Cooking is sometimes a pleasure, sometimes a duty, sometimes a burden
and sometimes a martyrdom, all according to the point of view. The
extremes are rarities, and sometimes duty and burden are synonymous. In
ordinary understanding we have American cooking and Foreign cooking, and
to one accustomed to plain American cooking, all variants, and all
additions of spices, herbs, or unusual condiments is classed under the
head of Foreign. In the average American family cooking is a duty
usually considered as one of the necessary evils of existence, and food
is prepared as it is usually eaten--hastily--something to fill the
stomach.
The excuse most frequently heard in San Francisco for the restaurant
habit, and for living in cooped-up apartments, is that the wife wants to
get away from the burden of the kitchen and drudgery of housework. And
like many other effects this eventually becomes a cause, for both
husband and wife become accustomed to better cooking than they could get
at home and there is a continuance of the custom, for both get a
distaste for plainly cooked food, and the wife does not know how to cook
any other way.
Yet when all is considered the difference between plain American cooking
and what is termed Foreign cooking, is but the proper use of condiments
and seasoning, combined with proper variety of the food supply from the
markets. Herein lies the secret of a good table-proper combination of
ingredients and proper variation and selection of the provisions
together with proper preparation and cooking of the food.
We have met with many well educated and well raised men and women whose
gastronomic knowledge was so limited as to be appalling. All they knew
of meats was confined to ordinary poultry, i. e., chickens and turkeys,
and to beef, veal, pork, and mutton. Of these there were but three modes
of cooking--frying, stewing and baking, sometimes boiling. Their chops
were always fried as they knew nothing of the delicate flavor imparted
by broiling. In fact their knowledge was confined to the least healthful
and least nutritious modes of preparation and cooking. Not only is this
true of the average American family, but their lack of knowledge of the
fundamentals of cooking and food values brings about a waste largely
responsible for what is called the "high cost of living." It is a trite,
but nevertheless true saying that a French family could live well on
what an American family wastes. Waste in preparation is but the mildest
form of waste. Waste consequent upon lack of knowledge of food values is
the waste that is doubly expensive for it not only wastes food but it
also wastes the system whose energy is exhausted in trying to assimilate
improper alimentation.
It is a well recognized medical fact that much of the illness of
Americans arises from two causes, improper food and improper eating
methods. In Europe this fact was recognized and generally known so long
ago that the study of food values and preparation for proper
assimilation is one of the essential parts of every woman's education,
and to such a degree has this become raised to a science that schools
and even colleges in cooking are to be found in many parts of England,
France and Germany. Francatelli, the great chef who was at the head of
Queen Victoria's kitchen, boasts proudly of his diploma from the
Parisian College of Cooking.
The United States is now beginning to wake up to the fact that the
preparation of food is something more than a necessary evil, and from
the old cooking classes of our common schools has developed the classes
in Domestic Science, that which was formerly considered drudgery now
being elevated to an art and dignified as a science. In Europe this
stage was reached many generations ago, and there it is now an art which
has elevated the primitive process of feeding to the elegant art of
dining. In San Francisco probably more than in any other city in the
United States, not even excepting New Orleans, this art has flourished
for many years with the result that the average San Franciscan is
disappointed at the food served in other cities of his country, and
always longs for his favorite restaurant even as the children of Israel
longed for the flesh pots of Egypt.
One needs to spend a day in the Italian quarter of San Francisco to come
to a full realization of the difference between the requirements of even
the poorest Italian family and the average American family of the better
class. We need but say that we have been studying this question for
nearly twenty years yet even now we meet with surprises in the way of
new delicacies and modes of using herbs and spices in food preparation.
If we were to attempt even to enumerate the various herbs, spices,
flavorings, delicacies, and pastes to be found in a well regulated
Italian shop it would take many pages of this book, yet every one of
these articles has its own individual and peculiar use, and the
knowledge of these articles and how to use them is what makes the
difference between American and Foreign cooking. Each herb has a
peculiar quality as a stomachic and it must be as delicately measured as
if it were a medicine. The use of garlic, so much decried as plebeian,
is the secret of some of the finest dishes prepared by the highest
chefs. It must not be forgotten that in the use of all flavors and
condiments there may be an intemperance, there lying the root of much of
the bad cooking.
Garlic, for instance, is a flavor and not a food, yet many of the lower
class foreigners eat it on bread, making a meal of dark bread, garlic
and red wine. It is offensive to sensitive nostrils and vitiates the
taste when thus used, but when properly added to certain foods it gives
an intangible flavor which never fails to elicit praise. What is true of
garlic is also true of the many herbs that are used. It is easy to pass
from a rare flavor that makes a most savory dish to a taste of medicine
that spoils a dinner. With the well-known prodigal and wasteful habits
of America the American who learns the use of herbs usually makes the
initial mistake of putting in the flavoring herbs with too lavish a
hand, and it is only after years of experience that a knowledge of
proper combinations is obtained.
Visitors have often expressed wonder at the variety of foods and
delicate flavors in San Francisco restaurants, and possibly this brief
explanation may give some comprehension of why San Franciscans always
want to get back to where they "can get something to eat."