It is likely that in the development of electric cooking inventive
America will lead Europe. But in other respects the American cooking
of the future will have to borrow many useful hints from the older and
more experienced nations of Europe.
We need, especially, greater variety in our dietary. The following
chapters will endeavor to indicate the best ways of multiplying our
pleasures of the table.
Before beginning with France, which has the largest number of lessons
to teach, let us briefly consider the need of variety.
King Philip V of Spain engaged Farinelli, the most famous vocalist of
his time, to sing four songs for him, without change of any kind, every
evening for ten years. He was not in his right mind, "as a matter of
course," one feels tempted to add, and yet are there not at this day,
and in this country, many thousands of persons whose musical pabulum
consists entirely of half a dozen tunes, which they sing, hum, and
whistle decade after decade? For them the countless inspirations of
genius given to the world in the last three centuries do not exist at
all. And how much enjoyment they thus miss!
Vastly more surprising, since everybody eats, is the fact that the
majority of persons are equally ignorant of the countless delicacies
invented by ingenious cooks of the past and present. What Sir Henry
Thompson wrote, more than a quarter of a century ago, regarding
the average Englishman is quite as true to this day of the average
American: "He cares more for quantity than quality, desires little
variety, and regards as impertinent an innovation in the shape of a new
aliment, expecting the same food at the same hour daily."
Breeders of fine animals have long since discovered that nothing is so
conducive to health and other desirable qualities as variety in the
food given.
A monotonous diet soon palls on the appetite, fails to stimulate the
digestive organs, and the result is dyspepsia, loss of pleasure,
energy, and earning power, and the shortening of life. Think of the
pallid victims of the everlasting hog and hominy in the South! "Hasty
pudding and milk," as Artemus Ward sagely observed, "are a harmless
diet if eaten moderately, but if you eat it incessantly for six
consecutive weeks, it will produce instant death."
At a conference on diet in schools held in London, all the speakers
agreed that "monotony is the most fatal thing to digestion in both
young and old, and that the knowledge that such and such a dish must
inevitably come on Monday and such and such another on Tuesday, is
destructive beforehand to appetite which is essential to good digestion
and nutrition."
When the average American or Englishman travels, he is glad to see new
cities, new scenery, new costumes and new faces; but he is comically
indignant if he cannot get the same food he has always had at home. It
would be much better for him if he could be made to understand that
Cowper's maxim, "Variety's the very spice of life," applies to diet
as much as to anything. Every country has something to give and teach
us regarding the pleasures of the table. No other land yields such a
lavish and varied supply of raw material as the United States, and all
we need in order to become the leading gastronomic nation is to wake up
to the importance of good and varied cooking and rational eating, and
to learn all we can from nations famed for their culinary art.
The methods of obtaining the diverse national food flavors can often
be studied without traveling abroad, since in our cities we have cooks
and restaurants of nearly every land under the sun. In New York one can
make a gastronomic trip of the world.
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