It is not often that an author is so fortunate as to have a subject
which is of vital importance to everybody, without exception. Everybody
eats, and everybody wants to enjoy his meals; yet few know how to get
the most benefit and pleasure out of them. The French are far ahead of
us in this respect; they are a nation of gastronomers, understanding
fully the importance to health and happiness of raising only the
best foodstuffs, cooking them in savory ways and eating them with
intelligence and pleasure. One of the main objects of the present
volume is to show that we have the material for the making of an even
more gastronomic nation than the French are, and that Americans,
especially if caught young, can be taught to eat in a leisurely way and
to refuse to accept anything that lacks appetizing flavor.
Flavor! In that word lies the key to the whole food problem.
Undoubtedly the nourishing property of food is also of importance;
without it we could not live. Yet, as Luther Burbank has keenly
remarked, if we eliminate palatability (that is, flavor) from food, it
is no more than a medicine, "to be taken because it produces certain
necessary results." Moreover, a little of this medicine goes a great
way. Horace Fletcher lived for years on eleven cents a day; and two
university professors--Dr. J. L. Henderson of Harvard and Dr. Graham
Lusk of Cornell--have demonstrated, independently, that a dime a day,
intelligently expended, is enough to keep body and soul together.
What more we spend on food--and we probably average five times that
amount--goes chiefly for flavor. It is the flavor that makes us willing
to pay more for good butter than for good oleomargarine, for fresh
chicken than for cold storage fowl, for Virginia ham than for ordinary
ham, and so on throughout the list of foods; for there is no difference
in nutritive value in any of these cases.
This being so, it seems passing strange that while so many good books
have been written on the nutritive aspects of foods, mine is the first
volume in any language treating specially of this same flavor, on
which we spend so much of our income, and which is so important to
our health. The explanation lies in the fact that flavor is generally
looked upon as something merely agreeable--like the fragrance of
strawberries, or the vanilla extract we put into ice cream--but of no
vital importance. It was this misunderstanding that prevented me from
keeping the title "Flavor in Food" which I had intended to use. At a
conference with the publishers we decided that (since, after all, the
book also discusses many other aspects of the food question), it would
be wiser to use the title "Food and Flavor." Nevertheless, Flavor
(with a big "F" to emphasize its importance) is the principal theme,
and the most important chapters are the second and the last in which
I discuss its superlative value, not only as the source of countless
wholesome pleasures of the table, but as a guide to health. The gist
of the book lies in the sections "An Amazing Blunder" and "A New
Psychology of Eating," in which I have shown that we need flavor as
much as we need food if we wish to be well; for food without flavor is
not appetizing; and when food is not appetizing it lies in the stomach
like lead and causes dyspepsia, the national American plague. The
final chapter considers the important difference between appetizing
flavor and mere fragrance, the neglect of which has created no end of
confusion and done so much harm.
In the pages concerned with "Ungastronomic America" and "Our Denatured
Foods," I have dwelt on some of the evils which have resulted from the
giving up of the old-fashioned condiments (especially woodsmoke)
in favor of the much cheaper chemical preservatives which denature
our food, that is, destroy its appetizing flavor, and give rise
to countless adulterations and deceptions. It was not with any
"muck-raking" intentions that these pages were written, but merely
to increase the present wholesome discontent and pave the way for
better things by making it clear to all what those better things are,
and indicating ways of thwarting the unscrupulous adulterators and
dealers. There is need of a good deal of hard fighting, for there are
in many towns health officers who thrive on "graft" as well as wealthy
manufacturers of undesirable preservatives who prevent the passage or
enforcement of pure food laws; yet I believe the time is not very far
distant when these two chapters will have little more than a historic
interest. Pending that time, _caveat emptor_--let the buyer beware.
The rest of the book is mainly constructive, and under the head of
"Gastronomic America" I have tried to paint a glowing picture not
only of present pleasures of the palate but of keener ones to come,
thanks to Luther Burbank and other educators of fruits and vegetables.
Among these educators are the specialists of the Department of
Agriculture. The Government of the United States has done more than
that of any other country to give useful advice to the growers of food
products--and to cooks, too! Throughout this volume I have missed no
chance to call attention to its many helpful publications, besides
summing up the matter under the head of "Governmental Gastronomy." It
is a topic of tremendous importance to farmers, vegetable gardeners,
dairymen, and all who are concerned with the growing or distributing
of food stuffs. Farming is defined as "cultivating the ground in order
to raise food"; and why farmers, quite as much as epicures, should be
interested in the _best foods_, I have explained in the section headed
"Commercial Value of Flavor," with illustrations showing how a tiller
of the soil can double or quintuple his income or even make a big
fortune by taking the demand for appetizing flavor as a guide.
Knowing that they do many of these things much better in Europe, I made
a special gastronomic trip in 1912 to gather first hand information in
the market places, gardens and restaurants of France, Italy, Germany
and England. I have dwelt on the good things raised and prepared in
those countries, such as the salads, the poultry, the bread, the
butter, the cheeses, the wonderful cuisine of France; the olive oil,
the economical substitutes for meat, and the macaroni (the _real_ staff
of life) of Italy; the diverse delicatessen of Germany (including live
fish brought to the kitchen and genuinely smoked meats and fish);
the Wiltshire bacon, the Southdown mutton, the cakes and marmalades
of Great Britain. Information on many things like those, concerning
which there is a widespread curiosity, has not before been brought
conveniently between two covers, and I am sure I need not apologize
for having followed the example of the gossiping Brillat-Savarin, in
presenting this information largely in the form of a narrative of
personal experiences, and with pertinent anecdotes.
To the chapters on the "Science of Savory Cooking" and "A Noble Art" I
wish to call special attention because in them lies, I am convinced,
the ultimate solution of the urgent problem of domestic help, as well
as the problem of improving the average American cuisine, which is a
still larger one, because in eleven out of every twelve families the
women have to do their own cooking. Too many women, not to speak of
men, do not know that cooking really _is_ a science, (which electricity
will soon make an exact science), and the practice of it a fine art,
experts in which may well look down proudly on the mere factory and
shop girls who foolishly think they are above them. Schools, women's
societies, and society women have taken up the matter in England as
well as in America, and great changes are impending--changes which, it
is hoped, this volume, coming at the "psychological moment," will help
to accelerate.
[Illustration][Drawing of a busy scene in a restaurant]