In Braithwaite’s “Rules and Orders for the Government of the House of an Earl,” published in the seventeenth century, the author writes: “In ancient times noblemen contented themselves to be served with such as had been bred in their own houses, but of late times none could please some but Italians and Frenchmen.”
It is much the same in our own day. The profession of cookery among Britons has died out, and, as a result, we are fed, outside our own homes, by scores of intelligent, well-educated, practised foreign cooks, who do their work, for the most part, excellently, but who could be replaced in time by the genuine home-trained article.
Although France, and particularly the Midi, has produced the greatest cooks, there is no reason why England should lag behind. It is certain that many purely insular dishes, such as Irish stew, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, tripe and onions, and such-like, can never be properly cooked by foreigners. They have not the tradition, and are too anxious to impart their own personal touch to the dish.
It is quite true that a really great chef is as rare as a really great poet or a really great general. But there is a lesser grade of thoroughly competent chef who may most certainly be evolved from the well-educated middle-class boy of to-day. The efforts of the Food and Cookery Association of London towards this end should be actively supported by all those who are interested in the nationalization of the kitchen and the reform of our digestion.
CHAPTER X
LENTEN FARE
Festina lente
The most strenuous Lenten faster on record was, I venture to think, St. Macarius, who was annually in the habit of passing forty days and forty nights in a standing position with no more substantial support than a few raw cabbage-leaves on each recurring Sunday.