As there is scarcely an English family among the higher or middle classes who does not number among its members a retired military or civil servant of the East India Company, or a retired naval officer or Indian merchant, it would be advisable to introduce a chapter in any coming cookery book on Anglo-Indian cookery. Mulligatawney soup, and curries, and pillaus, are exceedingly wholesome.
Neither the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Russian, nor the Polish cookery are deserving of general commendation; but a few national dishes and soups, which have obtained a more general reputation, are worthy of attention and adoption.
Cookery is, above all others, a traditional and practical art, and unless receipts have stood the test of time and experience, and general approval, they are little worth. Cookery books are, for the most part, copies of each other; and the first cookery book is only the most original, because we cannot trace the plagiarism beyond the period when printing was invented. But there is little doubt, that in the rolls of great houses, and in the muniment rooms of colleges, halls, and religious establishments, would be found in vellum manuscript every receipt published in the first English cookery book. And the plagiarism may be tracked, as a wounded man by his blood, from 1470 to 1863. The compilers of all cookery books have, more or less, copied the earlier compilers who preceded; and so it must ever be, till we are foolish enough to reject all experience, and trust to theory or conjecture.
The compilers of any new cookery book should lay no claim to originality. They should avail themselves, though never servilely, of the labours of nearly all their predecessors, and by collation, comparison, addition, retrenchment, and the exercise of their own skill, experience, and discoveries, endeavour to improve on works already in print.
Among the French masters in the science of cookery are, Vatel, La Chapelle, Grimod de la Reynière, Beauvilliers, Ude, Laguipierre, Carème, and Plumeret; but receipts of more general utility for the public at large will be found in the “Cuisinier Royal” and the “Cuisinière Bourgeoise.”
Many of the receipts of Carème require alterations and additions, but some may be adopted in their entirety. Of Carème’s cookery, however, the distinguishing characteristic is profuse expenditure. In order to render such a system not merely easy of adoption, but possible, men cooks, splendid establishments, and colossal fortunes must become much more universal than they ever have been or ever can be.
The object of all should now be not to render the introduction of French cookery difficult and expensive, but easy, and within the reach of persons of moderate fortune.
The present age is distinguished as an age of rapid progress, and the improvements suggested now may, in this day of easy and inexpensive communication with the Continent, become permanently rooted to the British soil before 1869.
