LIST OF PLATES
| Les Sens | [Frontispiece] | |
| Les Aliments | To face page | [30] |
| Les Audiences d’un Gourmand | ” | [89] |
| Les Rêves d’un Gourmand | ” | [135] |
| Des Magens Vertheidigung der edlen Austern | ” | [178] |
| Les Boissons | ” | [194] |
My thanks are due to the Editors of the St. James’s Gazette, the Evening Standard, the Academy, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, the Globe, the Tribune, and Vanity Fair for permission to reproduce certain portions of these papers.
CHAPTER I
COOKS AND COOKERY
“In short the world is but a Ragou, or a large dish of Varieties, prepared by inevitable Fate to treat and regale Death with.”
‘Miscellanies: or a Variety of Notion and Thought.’ By H. W. (Gent.) [Henry Waring] 1708.
The only thing that can be said against eating is that it takes away one’s appetite. True, there is a French proverb to the contrary, but that really only applies to the hors d’œuvre and the soup. We all eat three meals a day, some four, and a few even five, if one may reckon afternoon tea as a meal. Yet the art of eating—that is to say, how to eat, what to eat, and when to eat it—is studiously neglected by those who deem they have souls superior to the daily stoking of the human engine.
Whosoever simply wants to eat certainly does not require to know how to cook. But whosoever desires to criticize a dinner and the dishes that compose it—and enjoyment without judgment is unsatisfactory—need not be a cook, but must understand what cooking implies; he must have grasped the spirit of the art of cookery.