7. The seventh and most important function of the nose is the one

which--_mirabile dictu_--it remained for me to discover--the function of perceiving and enjoying the countless varieties of flavor that are developed in the food we eat. To what I have already said in proof of this assertion let me add that the nerves of taste are affected by liquids, and those of smell by gases; and the flavored air we breathe out while eating is certainly not liquid! EDUCATING THE SENSE OF SMELL. Dr. Piesse errs in saying that the sense of taste can and should be educated. It needs no educating; sweet is distinguished from sour, salt and bitter from the earliest infancy, and that is all there is to it. The sense of smell, on the other hand, can and should be educated systematically. Kant's reason for saying that it is not worth cultivating was that, in populous regions, particularly, there are more disagreeable than agreeable odors. He might as well have advised against educating the eyes and the ears because in our cities there are more offensive sights and sounds than agreeable ones. An educated sense of smell objects to malodorous surroundings and therefore prompts sanitary reforms. Much has been done in this direction since the days of Kant. The next reform will be to absolutely demand clean, sweet air in schools, theaters, and concert halls. The principal reason for educating the sense of smell is to protect us against the danger of eating spoiled food, and to enable us thoroughly to enjoy the countless pleasures of the table--dwelt on in this book--on which a good appetite depends. The significance of this was understood by Shakespeare when he wrote: Now good digestion wait on appetite And health on both. Ants are the most intelligent of all insects. Their antennæ are organs of smell and so much is their world a world of odors that, as Sir John Lubbock ascertained, an ant accidentally born without antennæ seemed to be as helpless as a blind person among ourselves. Many mammals are greatly dependent on this sense, and there was a time when a large part of the human brain was assigned to its perceptions. More and more the impressions of sight gained on it. The process has gone too far; we must once more strengthen and develop our olfactory nerves and encourage the expansion of the olfactory region in the brain. The way to do it has been dwelt on repeatedly in the preceding pages. I have taught several persons who were partly anosmic to learn after a short time to distinguish between different foods that had previously "tasted" alike to them; they simply followed my advice of breathing out _slowly and consciously_ through the nose while eating. Keep those two words--particularly _consciously_--in mind. Never eat in an absent-minded way; and if you are a host or a hostess, _please_ do not tell your guest interesting stories at the moment when he is trying to do justice to the good things you have placed before him! Children should be told every time they bolt their food or candy that the pleasure of eating lies not in the swallowing of it, but in keeping it in the mouth as long as possible and breathing out through the nose. That will make epicures of them, able to tell good food from bad and thus escape many an illness. How acute the sense of smell can be made is shown by the fact that it will perceive and distinguish the 1,300,000th part of a grain of attar of roses. It is said that the inmates of an asylum for the blind, whose other senses are sharpened by the loss of sight, can tell on entering a dining-room what viands are on the table. _De gustibus non est disputandum._ True; we are all entitled to our likes and dislikes; but many "differences of taste" are simply differences in development and acuteness of the sense of smell. To those in whom this sense is blunted, sweet (unsalted) butter may _seem_ insipid; but should they maintain that it _is_ insipid? To Turner a man once said he could not see in nature such colors as he used on his canvases. The great painter promptly replied: "Don't you wish you could?" Epicures are usually born with a keen sense of smell. Once, in crossing a bleak pass in the Alps, I said to my companion: "I smell an orchid!" After considerable search we found it--a tiny blossom--some ten feet from the road. That orchid explains why I have written this book. COFFEE, TEA, AND TEMPERANCE. A general educating of the sense of smell may not solve the temperance problem, but it will be a great help. It would be a blessing if every liquor saloon in the country could be closed. Most of the whiskey and other strong drink sold--at an enormous profit--in these places is adulterated in ways which often make it infinitely more harmful than the pure article would be, under any circumstances. But the unadulterated is an evil, too, because it is usually drunk in excess. It has been said of the native African that he wants something with a "bite" in it and is not satisfied with a drink that does not go down his throat "like a torchlight procession." But the African is not alone in this peculiarity. There are many thousands of whites who want their whiskey or rum "fiery" above all things; and they want it that way because their sense of smell is not educated to appreciate the higher qualities of liquors--their fragrance, or "bouquet." "It is a fact," as a well-known mixer of fancy drinks once remarked, "that there are very few good judges of liquor. It is a very old chestnut to set out whiskey when brandy has been called for, and not one in ten can tell the difference. There are few people who can distinguish between high and low priced wines." The difference between the best wines and the poorest lies chiefly in this, that the best have a maximum of bouquet and a minimum of alcohol. The bouquet is exhilarating, like the alcohol, yet is perfectly harmless. On the bouquet depends the commercial as well as the gastronomic value of wines almost entirely. Now, while some persons who are addicted to strong drink may be hopeless cases, there are thousands who might be saved by teaching them that by educating their sense of smell to the appreciation of bouquet they can get infinitely more pleasure from a refined sort of indulgence than from the bestial alcoholic intoxication which is followed by nausea, headache, by nights and days of misery, by poverty and deadly diseases. Drunkenness and gluttony are no longer respectable, or even semi-respectable, and further progress in the same direction may be hoped for through efforts at reform along the lines I have indicated. A true epicure would no more dull the edge of his appetite for future pleasures of the table by over-indulgence in food or drink than a barber would think of whittling kindling wood with his razor. Whiskey drinkers are far from being the only topers. There are also a great many tea and coffee topers. A writer in the "Journal of the American Medical Association" describes the case of a woman, a member of the Temperance Union in her town, who was "a coffee drunkard," having been living for months on little beside black coffee, till she was a wreck. Such cases are common; they have led to the manufacture on a large scale of diverse substitutes for coffee, some of which are not at all bad if taken with sugar and cream. Some relief is also coming through the increased demand for cocoa, which has the advantage over tea and coffee of being a real food. In the period from 1888 to 1911 imports of cocoa into the United States increased from 6,600,000 pounds to 134,000,000, while those of coffee increased only from 404,000,000 to 800,000,000 pounds, and those of tea from 68,000,000 to 104,000,000 pounds. That tea is the worst enemy of the Irish peasantry was the burden of a blue book issued a few years ago by the Inspectors of Irish schools. "The tea is so prepared for use that the liquid, when drunk, has the properties of a slow poison. The teapot stewing on the hearth all day long is kept literally on tap; the members of the family, young as well as old, resorting to it at discretion." [Illustration: Javanese Tea-picker and Porter] It is not only among the peasantry and the city slums that improperly made tea does its deadly work. Among the well-to-do, in all countries, it is far from being in all cases, as it is supposed to be, "the cup which cheers but not inebriates." The strong coffee-colored four-o'clock tea served in English and American homes is a gastronomic atrocity; it is bad for heart, nerves, and stomach. In the United States, in nine cases out of ten, the tea served is an inky fluid, bitter as gall, and devoid of fragrance. When our Government forbade the importation of artificially colored teas, Consul West wrote from Japan that the planters were induced by this measure to "make greater efforts in future to _improve the flavor_ rather than the color and the appearance" of the tea. The Flavor is, indeed, the one thing to be considered in raising high-class tea; also, in preparing it. The art of brewing a good cup of tea consists in making it in such a way as to secure a maximum of fragrance and a minimum of the tannin, which is bad for the digestion, and the theine, which is a nerve poison. The rules for making tea may be found in any good cook book. The main points are that the water should never remain on the leaves more than from three to five minutes, and that the teapot should be thoroughly heated because it is only at the boiling point that some of the volatile properties of the leaves, on which the aroma depends, can be properly extracted. A little sugar to sweeten it is permissible; it does not alter the flavor. Milk or cream do; wherefore tea-drinkers who are epicures and like to enjoy the unique fragrance of different kinds of tea, reject them. The commercial and gastronomic value of coffee is determined by the amount of the aromatic volatile oil which develops in the process of roasting. This fragrant oil is called caffeone. But coffee also has another active principle, an alkaloid called caffeine, which has a strong effect on the vascular and nervous systems and is used as a medicine. Now, the art of making good coffee consists in eliminating, as far as possible, the effects of the caffeine while developing those of the caffeone. To the caffeine are due the wakefulness and digestive disturbances caused by coffee; while the flavorsome caffeone produces the harmless exhilarating effects. Coffee-roasting is a science which every housewife should study and practise; its neglect accounts for the fact that one so seldom gets a fragrant cup of coffee. The grinding should be done just before the coffee is prepared, and it should be drunk at once. Families having plenty of storage room should buy coffee by wholesale as it improves with age and yields a more mellow beverage. Dealers do not favor this storing because the beans lose weight thereby. Wash the beans before roasting them, and you will have the material for brewing a good cup of coffee. An effort is being made in Europe to substitute for coffee and tea a beverage which, while having their refreshing effect, contains so small a proportion of the alkaloid substance as to be comparatively harmless, namely maté. In Argentina the use of the maté leaf has increased enormously in recent years, the annual consumption averaging nearly twenty pounds per person, and in Paraguay it is even as high as twenty-nine pounds per inhabitant. North Americans and Europeans have taken to it much more slowly, owing, it is said, to the crude way of preparing the leaves--the drying of them over an open fire, which gives them a smoky flavor. But it is claimed that superior methods of preparation will make maté a powerful rival of coffee and tea, all the more as it is much cheaper. A pound of it makes five times as many cups as a pound of coffee; and, unlike tea leaves, the maté leaves can be used for a second infusion without impairment of the quality. In beverages, as in foods, Flavor is the decisive factor. The natural flavor of maté seems to be as agreeable as that of tea or coffee, but it is apt to be marred by the suggestion of smoke just referred to. If this can be eliminated, and if it is true that maté, though containing less caffeine than either tea or coffee, is even more stimulating and sustaining, then "Paraguay tea" seems destined to be the domestic beverage of the future. INDEX A Adulterated and denatured foods, 14-39, 40, 66-116, 351, 441, 528. Alaskan berries, 546. Alcoholic drinks, 575. Alligator pears, 240. Allyn, L. B., 528. America, Gastronomic: specialties, 3; traditions, 4; missionaries, 5; most important problem, 42; progress, 181; cooking in schools, 182; electric, on battleships, 201; fat in diet, 224; in Paris, 258; sausages, 348; fruit, 432; breakfasts, 440;