FOOD AND COOKERY
Animals, taking one kind with another, nourish themselves on an
immense variety of food. The flesh and the blood of other animals of
all kinds, warm or cold, the leaves, twigs, fruits, juices of plants,
putrid carcases, hair, feathers, skin, bran, sawdust, the vegetable
mould or "humus" of the earth's surface, the sand of the sea, with its
minute particles of organic detritus, all serve as food to different
kinds of animals. Some are very little fettered in their tastes, and
are called "omnivorous," others are bound in the strictest way to a
diet consisting of the leaves of some one species of plant or the
juices of one species of animal. Some of the latter class, under
stress or privation, can accommodate themselves to a new food very
different in character and origin from that which is habitual to them;
others have no elasticity in this respect, and must have their exact
habitual food-plant or food-animal, unless they are to die of
starvation.
Man exhibits his great powers of accommodation to changed
circumstances in respect of food as well as in other matters. If we
are to suppose, as is probable, that our original ape-like ancestors
fed exclusively upon fruits and an occasional egg or juicy grub, how
vast are the changes in diet to which man has habituated himself! Man
is sometimes said to be omnivorous, but this is not a sufficient
description of the state of things which has grown up as he has spread
over the earth's surface. Every race--and even many a small group of
men--has its accustomed diet, to depart from which is a pain and a
difficulty, even though new kinds of food may be gradually accepted
and even become popular. Man has in this, as in so many other things,
a large range of possible accommodation, but he has at the same time
habits the continuance of which are necessary for the healthy working
of the nervous system. The psychical element in the matter of
food-habit is important in all higher animals, but most of all in man.
The digestive organs are controlled by the nervous system, and the
brain acts upon the latter in such a way as to favour or to restrain
the "appetite" and the secretion of the elaborate digestive juices, so
that fear, surprise, disgust, and "nausea" (that strange product of
mental and physical reactions) may destroy appetite and inhibit the
digestive process. There are vast populations of men who live on rice,
or beans, or meal, and never eat animal food, not even milk (after
babyhood), nor cheese, and would be, at a first attempt to eat it,
"put off" and disgusted by a mutton chop. There are others who subsist
almost entirely on fish, others who live on dried beef, others who
live on the fat of whales and seals, and would be for a generation or
two injured, half starved, and some of them even killed, by a change
of diet. Again, there are others who consider that they must have and
will be "ill" unless they had the cooked flesh of an ox or sheep as
part of their daily food. Let us examine this latter group a little
more fully--a group to which the nations of Europe belong, with the
exception of the Italians, who are essentially a meal-, fruit-, and
cheese-eating people.
Apparently at a very early time, even before the last glacial period,
man had learnt the use of fire, and roasted or grilled the carcases of
other animals which he killed in the chase, in order to consume them
as food. We have no reason to suppose that man ever made use of the
raw flesh of higher animals as his habitual diet. His teeth are not,
and never were, from his earliest ape-like days, adapted to true
carnivorous diet. Cooked meat is not the food of a carnivor, but is an
adaptation of the flesh of animals to the requirements of a
frugivorous animal. Probably the use of grain and cultivated vegetable
food is a later step in human progress than the roasting of meat. The
Neandermen, and even the later Reindeer-men (Cromagnards), had no
cultivated fields, but lived on roasted meat (of beasts, birds, and
fish) and wild fruits. We know how thoroughly the most ancient Greeks
enjoyed the long slices of roasted meat cut from the chine, as told in
the Homeric poems, and everywhere in Europe after the neolithic or
polished-stone period, meat was a main article of diet, in conjunction
with the vegetable products of agriculture. In this country, after the
Norman conquest, meat-eating was greatly favoured by the important
industry which grew up in hides. The land was well suited for the
pasturage of cattle, and owing to the smallness of the population and
the abundance of cattle slaughtered for their hides, meat was almost
to be had for the asking. It was thus that Englishmen became great
meat-eaters and that "the roast beef of Old England" was established.
Later the same superfluity of meat--in this case, "mutton"--recurred
and became general when wool-growing and the manufacture of woollen
goods developed into important industries. Relatively to the
population there was more "meat" of oxen and sheep in this country
than on the continent of Europe, and this disproportion has been
maintained.
But the increase of population has led to a considerable change in the
diet of a very large proportion--the poorer part--of the community.
Whilst the families of the better-paid working class and all the
middle and upper class continue to eat meat, the agricultural labourer
and the poorer workmen in towns live chiefly on flour, sugar, bacon,
and cheese. Probably they have become habituated to this diet, and,
provided that the quantity is sufficient, it cannot be maintained that
the diet, in which meat is nearly or altogether absent, is unhealthy.
Many vigorous and muscularly well-developed populations in other lands
thrive on exclusively vegetable food.
A curious and not altogether comforting reflection is that if the
inexpensive and simple food of the agricultural labourer is
sufficient, the section of the community which spends from five to ten
shillings per head a day on a mixed diet of meat, fish, eggs, and
vegetables is guilty of waste and excess. Here, however, the
remarkable, and, in fact, exceptional domination of "habit" (in the
case of man), in regard to both the actual articles of food and the
mode of its preparation, has to be recognised. Such and such
inexpensive and unskilfully prepared food may contain more than the
necessary amount of proteids (that is, matters like flesh, the casein
of cheese and of vegetables, and the albumen of eggs), of
hydro-carbons (_i.e._, fats), of carbo-hydrates (_i.e._, starch and
sugar), yet if you were suddenly to compel a man accustomed to
well-cooked meat to live on such food he would be unable to assimilate
it, his digestive organs would refuse to work, and he would become, if
not seriously ill, yet so ill-nourished and sickly that he would be
unfit for his work and readily fall a victim to disease. It is, in
fact, impossible to lay down any scheme of diet based on the mere
provision of the necessary quantities of food materials whilst
ignoring the formed habits of the individual and the relation of the
psychical conditions which we call "taste," "appetite," "fancy,"
"disgust," to the actual processes of digestion and the consequent
efficiency of the proposed diet.
No doubt gradually, after a few generations, a whole people may become
healthily habituated to a diet which would have been positively
injurious to their forebears, and no doubt individuals may be led by
fortitude or by necessity in time (perhaps weeks, perhaps years) to
acquire a tolerance, or even enjoyment, of food at first repulsive,
and therefore injurious. The difficulty in the matter is not that of
correctly determining what is physiologically sufficient for the human
animal, nor even what would be a healthy diet for a community when
once, after a transition period of distress and injury, habituated or
"attuned" to that diet. The difficulty is to arrive at a conclusion as
to what is really the suitable and reasonable diet for an
individual--yourself or one like yourself--having regard to the
lifelong habits of the individual, and the consequent nervous
reactions established in him or her in relation to the taste, quality,
and mode of presentation of food. Robust people, so long as they get
what suits their own uncultivated taste, are apt to make very light of
what they call "fancies" about food, and to overlook their real
importance.
Feeding on the part of civilised man is not the simple procedure which
it is with animals, although many animals are particular as to their
food and what is called "dainty." The necessity for civilised man of
cheerful company at his meal, and for the absence of mental anxiety,
is universally recognised, as well as the importance of an inviting
appeal to the appetite through the sense of smell and of sight, whilst
the injurious effect of the reverse conditions, which may lead to
nausea, and even vomiting, is admitted. Even the ceremonial features
of the dinner table, the change of clothes before sitting down to the
repast, the leisurely yet precise succession of approved and expected
dishes, accompanied by pleasant talk and light-hearted companionship,
are shown by strict scientific examination to be important aids to the
healthy digestion of food, which need not be large in quantity,
although it should be wisely presented.
These psychical conditions of healthy feeding are not trivial matters,
as we are too apt to suppose. They are part, and a very important
part, of the physiology of nutrition, and so deserving of scientific
inquiry and of practical attention. They have been made the subject of
careful experiment by a Russian physiologist, Pavloff. At a recent
meeting of the British Association this matter was brought under
discussion in the Physiological Section, and it was pointed out by the
author of a very interesting communication that the whole question as
to what is and what is not a sound and healthy diet is too often dealt
with by writers who ignore the psychical (or shall we say the
cerebral?) factor. Cases were cited of dangerous arrest of the power
of digesting, or even of swallowing, food which were cured by giving
the patient some apparently inappropriate and probably harmful article
of food for which he or she had a fancy, such as a grilled
salmon-steak, the last thing which would be spontaneously recommended
by a medical man to a patient who had been suffering for weeks from
inability to take food. The willingness is all--the assent, the
approval of the cerebral centres, and the consequent unlocking of the
whole arrested mechanism of digestive secretions and movements. Such a
case is only an extreme instance. But it is undoubtedly the fact that
just as the sight of so small a thing as a drop of blood, or even the
word "blood," will on occasion cause a strong, healthy man to faint,
so quite a small excess or defect in the accustomed quality of food
will at times arrest the appetite and digestive processes of a healthy
man. To many a healthy individual one among many flavours and savours
associated with agreeable food is necessary in order that healthy
appetite and proper digestion may be set going, and the absence of the
right flavour and the presence of what is, in his experience, a wrong
and disgusting smell or taste in the food set before him, will produce
nausea and complete arrest of the digestive processes.
It is apparently owing to this cause that "tinned meats" have proved
to be of little value as rations for an army in campaign, for
exploring expeditions, and for remote mining camps. It is not that
such tinned meats do not contain the necessary constituents of food,
or that they contain poisonous substances, but that they produce a
sense of disgust, and arrest the digestive processes. Soldiers,
travellers, and miners have assured me that they prefer a dry biscuit
and dried, or salted, or sugared meat, to the supposed more "tasty"
tinned meats, and that such is the general experience of their
comrades.
Of similar nature is another very serious trouble, in regard to the
healthy feeding of the modern Englishman, which has come upon us in
consequence of the quite modern system of huge restaurants, whether in
London or in the very large hotels, which are now run in Swiss,
Italian and English summer resorts. Hundreds of visitors are "catered
for" daily. There is no attempt at anything which deserves the name of
cookery. Great monopolists control the supplies, and contract to
deliver to these hotels, even in out-of-the-way localities, so much
ice-stored, "mousey" fish, "mousey" quails, stringy meat, impossible
vegetables and fruits, gathered from the cheapest markets of Europe
and of a quality just not bad enough to cause a revolt among the hotel
visitors. The heating of the food is done by patent machinery in ovens
and by the use of boiling fat. No cook is in these circumstances
possible, with his artistic feeling for the production of a perfect
result of skill and taste. A kind of bottled meat-flavoured sauce,
manufactured from spent yeast, is used to make the soups, and is
poured, with an equally nauseating result, over the hard veal, the
tough chicken, the "mousey" quails, and the tasteless beef and mutton,
which are never roasted, but are baked or stewed in boiling
fat--though shamelessly described as "rotis" in the pretentious and
mendacious "menu" placed on the dinner-table. The consequence is that
the tourist, who has been overfed at home, eats very little, and his
health benefits. But in such an hotel the man who lives carefully when
at home, and desires a simple but properly cooked meal, is reduced to
a state of indigestion, semi-starvation and misery.
The Englishman who is disgusted by the new mechanical methods of
cookery in the great hotels of Continental "resorts," returns to
London, and finds the same atrocious system at work--not only in the
public restaurants, but in his club. Nowhere in London can you rely on
being served with really fresh fish, however highly you may pay for
it. Rarely it is fresh, usually it is not. The ice storage people take
good care that you shall not obtain fresh fish, and so retain your
taste for it. Nowhere at club or restaurant, with rare exceptions, can
you obtain meat roasted in the old-fashioned way on a roasting-jack,
carefully "basted" during the process, and served when exactly cooked
to a turn. There were, only a few years ago, one or two such places
surviving--both clubs and restaurants--where proper roasting was done,
but, like the rest, they have now adopted lazy, economical,
money-saving methods. Their managers calculate that what they do will
serve. It is good enough for the crowd! So at last you abandon the
efforts to obtain decent simple food, in club or hotel, and dine with
your friend _en famille_. The same thing confronts you. The joint has
been baked in an oven, of which it smells, and is surrounded by a
sickly gravy, produced by pouring hot water over it! In conversation
with your hostess, you find that she knows nothing whatever about the
simplest elements of the preparation of food. She tells you she avoids
roasting because it necessitates a large fire and an extra expenditure
of L5 a year on coal, and she also purchases those mouldy,
frost-bitten potatoes instead of the best, because they cost half as
much as sound ones--and she herself does not care for potatoes. They
are fattening!
Sometimes at a restaurant or club, served by a foreign "chef," a
Yorkshire pudding, as hard as a stale loaf of bread, is handed round
in slabs with the so-called "roast" beef. It is not roasted: it is
baked beef, and the pudding is an ill-tasting baked mess, also.
Nowhere in London in public or private house do I ever see the
properly cooked article. True Yorkshire pudding can only be made by
placing it under the roasting joint, which drips digestion-promoting
essences into the pudding whilst itself rotating, hissing and
spluttering--as did the joints roasted in the caves long ago by the
prehistoric Reindeer-men. The scientific importance of good roasting
and grilling is that a savour is thereby produced which sets the whole
gastric and digestive economy of the man who sniffs it and tastes it,
at work. Possibly our successors, a generation or two hence, will have
learnt to do without this, and will have acquired as intimate and
happy a gastronomic relation to what now are for us the nauseous
flavours of superheated fat (rarely renewed), and of the all-pervading
gravy fabricated by chemical treatment of yeast, as that which we
ourselves have acquired in regard to the old-established and
painstaking cookery of the early Victorian and many preceding ages.
Medical men who are occupied as specialists with the study of very
young children have clearly demonstrated that the implanting of
tastes, tendencies and habits in infants of from two to eight years of
age has an immense importance in their subsequent development.
Character and capacity are really formed in those early years. Food
preferences, no less than mental and moral qualities, are then
created. Yet the children of both rich and poor are in these early
stages either left to haphazard or entrusted to ignorant nursemaids.
For those of us who were not born to the present system the transition
to the new methods of wholesale cookery is an abomination, and to
escape from them a matter of difficulty. We have to secure an ancient
roasting-jack and a large clear fire in our own kitchen, and to
instruct our cook--since no woman has taught her what she ought to
know--in the art of roasting and grilling, in the preparation of
Yorkshire pudding, in the mystery of the marrow-bone and the proper
and distinct use of garlic, onions, shalots, chives, chervil,
tarragon, marjoram, basil, other herbs, and divers peppers, and
finally to train her in the supreme accomplishment of the seasoning of
a salad.
Maybe that the present established relations of our appetites to the
time-honoured savours, by which the ancient Jews sought to propitiate
the Deity, are destined to be superseded. On the other hand it is
quite possible that all the juggling of modern "machine" cookery is a
false step, and injurious to digestion and health. It is not unlikely
that there is no relish which has so sure a hold on the digestion of
European man, no appeal to the cerebral mechanism controlling the
liberation of his gastric juices, which is so infallible as that
emanating from "well and truly" roasted or grilled meat.
It is not easy to account for the present neglect of decent cookery
and the triumph of the sham French cookery (for it is not French at
all!) which is at present foisted on a long-suffering public. Probably
the enormously increased number of visitors to foreign resorts and of
frequenters of restaurants in London have led to huge enterprise in
"catering," and to a monopoly which has driven out of existence the
smaller establishments, where alone the artist-cook can flourish. But
it seems that the neglect of decent cooking is also due in this
country to a racial incapacity and indifference which leads both men
and women to despise "taking pains" about small things, and brings
them into the world devoid of the desire to carry out with skill those
small enterprises on which much of the sweetness and gaiety of life
depends.
Even in the time of Charles II the skill and seriousness of French
cookery as compared with our own was recognised. The high reputation
of Scotch cooks at the present day seems to be due to an inheritance
of traditions from the days of close association of the Scotch and
French Courts. Up to nearly 100 years ago roasting was as usual a
method of cooking meat in Paris as in London. There were "rotisseries"
in Paris in the old days. High prices and thrift have led to the
decadence of roasting as a popular method of cooking meat in France,
but the great "chef" in a private house in Paris still produces the
most perfect roast beef and roast saddle of mutton (better than you
will find in England) in the old-fashioned way. So indifferent, or
perhaps hopeless, are Englishmen in regard to cookery that they drink
a strong champagne throughout dinner, content to drown the insipid
taste of the food in the fine flavour of a drink upon which they can
rely. An Englishman dining at a first-rate restaurant will usually
spend twice as much for wine as for food, whilst a Frenchman will
reverse the proportions. Another difference is one for which women are
responsible. In Paris a party of French men and women at a table in a
good restaurant enjoy their food, laugh and talk with one another, and
do not concern themselves with the company at other tables. It would
be bad manners to do so. But English-speaking women, when dining in
public, seem to be chiefly interested, not in their food nor in their
own party, but in pointing out to one another the celebrities or
notorieties or eccentricities seated at other tables. So long as the
place is fashionable and noisy, the food is negligible and neglected.
For some reason, which I am unable to discover, the women of England
(it is not the case with those of France and Germany) have, with rare
exceptions, no interest in or liking for "cookery," and yet the men
have left the management of it entirely in their hands. Male "chefs"
of English nationality are rare specimens, though they are, as a rule,
the best at grilling and roasting. On the other hand, in France, where
women no less than men value and understand cookery, there is an
enormous body of professional male cooks. English-women of means and
education have to such a degree neglected all knowledge of cookery and
of the quality and criticism of kitchen supplies, such as meat, fish,
birds, and vegetables, that there is no one to teach the poor country
girls (who become cooks in the majority of households) the elements of
the very difficult and important duties which they are expected--in
virtue of some kind of inspiration or native genius--to discharge with
skill and judgment: nor is there any head of a household capable of
seeing that the necessary care and trouble are given. It is wonderful,
under the circumstances, how clever and willing our domestic cooks
are. A considerable section of English middle-class women at the
present day are allowed by the men, who should guide them so as to
make them honourable and useful members of the community, to grow up
in complete ignorance of the essential parts of the art of cookery.
This was not the case a hundred years ago. Now a large proportion of
them have been led by bad example and foolish notions to give up such
matters to "the servants," whether they are able to afford competent
servants or even to judge of the competence of a servant or not. Many
of these "mistresses" now devote themselves exclusively to "dress,"
"amusements," "charity," "politics," and dabbling inconsequently in
various crazes. They are not to blame. It is the men who are to blame
who deliberately neglect to give to their womenkind a training and
education which shall make them real mistresses of household arts and
business, so that they may be thus filled with the happy conviction
(which is the one thing they most desire and most often cannot gain)
that they are of real use--are really wanted--in the world.
In conclusion, let me tell of a great German sports-man, Major von
Wissman, Governor of German East Africa, now no more, who came to see
me at the Museum nine years ago. It was his first visit to London, and
I took him to lunch at a famous grill-room. Happily, though roasting
is dying out, the art of grilling still survives in this country, but
nowhere else in Europe. Von Wissman said--"Can I have beer where we
are going?" "Yes, certainly," I said. "German beer?" he asked. "No," I
replied. "Something much better." When we were seated, I ordered a
pint tankard of Reid's London stout for my friend. It was in perfect
condition. He put his lips to it in doubt, but did not remove them
until, with reverential drooping of the eyelids, he had emptied the
tankard. "The very finest beer I have ever swallowed," he said. "What
in the name of goodness is it?" I told him, and ordered him more. Soon
a perfectly grilled chop and a large, clean, floury potato were before
him. He proceeded to eat, and was really and unaffectedly astonished.
"But this is marvellous," he said, "wonderful! enchanting! I have
never really tasted meat before in my life. Reitzend! Colossal!" He
had a steak to follow, and I was pleased to have been able to show him
something which I knew (by experience of that city) they could not
produce in Berlin. Three days later I went over to the same hospitable
grill-room for a chop, and told the gifted grill-cook (the French, in
former centuries, had a proverb, "Anyone may learn to be a cook, but
one must be born a 'rotisseur'") of the admiration he had excited in
the Emperor William's friend. "Yes, sir," he said, "I fancy he did
like it, for he came here by himself yesterday and the day before, and
took the same grills and stout." Von Wissman was staying at the German
Embassy, but was drawn all the way to South Kensington by the sweet
savour of the grill-room--an instance of what the physiologists call
"positive chemotaxis."
What I have here written on food and cookery is no "gourmet's" praise
of indulgence in the pleasures of the table, nor is it an expression
of a mere personal preference. It is a protest, based on scientific
grounds, against the neglect of one of the bulwarks of health--the
honest traditional cookery which flourished in London forty years ago.