I[UNGASTRONOMIC AMERICA,]
Mark Twain's Patriotic Palate—Food Missionaries in the Far West—Are Women to Blame?—The Danger in our Food—Why the Candy was not Eaten—Dr. Wiley's Poison Squad—Condiments versus Chemical Preservatives—Scotched, not Killed.
II[VITAL IMPORTANCE OF FLAVOR]
Sensual indulgence as a duty—Gladstone and Fletcher—The harm done by soft Foods—Epicurean delights from plain Food—How flavor helps the Stomach—An Amazing Blunder—A new Psychology of Eating.
III[OUR DENATURED FOODS]
Foul Fowl—The French way versus the American—Why do we Eat Poultry?—Is cold storage a Blessing?—Spoiling the American Oyster—"Smoked" ham, bacon and fish—Flavor in Butter—Sweet Butter versus Salt.
IV[THE SCIENCE OF SAVORY COOKING]
Desirable raw foods—Flavor as the guiding principle—The Philosophy of soup-making and eating—Wherein lies the value of vegetables?—Broiling, roasting, baking, frying—Combining the flavors of meats and vegetables—Savory food for everybody—Meat-eating of the future—The folly of vegetarianism—When to use condiments and sauces—Cook books.
V[A NOBLE ART]
The social caste of cooks—Royalty in the kitchen—Rossini, Carême and Paderewski—Looking down on others—Does cooking Pay?
VI[THE FUTURE OF COOKING]
School girls like it—Boys and soldiers as cooks—Traveling cooking schools—English school dinners—Progress in America—Teaching the art of eating—Real epicurism is economical—Fireless cookers—Private versus community kitchens—Scientific electric cooking—Importance of variety in foods.
VII[FRENCH SUPREMACY]
Kitchen alchemy—Seven hundred soups—Savory sauces—Profitable poules de Brese—Digestive value of sour salads—Escarole, tomatoes, artichokes, alligator pears—Vegetables as a separate course—Paris restaurants—Russian and American influences—Provincial local flavors—The world's greatest market places—Model market gardens—Mushrooms and truffles—Training trees for fancy fruits—Bread crust versus crumb—How the best butter is made—Cheese as an appetizer.
VIII[EPICUREAN ITALY]
The cradle of modern cookery—Olive oil and Sardines—Fried fish and fritto misto—Macaroni, the real staff of life—Cooked cheese in place of meat—Birds, tomato paste and garlic.
IX[GERMAN AND AUSTRIAN DELICACIES]
A cosmopolitan cuisine—Delicatessen stores—Sausages and smoked ham—Live fish brought to the kitchen—Game and Geese—In a Berlin market—Vienna bread and Hungarian flour—German menus on sea and land—German, Swiss and Dutch cheeses.
X[BRITISH SPECIALTIES]
Thackeray's little sermon—Dr. Johnson and Samuel Pepys—The Roast beef of old England—Southdown mutton—Wiltshire bacon—Fair play for pigs—Grouse and grilled sole—Covent Garden market scenes—Marmalades, jams and breakfasts—Restaurants, cakes, and plum pudding.
XI[GASTRONOMIC AMERICA]
Sweet corn and corn bread—Griddle cakes and maple syrup—Apple pie and cranberries—Turkeys, guinea fowl and game—Lobsters, scallops, crabs, and fishes—Vegetables steadily gaining ground—The fruit-eaters' paradise Governmental gastronomy—Burbank's new fruits and vegetables.
XII[COMMERCIAL VALUE OF FLAVOR]
Palatability decides permanence—Eating with the eyes—School girls as pure food experts—Pennywise dealers and pineapples—Successful peach-growers—Fortunes from bananas and oranges—Melons, honey and flavoring extracts—Opportunities for women—Feeding flavor into food—Farmers, middlemen, and parcel post.
XIII[GASTRONOMIC VALUE OF ODORS]
Sweet, sour, salt and bitter—A comedy of errors—How flavor differs from fragrance—Important functions of the nose—Educating the sense of smell—Coffee, tea and temperance.
[INDEX]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[PREFACE: A BOOK FOR EVERYBODY]

It is not often that an author is so fortunate as to have a subject which is of vital importance to everybody, without exception. Everybody eats, and everybody wants to enjoy his meals; yet few know how to get the most benefit and pleasure out of them. The French are far ahead of us in this respect; they are a nation of gastronomers, understanding fully the importance to health and happiness of raising only the best foodstuffs, cooking them in savory ways and eating them with intelligence and pleasure. One of the main objects of the present volume is to show that we have the material for the making of an even more gastronomic nation than the French are, and that Americans, especially if caught young, can be taught to eat in a leisurely way and to refuse to accept anything that lacks appetizing flavor.

Flavor! In that word lies the key to the whole food problem. Undoubtedly the nourishing property of food is also of importance; without it we could not live. Yet, as Luther Burbank has keenly remarked, if we eliminate palatability (that is, flavor) from food, it is no more than a medicine, "to be taken because it produces certain necessary results." Moreover, a little of this medicine goes a great way. Horace Fletcher lived for years on eleven cents a day; and two university professors—Dr. J. L. Henderson of Harvard and Dr. Graham Lusk of Cornell—have demonstrated, independently, that a dime a day, intelligently expended, is enough to keep body and soul together. What more we spend on food—and we probably average five times that amount—goes chiefly for flavor. It is the flavor that makes us willing to pay more for good butter than for good oleomargarine, for fresh chicken than for cold storage fowl, for Virginia ham than for ordinary ham, and so on throughout the list of foods; for there is no difference in nutritive value in any of these cases.

This being so, it seems passing strange that while so many good books have been written on the nutritive aspects of foods, mine is the first volume in any language treating specially of this same flavor, on which we spend so much of our income, and which is so important to our health. The explanation lies in the fact that flavor is generally looked upon as something merely agreeable—like the fragrance of strawberries, or the vanilla extract we put into ice cream—but of no vital importance. It was this misunderstanding that prevented me from keeping the title "Flavor in Food" which I had intended to use. At a conference with the publishers we decided that (since, after all, the book also discusses many other aspects of the food question), it would be wiser to use the title "Food and Flavor." Nevertheless, Flavor (with a big "F" to emphasize its importance) is the principal theme, and the most important chapters are the second and the last in which I discuss its superlative value, not only as the source of countless wholesome pleasures of the table, but as a guide to health. The gist of the book lies in the sections "An Amazing Blunder" and "A New Psychology of Eating," in which I have shown that we need flavor as much as we need food if we wish to be well; for food without flavor is not appetizing; and when food is not appetizing it lies in the stomach like lead and causes dyspepsia, the national American plague. The final chapter considers the important difference between appetizing flavor and mere fragrance, the neglect of which has created no end of confusion and done so much harm.

In the pages concerned with "Ungastronomic America" and "Our Denatured Foods," I have dwelt on some of the evils which have resulted from the giving up of the old-fashioned condiments (especially woodsmoke) in favor of the much cheaper chemical preservatives which denature our food, that is, destroy its appetizing flavor, and give rise to countless adulterations and deceptions. It was not with any "muck-raking" intentions that these pages were written, but merely to increase the present wholesome discontent and pave the way for better things by making it clear to all what those better things are, and indicating ways of thwarting the unscrupulous adulterators and dealers. There is need of a good deal of hard fighting, for there are in many towns health officers who thrive on "graft" as well as wealthy manufacturers of undesirable preservatives who prevent the passage or enforcement of pure food laws; yet I believe the time is not very far distant when these two chapters will have little more than a historic interest. Pending that time, caveat emptor—let the buyer beware.