It may be objected that this is no real economy, because by the time the French cook has sauced and spiced his cheap cut in order to make it palatable, the cost is as great, if not greater than it would have been had he paid more for his meat in the first place. This would be true enough according to the average American's method of procedure. But it is to be remembered that the French cook has already in his kitchen the cooking vinegars, the spices, the dried herbs, the extracts, that in very small amounts—a dash or a few leaves—are used at a time; also, that in a great number of cases, gravies and sauces are made from the by-products of the main dishes—those by-products that in the American kitchen usually go down the sink-drain or into the garbage pail.
Take a peep into the typical French cupboard. There you will find from twenty-five to thirty liquid seasonings such as anchovy extract, tobasco sauce, meat extracts, mushroom catsup, tomato paste, chutney, various vinegars, Worcestershire and many another flavoring designed to give a tang and a zest even to the most unpromising dish, if used aright. There you will find, too, fifty or more dry seasonings, including anise, basil, saffron, savoury, clove or garlic, cassia buds, bay leaf, ginger root, pepper-corns, marjoram, mint, thyme, capers and so on.
Herein lie the “secrets” of French cookery which are, in truth, not secrets at all, but merely the application of common sense to the cuisine. The French have never allowed their taste to be restricted by prejudice, so they hail a new flavor with delight rather than registering an instinctive dislike because it is not familiar. With a little applied education, Americans can bring the charm of the French table to their own homes rather than when they are, as they say, tired of the same old round of “eats,” seeking out a nondescript table d'hôte restaurant and eagerly consuming what is set before them, grateful for a change.
But don't harden your heart against French cookery merely because you have sampled it, as you fondly think, at one or another of the “red-inkeries” of New York or any other city. For the most part the “French” restaurants of the land are in reality not French at all, but Italian for the most part, and whatever Gallic flavor the remainder ever possessed has well-nigh vanished. There may be exceptions but, if there are, their patrons carefully guard the secret.
But to return to our subject: It is the French cook's knowledge of the subtleties, the nuances of seasoning that stands him in good stead. The American woman who has essayed to use some spice or savory unfamiliar to her and has turned out a dish which her family has declared “tasted like medicine” is, naturally enough, discouraged from wandering after that particular strange god again. The truth is that she has overdone the seasoning. She doesn't want to be parsimonious, which is just what the French cook is with his flavors, only he, more scientifically, calls it using good judgment. If he uses garlic in a salad, it doesn't necessarily follow that the entire household must take on the atmosphere of an Italian barber shop, for he uses garlic or onion, not to give their flavor to a dish, but to bring out the flavors of the vegetables with which they are used.
Vanilla and lemon have an almost universal appeal to the palate, and knowing this, the American cook, like the generation before her, has always seasoned her rice puddings, for instance, with one or the other, just as her apple sauce has invariably been flavored with lemon or nutmeg, her bread pudding with vanilla, and so all along her restricted line.
The French cook holds no brief against vanilla, and sometimes he flavors his rice pudding with it, but he so guides matters that the very sight or mention of rice pudding does not bring the thought of vanilla to the mind, for with him it may be flavored with pistache or rose or have a geranium leaf baked in it, giving a delightful, indescribable flavor. An ordinary bread pudding becomes veritably a queen of puddings as, indeed, it is called, merely by having a layer of jam through its center and a simple icing spread over the top. Ordinary pea soup exhibits chameleon-like possibilities merely through the addition of a little celery-root, a dash of curry or the admixture of a few spoonfuls of minced spinach, and tomato soup has for most an appeal that even this favorite of soups never had before when just the right amount of thyme is added while it simmers, along with, perhaps a bayleaf.
In the recipes appended to the little dinners in this book a great many of the French cooks' materials and methods of procedure are set forth. But if the ordinarily experimental American housewife has the flavorings on hand, she will doubtless herself contrive many an alluring dish of her own. Variety is said to be the spice of life. However that may be, the spices and their friends, the herbs, certainly make for variety in that important function of life, the dinner table.