If she has laid in a box of sage and one of mixed dressing with, perhaps, some paprika and thyme, she views her foresightedness with much complacency. She is supplied with savories.
Then she goes right on sighing, “Oh, for a new meat, instead of the same old round of mutton, pork, beef and fish; fish, beef, mutton and pork,” disclaiming utterly any responsibility for the monotony that is undermining the family health and temper and, quite possibly, its morals.
That is where the American housewife makes her primary and most important mistake. The French, on the other hand, know that there are, literally, hundreds of ways to vary every dish, however ordinary it may be in its primary state. That is their secret of success: unfailing variety coupled with economy.
However, this is not to claim that the American palate would take kindly to all the French cooks' little delicacies, or that it could be cultivated to that degree that makes a Frenchman regard a perfectly balanced meal even as an inspired poem.
Probably Americans, as a class, could never be induced to eat some of the little birds—the mauviettes, the alouettes, the sparrows baked in a pie, that so delight the Frenchman. Also, it is a question whether snails, even if it were possible to obtain the superior Burgundian, fat and juicy and cooked even as our own Oscar used to prepare them for certain Waldorf guests, would ever appeal to the American taste, as even the common hedgerow sort of snail does to the average Frenchman.
It is not that the French dinners of Monte Carlo are necessarily so superior to American shore dinners, or that the little dinners of Paris are so infinitely to be preferred to those, say, of certain places in New Orleans, or that the coppery-tasting oysters of Havre are to be compared with those of our own Baltimore. There is no more to be said, probably, for the woodcock patés of old Montreuil, or the rillettes of Tours, or the little pots of custard one gets at the foreign Montpelier, or the vol-au-vent, which is the pride and boast of the cities of Provence, than there is for grandmother's cookies such as have put Camden, Maine, on the map, or Lady Baltimore cakes, or the chicken pies one goes to northern New Hampshire to find in their glory, or the turkeys that, as much as the Green Mountains, make Vermont's fame.
Still, there is no question but that the American palate would benefit much by being cultivated, not only in the interests of economy, but also with a view to the increase of gastronomic pleasure, for a taste attuned to many variations is as an ear sensitive to the nuances of sweet sounds or an eye trained to perceive delicate tones and tints. It is really a matter for regret that we, as a people, have not been as willing to learn from the French the art of cooking and eating as we have been to acquire from them knowledge of the art of dress. Until we widen our horizon sufficiently to do this, we have not even begun to develop all our food resources or to understand the first principles of true food economy—which is not at all synonymous with “going without.”
FLAVOR, HANDMAID OF VARIETY
It is because he has a multitude of seasonings at his command and knows how to use them that the French cook is enabled not only to send to the table an infinite variety of dishes, but, at the same time, to practice economies that were otherwise impossible. The American buys an expensive cut of meat and, as is right in such a case, treats it as plainly and simply as possible. The Frenchman buys meat of a much lower quality, but so embellishes it that when it comes to the table it is superior, or, at least, equal to that which costs much more.