III. We need very little of the savory material to flavor a bountiful meal.
Were we a nation of epicures, making daily practical application of these three cardinal principles of culinary knowledge, we could easily, though getting always the best material, live much more cheaply than we do now.
Count Rumford, in a report on dietary experiments made by him in behalf of the Bavarian Government with its army, dwelt particularly on the fact, demonstrated by these trials, that much more depends on the art and skill of the cook than on the sums laid out in the market.
The brain is mightier than the purse. With brains in the kitchen you can live better on two or three thousand a year than on ten times that sum without brains.
To solve the high-cost-of-food problem we should therefore above all things labor to get educated cooks into our kitchens.
Educated cooks can save us money. The more they save us, the more we can afford to pay them; and the more we pay, the easier will it become to persuade young women and men to become trained cooks.
Let us, therefore, with all our might and main endeavor to make the culinary art and science an honored profession, to which any one may feel proud to belong.
Fortunately, apart from all the things just considered which make for the popularity of cooking as a profession, there are others of the utmost importance which must now be dwelt on.
In most hesitating minds one of the chief objections to cooking as at present practised is the drudgery it involves. This drudgery is now being eliminated and will in a decade or two be reduced to a minimum.