Chapter II may be regarded as an Intermezzo--but a most important one,

for it contains truths that are of vital importance to everybody. Indeed, it is chiefly for the sake of impressing these truths on as many intelligent persons as possible that I am writing this book. SENSUAL INDULGENCE AS A DUTY. Too long we have been allowing covetous manufacturers and dealers and incompetent or indolent cooks to spoil our naturally good food. We have done this because we have not as a nation understood that there is nothing in the world on which our health and hourly comfort, our happiness and our capacity for hard work, depend so much as on the Flavor of food--those savory qualities which make it appetizing and enjoyable and therefore digestible and helpful. It is not too much to say that _the most important problem now before the American public is to learn to enjoy the pleasures of the table and to insist on having savory food at every meal_. There was a time when it would have been considered rank heresy to express such an opinion, and even to-day there are millions of honest folk who hold that the enjoyment of a good meal is merely a form of sybaritic indulgence. When Ruskin wrote his "Modern Painters" he referred to the indulgence of taste as an "ignoble source of pleasure." He lived to realize the foolishness of this sneer; in one of those amusing footnotes which he contributed to the final edition of that great work, and in which he often assails his own former opinions with merciless severity, he denounces the "cruelty and absurdity" of his failing to learn to appreciate the dainties provided by his father. But his earlier opinion reflected the general attitude of the time toward the pleasures of the table. Fortunately, in our efforts to fight the great American plague--dyspepsia--we are no longer seriously hampered by that Puritan severity which caused the father of Walter Scott, when young Walter one day expressed his enjoyment of the soup, to promptly mix with it a pint of water to take the devil out of it. America's leading educator, Ex-President Eliot of Harvard, has expressed the more rational view of our time in these words: "Sensuous pleasures, like eating and drinking, are sometimes described as animal, and therefore unworthy, but men are animals and have a right to enjoy without reproach those pleasures of animal existence which maintain health, strength, and life itself." We may go farther than that, asserting that not only have we a right to enjoy the pleasures of the table, but it is our moral duty to do so. _The highest laws of health demand of us that we get as much pleasure out of our meals as possible._ To prove this statement is the main object of the present volume, nearly every page of which bears witness to its truth, directly or indirectly. GLADSTONE AND FLETCHER. There is an old German proverb to the effect that if food is properly chewed it is half digested: _Gut gekaut ist halb verdaut_. This is literally true, but in England and America, although physicians and others have long known it to be so, it was not impressed on the general public's attention until the newspapers began to comment--some seriously, others facetiously--on the statement that Gladstone, in 1848, adopted certain rules for chewing food to which he ever after adhered and to which some observers attributed his remarkable physical vigor. "Previous to that," said the "Pall Mall Gazette," "he had always paid great attention to the requirements of nature, but at that date he laid down as a rule for his children that thirty-two bites should be given to each mouthful of meat and a somewhat lesser number to bread, fish, etc." Now Gladstone was wrong in suggesting that meat needed more munching than bread. The stomach takes care of meat if it is not swallowed in _too_ large chunks; whereas bread, as well as potatoes, together with oatmeal and other cereals, no matter how soft, should be kept in the mouth some time to enable the saliva to partly digest them and prepare them for the lower viscera. This error, however, did not detract seriously from the value of Gladstone's directions. The main thing was that his "home rule" called the attention of two nations to the unwisdom of bolting food and the advantage to health resulting from keeping it for some time in the mouth. In its far-reaching effect on millions in two worlds it was perhaps of greater and more lasting value than any of his acts as a statesman. This assertion gains strength from the fact that it was Gladstone's example that started Horace Fletcher on his road as a reformer of the foolish eating habits of Americans, and others, but Americans in particular. He has himself related (in the "Ladies' Home Journal" for September, 1909) how it was that his thoughts were first directed into this channel through an epicurean friend who had a snipe estate among the marshlands of Louisiana and a truffle preserve in France, and who faithfully followed Gladstone's rules in regard to the thorough chewing of food. In 1898 Mr. Fletcher began to work out the problem for himself, to the great advantage of his health. At the age of forty he was an old man, on the way to a rapid decline. His hair was white, he weighed 217 pounds, he was harrowed by indigestion, and had "that tired feeling." At the age of sixty, after eleven years of experiment, he had reduced his weight to 170 pounds, felt strong and well, and had forgotten what it was to have the tired feeling. His experience thus was similar to that of the Italian nobleman, Luigi Cornaro (1467-1566), who was a dissipated wreck at the age of forty, but who by reforming his way of eating, regained his health and lived to be nearly a hundred. After his eighty-third year he wrote four treatises on diet and longevity; his autobiography has passed through more than forty English editions. His wisdom might be summed up in these words: "As you grow older eat less." Horace Fletcher is the Cornaro of the nineteenth century. Everybody who ever "knows he has a stomach" should read one or both the books he has written on this subject: "The A B-Z of Our Own Nutrition," and "The New Glutton or Epicure." The first named owes its value largely to the fact that it includes reprints of valuable papers by eminent men of science and physicians, the investigations of most of whom were in part prompted, or inspired, by Mr. Fletcher's writings. The most important of these are Dr. Harvey Campbell's Observations on Mastication, and Prof. Pawlow's articles on Psychic Influence in Digestion. Most persons labor--or act as if they labored--under the delusion that the mouth was made chiefly for the _ingestion_ of food and that the sole use of saliva is to lubricate it so that it can be easily and quickly swallowed. Mr. Fletcher did not discover the fact that the mouth is also a most important organ of _digestion_, with the aid of saliva; but he emphasized this important fact in his writings as no other writer had ever done, proclaiming it from the housetops till thousands began to listen and heed and learn and benefit by his preaching; and therein lies the importance of his name in the history of dietetic reform. The gist of his doctrine may be given in a few words: keep all food (soft as well as hard, liquid as well as solid, moist as well as dry) in the mouth and chew it till it has become thoroughly mingled with the saliva, has lost all its flavor, and is ready to disappear down the throat without an effort at swallowing. Gladstone's directions in regard to thirty-two masticatory movements are all right for some foods, but others require no more than twenty, while for some (onions) seven hundred hardly suffice to remove the odor and make them digestible. _Unless the mouth thus does its work, the lower digestive tract has to do it at ten times the expenditure of vital force, and the result is dyspepsia._ [Illustration: HORACE FLETCHER] Never, surely, was preaching more needed than these sermons of Horace Fletcher to the victims of America's national scourge of chronic indigestion. It cannot be denied that there is a considerable amount of questionable faddism and exaggeration in his doctrines. He, himself, frankly apologizes for such details in them as "may suggest the scrappiness and extravagance of an intemperate screed," on the ground that "so-called screeds sometimes attract attention where sober statement fails to be heard"; which is unfortunately true. Many of Fletcher's followers accept his exaggerations along with the sound parts of his doctrines. They endorse the statements that he, "in inaugurating the chewing reform has done more to help suffering humanity than any other man of the present generation"; or, as another writer, a physician, put it in a letter to him: "What you have done to unfold physiologic mastication means more for human weal than all the mere medical prescribes have given the world from Adam to the present day." It cannot be denied that medical and other scientific writers were culpable in not enlightening the public on these important matters, and it serves them right, therefore, if Fletcher has got the credit and the fame for doing this. It is estimated that there are already more than 200,000 "Fletcherites" in the United States. In the hope of increasing their number, in the rational sense of the word, let me dwell on a few of the things in which, in my opinion, Mr. Fletcher is right, and some of those beside which readers of his books will do well to place question marks. In particular, I wish to call further attention to his valuable remarks on the necessity of doing more "mouth work" than most of us do, and on the importance of agreeable Flavor in food as an aid to digestion. Many thousands of otherwise healthy persons bewail the fact that they have to avoid some of their favorite dishes because they find them indigestible. To these individuals Fletcherism, as endorsed by Dr. Campbell, brings the cheering message that they can eat anything they please provided they give it the proper mouth treatment. Inasmuch as individuals differ in regard to the supply of saliva, no general rules can be laid down as to how many bites any particular mouthful requires. One person may dispose of a morsel of bread in thirty mastications while another may need fifty before it has disappeared down the throat without an effort at swallowing. Mr. Fletcher once had a tussle with a challot, or young onion, which "required 722 mastications before disappearing through involuntary swallowing." But when it was down it left no odor upon the breath and created no disturbance whatever. Could anything more triumphantly proclaim the wonders of Fletcherism? Here is another miracle: "Abundant experiment has been made by those to whom 'Boston brown bread' was formerly little less than a poison, to prove the assertion that, sufficiently mixed with saliva, it is perfectly digestible and that the delicious taste of the bread after forty or fifty bites--about one-half minute--gets sweeter and sweeter, and attains its greatest sweetness and most delicate taste at the very last, when it has dissolved into liquid form and most of it has escaped into the stomach." THE HARM DONE BY SOFT FOODS. Dr. Campbell, whose admirable articles on The Importance of Mastication cannot be too urgently brought to the reader's attention,[2] has pointed out a very important reason why at present, more than at any other time in the history of man, there is need of mouth digestion. The art of cooking has had a beautifying effect on the human face. The jaws and teeth have become smaller because they are no longer called upon to bite off and chew raw, tough, and fibrous foods, as they were in primitive days. One of the results of agricultural progress has been to diminish the fibrous, cellulosic food and make it more easy to masticate. The food of to-day is for the most part soft and pappy, of a kind which does not compel thorough mastication; so much so that Dr. Campbell thinks we may speak of this as "the age of pap." Beginning with the babes, we pour into their stomachs all kinds of artificial saccharine foods in liquid or semi-liquid form, following this up, later on, with such viands as mashed potatoes and gravy, rusks soaked in milk, milk puddings, bread dipped in bacon fat, pounded mutton, thin bread and butter, and the like. Food of this kind does not invite mastication (nor have mothers been taught to teach their children to keep it in the mouth, the doctor might have added). "Hence the instinct to masticate has little opportunity of exercise and not being properly exercised, tends to die out. Small wonder that the child nourished on such pappy food acquires the habit of bolting it, and learns to reject hard, coarse foods in favor of the softer kinds; everything, nowadays, must be tender, pultaceous, or 'short.'" The evils resulting from the bolting of this soft food by children and adults alike are of the gravest and most alarming kind. Overeating and habitual indigestion are two of them. Morbid craving for food not needed is another. It is not improbable that the habitual bolting of food, by the prolonged irritation to which it gives rise, may predispose to cancer of the stomach. Napoleon was a notoriously fast eater and it is well known that he died from this disease. Dr. Campbell also agrees with Sir Frederick Treves that the neglect of the mastication of food is a potent cause of appendicitis. Solid lumps, especially in the case of such articles as pineapple, preserved ginger, nuts, tough meat and lobster, are apt to pass beyond the pylorus and, escaping intestinal digestion, to lodge in the cœcum and precipitate an attack of that dreaded disease, the most common predisposing cause of which is a loaded cœcum, often preceded by constipation. Summing up his extremely valuable paper on the Evils of Insufficient Mastication, Dr. Campbell comes to the conclusion that "an appalling amount of misery and suffering may be saved by the simple expedient of inculcating the habit of efficient mastication." It is difficult to teach an old dog new tricks. I have noticed again and again how hard it is to teach adults to "Fletcherize." They begin it, find it irksome at first, and drop it. For thorough reform we must begin with infants; but adults cannot be urged too strongly to persevere till the habit--like that of breathing--becomes automatic. The rewards in increased health and enjoyment of life and work are glorious. EPICUREAN DELIGHTS FROM PLAIN FOOD. To return to Fletcher's own contributions to this subject. Next to his dwelling on the importance of "mouth-work" he deserves most praise for his remarks on the epicurean delights resulting from slow and rational eating. Herein again, it must be premised, he was far from being the original discoverer; but he probably did more to call the general public's attention to the matter than any one else had done, thanks largely to his habit of introducing vivid illustrations and details of personal experiences. "My, but I never realized that potato is so good," exclaimed the young lady; and "Gracious! isn't this corn bully!" echoed the father. These exclamations express the outcome of one of Mr. Fletcher's experiments in teaching others how to get delicious pleasure from the simplest and commonest foods if munched according to his directions. If you bolt your food, he says, you get "none of the exquisite taste that Nature's way offers as an allurement for obeying her beneficent demands. The way of Nature is the epicurean way; the other way is nothing but piggish gluttony." It is the way of animals; and Fletcher named his book "The New Glutton or Epicure" to call attention to the two ways of taking food. "An epicurean cannot be a glutton. There may be gluttons who are less gluttonous than other gluttons, but epicurism is like politeness and cleanliness, and is the certain mark of gentility." A remark worthy of the French epigrammatists! Thackeray called attention to the exquisite enjoyment an epicure can derive from a slice of buttered brown bread. In the same spirit Fletcher writes: "For illustration, try a ship's biscuit--commonly called hardtack--and keep it in the mouth, tasting it as you would a piece of sugar, till it has disappeared entirely, and note what a treasure of delight there is in it." Again: "The most nutritious food does not require sauces. It may seem dry and tasteless to the first impression, but, as the juices of the mouth get possession of it, warm it up, solve its life-giving qualities out of it and coax it into usefulness, the delight of a newfound delicacy will greet the discoverer." HOW FLAVOR HELPS THE STOMACH. In all cases, be the food simple or the outcome of a French chef's culinary alchemy, it is its Flavor that makes it agreeable and by so doing stimulates the flow of the juices necessary for proper digestion. In the case of the mouth and its salivary glands this is obvious to all. Everybody knows that the fragrance of good food "makes the mouth water." In the case of the stomach, the connection is much less obvious. Until a few years ago even the medical men were in the dark on this extremely important aspect of the question, although French and German physiologists had made important discoveries. [Illustration: A French chef's culinary alchemy] It remained for Professor Pawlow of St. Petersburg to throw the bright light of scientific experiment on this subject. He demonstrated in his St. Petersburg laboratory that the mere presence of food in a dog's stomach--which is like a man's in that respect--does not suffice to cause a flow of gastric juice, but that the psychic factor we call appetite--a keen desire for food--causes an abundant flow of that fluid, without which the digestion cannot proceed. Now it might be said that there was really no need of laboratory experiments to tell us that food eaten without enjoyment lies like lead in the stomach and does more harm than good. It is nevertheless a great advantage to have a scientific demonstration of the fact and an explanation of it, because it encourages us in the right way of eating. Instinct showed that way long ago; it did its best to intimate that food should be eaten with interest and enjoyment. Too often, unfortunately, no attention has been paid to this instinct. Among the Russians (who do not, in this respect, differ from other peoples) "an absolutely unphysiological indifference towards eating often exists," Professor Pawlow says. "In wider circles of the community a due conception of the importance of eating should be disseminated. How often do the people who have charge of the commissariat pay attention solely to the nutritive value of the food, or place a higher value on everything else than taste!" Yet it is the "taste" (Flavor) of food that arouses the appetite. As the French say, "the appetite comes while we are eating." Medical men of various countries in former times paid special attention to the restoration of a patient's appetite. In more recent text books less attention is paid to appetite as a symptom; but Prof. Pawlow's experiments have again, and for all time, demonstrated its importance. Those young ladies who think it is "nice" and "feminine" to pretend to have no appetite should read the Pawlow papers, and have all that nonsense knocked out of their heads. A poor appetite is a danger signal--a thing to arouse pity and to be cured, just like a headache or a fever. "Appetite juice" is one of the suggestive names Professor Pawlow gives to the fluid which digests food in the stomach. There is little or none of it for the man who eats without noticing his food, unable to distract his thoughts from his work, as so often happens to those who live in the midst of the incessant turmoil of large cities. This inattention to the act of eating (to the Flavor of the food) prepares the way for digestive disturbances with all the various diseases following them. No medical treatment can help such a patient--unless he reforms and eats rationally. Thus, the studies of Dr. Pawlow fully bear out my contention as to the Vital Importance of Flavor in Food. [Illustration: An American quick-lunch] There is one more of his observations to which superlative importance attaches. One of his experiments on dogs showed that if food was given gradually in small quantities, it led to the secretion of much stronger gastric juice than when the animal was allowed to eat the whole ration at once. This was a laboratory demonstration of the wisdom of the best medical treatment of a weak stomach; "and such a regulation of diet," continues the professor, "is all the more necessary, since, in the commonest disorders of the stomach, only the surface layers of the mucous membrane are affected. It may, consequently, happen that the sensory surface of the stomach, which should take up the stimulus of the chemical excitant, is not able to fulfil its duty, and the period of chemical secretion, which ordinarily lasts for a long time, is for the most part disturbed, or even wholly absent. A strong psychic excitation, a keen feeling of appetite, may evoke the secretory impulse in the central nervous system and send it unhindered to the glands which lie in the deeper as yet unaffected layers of mucous membrane." Doubtless the very interesting physiological detail here pointed out by the eminent Russian professor, explains the dietetic as well as gastronomic wisdom of the old fashioned table d'hôte of the European hotels. Half a dozen or more courses follow one another leisurely in course of an hour or more during which the pleasant Flavor of one dish after another keeps the appetite on edge and gives plenty of time for the deeper as well as the surface layers of the glands to secrete their beneficent and comforting digestive juices. From such a leisurely dinner, with courses skilfully made up of contrasting flavors to prevent the appetite from flagging, we rise cheerful and at peace with all the world, whereas an American quick-lunch, or a railroad dinner gulped down in ten minutes makes us feel like swearing off eating for all time. AN AMAZING BLUNDER. How far we have traveled away from that foolish, nay, criminal Puritan notion that enjoyment of the pleasures of the table is a reprehensible form of sensual indulgence--the notion which made Walter Scott's father pour hot water into the soup because the boy liked it! That attitude was a blunder, a huge blunder, as the preceding pages prove. A still bigger blunder, and one equally deplorable and mischievous, now claims our attention--a blunder so amazing, so incomprehensible that it seems almost incredible: _the universal belief, among men of science as well as the laity, that the pleasures of the table come to us through the sense of taste_. How I happened to discover that this notion is a blunder, I now beg the reader's permission to relate briefly. In 1878 Harvard University rewarded me for my hard work in the philosophical department (under Professors Bowen and Palmer) by giving me the Harris Fellowship, which enabled me to continue my study of physiological and comparative psychology for three years at the universities of Germany. I recall vividly my boyish delight in the pleasures of the senses of sight, hearing, and smell. During my college course and afterwards I diligently studied the phenomena of these senses in man and animals in all the books and scientific papers I could find; and thus it came about that my first magazine articles were on the Æsthetic Value of Odors, and The Development of the Color Sense. The first of these was accepted by W. D. Howells, for the "Atlantic Monthly" (December, 1880); the second, by Alfred Russell Wallace, for "Macmillan's Magazine" (London, December, 1879). I mention these things to show that the senses of man and animals have been a subject of special interest with me for more than four decades, and that when I went to Germany, I took up the study of them not as an amateur but as one prepared (as well as eager) to make original researches. My most ardent desire was to work in the laboratories of the University of Berlin under Professor Helmholtz, whose monumental books on the sensations of tone and on the phenomena of sight had revealed so many secrets to the world of science. Unfortunately he was not lecturing on those subjects at that time. Moreover, reperusal of his books made me feel as if he had covered all the most interesting ground. I therefore looked about for a region in which I could do some exploring on my own account, and soon found it in the functions of the senses of smell and taste. Concerning these two senses, the most absurdly incorrect notions were current at that time even among leaders in science. Grant Allen, known as "the St. Paul of Darwinism," voiced the current biological opinion when he wrote that with man "smell survives with difficulty as an almost functionless relic"; and Darwin himself wrote that this sense is "of extremely slight service" to man. The king of German philosophers, Kant, who was an epicure, maintained that smell is the least important of our senses, and that it is not worth while to cultivate it. Nay, the king of epicures, Brillat-Savarin, wrote a famous book the very title of which, "Physiology of Taste," is a scientific blunder. Like everybody else, he believed in the existence of an infinite variety of tastes, and never suspected that, _with the exception of sweet, sour, salt and bitter, all our countless gastronomic delights come to us through the sense of smell_. A NEW PSYCHOLOGY OF EATING. The French physiologist Longet and the German anatomist Henle were, so far as I could find, the only experts who had an inkling of the gastronomic importance of the sense of smell; but they did not go so far as to formulate the theory I have just expressed in italics. My experiments showed me that not only is it impossible, with the nose clasped (or closed by a cold), to tell the difference between various kinds of meats, or cheeses, or cakes, or vegetables, but also--which no one had ever pointed out--that even in the case of sweet and sour substances which do gratify the palate, _the sense of smell is much more important than the sense of taste_. Vinegar, for example, is absolutely uninteresting unless it has a "bouquet"--the aroma of the cider, wine, or malt of which it is made. And why is it that we are willing to pay from five to twenty times as much for candy as for plain sugar? Because the sugar appeals only to the taste, whereas the candy is usually perfumed with the aroma of sarsparilla, wintergreen, vanilla, chocolate, and a hundred other flavoring ingredients the fragrance of which we enjoy by _exhaling through the nose while eating it_. The emphasis lies on the word _exhaling_. It is considered a breach of etiquette to smell of things at the table in the ordinary way, because it implies a doubt as to the freshness of the food. But there is a second way of smelling of which most persons are unconscious, although they practise it daily. Anatomy shows that only a small portion of the mucous membrane which lines the nostrils is the seat of the endings of the nerves of smell. In ordinary expiration the air does not touch this olfactory region. But when we eat in the right way we unconsciously guide the air impregnated with the Flavors of the food we are munching, into that region, and that is the way we enjoy our food. We do this unconsciously, I say; but now try and do it consciously, guiding the expired air _very slowly_ through the nose, and your enjoyment of a meal will be quintupled. Obviously Kant made the mistake of his life when he said the sense of smell was not worth cultivating. It not only provides us with additional table pleasures, the hygienic and tonic value of which has been sufficiently dwelt upon, but it is a fact of unspeakable importance that the more we educate the nose, the more discriminating we make it, and the more stubbornly therefore we insist on having wholesome food only. This new psychology of eating I set forth for the first time in the "Contemporary Review" (London, November, 1888), under the title of "The Gastronomic Value of Odors." It was commented on as a psychological curiosity, but otherwise attracted little attention. At that time there was not the same general interest that there is now in the food question. Even Gladstone's directions regarding eating were more frequently smiled at than followed. Since his day many things have happened to give the food question an aspect of superlative importance, particularly the wholesale adulterations described in the preceding pages. That among those who have helped to awaken the public to a realizing sense of the importance of this subject no one deserves more credit than Mr. Fletcher--who has been immortalized in the dictionaries by the inclusion of the verb "to Fletcherize"--has been stated before. So beneficent, on the whole, has been his influence that I hesitate to point out any of his mistakes; but as some of them obscure the truth, I will do so. He first made public his views, in a crude form, eleven years after the appearance of my article on the gastronomic value of odors. That article anticipates some important details of his doctrines, but he evidently never saw it, because in his books he makes only one brief reference to the sense of smell and perpetuates all the old errors regarding that insolent pretender, the sense of taste. This is to be regretted, for it left his followers groping in the dark as to the best way of getting the most pleasure and benefit out of their food, at home and at their "munching parties." There is one detail of Fletcherism which every epicure will fight with his last drop of ink. If we all followed his example, living on griddle cakes, butter, and syrup (at a cost of eleven cents a day), or some other equally simple menu, as he advises, what would become of that delectable variety which is the spice of gastronomy, and what of the farmers, and the hundreds of industries which supply this variety? True gastronomic progress, I maintain, lies in the direction of multiplying the pleasures of the table--an important phase of our subject which will be discussed in a later chapter. We must now turn the limelight once more on Ungastronomic America. [Illustration] III OUR DENATURED FOODS Bearing in mind the superlative importance to our well-being of Flavor in the food we eat, the reader is now in a position to appreciate the full force of a third indictment to be brought against those who spoil our food. The first indictment was that they use chemical preservatives which arrest digestion and often act as cumulative poisons; the second, that they use chemicals which enable unscrupulous persons to sell foods made of nauseating and dangerous raw material, so disguised as to fool the buyer. The culprits now to be arraigned are those who, from ignorance, indolence, or greed to get rich quick, adopt devices which spoil the Flavor of our food and thus destroy our appetite and undermine the health of the community. Denatured is the word used for alcohol that has been made unfit to drink by the addition of chemicals, and denatured is hardly too strong a word to apply to many if not most of the foods offered in the American markets and stores, the offense being aggravated by the fact that the prices usually asked for these are quite as high as those asked for foods preserved by the wholesome old condimental methods, although the cost to the maker is only a fraction of what it would be if those methods were followed. Palatable, appetizing smoked bacon and hams are still to be found in our markets by those who know a thing or two, and sternly insist on getting what they ask for; but for the vast majority of consumers smoked meats have disappeared. Meats lose weight--up to 20 per cent.--during the process of smoking, and therefore bring the dealer less profit. What he offers is usually denatured--unappetizing and indigestible. The same holds true of smoked fish, which used to make an epicure's mouth water. Why it does so no longer is shown by the following paragraphs from Philadelphia, printed in the New York "Evening Post": _Fish Was Dyed, not Smoked_ The dairy and food bureau of the State Agricultural Department has discovered that a large number of delicatessen and other stores of this city have been for a long time selling "dyed" fish as a substitute for smoked fish. When Harry P. Cassidy, the agent of the bureau told the retail store proprietors what they were doing, they were surprised, as they had purchased the stuff as genuine smoked fish. Cassidy's attention to the food article was attracted by its rich red color. Purchasing some, he had it examined, and the expert reported that he could dye wool with the coloring matter extracted from it. In smoking fish there is a loss of fifteen pounds to every hundred, it is said, but in dyeing there is no loss at all. This permitted the violators of the law to undersell their competitors in the smoked fish industry. Nor is our fresh fish usually more palatable. New York, for instance, ought to be a paradise of fish eaters, yet how seldom is it served in prime condition, even in leading restaurants! In Germany they have various ways of bringing fish to market alive, even in interior towns; over here they are kept in cold storage for weeks, months--indeed years, although fish deteriorates by this process much more rapidly than even poultry--of which more anon; and everybody knows that the poorest kind of fish just out of the water is better than the best kind after it has been out a day or two. Were we a gastronomic nation we would rise in revolt against the wholesale denaturing of our food to be presently described in more detail. We should insist on always having real French or German-style bread, with crisp, tasty crust, refusing the soggy loaves made of bleached, bolted flour robbed of its nutritious phosphates and sources of Flavor; refusing also the machine-polished rice deprived of its nutritious outer parts, in which lies the delicate Flavor of this cereal, leaving it pretty to look at, but, as one of the Government's agricultural experts, David Fairchild, has forcibly expressed it, "as tasteless as the paste that a paper-hanger brushes on his rolls of wallpaper." We should exclude the chemically greened teas dumped into our groceries because they are not wanted in any other country. We should protest against the peaches and pears and other fruits formerly brought into our markets soft, sun-ripened, luscious, but now offered to us hard, unripe, flavorless. The melancholy list of gastronomic misdeeds might be prolonged indefinitely. In all these cases, let me emphasize this fact once more, that what is eliminated from the food is its very soul, its precious Flavor, which makes it appetizing and enjoyable and therefore digestible. We allow covetous or ignorant manufacturers as well as incompetent or indolent cooks to spoil our naturally good food because we do not as a nation, realize that on its pleasurableness depend our health and comfort, our happiness and capacity for hard work, more than perhaps on anything else--a point which cannot be emphasized too often. Now for a few details, beginning with the treatment to which our poultry is subjected, which has long been a national calamity and a scandal of the first order. FOUL FOWL. Perhaps more than anything else, what makes us stand before the world as a deplorably ungastronomic nation is our tolerance of the tainted, unpalatable, cold-storage poultry served in public eating places as well as in private houses in nine cases out of ten. We spent the months of May to September, 1912, in Europe, traveling in France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, and England. Nearly every day we ate chicken, or some other kind of poultry and not once did we have any that was in the least like our cold-storage fowls; everything was fresh, sweet, juicy, and appetizing. Again and again I said to my wife, or she to me: "I wish we could get such chicken in New York!" An American lady of wealth said to me a few years ago that one of the reasons why she went to Europe every summer was that she liked good things to eat and could get them so much more easily and regularly abroad--particularly butter, and her favorite dish, chicken. She knew of the poulet de Bresse--that explained it all. I shall never forget, though I live another half-century, my first taste of that particular brand of fowl. I had arrived at one of the leading Paris hotels too late for the table d'hôte, and thinking I was not hungry, ordered nothing but a portion of chicken and a bowl of salad. The waiter brought an enormous portion, and I had hardly tasted it when I found I was ravenously hungry. Not a shred of it was left. The delicious taste of that sort of fancy poultry is due in part to the particular breed, but more still to the use of special kinds of food which give a rich and delicate flavor to the flesh, as the so-called wild celery of the Chesapeake Bay does in the case of our best ducks and turtles. Nature provides our canvasback and redhead ducks and terrapin--not too bountifully, it is true--but when it comes to mortal man's treatment, in this country, of the poultry that has to take the place of the formerly abundant game, what do we see? A state of affairs that would not be tolerated one week on the European continent. It is officially estimated that from 75 to 90 per cent. of all the poultry produced in the United States is preserved in cold storage for months, often for years. What is worse still, "only a very small percentage of the fowls which are placed in cold storage are drawn," the result being that by a physiological process known as osmosis the meat becomes tainted in a most offensive manner. The warehouse men and dealers have for years been fighting furiously against the health boards of various cities and states for the privilege of perpetuating this state of affairs, which greatly simplifies the poultry business and enables them to sell the entrails of a fowl at the same price per pound as the meat; but the long-suffering public has at last become thoroughly aroused, convinced that many obscure disorders of the digestive tract are due to the consumption of undrawn and other cold-storage poultry, not to speak of the horror of eating such stuff. A young woman informs me that one day she went into a butcher's shop (in a part of town where prosperous families live) and ordered a chicken. The butcher took one down, but when he cut it open such a stench came from it that she stepped back in horror. Yet the man tried to persuade her to take it, remarking: "That's all right! Just wash it in a solution of borax, or in vinegar and water and the odor will disappear." This happened in New York City in the year 1912; it was not an exceptional case; thousands of such offensive carcasses are sold in American cities daily. Nor is it necessary to cut them open to know that they are unfit for food. Their greenish, mummified, rigid appearance reveals their unpalatable condition. Daily, for years, as I have walked along the streets of New York and seen these hideous bird corpses brazenly exposed for sale, I have wondered at a community which will tolerate such a thing. As the authors of Bulletin No. 115 of the Bureau of Chemistry[3] say, a careful inspection of cold-storage fowls before cooking "would do much to destroy any appetite which might otherwise have been manifested for these birds when cooked." On pages 100-101 of his monumental work on foods and their adulteration which should be read by all consumers as well as dealers because of its impartial statement of the case, Dr. Wiley remarks pertinently that "the keeping of chickens with the intestinal contents undisturbed does not appeal to the imagination of the consumer any more than would the freezing of the carcass of a beef or hog with the viscera remaining in it." Elsewhere the great reformer put his finger on the most vulnerable and undeniable aspect of the storage business: "Palatability is one of the elements of wholesomeness, and we find in cold storage _a tremendous decrease in palatability_." From this kind of tainted, unappetizing, unpalatable chicken to the poulet de Bresse, what a long road we have to travel. Under present conditions, as a matter of course, it makes no difference what we feed our fowls; all are foul alike, and will remain so as long as the American public remains content to fall so far below the European gastronomic level. The packers and dealers, of course, laugh at Dr. Wiley's statement that, under the present scientific methods of production, poultry can be furnished in a fresh state all the year round (as it is in Europe). They do not want it fresh; they want it in their refrigerators so they can regulate and artificially raise prices. The worst offenders are the men who speculate in storage fowls, making, say, $10,000 or $20,000 in one day. That enables them to cross the Atlantic and eat _edible_ chicken in Paris. The simplest way for the consumer to thwart the conspirators against his appetite and stomach is to buy of genuinely Kosher butchers, who by their tenets are not allowed to handle cold-storage fowls; or direct of the farmer, with whom an arrangement can be made to send the freshly killed and promptly cleaned poultry to one's home. In this way the total cost does not exceed regular city prices, and oh! the difference in the effect on our well-being, not to speak of getting even with the "icemen." The introduction of parcel's post greatly reduced the cost of this method of securing fresh poultry. In European countries, particularly France and Germany, the parcel's post has done much to eliminate middlemen, and many thousands of consumers make use of this chance to get provisions fresh and direct from the producer. There are reasons to believe that the present high prices of beef and mutton will never come down again, but will climb higher still because the former vast grazing-grounds of the West are being cut up into farms. But to the raising of chickens there is no limit. By applying the methods of intensive farming the supply can be steadily increased and prices lowered. Chicken day is destined to become more and more frequent, and it is for the consumer to decide whether his chicken dinner shall be appetizing, enjoyable, and beneficial, or remain what it is now in most cases, a gastronomic calamity. From the point of view of Flavor, which is the main theme of the present volume, this subject is of such importance that a few more pages must be devoted to it. THE FRENCH WAY VERSUS THE AMERICAN. In Paris one eats the best chicken in the world; in New York, as a rule, the worst. How do they do it in France? The answer will be given in the chapter on French Gastronomic Supremacy; here let us anticipate only a few details as supplied to the Government of the United States by Newton B. Ashby, special agent of the Bureau of Animal Industry and published in its Sixteenth Annual Report (1899). The French, he notes, "are economic people, and the system of sending young and immature chickens to market is not practised. The fowls sent to market are from 4 to 8 months old. They are carefully fed and grown for market instead of being allowed to scavenge. For instance, the chickens are given clean water instead of being allowed the run of filthy pools and puddles." The method of slaughter, he goes on to say, "seems to be chiefly by cutting the jugular vein. The fowl is then dry plucked very carefully to prevent tearing the flesh, and is drawn through the vent." [Illustration: How they do it in France?] Note those last six words. They show that _the French do not allow chickens to remain undrawn even one day_; for, as Mr. Ashby continues, "the fowls are packed the afternoon or evening of the day of slaughter, and despatched to Paris by special express train that night. They are due in Paris before five o'clock in the morning. They are delivered at once to the market, and are sold on the day of arrival, so that French fowls are generally disposed of in the market within twenty to twenty-four hours after being killed.... In July and August many French fowls come to the market alive." "The Paris markets, and French markets generally," we are further told, "do not take kindly to foreign poultry or meat." Such poultry would of course have to be brought in cold storage, and what the nation which knows most about eating wants is fresh chicken. "Foreign poultry is not in demand in Paris," because the French know and have known for generations that to freeze meat is to spoil it. On this subject I shall have some further remarks in a later section on the Roast Beef of Old England. Now look at the way much of the poultry consumed in American cities is gathered. Dr. Cavana of Oneida, N. Y., who found no fewer than eleven distinct groups of bacteria in the flesh of a single undrawn fowl, remarked, in a lecture delivered in 1906, at the Annual Convention of Railway Surgeons, that poultry stocks are collected for eastern cities from all parts of the country. He goes on to say that after slaughter the feathers are removed and the carcasses packed in barrels, generally without further dressing. The head, feet, and legs, as well as the craw of partially digested food, therefore, is left in the sealed cavities of the fowls, forming conditions which force the general infection of the tissues by the flagellated, or rapidly swimming intestinal bacteria, which double their quantity and numbers every forty minutes, a single bacillus being capable of developing over forty-two billion germs in twenty-four hours. Their shipments are made by rail and steamship, and cover transit periods of several days before reaching the cold atmospheres of the storage warehouses. "To determine the activity of these germs and the period required for their permeation of the tissues in the slaughtered undrawn fowl, we caused to be made a series of experiments, the results of which justify the belief that a great percentage of the infected poultry and game stock in storage became so infected before reaching the low temperature of the storage warehouses." Nor does ordinary cold storage destroy the noisome bacteria. They are merely scotched, to revive and multiply at the first opportunity. One of the principal objections to cold-storage poultry is that after being taken from the storehouse they decompose much more quickly than fresh birds. Some dealers aggravate the evil by soaking the poultry when taken out of storage in cold water for the purpose of thawing. This adds to its weight, to the profit of the dealer, but it "causes heavy bacterial infection," as Dr. Charles Harrington, secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Health, has pointed out. Dr. Pennington, in an article on Changes in Chickens in Cold Storage, to which we shall recur, refers to a case in which a frozen fowl, after being immersed in water, had increased in weight eleven per cent. (to the dealer's profit). In Bulletin 144 of the United States Department of Agriculture we read: "Under precisely the same conditions of temperature and humidity, drawn fowls will keep from twenty to thirty days longer than those not drawn. The presence of undigested food and of excrementitious substances in animals which have been killed most certainly favors the tainting of the flesh and general decomposition. The viscera are the first parts to show putrescence, and allowing these to remain within the body cannot do otherwise than favor infection of the flesh with bacteria and ptomaines, even if osmosis does not actually carry putrid juices to contiguous tissues. Hunters know the value of drawing birds as soon as possible after they have been shot, in order to keep them fresh and sweet and to prevent their having a strong intestinal flavor." Read also the following weighty remarks reprinted from Senate Report No. 1991, March 22, 1906: The process of decomposition and putrefaction begins at once after the death of the animal. Cold storage and freezing may limit the rotting process, but do not entirely stop it. When poultry or animals are taken from cold storage and are thawed out for exhibition and sale, the decomposition continues with marked energy, impregnating the flesh with poisons--and this decomposition is exceedingly rapid even when the poultry is kept in the market or grocery refrigerator, the temperature of which is much higher than that of the cold-storage warehouse. Flesh in which the blood has been permitted to remain is particularly susceptible to such decomposition, and this susceptibility is increased by the long period of freezing and thawing. Even with poultry which is "freshly killed" there is frequently a period of several days between the time of slaughtering and sale. Not only is it dangerous, but it is repugnant to our sense of decency, that the flesh we are to eat shall lie for several days in close contact with putrefying animal matter. Undoubtedly undrawn poultry, fish, and game have caused many cases of poisoning which have been wrongfully attributed to other sources. The poisoning resulting often resembles that caused by other poisons administered by persons or taken with suicidal intent. Many sufferers from digestive troubles--headache, nausea, colic, and diarrhea after eating, owe their ailments to tainted foods. We are advised that the reason for slaughtering poultry without thorough bleeding is the saving in the weight of the fowl, and this reason is doubtless also one for the storing of poultry and offering it for sale without removing the viscera. There is, however, no reason why the consumer should be compelled to purchase a large percentage of excreta, offal, and refuse with his poultry. We would not tolerate the addition of a certain percentage of weight in the form of entrails of the steer with each beefsteak we buy. The consumer purposes to buy edible food and not the disgusting waste which should be eliminated in the process of slaughtering and dressing. It is just as reasonable to ask the consumer to buy hogs, calves, and lambs without the intestines removed as to solicit his purchase of undrawn turkeys and chickens. WHY DO WE EAT POULTRY? After the appearance, in "The Century Magazine" of November, 1911, of my article on Ungastronomic America, in which I denounced the practice of offering the public undrawn, cold-storage poultry, I was bombarded with abusive letters from packers and others, and a periodical, called "The Steward," fancied that it had completely demolished me by quoting the results obtained by Dr. Mary E. Pennington, in collaboration with Evelyn Witmer and H. C. Pierce, during a series of observations described in a circular entitled "The Comparative Rate of Decomposition in Drawn and Undrawn Market Poultry" published in 1911 by the Department of Agriculture. This result of these observations was that "undrawn poultry decomposes more slowly than does poultry which has been either wholly or partially eviscerated." This statement does not agree with the conclusion reached and printed in the Bulletin No. 144 to which I have already referred, that "under precisely the same conditions of temperature and humidity, drawn fowls will keep from twenty to thirty days longer than those not drawn." This statement is doubtless correct--provided the fowls have been eviscerated in such a way as to keep the cavity absolutely free from contamination. If this is _not_ done, the drawn fowl will, for obvious reasons, spoil even sooner than the undrawn. It is _not_ usually done by the American packers; and the moral is, _not_ that undrawn fowl is preferable to drawn fowl for packing, but that these packers should send their men to France or Germany to learn how properly to draw fowls. The consumer, anyway, is not interested in "keeping qualities." What he wants is chicken that is good to eat, and the shorter a time it has been kept, the better for him, in every way. Dr. Wiley refers to experiments which have "shown the advisability of packing drawn poultry in tin cartons, carefully closed"; adding that "fowls thus treated preserve to a remarkable degree their freshness and palatability." If that degree of freshness and palatibilty is sufficient to satisfy the consumer, then cold storage has a future. If not, cold storage is doomed, for undrawn, frozen poultry will, I feel sure, _not_ be eaten much longer by the American public. Why do we eat poultry, anyway? Surely not merely because we want food. If that were the case, why waste money on expensive chicken or turkey, when we could get the same amount of nourishment from many other foods at a mere fraction of the cost? _The reason why we eat chicken in preference to those other foods is that we want to enjoy its flavor._ And we do _not_ want frozen, undrawn poultry, not only because the freezing spoils the flavor but because the leaving of the entrails in the animal makes it unwholesome. One of the main arguments of the packers in favor of leaving fowls undrawn is that they dry out sooner when drawn. A more deadly boomerang it would be difficult to throw. There is only one way in which the drying carcass of a fowl can get its moisture: from the contents of the entrails. That is what is meant by osmosis. Thus out of their own mouths the packers stand convicted of offering the public fowl which is disgustingly tainted. The best part of the fowl--the second joint--gets the taint soonest, because it lies nearest the intestines. The wings and drumsticks get it last. It is important to know this, because it explains why experts may differ as to the time it takes to spoil the flavor of a stored bird. Usually the process is quite rapid. The whole question of the tainting of meat by osmosis deserves much more attention than it has received. A wild boar has to be eviscerated at once after being killed. If this is not done, none of the meat is fit to eat except the head--which explains why "wild boar's head," and the head alone--often figures on bills of fare in France and Germany. My wife, who was brought up in Southern France knew a wealthy silk merchant, a great hunter in his own domains, who always promptly removed the entrails of the boars he killed, before the carcass grew cold, the consequence being that all the meat was good to eat, as his friends were given many a chance to find out. For several years some of the New York butchers have indulged in the custom of exhibiting in their windows the carcasses of lambs with their pelts still on. If a Paris butcher did that, the first of his customers coming along would ask him if he didn't know that unless the pelt is taken off at once after killing a _mouton_, the meat gets from it a disagreeable "sheepy" flavor--which is a very different thing from the unique and delicious flavor properly dressed mutton has. Perhaps the most striking illustration of the rapid action of osmosis is provided by venison, which is unfit to eat if the deer has been tortured by a cruel chase. Its terror affects the digestive juices, and the whole body becomes tainted. IS COLD STORAGE A BLESSING? In an editorial entitled "Cold Storage Hardly a Blessing" the New York "Times" called attention during the holiday season of 1911 to the fact that the price of cold-storage turkeys was six cents a pound less than that of the fresh-killed birds. "This difference of almost 25 per cent. is an admission by the cold-storage people, forced from them by unalterable public opinion, that their much-wanted wares are to just about that extent inferior to those which they vociferously declare to be no better." Quoting the happy expression that cold-storage fowls taste "as if they had been buried and dug up again," the same writer remarks: "None of us really knows how fowls do taste after they have gone through that process. We can imagine the flavor, however, and do, noses helping tongues." Were it not for the storage people, chickens and eggs would come into our markets fresh, cheap, and in abundance at the time when they are at their best. But it is precisely when they are at their best and cheapest that the storage men corner the market and hold the goods till they are good no more; whereupon they sell them at their own prices, largely increased through gambling. In view of such facts the "Times" refers to cold storage as "a baleful invention." A baleful invention it certainly is--and a needless one, too. To quote Dr. Wiley again: "Poultry is a food product which under the present scientific methods of production can be furnished in a fresh state all the year. The necessity for cold storage, therefore, is not so apparent in this case as in that of fruit and other perishable foods." The American public, surely, will not much longer tolerate the present condition of affairs. There are packers and packers. Some are more careful and cleanly in their methods than others; but cold-storage fowl at its best is more or less denatured, and at its worst it is worse than denatured, putting us almost on a level with the African Bushmen who, when they kill a sheep, eat the entrails with their contents. I would no more eat such undrawn storage poultry as is placed daily before thousands of my countrymen than I would the flesh of a hyena or a vulture. It was estimated that, in 1912, $75,000,000 worth of poultry was consumed in New York City. Of this, only $1,500,000 represented the business done in live chickens, and nearly all of this went to the Kosher butchers of the East Side. Surely Christians cannot afford to be less cleanly than Hebrews in regard to what they put in their stomachs. The time has come for Christians to gird up their loins and fight for untainted food on their tables, too. There is encouragement in the information that in one season 1,100 more cars of live poultry were shipped to New York City than the season before (1910), and that plants were being established near the city for providing poultry freshly slaughtered and dressed. The consumer must, however, make sure that the fowls are not only freshly killed but drawn within a few days; the second joint is sometimes tainted on the second day. Butchers and poultry dealers would make friends if they gave up the habit of charging for fowl at so much a pound including the intestines. Let them charge more per pound for the meat alone, refusing under any conditions to have an undrawn bird in their shops, and the poultry business will soon be doubled, nay, quintupled. The fact that fresh fowl costs more than frozen is due to artificial conditions which can be remedied and _must_ be remedied. For the present, if you cannot afford a six-pound fowl, try one weighing three pounds. If your dealer understands--as mine understands--that you will not under any circumstances eat a cold-storage bird he will supply a fresh one. What you want is not quantity but quality--particularly the true chicken Flavor. In the chapter on Savory Cooking it will be shown how a few pounds of fresh chicken can be made to yield their delicious flavor to a dish much larger and much cheaper than would be afforded by a fowl double its size cooked in the usual way. In Europe, most persons travel third class on the railways because they cannot afford first or second. In this country, nearly everybody can afford to travel first class. Americans are always bound to have the best of everything--if they know how to get it. Only in the gastronomic world are they--with the exception of the Jews--traveling third class--eating third-rate poultry prepared by third-rate cooks. This cannot last. We can afford the best. Let us have it. SPOILING THE AMERICAN OYSTER. Nowhere in the world are oysters more abundant than in America. Nowhere are they cheaper or better. As a rule, too, we cook them well, in various styles; but in the opinion of most epicures a cooked oyster is an oyster spoiled. Its food value in any case, raw or cooked, is very small, and it is chiefly as a relish that those who know how to eat value it. But for years the public has been allowing the men who market oysters to eliminate the very elements which give them relish by soaking them in fresh water, which makes them bloated, blonde, and tasteless. The dealers declare that many consumers demand them that way; floating makes them bigger. There are such consumers; they sacrifice quality for quantity; they know not that usually the best oysters by far are the small brunettes straight from the deep sea; and they further demonstrate their gastronomic obtuseness by smothering their oysters under several strong condiments, which in themselves would destroy their delicate, natural Flavor. In some of our States the government has come to the rescue of the epicure--who is in despair at this wholesale denaturing of his favorite delicacy--by enacting laws against the soaking of oysters because few of the streams in which this is done are free from typhoid and other deadly germs; but many of us do not feel sure that the health boards (because of indolence or "graft") exercise the necessary supervision, and therefore we deprive ourselves of the cheap luxury which Europeans have most reason to envy us. At banquets, where everybody used to eat oysters on the half-shell, it is noticeable how many plates the waiters remove that have not been touched. Having thus summed up the indictment, let us consider a few of the more important details. The London "Lancet" of April 22, 1911, had an editorial article on Shell Fish and Disease in which it pointed out that while from the nature of the case the testimony is usually of a very circumstantial kind, "which only becomes convincing in its cumulative aspects," there are instances on record like the outbreaks following certain banquets in Southampton and Portsmouth which admitted of no doubt as to the source of the disease. Dr. H. T. Bulstrode made a comprehensive report upon enteric fever and gastro-enteritis in England to the Local Government Board of London, in 1906, in which he showed by means of maps how many of the mussel, oyster, and cockle beds were exposed to contamination, his revelations being, as the "Lancet" remarks, "decidedly disquieting." Even in cases where the shellfish were collected from locations relatively remote from contamination by sewage they were likely to be "brought back and cleansed on shore much too near the mouths of sewers." England is thus in the same predicament as the United States, but that is small comfort for us. In an address before the New York Academy of Sciences delivered by Dr. George A. Soper, President of the Metropolitan Sewerage Commission and reported in the "Times" of March 14, 1911, it was pointed out that there are over 500 sewer outlets discharging into the rivers and harbor of New York each day a volume of sewage that would fill the channel of the East River from the Brooklyn Bridge to a distance of fifteen miles. "New York gets many of its oysters from Jamaica Bay--about a million bushels a year. The water at this section is heavily polluted, and to this can no doubt be traced a great part of the typhoid that breaks out in this city. The Board of Health has found that 15 per cent. of all typhoid is due to the eating of polluted shell fish." James L. Kellogg, professor of biology in Williams College, in his admirable book on Shell Fish Industries[4] sums up the results of his thorough study of this subject in a chapter on Bivalves in Relation to Disease. It may be stated as a fact, he says, that "epidemics are sometimes caused by eating uncooked oysters. Several times they have been traced directly to that source. The evidence collected on that point in this country and abroad is conclusive." There are four reasons for objecting to the process of "floating" oysters. The first--the danger of conveying a deadly disease--has been sufficiently dwelt on. Let us now consider the second: Were all oysters taken from the ocean and not near the mouths of harbors or rivers that bear sewage, no one need ever hesitate to eat them raw. The trouble lies in the fact that, as Professor Kellogg puts it, "before food mollusca are marketed they are _almost invariably_ placed for a few hours in fresh water to undergo what the oystermen term the drinking process. Oysters sold in shell as well as those that have been shucked are usually subjected to the fresh water treatment. To make delays and the cost of transportation as light as possible, the localities selected for this are almost without exception in harbors or river mouths near large markets. In very many cases such waters bear the sewage of cities of hundreds of thousands of inhabitants." With these facts--which have often been pointed out--before him, is it necessary to call the reader's attention to the circumstance that even if it had never been proved that oysters can serve as conveyers of deadly diseases, the process of floating them--that is, _bloating them with sewage_--must be condemned as unspeakably vile and disgusting? What aggravates the matter is that oysters have what Professor Kellogg calls "wonderfully efficient mechanisms for _straining dangerous organisms out of the water_." "Several gallons of water every day pass through the gills of every full-grown oyster or clam, and every solid particle is removed from it and remains in the body." "It is thus plain that even if relatively few in the water, the chances are that a dangerous number of disease organisms will be strained out of it by these shellfish." Indeed, were it not for the fact that most of these disease organisms are destroyed by the digestive fluids of oysters and those who eat them, there would be vastly more typhoid fever than there is now from the thirty million bushels that are sent to our markets every year from our shore beds. The danger comes from the organisms on the gills, or on the shell, which, in that case, it is not safe to handle. Berlin has its _Rieselfelder_--vast meadows and gardens made fertile with the city's sewage. This liquid sewage is subjected to such thorough chemical treatment that ere it reaches its destination it is perfectly harmless. When the _Rieselfelder_ were opened, the city fathers had such confidence in their chemist that they ceremoniously drank some of this water. It was a disgusting, though perfectly safe thing to do. The eating of our sewage-bloated oysters is both disgusting and unsafe. "Cleanliness is next to godliness" is a motto which it is even more important to apply to the inside of the body than to the outside. After this demonstration of the dangers and the filthiness of the process of floating oysters, it is needless to advance further arguments. But in order to complete the rout of the "floaters"--who have long fought so fiercely for the privilege of spoiling the American oyster--reference must be made to the two other indictments against them, because of the interest and importance attaching to them. One is moral and legal; the other, gastronomic. Dr. Wiley sums up the two in one sentence: "Not only does it (floating) deceive the customer in regard to the size of the oyster but it deprives the oyster of its proper taste and flavor." Osmosis comes into play in "floating," as he further points out: "By this process the body of the oyster affects a plumpness and largeness which materially increases its selling qualities, as it increases its weight and size and, therefore, the profits of the dealer. The principle of this process depends upon the fact that when a soft substance like an oyster, containing a mineral salt in its composition, is brought in contact with water, a process of diffusion takes place which is known in chemical physics as osmosis, whereby water passes through the cell walls and enters the cells of the oyster and the mineral substance thereof is forced out into the external water. Larger volumes of water pass into the cells than accompany the particles of mineral matter to the outside of the cells and the result is a swelling of the oysters and consequent increase in the size and weight by the addition of pure water, but at the expense of the natural salt, mostly chloride of sodium or common salt, which the oyster contains." Thus does science confirm and explain the epicure's perception that oysters are denatured by being soaked in fresh water--_deprived of the tang of the sea_, which tang to any one who knows anything about the art of eating constitutes ninety-five per cent. of the value of an oyster. There are exceptions to my statement that small oysters are the best. Some epicures prefer the large, adult Lynnhavens to the small Blue Points; and the Lynnhavens certainly are among the finest in flavor. But men who do prefer the naturally large oysters, or oysters that have been _legitimately_ fattened in _salt_ water, ought to be the first to fiercely resent the floating which is done to deceive them as to the _real_ size of the oysters they pay for, and gives them denatured oysters, bloated and sickened with sewage water. Three centuries ago Massachusetts boasted oysters a foot in length, and in Maine a shell has been found measuring three inches over a foot. We need not worry, however, at the decreased size of our bivalves; it makes them more tender--though, to be sure, also less nutritious. In any case, however, the nutritive value of an oyster is so insignificant as to be practically negligible. How ludicrously small it is, is shown by Dr. Wiley. For one hundred pounds of shelled oysters, he says, only about ten pounds of meat are found. In ten pounds of the meat there is over 80 per cent. of water; so that "_the actual nourishment contained in 100 pounds of oysters is reduced to a little over one pound!_" Could anything more triumphantly demonstrate the comparative importance of Flavor over nutriment in this, the most delicious of all sea foods? Yet it is to this all-important Flavor that our dealers show such brutal indifference, not only in the various ways pointed out in the preceding pages but in other ways. For instance, oysters spoil even more rapidly than fish and should therefore be kept alive to the last possible moment before serving. Yet how lamentably seldom is this done! It can be done not only in cities on the coast, but in those of the interior, it being possible to keep oysters alive and in excellent state for consumption for a week or ten days or even longer. It would be unjust to the oystermen to accuse them of perpetrating all their crimes against shellfish from sheer greed for extra gain. Ignorance also comes into play. Only one opener in fifty seems to know that the best thing by far about an oyster is the liquid in its shell. Watch the other forty-nine and you will see them wantonly wasting this precious, fragrant liquid, and in many cases they will serve the oyster on the flat shell, so that you get no juice at all. Always ask for them on the deep shell and don't be afraid, after you have transferred the morsel to your mouth to drink the liquid from the shell. It may not look elegant, but elegance be hanged! Dealers who wish to get rich quick by creating an unprecedented demand for oysters with the real tang of the sea should bear all these things in mind and further prepare themselves by reading pages 158 to 164 of Dr. Wiley's _Foods and their Adulteration_. Then let them remember that honesty is the only profitable policy. The public is not in a mood to be fooled and trifled with any longer. In the autumn of 1912 Dr. Wiley called attention (in "Good Housekeeping" for November) to the important fact that under present conditions not only is it seldom safe to eat raw oysters, but that they are particularly risky in two of the "R" months--September and October--because of the danger of pollution due to the crowding at the seashore, which is becoming greater and greater as the summers wear on, many of the resorts being near beds in which oysters thus become sewage-contaminated even before they are "floated" by dealers. In September, 1912, the Bureau of Chemistry published its Bulletin 156 on _Sewage Polluted Oysters as a Cause of Typhoid and other Gastro-Intestinal Disturbances_, by George W. Stiles, Jr., Chief of the Bacteriological Laboratory. He reviews the literature on the subject, showing how in many cases epidemics of typhoid and other diseases were traced to the eating of raw shellfish, and then relates how, with a detective ingenuity worthy of a Sherlock Holmes or a Burns, seventeen cases of typhoid and eighty-three cases of gastro-enteritis following a banquet held at Goshen, N. Y., in October, 1911, were traced directly to eating Rockaway oysters floated at Indian Creek, and twenty-six other cases, ten of them typhoid, were traced to the eating of Rockaways, some of which came from the same lot furnished for the Goshen banquet. The Rockaway oysters thus got a "black eye," but if perhaps the worst offenders, they are by no means the only ones. "All the oysters of New York Bay, Narragansett Bay, and the Potomac River, the waters near Norfolk, Va., and the mouth of the James River, the mouths of the Connecticut and Merrimac Rivers, and other industrial streams, and the continental border of Long Island Sound, are open to suspicion," says Dr. Wiley, and should not be eaten raw. More and more, too, will object to eating them cooked. Boiled filth does not appeal to the imagination. The plain and distressing truth is that our great shell fish business, the pride of Gastronomic America, will be ruined altogether unless the barbarous custom of discharging the sewage matter of cities and villages into rivers and the ocean is stopped. It seems incredible that we, with our incalculable wealth, should be so far behind Europeans, especially Germans, in this matter of keeping our sea food clean and edible. The disposal of sewage matter after German methods is the most important problem now before the American public, more important by far than tariff questions, warships, irrigation projects and Panama canals. Typhoid fever could be reduced to a minimum were the sewage disposed of scientifically as it is in some German and English cities. The startling assertion that in 1909 there were more cases of typhoid in the United States than of plague in India was made by Dr. Allan J. McLaughlin, of the United States Public Health Service at a meeting in New York, December 5, 1912, of the Association of Life Insurance Presidents. The typhoid fever rate per 100,000 is, in Berlin, only 2.9; in London it is 3.3; in Vienna, 3.8. In Boston it is 11.3; in New York, 11.6; in Chicago, 13.7; in Philadelphia, 17.5; in Washington, 23.2; while in Milwaukee and Minneapolis it rises to 45.7 and 58.7 respectively. The annual loss to the country from these fever cases is put at $100,000,000. "SMOKED" HAM, BACON, AND FISH. Some Americans have an inexplicable prejudice--which, however, is fast disappearing--against fresh pork and against sausages, but bacon and ham are relished universally, and it is therefore of national importance that they should be made appetizing. But they fare as badly as our bivalves and our fowls. Time was when a crisp slice of bacon would give zest to a whole breakfast, but the bacon served now in nineteen cases out of twenty has no more flavor than sawdust; it is eaten without pleasure, and therefore burdens the stomach for hours. Virginia ham has maintained its supremacy and there are a few packers of other hams and bacon who uphold a high standard; but most of them have succumbed to the temptation of curing their pork products with cheap preservatives which denature them, making them as flavorless as floating makes the oysters, and cold storage the poultry. Has the reader ever spent a summer in a farmhouse and casually come into a corner of the woodshed where smoked hams were suspended from the rafters? If so, he will remember the appetizing fragrance which suddenly made his mouth water and make him long for breakfast. Some persons think they do not like smoked meats; but they almost invariably do when they thus come across the real thing. [Illustration: Where smoked hams were suspended from the rafters] Smoke is not only the best of all preservatives, it is also the most valuable of condiments, imparting to meats or fish a delicate aroma without altering their natural flavor. A famous Austrian physiologist, Professor Brücke, pointed out many years ago that smoked meats are more digestible than fresh meats; but he did not give the reason, which is that the delicate yet penetrating Flavor added by the smoke creates an appetite and thus causes a flow of digestive juices to the stomach. The American consumer is now usually deprived of this healthful condiment and wholesome pleasure because those who handle pork products have discovered that they can save much time, trouble, and money by soaking them, as just intimated, in cheap solutions of chemicals instead of smoking them in the old-fashioned way, carefully and _slowly_. Farmers are busy folk and therefore naturally eager to learn ways of lessening their labors. They consequently succumb readily on reading an alluring advertisement like the following, clipped from a paper published in a Western village: "=Smoke Your Meat With a Brush= There's a new and better way of smoking meat. You accomplish in but a trifle of time all that you can by the tedious old fashioned process. Your meat will be hard and firm, it will be protected from all germs and insects and it will have a more delicate flavor than if smoked in the old way. Use =Brown's Condensed Smoke= It contains all the preservative elements of the smoke, without the rank, disagreeable elements. You simply apply it with a brush or sponge, giving the meat one or two coats, and the smoking is done. Price 75c." In England, also, long famed for its deliciously flavored smoked hams and bacon, the farmers and packers have been approached by the tempter. "A case in point," says the "Lancet" of February 5, 1910, "is seen in a rapid method of making hams, bacon, and certain fishes appear to be smoked by applying to them a fluid called 'smoke essence.'" Is it straight dealing, it asks, to call an article painted over with smoke essence "smoked"? "We had occasion recently," this leading medical journal continues, "to examine a specimen of smoke essence in the laboratory, and the results of the analysis were interesting. We found it to consist chiefly of creosote, analine dye, and a salt of iron." Even if such a mixture is harmless "that fact does not justify leading a consumer to suppose that a bloater, a tongue, a rasher of bacon or ham, treated by this simple process, had been adequately cured by the operation well known as 'smoking.' There can be no question at all that the color is added to complete the disguise, and we feel bound to admire the ingenuity of the inventor of a mixture who puts into it a salt of iron which is calculated to give a side of bacon an appearance of natural rustiness." In conclusion, the "Lancet" expresses its regret that such matters as these affecting the purity of the food supply were not "strongly dealt with" when the Departmental Committee on Food Preservatives and Coloring Matters issued its recommendations nearly a decade previously. It is passing strange how patiently the average Englishman, and still more the average American, allows himself to be fooled by food manipulators whose chief aim is to save time, trouble, and expense. The familiar definition of genius as "a capacity for taking pains" is incorrect, but such a capacity is certainly necessary for the production of the best foods, including bacon and ham. We Americans, speaking collectively, lack it and that is one of the main reasons why we must be branded as an ungastronomic nation. A striking illustration of the importance the Bohemians, for instance, attach to such matters is found in the village of Wallern, where a coöperative society has been formed for the sole purpose of getting meats smoked in the best possible manner, with beech wood. The point I wish to call special attention to is that the pork products in this model house are smoked, according to the size of the pieces, for a period of _two to three months_. In a recent _American_ book on pigs these directions are given: "If the hams are to be smoked they should be hung in the smoke stoves _at least three days_." Three days! In Germany and Austria, where the world-famed Westphalian and Prager hams are cured, six weeks is the minimum time for a good article. The maximum, for the highest-priced hams, is three months. We are now in a position to understand why so many Americans imagine they do not like smoked meats. They have in mind either such meats as have been chemically "smoked," miles away from any smoke house or stove, or such as have been actually smoked, but too briefly, or in too strong smoke. Dealers have slyly taken advantage of the naturally growing aversion to "smoked" meats. "Slightly Smoked" is a label one often sees now, and ere long, if not checked they will have the audacity to say to a housewife asking for smoked ham or fish or bacon that they have "none in stock," there being "so little demand for it." That is the way many of the best things are crowded out of the market. In conclusion, let me whisper in the reader's ear the secret why those who handle pork products and fish are so eager to get rid of the smoke house that during the process of smoking the ham and bacon may lose up to twenty per cent. of its weight. "But why does the dealer not charge more, to make up for loss of weight?" He does, dear Madam. He charges more every year and saves the full weight, too, by avoiding the smoke house. The joke is on you. He will do this as long as you meekly tolerate it. He will tell you with a look of injured innocence that you are "the first one to complain"--and perhaps you are, though merely one of many thousands who have been fooled. As I have said, there are exceptions. A few firms are selling real smoked ham and bacon, and they are coining money. Others will perhaps find out ere long that it pays better to please the public than to fool it. At present, the outlook seems hopeless. Some years ago, when there were still a few dealers left who did not try to get rich quick at the expense of your stomach and health, I used to lunch often on smoked fish. But in the year 1912 you could not--at least I could not--get a genuine smoked fish for love or money. One day in December, I walked into a delicatessen store in which I saw through the window a plateful of whitefish, a variety which is particularly good smoked. They were choice specimens, but after a sniff at them I beat a retreat with, I presume, a disgusted expression. "What's the matter with those fish?" asked the dealer. "They are a first-class article." "Fine fish," I retorted, "but they are not smoked." "They may not be smoked enough...." "They are not smoked at all," I interrupted, "they are chemically preserved and dyed to save weight." "You seem to know more about it than I do," he said. "I certainly do," I answered: "If they were smoked I would take a dozen of them." Fancy the situation--to be unable, in the second largest city of the world, to get smoked fish! I have tried dozens of places, always with the same result. If others refused to buy the denatured stuff offered, smoked fish would soon be in the market again. The best foreign methods of smoking meats are described in No. 3655 of the Daily Consular and Trade Reports (Washington, December 8, 1909). Fortunes are in store for all American packers who will follow those methods and advertise _honestly_: "We give our pigs clean food, feeding a fine flavor into our hams and bacon; we do not destroy this flavor with chemical preservatives but intensify its appetizing qualities by the use of beechwood smoke." Where beechwood or hickory, oak, or maple are not available, corn cobs make a cheap and satisfactory substitute. FLAVOR IN BUTTER. On every table in the land, except that of the very poor, there is one article which appears two or three times a day all the year round, and that article is butter. More than $300,000,000 worth of it is consumed every year in the United States. One would therefore suppose that the public would insist with all its might and main on having its butter good. It does no such thing, but meekly accepts the indifferent and often vile stuff offered by dealers--an unpalatable lubricator which I would no more think of eating than I would axle grease. A few years ago Miss Alice Lakey, chairman of the food investigating committee of the National Consumers' League, said that "ninety-five per cent. of all samples of butter submitted were adulterated. We are eating practically no pure butter." While there is evidence to show that butter was made four thousand years ago, it seems to have taken some nations a long time to "catch up with the procession." We are a long way ahead, on the whole, of the Spaniards, who, as late as the seventeenth century, kept butter in medicine shops "for external use only" (doubtless there were good reasons!) and who to this day hardly know what edible butter is; or of the Irish of that same century who are spoken of by James Houghton as rotting their table butter by burying it in bogs. But we are lamentably behind some of the European nations, notably the French, Germans, Austrians, and Swiss, in the making and the appreciation of first-class butter. In some of our leading restaurants and hotels, as well as in expensive clubs and the residences of wealthy families, one may come across such butter; but one is not sure of getting the real thing even after paying the highest price. I seldom eat it at home--there are too many disappointments--and when I travel in the United States I rarely have the courage to try it. In rural summer resorts we have found that the only way to get edible butter is to make it ourselves. As regards Europe, on the contrary, I can repeat what I have said about poultry: that during a five months' trip in 1912 I did not once have butter placed before me which I could not eat with pleasure. The unwillingness of Americans to take pains in the preparation of foods to which I have referred as one of the main indications of our being an ungastronomic nation is strikingly illustrated in the department of butter-making, wherein it is the chief cause of our inferiority. Our Government has done its best to enlighten the butter-makers. In 1904 the Department of Agriculture published, for free distribution, Farmers' Bulletin No. 241: "Butter-making on the Farm," by Edwin H. Webster, Chief of Dairy Division, Bureau of Animal Industry; and, in 1905, Circular No. 56 of the same Bureau: "Facts Concerning the History, Commerce and Manufacture of Butter," by Harry Hayward, assistant chief. These pamphlets contain in concise form invaluable information which, if generally utilized, would revolutionize the butter business. Mr. Webster refers to "the great amount of poor butter made on the farm," and Mr. Hayward also confesses that "a very small percentage of all dairy butter made is of really high grade." When one reads of all the diverse precautions that must be taken to ensure a good article, and bears in mind the characteristically American unwillingness to take pains with the things that are put into our stomachs, one wonders not that our butter is so inferior. A few of the hundred-and-one precautions necessary to secure a first-class article may be briefly mentioned. The cow must be kept carefully cleaned, particularly the udder, and so must the hands of the milker, and the pail which holds the milk. "The habit of some milkers of wetting their hands with milk just as they begin is a filthy practice and the cause of much bad milk and poor butter." There must be no hidden, inaccessible places in the pails, nor must rusty tinware be used, because it imparts a metallic flavor to the milk. Some of the so-called washing powders are very objectionable. The walls of the barn must be whitewashed, and the ventilation such that the air is changed every few minutes. The pails must be rinsed first with cold, then with boiling water. The milk must be removed as soon as possible from the barn, where it readily absorbs dust or bad odors from the air, and then stored in a cold place, far away from decaying vegetables or fruits or other things, the odors of which it might absorb. The sun should pervade the cold storage room but not look on the milk. If possible, the cream should be collected by means of a separator, for the proper handling of which there are a number of rules, the neglect of any one of which will spoil the butter. It is absolutely necessary to cool the cream thoroughly, immediately after separating, and to avoid mixing of cold with warm cream. Then there are a number of directions concerning churning; working the butter to get out the milk and water; packing; marketing; feeding the cows, and so on, none of which can be disregarded with impunity. This complexity of the art of butter-making may help to explain the situation in America, but does not excuse it, for in the gastronomic countries of Europe people are not too lazy, ignorant, or indifferent to turn out a first-class article every day in the year. What I wish to call particular attention to is that all these precautions necessary for the making of first-class butter relate to its Flavor. _Persons buying butter for any other purpose than the enjoyment of its Flavor are extremely foolish_, for they can get the same amount of fat and general nourishment very much cheaper in a hundred other ways. It is for the sake of securing an agreeable aroma or Flavor that all the rules just enumerated, and two-score more, must be observed. If this is not done--if only one or two of them are neglected--there are developed in the milk, or the cream, or the churned butter, bacteria of a very disagreeable kind, which will convert butter that might have been of the highest grade into a second, third, or fourth grade article, or one quite unfit for human consumption, because of excessively rancid, fishy, smoky, tallowy, leeky, soapy, cheesy, or other flavors. The art of butter-making consists in eliminating all disagreeable flavors and fostering the agreeable ones. Renovated or process butter is made of butter in which, on account of careless manufacture or storing, the disagreeable bacteria have so got the upper hand of the agreeable ones that even those persons who, because of a slender purse or an imperfectly developed sense of smell, are contented with fourth-grade butter, refuse to buy it. This stuff (often sold, _horribile dictu_, as "cooking butter") is subjected to a process of purification, which makes it a wholesome and nutritious article of diet. Yet it is sold at a much lower price, for the reason that it is inferior in Flavor to good butter. The long and fierce fight between the butter-makers and the manufacturers of oleomargarine is also in the final analysis, a question of Flavor. Oleomargarine is a mixture of vegetable and animal fats, diversely mixed. This mixture is churned with milk to impart a butter Flavor; or there is added to it more or less butter, in which case it is known commercially as butterine, although legally it is classified as oleomargarine. If made honestly, of clean material, and unadulterated with borated Chinese egg-yolks, or with preservatives, oleomargarine is a perfectly unobjectionable and wholesome food. The trouble is that, as Dr. Wiley has pointed out (1911), "there has been a constant disposition on the part of dishonest manufacturers and dealers, since the time when oleomargarine became a commercial commodity, to sell it as butter. Although the penalties of National and State laws are very severe in this respect the practice is continued. The opportunity for gain is so great that the cupidity of the manufacturer overcomes his fear of punishment and disgrace." There has been much outcry because of the special tax on oleomargarine and the severe laws against selling it as butter. As a matter of fact these laws should be even more severe and much more rigidly enforced. The practice of selling it as butter not only defrauds the consumer but it tends to drive real butter out of the market, since such butter cannot be produced at nearly so low a cost as margarine, especially if made with the care and expenditure of time necessary for the production of first-class butter. The best butter costs five or six times as much as the best margarine. It is needless to say that in the compounding of "butterine" the best butter is not likely to be used. By mixing milk or butter with his fats, the manufacturer of margarine confesses that his own product lacks the one thing which gives butter its advantage, for table use, over a dozen other fats that might be chosen--its appetizing Flavor, which makes it digestible and enables us to eat it with relish every day in the year. It is owing to this superiority that pure butter is entitled to legal protection against unfair competition. It might be argued that the American farmer, whose butter is, as we have seen, usually of a low grade, does not deserve the protection the Government gives him against the underselling of the margarine maker, because good oleomargarine is preferable to bad butter. Such protection is, however, due to the associated system of manufacture known as creameries. The creamery, which in 1900 had already usurped one-half the butter business in the country, "has done much," as Mr. Hayward remarks, "to improve the quality of American butter, and if all butter came direct from creameries there would be no such quantities sold by producers at prices which are often actually below the cost of production, as is the case at the present time." SWEET BUTTER VERSUS SALT. There are now a number of model creameries in the United States turning out butter which would probably equal the best European were it not habitually spoiled by the injudicious use of a "starter" to turn the cream quite sour, and by the addition of salt. The subtle and much disputed question of sour cream versus sweet will be discussed in the chapter on French Supremacy. That of "salt or no salt" must be disposed of now. The assertion frequently made that unsalted butter tastes insipid to most users is not confirmed by my own experience. No doubt the subtle aroma of sweet butter escapes many who are partially anosmic (a frequent defect analogous to color-blindness), or who have neglected to train their sense of smell, or who have deadened their olfactory nerve by excessive smoking or drinking of strong liquors, so that they cannot appreciate the delicate aroma of European butter. But I have come across many Americans at home and abroad who, given a fair chance, instantly and emphatically preferred the unsalted butter. Once I made a special experiment at a rural boarding house in Maine. Of a dozen persons at the table only one liked salt butter better; two had no decided preference, while the other nine voted, after a fair trial and comparison, for sweet butter first, last, and all the time. The only trouble was that much more was consumed of the sweet than had been eaten of the salt; which shows the folly of those dealers who think they are smart in selling pounds of salt at the price of butter, whereas in truth they would sell twice as much butter if they left it sweet, because that kind is so much more palatable and tempting. Boarding house keepers will always order salt butter. Undoubtedly the vast majority of Americans at present prefer, or think they prefer, salted butter. To convince them that this preference simply proves that their gastronomic education has been neglected, let me add a few significant details. Dr. Wiley, in whose taste, judgment and knowledge we all have so much faith says that "the best grade of butter is that which receives no treatment other than the washing and working process to which attention has been called. This kind of butter is known as natural or unsalted or uncolored butter, that is, a fresh, sweet product of an agreeable aroma, palatable, of fine texture and grain, and is the best product of its kind for human consumption. It also brings the highest price on the market." Until a few years ago it was almost impossible, even in New York City, to get unsalted butter. To-day it is usually served in the most expensive hotels and restaurants, some of the wealthy folk use it at home, and the general customer has a chance to buy it in a few places, at fancy prices. It is seldom as good as the same product in the humblest inn of Continental Europe, but it is improving from year to year. In connection with this fact it is interesting to read the words of Chief Hayward, in the Government publication already referred to. "_What is known as the highest class trade demands a much lighter salted butter than is demanded for the lower grades. Furthermore, there is an increasing tendency on the part of the best trade to ask for a butter containing less and less salt. Butter which has a clean, pure flavor needs little salt; that which is off-flavor or tainted in any way is improved by being strongly salted._" In other words, the worse the butter, the more salt it needs, and the better the butter the less salt it needs. From this it follows logically that the best butter needs no salt at all. The notion that salt "brings out" the Flavor is ridiculous; it spoils it. In the gastronomic countries of Europe the consumer would no more allow salt to be put into the butter he eats than into the cream he puts in his coffee, or the ice-cream he takes for his dessert. There is absolutely no excuse for continuing the barbarous practice of denaturing American butter by the addition of salt. It does not even help to make it keep. On this point Dr. Wiley remarks: "It is a common supposition that salt in butter is a preservative. This is true when used in large quantities, that is, in quantities which render the butter somewhat unpalatable. The very small quantity of salt used purely for condimental purposes cannot be regarded as aiding in any material way the preservation of the product." There is also a comic side to the question and the joke is on the butter-maker and dealer. I have already pointed out that we are tempted to eat much more of the sweet butter than of the salt. There is another weighty reason why the makers would profit by leaving out the salt. Dr. Wiley observes that "there is a tendency on the part of the greedy manufacturer to add excessive quantities of salt because it is very much cheaper than the butter itself and thus he hopes to add to the profit of the industry. On the contrary this practice usually results in loss, since such highly salted butter naturally brings the lowest price." The funniest part of the story remains to be told. By throwing in handfuls of salt the maker not only lowers the market price of his butter but also decreases its weight! Read Assistant Chief Hayward's explanation of this seeming paradox: "Butter will usually weigh less after the salt has been added and the butter worked than before. This is due to the fact, already mentioned, that salt unites, or collects, the small drops of moisture into drops so large that they can be separated from the butter, and, as the total weight of the water or brine thus separated exceeds the weight of salt added, the butter consequently loses weight by reason of salting." If, _in spite of all this_, the butter-maker and dealer persist in foisting strongly salted butter on you, beware! It can only be because, as Chief Hayward has pointed out, "that which is 'off flavor' or tainted in any way, is improved by being strongly salted." Do you wish to habitually eat bad butter thus "improved"? Can it be possible that you do not resent being the dupe of the astute butter men? [Illustration] IV THE SCIENCE OF SAVORY COOKING DESIRABLE RAW FOODS. Nobody wants a boiled or fried orange or grapefruit for breakfast. Other fruits, such as apples, pears, peaches, plums, cherries, grapes, and diverse berries are often cooked, in many ways; but when ripe, sound and of good stock, they usually "taste" better raw than cooked. We do not boil our melons, nuts, or radishes, nor, as a rule, our celery and green-salad leaves of various kinds, or our cucumbers. Tomatoes make an excellent stew, but they are better still sliced raw, with vinegar and oil, and best of all eaten out of hand right off the plant. These things nearly everybody knows. Many, however, are not aware that the best thing about a cabbage is the core, eaten raw, and that carrots, turnips, and particularly peas, when young and tender, are far better raw than cooked. Raw carrots taste a little like celery. One of my chief delights when on a farm is to stroll about the garden and orchard, sampling the various vegetables, berries, and fruits just before breakfast. A tolerable case might thus be made out for those faddists who preach the gospel of raw food. Like all fads, it is nevertheless foolish. Were we to accept it, we might still eat sun-dried meat, or ham, sausages, and fish thoroughly smoked, but we would hardly care to eat raw bacon, or veal, or mutton, or poultry, or beef (though a "beefsteak à la Tartare" is edible when buried under diverse "trimmings" from the delicatessen store). I should like to see a faddist eat a raw potato or beet, or a plateful of raw pumpkin, squash, or beans! Were we to live on raw foods altogether, we might survive to tell the tale, but we should have to give up that infinite variety which is the chief spice of our diet. At the same time one of the great arts of civilization would vanish from the earth--an art which does as much to distinguish us from animals as the fine arts do--more so, in fact, for birds sing and beavers build houses, but no bird or other animal ever cooks its food. FLAVOR AS THE GUIDING PRINCIPLE. "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. THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOUP MAKING AND EATING. In each of the processes of cooking, such as boiling, roasting, frying, stewing, steaming, baking, it is necessary to observe certain elementary rules which can easily be taught. _Boiling._ In boiling meat, everything depends on whether the object is to keep the juices within the meat or to get them out; in other words, whether the meat is intended to be eaten, or simply used for the purpose of making a rich, flavorful bouillon or soup. If the meat is to be eaten, it is plunged at once into _boiling_ water, which coagulates the protein on the outside and prevents the loss of the juices. The bigger the chunk, the better. If the meat is _not_ to be eaten, it is put into a pot of _cold_ water and the temperature is raised gradually. In this case the richest broth is obtained if the meat is cut up into small pieces and cooked a long time. It is almost universally believed that "soup meat" (usually beef) boiled in this way has lost most of its nutritive qualities and that these have gone into the soup. In reality, it is all a matter of Flavor. We prefer the soup to the meat boiled in it, merely because the Flavor of the meat has been transferred to the soup. The nutritive matter remains in the meat; the soup stock has very little of it--from one to five per cent. only. It is evident, therefore, as Dr. Wiley points out, that "_the soup stock is valuable as a condiment and flavoring and not as a food_." The same is true of beef extract, which is simply a concentrated soup stock--thirty-four pounds of beef boiled down into one pound. Here we have the whole philosophy of soup making and soup eating, reduced to the simplest terms. Soup contains the essence of meat Flavor, and we eat it at the beginning of a meal because this Flavor stimulates the appetite, which in turn causes the digestive juices to flow freely. The richer the soup is in Flavor, the more it stimulates the appetite. The beef extracts sold in little jars are, if made by reputable firms, among the most valuable appetizers--invaluable, in fact, in a country in which the science of making savory soup is so little understood or practised as it is in the United States. The makers of meat extracts have laid themselves open to censure by making extravagant claims as to the nutritive properties of these extracts, instead of dwelling principally on their importance as flavorful appetizers. This, to be sure, they could hardly have been expected to do until the all-importance of Flavor in Food had been impressed on the public in a special monograph. WHEREIN LIES THE VALUE OF VEGETABLES? Except for the making of soup stock, and of extracts and beef tea, boiling of meats is not much in vogue in America. Vegetables, on the other hand, are usually boiled--and thereby hangs a melancholy tale. Boiled they should be, but not in the careless, unscientific way generally practised in America and England, where they usually are served at table entirely denatured, that is, deprived of their Flavors. Villainous and idiotic are the only adjectives that adequately describe this method of cooking vegetables, for their utility as food lies chiefly in these Flavors, the nutritive value of green vegetables being small. How small it is may be seen by the analysis given in Dr. Wiley's "Foods and their Adulteration," Part VI, where he says, for example: "There is very little nourishment obtained in eating a turnip which perhaps is 95 per cent. water,--yet its palatability, its condimental character, and its general salutary effect upon digestion is such as to make it worth while to pay even a high price in proportion to its nutriment." If the reader wants more evidence on this point he may find it in Sir Henry Thompson's valuable book, _Food and Feeding_. Speaking of "the entire cabbage tribe in great variety; lettuces, endives, and cresses; spinach, sea-kale, asparagus, celery, onions, artichokes, and tomato," he remarks that all these are "valuable not so much for nutritive property, which is not considerable, as for admixture with other food chiefly on account of salts which they contain, and for their appetizing aroma and Flavor." Therefore, to boil green vegetables without the slightest attempt to preserve or develop their natural Flavors, as is almost universally done in our country, is, I repeat, villainous and idiotic. Americans undoubtedly eat too much meat. Preaching about the injuriousness of this excess may do some good, but a much more effective way would be to cook vegetables more temptingly. If peas and string beans are succulent and fresh, they are delicious when simply boiled in salted water. In cities they seldom are quite fresh, and, as a rule, it is well to add soup stock or butter to develop the Flavor. In any case, it is of importance that the water should be already boiling when the vegetables are put in. If this is not the case, there is a loss of valuable salts and Flavors. Some loss there must always be; that is, the water always absorbs some of these juices and Flavors; but note the difference. French cooks preserve this vegetable stock, as they do the meat stock, for diverse combinations. Our cooks pour it down the sink. It is fortunate that the United States Government has undertaken to establish the principles of savory cooking by scientific methods, which will lead to more satisfaction and generally helpful results than the empirical, haphazard methods hitherto followed by cooks. An interesting glimpse into the kitchen laboratories of our Government experts is given by Murray in his "Economy of Food." "It is obvious," he says, "that the loss of nutrients will be increased by cutting the vegetables into small pieces, and by soaking them in cold water before cooking. In the case of potatoes, turnips, and similar products, the loss might be greatly diminished by cooking them whole with the skins on, but as a rule this method is not practicable. "These conclusions are confirmed by the experiments of Snyder,[6] Frisby, and Bryant. They found that when potatoes were peeled, cut into pieces in the usual way, and soaked in cold water before boiling about half the total nitrogen--including about a quarter of the true albuminoids--was lost. When put into cold water and cooked at once, only about a sixth of the total nitrogen--including a twelfth part of the true albuminoids--was lost. When the potatoes were put, at once, into boiling water, the loss was only about half the amount recorded in the last case; but, for some reason, this method is not suitable for some kinds of potatoes, as they 'go to smash' if so treated. The loss from potatoes boiled in their skins was quite inconsiderable, being less than one per cent. of the total nitrogen. "In boiling carrots which had been scraped and cut into pieces, the amount of the loss was found to depend almost entirely upon the size of the pieces. Small pieces lost about 40 per cent. of the total nitrogen and 26 per cent. of the sugar. With large pieces, the loss of nitrogen was about 20 per cent. and of sugar, 15 per cent." A number of useful hints for the practical cook are supplied by these scientific experiments. It is needless to say that in potatoes and beets, and in dried vegetables, like beans, corn, and peas, the proportion of nutriment is greater than in the succulent greens. In the cooking of dried vegetables the preservation and development of Flavors is also of great importance, with a view especially to digestibility. Unlike the green, the dried vegetables should be cooked by putting them into cold water; and prolonged cooking is necessary in order to soften and otherwise prepare them for the alimentary canal. Our benevolent Government a few years ago engaged one of the country's chief cooking experts, Maria Parloa, to write a brief treatise on the _Preparation of Vegetables for the Table_ for free distribution by the Department of Agriculture as Farmers' Bulletin No. 256. Like all these documents, it is excellent; in less than fifty pages it explains the best ways of cooking potatoes, beans, peas, carrots, asparagus and two-score more of the products of the garden; and these pages are followed by others on vegetable soups, seasoning and sauces for vegetables, and salads and salad dressings. Every cook, urban as well as rural, should have a copy of this pamphlet and mark with a red pencil the more important directions. If every cook in the country knew and practised only the following directions given in this useful document, what a transformation there would be in our dining-rooms! "All green vegetables, roots, and tubers should be crisp and firm when put on to cook. If for any reason a vegetable has lost its firmness and crispness, it should be soaked in very cold water until it becomes plump and crisp. With new vegetables this will be only a matter of minutes, while old roots and tubers often require many hours." "All vegetables should be thoroughly cooked, but the cooking should stop while the vegetable is still firm." "Over-cooked vegetables are inferior in flavor and often indigestible." "Badly cooked, water-soaked vegetables very generally cause digestive disturbances, which are often serious." Cabbage "is apt to be indigestible and cause flatulence when it is improperly cooked. On the other hand, it can be cooked so that it will be delicate and digestible." _Steaming_ is one of the best ways of cooking vegetables. It is largely practised in France and Germany, but neglected in England as it is in America. Potatoes have more of their natural Flavor when steamed than when cooked any other way. An English writer says on this point: "Steaming has the double advantage of conserving the Flavor and making the food more digestible. Its only drawback is that it takes more time, and this is probably the reason why it has somewhat fallen into disfavor in England." BROILING, ROASTING, BAKING, FRYING. As this volume is not intended to be a practical cook-book, no attempt is made to give rules for all the various processes of cooking food; nor is it necessary, for nearly every family owns a cook-book giving the required directions. What I wish to emphasize is that in all these processes the rules given by the best chefs refer directly or indirectly to the preservation and development of the food Flavors. A few brief paragraphs will suffice to prove this point. _Broiling._ As one expert puts it: "The ideal to be reached in broiling steak is to sear the surface very quickly, so that the juices which contain the greater part of the _flavoring_ of the meat shall be kept in, and then to allow the heat to penetrate to the inside until the whole mass is cooked to the taste of the family. To pass the point where the meat ceases to be puffy and juicy and becomes flat and hard is very undesirable, as the _palatability_ is then lost. Exactly the same ideal should be kept in mind in broiling chopped meat. If this were always done, hard, compact, _tasteless_ balls or cakes of meat would be served less often." The three words I have italicized show that in this case, as in all others, my contention is borne out that Flavor is the guiding principle in all scientific cooking. The use of the gridiron for a broil, or "grill," as the English call it (after the French griller), also imparts to the meat a slightly burnt taste relished by epicures. _Roasting._ Why is our roast beef usually so insipid and unappetizing? Sometimes the inferior quality of the meat is to blame, but more frequently our disappointment is due to the cook's indolence or the substitution of baking for roasting. Real roasting is like broiling in so far as it requires exposure of the meat to an open fire. It differs from broiling in that it also calls for frequent basting, that is, taking up with a spoon the fat which flows from the meat and pouring it over the surface, thus aiding the initial searing in keeping in the juices, on which the Flavor depends. Ordinary cooks are too lazy to baste and therefore this precious juice escapes into the pan, where it is in turn spoiled by a deluge of water and an uncooked mass of flour, the resulting liquid being a sorry substitute for real, savory gravy. In place of roast meat most families now have to put up with baked meat. Baking in an open pan in a modern range results in the tainting of the meat with the disagreeable flavor of charred fat spattered by the cooking process against the top and the sides of the oven. The oven being unventilated, and not easily washed, the result is a permanent "oven taste" in the roast beef, mutton, veal, pork, or chicken, which is almost as exasperating to a discerning diner as the taint of cold-storage poultry. This objectionable oven taste can be eliminated by using a double roasting pan, which also has, to a certain extent, the advantage of being self-basting. A conscientious cook, who knows the value of Flavor and of real gravy, will nevertheless look after the basting personally. The value of gravy is far too little understood. Nothing is more appetizing in association with a good plain roast than the gravy made from its fat and some of its juices. In starting a roast it is of prime importance to expose the meat at once to a very high temperature so as to sear the surface and (as already stated) keep the juice in the meat. But before the searing process is completed, enough of the juice usually escapes to make, in combination with the fat which continues to ooze out, a delicious gravy. The French do not add flour to gravy; if it is added, it should at least be used sparingly, and cooked five to eight minutes in the gravy. _Frying._ Give a dog a bad name, etc.! Frying has been denounced as an invention of the devil, a source of countless digestive disorders. As ordinarily practised it fully deserves its evil repute. From a dietetic as well as a gastronomic point of view nothing could be more objectionable than the fried steaks, bacon, potatoes, and diverse deadly fritters daily placed on hundreds of thousands of American tables. But frying on rational principles is an entirely wholesome and most desirable branch of the science of savory cooking. Success or failure in this branch is chiefly a matter of temperature. At the moment the meat, fish, or vegetable is put into the fat, this must be sufficiently hot to coagulate the surface so that (as in the processes of roasting or broiling) the juices with their Flavors are kept within. If the fat is not hot enough, the food comes out soaked with grease and highly indigestible. On the other hand, care must be taken that the fat is not scorched. This point is best explained in one of the Agricultural Department's helpful publications.[7] "The chief reason for the bad opinion in which fried food is held by many is that it almost always means eating burnt fat. When fat is heated too high it splits up into fatty acids and glycerin, and from the glycerin is formed a substance (acrolein) which has a very irritating effect upon the mucous membrane. All will recall that the fumes of scorched fat make the eyes water. It is not surprising that such a substance, if taken into the stomach, should cause digestive disturbance. Fat in itself is very valuable food, and the objection to fried foods because they may be fat seems illogical." The temperature required varies with the different foods and styles desired. On this point, as well as on the relative merits of the various baths to be used, sufficient information is given in cook books. The best frying baths are made of suet and veal fat, fresh butter, and pure olive oil. For the sake of economy, and variety in flavor, it is also advisable to use the drippings from fried bacon, ham, or sausage--but _not_ from fish. In speaking of broiled meat I referred to the slightly burnt taste which is relished by epicures--somewhat as dissonances are by music-lovers. In the case of fried and roast meats, properly browned on the surface, there is a somewhat similar but less dissonant flavor which comes from browning the meat with fat. If the browning has been done scientifically many persons (I am one of them) prefer the outside slices of roast meat to the inside. COMBINING THE FLAVORS OF MEATS AND VEGETABLES. Apart from the adventitious browned flavors just referred to there are in broiled, baked, and roast meats usually no combination flavors except such as come from the butter and salt that are added after the meat is done. Two most important details to know are that if the salt is put on meat before it is broiled, it allows the juices to escape; but that in frying a steak (which is not a barbarism if properly done) salt added at once helps to make a delicious gravy. In the frying of meats or of vegetables (parsnips, carrots, egg plant, oyster plant, and particularly potatoes) a desirable extra flavor can also be added by using the fat previously fried out of bacon, ham, or sausages, or the fat from a pot-roast or the soup kettle. Endless possibilities for combination Flavors are offered by two of the cooking processes: boiling and stewing. The first of these has already been briefly considered under the head of the Philosophy of Soupmaking. _Stewing_ is not usually considered one of the most "high-toned" of cooking processes; yet, if scientifically done--think of a real Irish stew!--it provides dishes second to none in savoriness--dishes fit for gods, kings, and epicures. And a man might live a hundred years and have a new variety of stew every day, so great are the possible permutations and combinations of vegetables and meats. More savory results can often be secured by stewing than by any other process of cooking. It is well-known that the "sweetest" (that is, the most highly flavored) meat is that near a bone. Moreover, the bone itself, thoroughly cooked, yields most agreeable flavors of its own. Now, in making stews, the bony parts (shoulder, neck, end-pieces of ribs) are used, and the prolonged cooking called for by this process results in extracting all the sweetness from the bones and the meat nearest them. Boiling yields similar results, but the savors pass into the liquid, leaving the meat almost flavorless, whereas in a stew the flavors enrich the gravy, the vegetables, and the meat alike, in a particularly appetizing manner. In ordinary stewing--the method of preparing the French bœuf à la mode, or the Irish stew--the meat and the vegetables are put into water and allowed to simmer slowly. A more elaborate method of stewing is known as braising. In this process a strong liquor of vegetables and meats is used in place of water, and it is usually advised that both the vegetables and the meat be fried in a little fat before being placed in the pot to braise. This does not seem altogether scientific, because in a stew the object is not to keep in the juices but to get them out and combine them. A less objectionable way, which some consider the last refinement necessary to produce a first rate braise is thus described: "Have well-fitted to the braise-pot a sunk copper or iron cover, in which some hot coals or charcoal are placed, in order to transmit downwards a scorching heat to the top of the portion which is uncovered by the liquid in the pot below. In this case it is usual to cover the portion, especially if a fowl, with a piece of white paper, which serves to shield a delicate morsel from a too fierce heat."[8] SAVORY FOOD FOR EVERYBODY. It is to be greatly regretted that in America, as in England, the process of making diverse savory stews is so little understood. For not only do such dishes appeal to the most fastidious epicures, but a thorough and general knowledge of correct stewing would go far toward solving the problem of providing savory food for everybody. Too many Americans look on the ability to buy the most expensive cuts of butcher's meats as the gauge of prosperity, if not respectability. Now, the difference between these expensive cuts and the cheaper ones lies much less in their nutritive value than in their texture and flavor. Inasmuch as I am preaching throughout this volume that the Flavor is all-important, this ought to justify the general scramble for the more expensive cuts, but it does not; for in truth these differences in Flavor and tenderness can be obliterated by skilful cooking, especially in the stew pan. It has been well said that "_the real superiority of a good cook lies not so much in the preparation of expensive or fancy dishes as in the attractive preparation of inexpensive dishes for every day and in the skilful combination of flavors_." Has not the French chef been praised a thousand times for his alleged ability to prepare a host of toothsome dishes from thistletops? The Government at Washington, which so kindly looks after our welfare in many ways, has not overlooked this matter. In a pamphlet (to which reference has already been made,) issued as Farmers' Bulletin 391 for free distribution, and entitled "Economical Use of Meat in the Home," two of the Government's experts in nutrition, Dr. C. F. Langworthy and Caroline L. Hunt, have given forty-three pages of practical information and advice, which, if generally heeded, would not only go far toward solving the high-cost-of-food problem, but toward making us a gastronomic nation. It is a document which cannot be too highly commended to the attention of all who are interested in cooking and eating. The object of the pamphlet is to show that the number of "tasty" dishes which a good cook can make out of the cheaper cuts of meat or meat "left over" is almost endless. Directions are given for developing the natural flavor of meat even in the cheapest cuts and for further heightening the savors by the judicious use of condiments and sauces; and these general directions are followed by a number of special recipes, for making stews with dumplings; meat pies; meat with macaroni, or beans, or eggs; meat with vinegar, casserole cookery; pounded or chopped meat, etc. In conclusion the authors refer to the strange prejudice which some housekeepers seem to have against economizing in the ways suggested by them; upon which they comment that surely "the intelligent housekeeper should take as much pride in setting a good table at a low price as the manufacturer does in lessening the cost of production in his factory." The trouble with most cookbooks is that they are so bulky that few have the patience to wade through them to get at the general remarks to be found here and there. This Government bulletin is so short, and yet covers so much ground, that it is likely to do a vast amount of missionary work in American kitchens. MEAT EATING OF THE FUTURE. Boycotting the butchers may be an effective way of temporarily lowering the price of meat, but to make it permanently cheaper another method must be followed: we must eat less and thus decrease the demand. This we can do _without depriving ourselves of any of the coveted pleasures of the table_. We like to eat meats because we enjoy their Flavors; but it is possible and easy to enjoy these same Flavors in a way which makes our meals not only more economical but also more nutritious. This method has long been in use, but not to such an extent as it should be. It consists in _extending the flavor of meat_ to other material which costs less but has a higher nutritive value. The most valuable pages of the Bulletin referred to in the last section are those exemplifying the diverse methods of thus extending the flavor of meat. The recipes are preceded by these illuminating words: "Common household methods of extending the meat flavor through a considerable quantity of material which would otherwise be lacking in distinctive taste are to serve the meat with dumplings, generally in the dish with it, to combine the meat with crusts, as in meat pies or meat rolls, or to serve the meat on toast and biscuits. Borders of rice, hominy, or mashed potatoes are examples of the same principles applied in different ways. By serving some preparation of flour, rice, hominy, or other food rich in starch with the meat we get a dish which in itself approaches nearer to the balanced ration than meat alone and one in which the meat flavor is extended through a large amount of the material." Dr. Wiley, in discussing this aspect of the question, goes so far as to express the conviction that "the meat eating of the future may not be regarded so much as a necessity as it has in the past, but that _meats will be used more as condimental substances than as staple foods_." Meats as condiments rather than as foods! _There_ is a revolutionary doctrine for you!--a doctrine subversive of all the beliefs and practices of the past! Yet it is a doctrine which meat-eaters may accept calmly in view of the fact that what delights them in meat is its Flavor, and that even with a minimum quantity of meat this flavor can be preserved, developed, and extended in the diverse ways hinted at in the preceding pages. In view of this truth, meat-eaters should ponder what Dr. Wiley says in favor of our eating less meat than we do and using it as a condiment: "In all meat, for instance, that costs twenty-five cents a pound, such as steaks, there is over one-third or a half of it which is inedible, so that the edible portion really costs double the amount. On the contrary, when a pound of flour or maize is purchased, the price of which is perhaps only one-eighth that of meat, the whole of it is edible. Thus, from the mere point of economy as well as nutrition, the superiority of cereals and other vegetable products is at once evident. On the one hand, a cereal is almost a complete food containing all the elements necessary to nutrition, and it costs only a few cents a pound. On the other hand, a steak or roast is only a partial food and it costs much more than cereals." THE FOLLY OF VEGETARIANISM. The vegetarians who would banish all meat from our diet must not infer from the remarks just quoted that Dr. Wiley endorses their doctrine. He is an epicure as well as a man of science, and no epicure will ever advocate exclusive vegetarianism. While conceding that man "cannot be nourished by meat alone," but that he "can live and flourish without meat," he holds that he "is an omnivorous animal both by evolution and necessarily by heredity"; and he has written much, and _con amore_, about the pleasures of the table provided by meats cooked in savory ways. It is needless to dwell on the fact that most persons find meats more appetizing and digestible than any other foods, and that it would therefore be ridiculous as well as harmful to banish them from our tables. The chief argument against vegetarianism is that it would deprive us of thousands of the delicious plain or combination Flavors which make our food appetizing and digestible; and this argument is so irrefutable, so crushing, that not another word need be wasted on the subject. The _Flavor Test_ settles it for all time, as it does everything relating to food. WHEN TO USE CONDIMENTS AND SAUCES. Salt has been defined humorously as that which, if not put in the soup, spoils it. Potatoes, eggs, and many other foods are thus "spoiled" if eaten without a pinch of salt. It is, in fact, added to most cooked foods, by whatever methods prepared. Bread requires a considerable amount of salt to make it tasty. American bakers usually put in too little, and that is not only one of the reasons why our bread is so inferior to the best European, but explains the prevalence of the habit of eating salted butter, which, as previously pointed out, is as great a gastronomic barbarism as it would be to eat salted ice cream or drink salted coffee or tea, although under the circumstances it is more pardonable than it would be if the bakers were not such bunglers. In many countries some of the most important condiments--salt, sugar, vinegar, mustard, and pepper--are placed on the table so that every one may season his food to suit his individual taste. Yet in most cases these condiments do not give such good results when used at table as when added to the food while it is cooking. It is well known that nothing so exasperates a French cook as to see some one (Americans and Englishmen are the chief sinners) take a salt shaker in one hand, a pepper box in the other, and sprinkle their contents over the dish he has prepared, without even trying to find out whether he had properly seasoned it in the kitchen. Our addiction to such a habit is, of course, a lamentable confession that _our_ cooks usually know not how to season food. It comes to us generally in such an insipid condition that we take it for granted that we must do something to make it palatable. Apart from the table condiments just named there are many others which are usually reserved for the kitchen. Among these are allspice, bay leaf, capers, celery seed, cinnamon, cloves, curry, garlic, onions, ginger, nutmeg, sage, thyme. Also, a great variety of bottled sauces and of flavoring extracts, such as the essences of vanilla, lemon, almonds, etc. At the risk of wearying the reader by seeming always to harp on the same string, I must call attention to the fact that, with the sole important exception of sugar, all these diverse condiments have practically no direct nutritive value but are used the world over _simply because of their agreeable Flavors_. If they lose these Flavors--as they do if their volatile essences escape, or if they are adulterated (which is frequent, because so easy) the only thing to do is to throw them into the garbage pail. Greater even than the number of spices and condiments is that of sauces. These, also, are of two kinds: some of them, like tomato, walnut, or mushroom catsups, Worcestershire sauce, pickles, and tabasco, are served at table, while another very large class of sauces is usually made fresh in the kitchen for each meal. All of these sauces--once more it must be parroted--like the spices and condiments just discussed, are valued solely because of their Flavors--their importance to the Science of _Savory_ Cooking. One of the most important branches of this science relates to the proper use of sauces and condiments. Many persons commit the gastronomic sin of pouring a bottled sauce over a plate of meat or fish without previously ascertaining whether it needs any seasoning. Surely, among all the food Flavors, nothing is more delicious than the natural savor of fresh sole or salmon, or a juicy steak or chop just off the grill. To put any kind of sauce--be it the best in the world--on such a dish is as unpardonable as it would be to pour cologne over a bunch of fragrant violets. It is when the fish is a trifle "tired," or the meat without much flavor of its own, as so often happens, that these commercial sauces come to the rescue. Used only on such occasions, they have their value; and they are also desirable because of the variety they supply in the combination of flavors. The French make hardly any use of bottled sauces; theirs are domestic, made in their own kitchens, and they attach more importance to them than to anything else in culinary art. "Sauces, by the care and labor they require, by the costly sacrifices which they necessarily involve, ought to be considered as the essential basis of good cookery," according to Dubois-Bernard. "A man is never a good cook," he adds, "if he does not possess a perfect knowledge of sauces, and if he has not made a special study of the methodical principles on which their perfection depends." The sauces provided in Parisian restaurants and private houses are certainly delicious; yet the French often err--and that is almost their only serious gastronomic fault--in sacrificing to them the delicious natural Flavors of diverse prime meats, just as Americans and Englishmen do by pouring on their bottled sauces. Butter has among its many virtues that of developing the natural Flavors of meats and vegetables and may therefore often be used as a sauce in plain cooking à l'Anglaise. But, except for occasional variety, other sauces should be allowed to assert themselves over the natural food flavors only when these are not of the best. COOK BOOKS. Theodore Child--an American gastronomic missionary who unfortunately died young while traveling in Persia--remarks in his book, _Delicate Feasting_, that while there are hundreds of cook books, many of them admirable in their way, and bought by many, few are read or used, for the reason that most of them consist of a vast number of recipes, and "a cook must be already very learned in his art in order to know how to use them with advantage." In other words, these books fail to explain the principles of the art of cooking--the ways of preserving, developing, and combining Flavors--as I have attempted to do in this chapter. There are exceptions, and the best of these, so far as I know, is Mary Ronald's _Century Cook Book_ in which various methods of cooking are explained lucidly, so that those who boil, fry, broil, and so on, not only may know what to do but why to do it thus and not otherwise. The different sections, on meats, fish, vegetables, entrées, breads, desserts, etc., all have prefatory pages of most useful condensed information. A fairly complete list of the best cook books and other treatises on gastronomic topics may be found in Ellwanger's _Pleasures of the Table_. No fewer than 2,500 books and brochures, mostly French, are listed in George's Vicaire's _Bibliographic Gastronomique_. Probably the best and most widely used of the French cook books are those of Urbain-Dubois. There are seven of them: _Cuisine Classique_, _Cuisine Artistique_, _Grand Livre des Patissiers et des Confiseurs_, _Patisserie D'Aujourd'hui_, _Cuisine D'Aujourd'hui_, _Ecole des Cuisiniers_, and _La Cuisine de tous les Pays_, which includes recipes of all the nations who know how to eat. To another French classic, Richardin's _La Cuisine Française_ (_L'Art du Bien Manger_) with its 2,000 _recettes_, its menus of historic as well as gastronomic interest, I shall refer in the next chapter. The Germans and Austrians not only have books on the special ways of preparing food prevalent in different parts of the country, but books about the specialties of other countries, such as the making of marmalade in the English way, etc. The author of _Die Kunst des Essens_, Emil Weissenturn, took the trouble to make lists of the still surviving cook books of various countries. Of 17 written in the fifteenth century, 10 were Latin, 1 English, while Germany, Italy and France each contributed 2. In the sixteenth century Latin was still in the lead with 42, followed by Germany with 30 and France with 21. Italy contributed 16, Spain 5, Greece 2, England 2. In the seventeenth century France heads the list with 104 books; Germany printed 39, 31 were in Latin, 18 Italian, 10 English, 7 Dutch, 1 Portuguese, 1 Swedish. In the eighteenth century Germany comes to the fore with 96, France following with 60 and England with 34; 14 are in Latin, 11 Dutch, 5 Italian, 4 Spanish, 3 Swedish. In the nineteenth century Germany's lead is still more remarkable--374 books as against 152 contributed by France. England makes a spurt with