IMPORTANCE OF VARIETY IN FOODS.
It is likely that in the development of electric cooking inventive America will lead Europe. But in other respects the American cooking of the future will have to borrow many useful hints from the older and more experienced nations of Europe.
We need, especially, greater variety in our dietary. The following chapters will endeavor to indicate the best ways of multiplying our pleasures of the table.
Before beginning with France, which has the largest number of lessons to teach, let us briefly consider the need of variety.
King Philip V of Spain engaged Farinelli, the most famous vocalist of his time, to sing four songs for him, without change of any kind, every evening for ten years. He was not in his right mind, "as a matter of course," one feels tempted to add, and yet are there not at this day, and in this country, many thousands of persons whose musical pabulum consists entirely of half a dozen tunes, which they sing, hum, and whistle decade after decade? For them the countless inspirations of genius given to the world in the last three centuries do not exist at all. And how much enjoyment they thus miss!
Vastly more surprising, since everybody eats, is the fact that the majority of persons are equally ignorant of the countless delicacies invented by ingenious cooks of the past and present. What Sir Henry Thompson wrote, more than a quarter of a century ago, regarding the average Englishman is quite as true to this day of the average American: "He cares more for quantity than quality, desires little variety, and regards as impertinent an innovation in the shape of a new aliment, expecting the same food at the same hour daily."
Breeders of fine animals have long since discovered that nothing is so conducive to health and other desirable qualities as variety in the food given.
A monotonous diet soon palls on the appetite, fails to stimulate the digestive organs, and the result is dyspepsia, loss of pleasure, energy, and earning power, and the shortening of life. Think of the pallid victims of the everlasting hog and hominy in the South! "Hasty pudding and milk," as Artemus Ward sagely observed, "are a harmless diet if eaten moderately, but if you eat it incessantly for six consecutive weeks, it will produce instant death."
At a conference on diet in schools held in London, all the speakers agreed that "monotony is the most fatal thing to digestion in both young and old, and that the knowledge that such and such a dish must inevitably come on Monday and such and such another on Tuesday, is destructive beforehand to appetite which is essential to good digestion and nutrition."
When the average American or Englishman travels, he is glad to see new cities, new scenery, new costumes and new faces; but he is comically indignant if he cannot get the same food he has always had at home. It would be much better for him if he could be made to understand that Cowper's maxim, "Variety's the very spice of life," applies to diet as much as to anything. Every country has something to give and teach us regarding the pleasures of the table. No other land yields such a lavish and varied supply of raw material as the United States, and all we need in order to become the leading gastronomic nation is to wake up to the importance of good and varied cooking and rational eating, and to learn all we can from nations famed for their culinary art.
The methods of obtaining the diverse national food flavors can often be studied without traveling abroad, since in our cities we have cooks and restaurants of nearly every land under the sun. In New York one can make a gastronomic trip of the world.
[VII]
FRENCH SUPREMACY
A GRUMBLER might ask "What's the use trying to learn new things from foreigners when so many of our families can hardly afford to buy the ordinary meats and vegetables for any kind of meal?"
But it is precisely because foodstuffs are becoming expensive that we ought to look to the older and less extravagant nations of Europe for guidance. Our Government has been commendably alert in this matter, doing a most useful service by issuing Farmers' Bulletin 391, which, as previously pointed out, shows how, by expert cooking, the cheaper cuts of meat may be made to yield more nutrition as well as more appetizing flavor than the choicest cuts as at present prepared in American households.