HOMELY, BUT IMPORTANT.
The French woman dresses herself with a view to pleasing the
cultivated eye. She consults her complexion, height, figure and
carriage, in color, make and trimming. Her apparel partakes of her
individuality.
The American woman wears her clothes, as clothing, and has them made
up of certain materials and in various ways, because dressmakers and
fashion-plates prescribe what are this season's "styles."
Dissimilarities as marked prevail in the cookery of the two nations.
Daintiness and flavor take the rank of other considerations with the
French cook; with the American,--_fillingness_! I can use no
substitute for the word that will convey the right idea.
The human machine (of American manufacture) must be greased regularly
and plied with fuel or it will not go. And "go" is the genius of
American institutions. Cookery with us is means to an end; therefore,
as much a matter of economy of time and toil as building a road.
Almost every cottage has specimens of fine art on the walls in the
shape of pictures "done" by Jane or Eliza, or embroidery upon
lambrequin, _portière_, or tidy. It occurs to Jane and Eliza as seldom
as to their fore-mothers, that cooking is an art in itself, that may
be "fine" to exquisiteness. In their eyes, it is an ugly necessity, to
be got over as expeditiously as "the men-folks" will allow, their
coarser natures demanding more and richer filling than women's. It
follows that dishes which require premeditation and deft manipulation
are unpopular. The scorn with which our middle class woman regards
soups, jellies, salads and _entrées_ is based upon prejudice that has
become national. Recipes marked--"Time from three to four hours," are
a feature of English cook-books. We American writers of household
manuals are too conversant with Jane's and Eliza's principles to
imperil their sale by what will be considered danger-signals. This
same desire to dispatch a disagreeable task increases in said manuals
the number of "Quick Biscuit," "Minute Muffins" and "Hasty Pudding"
recipes.
Represent to the notable housewife who is scrupulous in saving
minutes, candle-ends and soap grease, that a few pounds of cracked
bones, a carrot, a turnip, an onion and a bunch of sweet herbs,
covered deep with cold water, and set at one side of the range on
washing-day, to simmer into soup stock, wastes neither time nor fuel
and will be the base of more than one or two nourishing dinners;
prove, by mathematical demonstration, that a mold of delicious
blanc-mange or Spanish cream or simpler junket costs less and can be
made in one-tenth of the time required for the leathery-skinned, sour
or faint-hearted pie, without which "father'n the boys wouldn't relish
their dinner;" that an egg and lettuce salad, with mayonnaise
dressing, is so much more toothsome and digestible than chipped beef
as a "tea relish," as to repay her for the few additional minutes
spent in preparing it--and her skeptical stare means disdain of your
interference, and complacent determination to follow her own way.
She has heard that "country people in furren parts a'most live upon
slops and grass and eggs and frogs, and supposes that's the reason
Frenchmen are so small and dark-complected." She thanks goodness she
was born in America, "where there's plenty to eat and to spare," she
adds, piously, as she puts the chunk of salt pork on to boil with the
white beans, or the brisket of salt beef over the fire with the
cabbage, before mixing a batch of molasses-cake with buttermilk and
plenty of soda.
The corner-stone of her culinary operations might have been cut from
the pillar into which another conservative woman with a will of her
own, was changed. It is solid salt. Salt pork, salt beef, salt fish,
relieve one another in an endless chain upon her board. She averts
scurvy by means of cabbage and potatoes. I know well-to-do farmers'
wives who do not cook what they call "butcher's meat," three times a
month, or poultry above twice a year. Dried and salt meat and fish
replenish what an Irish cook once described to me as "the _meat
corner_ of the stomach."
"Half-a-dozen eggs wouldn't half fill it, mem;" she protested, in
defence of the quantity of steak and roast devoured daily
below-stairs.
Our native housewife does not make the effort to crowd this cavity
with the product of her poultry yard. Eggs of all ages are marketable
and her pride in the limited number she uses in filling up her
household is comic, yet pathetic. Cream is the chrysalis of butter at
thirty cents a pound; to work so much as a tablespoonful into dishes
for daily consumption would be akin to the sinful enormity of lighting
a fire with dollar bills. She sends her freshly-churned, golden rolls
to "the store" in exchange for groceries, including _cooking butter_
to be used in the manufacture of cake and pastry.
These she _must_ have. Appetites depraved by fats--liquid, solid and
fried--crave the assuasives of sweets and acids. "Hunky"
bread-puddings and eggless, faintly-sweetened rice puddings, and pies
of various kinds, represent dessert. Huge pickles, still smacking of
the brine that "firmed" them, are offered in lieu of fresher acids.
Yet she sneers at salads, and would not touch sorrel soup to save a
Frenchman's soul. For beverages she stews into rank herbiness cheap
tea by the quart, and Rio coffee, weak and turbid, with plenty of
sugar in both. Occasionally the coffee is cleared (!) with a bit of
salt fish skin. I was told by one who always saved the outside skin of
codfish, after soaking it for fish balls, for clearing her coffee,
that, "it gives a kind of _bright_ taste to it; takes off the
flatness-like, don't you know?" We raise more vegetables and in
greater variety than any other people; have better and cheaper fruits
than can be procured in any other market upon the globe; our waters
teem with fish (unsalted) that may be had for the catching. Yet our
national _cuisine_--take it from East to West and from North to
South--is the narrowest as to range, the worst as to preparation, and
the least wholesome of any country that claims an enlightened
civilization.
Properly fried food once in a while is not to be condemned, as the
grease does not have a chance to "soak in." But when crullers or
potatoes or fritters are dropped into warm (not hot) lard, and allowed
to remain there until they are oily and soggy to the core, we may with
accuracy count on at least fifteen minutes of heartburn to each
half-inch of the fried abominations.
Perhaps there is nothing in which we slight the demands of Nature more
than in _what and how we eat_. Chewing stimulates the salivary glands
to give out secretions to aid in disposing of what we eat. We swallow
half-chewed food, thus throwing undue labor on the stomach. It is
impossible for the work of disgestion to be carried on in the stomach
at a temperature of less than one hundred degrees. Yet, just as that
unfortunate organ begins its work we pour into it half-pints of iced
water. We add acid to acid by inordinate quantities of sugar, and
court dyspepsia by masses of grease. If we thus openly defy all her
laws, can we wonder if the kind but just mother calls us to account
for it?