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.
[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.