bring out, for the healthy palate,
all its natural juices and savours. And in this, when the cook has any
measure of natural or acquired skill, we most notably succeed. Our beef
is veritably beef; at its best, such beef as can be eaten in no other
country under the sun; our mutton is mutton in its purest essence--think
of a shoulder of Southdown at the moment when the first jet of gravy
starts under the carving knife! Each of our vegetables yields its
separate and characteristic sweetness. It never occurs to us to disguise
the genuine flavour of food; if such a process be necessary, then
something is wrong with the food itself. Some wiseacre scoffed at us as
the people with only one sauce. The fact is, we have as many sauces as
we have kinds of meat; each, in the process of cookery, yields its native
sap, and this is the best of all sauces conceivable. Only English folk
know what is meant by _gravy_; consequently, the English alone are
competent to speak on the question of sauce.
To be sure, this culinary principle presupposes food of the finest
quality. If your beef and your mutton have flavours scarcely
distinguishable, whilst both this and that might conceivably be veal, you
will go to work in quite a different way; your object must then be to
disguise, to counterfeit, to add an alien relish--in short, to do
anything _except_ insist upon the natural quality of the viand. Happily,
the English have never been driven to these expedients. Be it flesh,
fowl, or fish, each comes to table so distinctly and eminently itself
that by no possibility could it be confused with anything else. Give
your average cook a bit of cod, and tell her to dress it in her own way.
The good creature will carefully boil it, and there an end of the matter;
and by no exercise of art could she have so treated the fish as to make
more manifest and enjoyable that special savour which heaven has bestowed
upon cod. Think of our array of joints; how royal is each in its own
way, and how utterly unlike any of the others. Picture a boiled leg of
mutton. It is mutton, yes, and mutton of the best; nature has bestowed
upon man no sweeter morsel; but the same joint roasted is mutton too, and
how divinely different! The point is that these differences are natural;
that, in eliciting them, we obey the eternal law of things, and no human
caprice. Your artificial relish is here not only needless, but
offensive.
In the case of veal, we demand "stuffing." Yes, for veal is a somewhat
insipid meat, and by experience we have discovered the best method of
throwing into relief such inherent goodness as it has. The stuffing does
not disguise, nor seek to disguise; it accentuates. Good veal
stuffing--reflect!--is in itself a triumph of culinary instinct; so bland
it is, and yet so powerful upon the gastric juices.
Did I call veal insipid? I must add that it is only so in comparison
with English beef and mutton. When I think of the "brown" on the edge of
a really fine cut of veal--!