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The Cook's Decameron:  A Study In Taste

Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes

By

Mrs. W. G. Waters

"Show me a pleasure like dinner, which comes every day and lasts an
hour." -- Talleyrand circa 1901



To

A. V.

In memory of Certain Ausonian Feasts



Preface

Montaigne in one of his essays* mentions the high excellence
Italian cookery had attained in his day.  "I have entered into this
Discourse upon the Occasion of an Italian I lately receiv'd into my
Service, and who was Clerk of the Kitchen to the late Cardinal
Caraffa till his Death.  I put this Fellow upon an Account of his
office:  Where he fell to Discourse of this Palate-Science, with
such a settled Countenance and Magisterial Gravity, as if he had
been handling some profound Point of Divinity.  He made a Learned
Distinction of the several sorts of Appetites, of that of a Man
before he begins to eat, and of those after the second and third
Service:  The Means simply to satisfy the first, and then to raise
and acute the other two:  The ordering of the Sauces, first in
general, and then proceeded to the Qualities of the Ingredients,
and their Effects:  The Differences of Sallets, according to their
seasons, which ought to be serv'd up hot, and which cold:  The
Manner of their Garnishment and Decoration, to render them yet more
acceptable to the Eye after which he entered upon the Order of the
whole Service, full of weighty and important Considerations."

It is consistent with Montaigne's large-minded habit thus to
applaud the gifts of this master of his art who happened not to be
a Frenchman.  It is a canon of belief with the modern Englishman
that the French alone can achieve excellence in the art of cookery,
and when once a notion of this sort shall have found a lodgment in
an Englishman's brain, the task of removing it will be a hard one.
Not for a moment is it suggested that Englishmen or any one else
should cease to recognise the sovereign merits of French cookery;
all that is entreated is toleration, and perchance approval, of
cookery of other schools.  But the favourable consideration of any
plea of this sort is hindered by the fact that the vast majority of
Englishmen when they go abroad find no other school of cookery by
the testing of which they may form a comparison.  This universal
prevalence of French cookery may be held to be a proof of its
supreme excellence--that it is first, and the rest nowhere;
but the victory is not so complete as it seems, and the facts would
bring grief and humiliation rather than patriotic pride to the
heart of a Frenchman like Brillat-Savarin.  For the cookery we meet
in the hotels of the great European cities, though it may be based
on French traditions, is not the genuine thing, but a bastard,
cosmopolitan growth, the same everywhere, and generally vapid and
uninteresting.  French cookery of the grand school suffers by being
associated with such commonplace achievements.  It is noted in the
following pages how rarely English people on their travels
penetrate where true Italian cookery may be tasted, wherefore it
has seemed worth while to place within the reach of English
housewives some Italian recipes which are especially fitted for the
presentation of English fare to English palates under a different
and not unappetising guise.  Most of them will be found simple and
inexpensive, and special care has been taken to include those
recipes which enable the less esteemed portions of meat and the
cheaper vegetables and fish to be treated more elaborately than
they have hitherto been treated by English cooks.

The author wishes to tender her acknowledgments to her husband for
certain suggestions and emendations made in the revision of the
introduction, and for his courage in dining, "greatly daring," off
many of the dishes.  He still lives and thrives.  Also to Mrs.
Mitchell, her cook, for the interest and enthusiasm she has shown
in the work, for her valuable advice, and for the care taken in
testing the recipes.