ON MODERN COOKERY AND COOKERY BOOKS.
I am, in the matters of the kitchen, as will be learned from the
previous chapter, no admirer of the wisdom of our ancestors. Cookery
is eminently an experimental and a practical art. Each day, while it
adds to our experience, should also increase our knowledge. And now
that intercommunication between distant nations has become facile and
frequent; now that we may make an early breakfast in London and a late
dinner in Paris, it cannot be permitted that cookery should remain
stationary. Far am I from saying that a dinner should be a subject
of morning or mid-day meditation or of luxurious desire; but in the
present advanced state of civilization, and of medical and chemical
knowledge, something more than kneading, baking, stewing, and boiling
are necessary in any nation pretending to civilization. The metropolis
of England exceeds Paris in extent and population; it commands a
greater supply of all articles of consumption, and contains a greater
number and variety of markets, which are better supplied. We greatly
surpass the French in mutton, we produce better beef, lamb, and pork,
and are immeasurably superior both in the quantity and quality of our
fish, our venison, and our game, yet we cannot compare, as a nation,
with the higher, the middle, or the lower classes in France, in the
science of preparing our daily food. The only articles of food in the
quality of which the French surpass us are veal and fowl, but such is
the skill and science of their cooks that with worse mutton, worse
beef, and worse lamb than ours, they produce better chops, cutlets,
steaks, and better made dishes of every nature and kind whatsoever. In
_fricassées_, _ragouts_, _salmis_, _quenelles_, _purées_, _filets_, and
more especially in the dressing of vegetables, our neighbours surpass
us. No good reason can be alleged why we should not imitate them in
a matter in which they are perfect, or why their more luxurious,
more varied, more palatable, and more dainty cookery, should not be
introduced more generally among the higher and middle classes.
The object of sensible people should be to adopt all that is good in
the cookery of both nations. While English soups, such as ox tail, mock
turtle, giblet, hare, pea soup, and mutton broth have their merits, the
French _potages à la reine_, _à la Condé_, _à la Julienne_, and the
various _purées_ should not be forgotten. While, also, the practical
cook may find copious receipts in English cookery books for the boiling
of turbot, cod-fish, john-dorey, and salmon, in the English and Dutch
fashion, the sturgeon cutlets of the French, and their _filets_ and
_béchamels_ of fish should be also introduced to English favour and
attention from French cookery books. Our barons of beef, our noble
sirloins, our exquisite haunches, saddles, legs, and loins of Southdown
mutton, our noble rounds of boiled beef, and those haunches of British
venison, the envy and admiration of the world, are worthy of the
highest praise. But, on the other hand, the _gigot à l’ail aux haricots
blancs_ ought to be made more favourably known to the Englishman, as
well as the _filet de bœuf_, an excellent every-day dish in the good
city of Paris. In any new cookery book, while no English receipt of
approved excellence should be cancelled, yet there should also be given
within a reasonable compass a short system of French, and a compendium
of foreign, cookery. It is desirable that we should learn much from
our neighbours, as I have said in a former chapter, in white and brown
sauces, in veloutés, in the dressing of vegetables, in the seasoning
and flavouring with ham instead of with salt, and in a more profuse use
of eggs, oil, and butter.
A new cookery book, pointing out the distinctive merits of the French
and English kitchens, is a work urgently needed. In such a manual of
the art the readers should be presented with all that is best in
the substantial solidity and simplicity of the English kitchen, and
all that is most varied, delicate, and harmoniously combined in the
kitchen of the French. Both are excellent in their way, and there are
already many separate treatises on each; but a fusion or combination
of the two systems ought now to be attempted. If any professed cook
or amateur succeeds in causing an abandonment of all that is coarse
and unwholesome in the English kitchen, and in introducing all that is
light, elegant, and varied in the French, he will have accomplished a
great object, and have done the health of diners-out and dinner-givers
equal service. It is the greatest mistake, in a medical point of view,
to suppose that an unvaried uniformity of food contributes either to
health or to comfort. Variety is as necessary to the stomach as change
of scene, or change of study to the mind, and that variety should be
placed in our day within the reach of as many as possible.
As there is scarcely an English family among the higher or middle
classes who does not number among its members a retired military or
civil servant of the East India Company, or a retired naval officer or
Indian merchant, it would be advisable to introduce a chapter in any
coming cookery book on Anglo-Indian cookery. Mulligatawney soup, and
curries, and _pillaus_, are exceedingly wholesome.
Neither the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Russian, nor the Polish
cookery are deserving of general commendation; but a few national
dishes and soups, which have obtained a more general reputation, are
worthy of attention and adoption.
Cookery is, above all others, a traditional and practical art, and
unless receipts have stood the test of time and experience, and general
approval, they are little worth. Cookery books are, for the most part,
copies of each other; and the first cookery book is only the most
original, because we cannot trace the plagiarism beyond the period when
printing was invented. But there is little doubt, that in the rolls
of great houses, and in the muniment rooms of colleges, halls, and
religious establishments, would be found in vellum manuscript every
receipt published in the first English cookery book. And the plagiarism
may be tracked, as a wounded man by his blood, from 1470 to 1863. The
compilers of all cookery books have, more or less, copied the earlier
compilers who preceded; and so it must ever be, till we are foolish
enough to reject all experience, and trust to theory or conjecture.
The compilers of any new cookery book should lay no claim to
originality. They should avail themselves, though never servilely,
of the labours of nearly all their predecessors, and by collation,
comparison, addition, retrenchment, and the exercise of their own
skill, experience, and discoveries, endeavour to improve on works
already in print.
Among the French masters in the science of cookery are, Vatel, La
Chapelle, Grimod de la Reynière, Beauvilliers, Ude, Laguipierre,
Carème, and Plumeret; but receipts of more general utility for the
public at large will be found in the “Cuisinier Royal” and the
“Cuisinière Bourgeoise.”
Many of the receipts of Carème require alterations and additions, but
some may be adopted in their entirety. Of Carème’s cookery, however,
the distinguishing characteristic is profuse expenditure. In order to
render such a system not merely easy of adoption, but possible, men
cooks, splendid establishments, and colossal fortunes must become much
more universal than they ever have been or ever can be.
The object of all should now be not to render the introduction of
French cookery difficult and expensive, but easy, and within the reach
of persons of moderate fortune.
The present age is distinguished as an age of rapid progress, and the
improvements suggested now may, in this day of easy and inexpensive
communication with the Continent, become permanently rooted to the
British soil before 1869.
[Illustration]