"Cookery is an art which almost more than any other has civilized
mankind," as President E. B. Tylor of the British Anthropological
Association has truly said.
[Illustration: Before breakfast in the garden]
Nor is it only an art; it is also a science--or rather, it is becoming
a science. From time immemorial cooks have, by instinct or accident,
often done the right thing; but in the absence of a guiding principle,
scientifically formulated, they have much more frequently made a mess
of it.
There are four reasons for cooking food: to sterilize it; to make it
more nutritious; to make it more easily digestible; and to improve or
vary its Flavor.
Cooking destroys the germs of typhoid and other diseases which may lurk
in food products, and it also retards the general decomposition which
may result in ptomaine poisoning.
It has long been believed that raw or semi-raw meat is more nutritious
than meat which has been moderately cooked; but this is not true. It
is true, on the other hand, that in the ordinary methods of cooking
there is often a considerable loss of nutriment. The United States
Department of Agriculture has had a number of experiments made to place
this question on a scientific basis.[5] Much remains to be done, but in
the end it will doubtless be found that there is no appreciable loss if
French methods are followed.
That cooking makes most foods more digestible it is needless to prove.
Even fruits which taste better raw, digest more readily when cooked.
A great many persons who cannot, for instance, eat apples, find them
not only agreeable but easily assimilated and most beneficial to
health when stewed or baked. Cereals (particularly oatmeal) and many
vegetables and meats need cooking--sometimes hours of it to make them
easy to masticate and digest.
_The main object of cooking, however, is to preserve and develop the
countless savors latent in good raw material, to combine them or to add
others where the material is deficient in natural Flavor._
This is the guiding principle to the _science_ of cookery. Strange
to say, there are cook books in which the word Flavor is not to be
found! The recipes given in such books may be correct, but to follow
them mechanically is like playing the notes of a piano piece without
knowing anything about expression marks. Flavor is the soul of food as
expression is the soul of music.
_Born_ cooks know this instinctively and act on it. But cooks can also
be _made_. Tremendous improvement could be effected in our kitchens
in a short time by attending to the elements of the Science of Savory
Cooking, long since discovered, but usually ignored.
Much has been written about the wastefulness in our households. A
French family, we have been told a thousand times, could live on what
is thrown away in an American kitchen. True; but as long as we enjoy
our present national prosperity this waste is a far less deplorable
matter than the _criminal_ way in which ignorant or careless persons
habitually denature our best food materials by allowing the healthful
Flavors to escape during the process of cooking.