Made dishes are sometimes very expensive, and sometimes very economical,
for ragouts and fricassees are often much less expensive than the plain
dishes made of the same material, that is, a given weight of meat will
go farther than if plainly roasted or boiled. French cookery consists
nearly altogether of made dishes, both with the rich and poor. The rich
have them to gratify the palate, and the poor, for the sake of economy.
Many circumstances combine to prevent made dishes from becoming of very
general or frequent use in England. The care, attention, and length of
time necessary for preparing them, are incompatible with the domestic
affairs and usages of life in this country, where time is far more
precious than in any other country; it is for that reason, most
probably, that all the operations of English cookery are such as can be
performed expeditiously.
The English cooks, both in the middling and lower ranks, are generally
in a hurry to get a dinner dressed. The French cooks, on the contrary,
begin in the morning early, and even in the house of the simple
_Bourgois_, the dinner begins to be cooked immediately after breakfast.
The superior expedition, and inferior degree of skill which distinguish
English from French cookery, would be sufficient alone to give the
former the preference in this country; but there are a number of other
circumstances that have the same tendency.
A good table is a study in France: it is with the master a grand object
in life, and with the cooks a constant employment, like our journeymen
in a manufactory. With us, again, the dinner is readily prepared, and
expeditiously eaten. It is despatched like a piece of business in this
country; but in France, and more or less all over the Continent, people
dine as if they had a pleasure in dining; they converse more during the
repast than almost at any other time, and they never hurry it over as if
they were in haste to be done, and as if they had business always on
their mind, and were reflecting on the saying, so common and so true,
that “_time is money_.”
It is curious enough, however, to remark, that the French, who sit so
long, and enjoy themselves so leisurely at dinner, rise, immediately
after the dessert, from the table, and are ready for business; and that
the English, who hurry the dinner over, pass whole hours over the bottle
as if time were of no value. Such are the inconsistencies of mankind,
arising from different tastes and different circumstances.
The construction of our kitchen grates and fire places, and the nature
of the fuel we burn, are unfavourable to the slow and regular simmering
with which made dishes are prepared; and, at the same time, that they
are unfavourable for made dishes, they are exactly what is wanted for
English cookery. The construction of the grates, together with the
nature of the fuel, produce a fierce scorching fire, so that the direct
rays of heat may be made to impinge on the substance to be cooked.
In France, roasting large joints is almost impracticable with the form
and nature of the fire; so that it does not appear that taste or will
has been the only guide in the mode of cooking in either country; but
that the practices most suitable to circumstances have been a chief
cause of the great difference of the manner of dressing victuals.
English medical men have always been at great pains to condemn made
dishes as injurious to health; but the French physicians have been of a
different opinion, and if _experientia docet_ is a true proverb, they
ought to be the best judges: but those who have been used to both, will
allow that they are less heavy, and the stomach seems to be less
encumbered after the French dinner on made dishes, than the English one
on single joints.
In made dishes, where butcher’s meat enters, as although the chief
ingredient is generally _much more_ done, to use the common phrase,
none of its nutritive substances are lost; but as the arguments for and
against the real things of one or the other is not to be determined by
reason, and has not been determined by experience, it would be absurd to
give an opinion on the subject.
It may be well enough, however, to observe, that the dispute about what
are the most healthy dishes, probably arises from difference of tastes,
and from those things to which the stomach has not been accustomed, not
agreeing with it at first; so that most people on finding it so, if they
can avoid doing it, never repeat the experiment.
The case is the same with Foreigners as with Englishmen, for their
stomachs do not at first find our dishes agree with them.