Worldwide Cookbooks

The Consumer Viewpoint

SIMPLE ITALIAN COOKERY

American Woman's Home

Art of Living in Australia

Cooking Eggs

Elegant Art of Dining

Guide to Marketing and Cooking

Italian Recipes

Meal Preparation

School and Home Cooking

Physiology of Taste

Tried and True Recipes

Milk Butter Cheese Eggs Vegetables

Hans Christian Andersen . American Fairy Tales . Grimm's Fairy Tales

Aesop's Fables - Tales with Morals . Mother Goose . Mother Goose in Prose

The Eighth Day

"We are getting unpleasantly near the end of our time," said the
Colonel, "but I am sure not one of us has learnt one tithe of what
the Marchesa has to teach."

"My dear Colonel Trestrail," said the Marchesa, "an education in
cookery does not mean the teaching of a certain number of recipes.
Education, I maintain, is something far higher than the mere
imparting of facts; my notion of it is the teaching of people to
teach themselves, and this is what I have tried to do in the
kitchen.  With some of you I am sure I have succeeded, and a book
containing the recipe of every dish we have tried will be given to
every pupil when we break up."

"I think the most valuable lesson I have learnt is that cookery is
a matter for serious study," said Mrs. Sinclair.  "The popular
English view seems to be that it is one of those things which gets
itself done.  The food is subjected to the action of heat, a little
butter, or pepper, or onion, being added by way of flavouring, and
the process is complete.  To put it bluntly, it requires at least
as much mental application to roast a fowl as to cut a bodice; but
it does not strike the average Englishwoman in this way, for she
will spend hours in thinking and talking about dressmaking (which
is generally as ill done as her cooking), while she will be
reluctant to give ten minutes to the consideration as to how a
luncheon or supper dish shall be prepared.  The English middle
classes are most culpably negligent about the food they eat, and as
a consequence they get exactly the sort of cooks they deserve to
get.  I do not blame the cooks; if they can get paid for cooking
ill, why should they trouble to learn to cook well?"

"I agree entirely," said Mrs. Wilding.  "That saying, 'What I like
is good plain roast and boiled, and none of your foreign
kickshaws,' is, as every one knows, the stock utterance of John
Bull on the stage or in the novel; and, though John Bull is not in
the least like his fictitious presentment, this form of words is
largely responsible for the waste and want of variety in the
English kitchen.  The plain roast and boiled means a joint every
day, and this arrangement the good plain cook finds an admirable
one for several reasons:  it means little trouble, and it means
also lots of scraps and bones and waste pieces.  The good plain
cook brings all the forces of obstruction to bear whenever the
mistress suggests made dishes; and, should this suggestion ever be
carried out, she takes care that the achievement shall be of a
character not likely to invite repetition.  Not long ago a friend
of mine was questioning a cook as to soups, whereupon the cook
answered that she had never been required to make such things where
she had lived; all soups were bought in tins or bottles, and had
simply to be warmed up.  Cakes, too, were outside her repertoire,
having always been 'had in' from the confectioner's, while
'entrys' were in her opinion, and in the opinion of her various
mistresses, 'un'ealthy' and not worth making."

"My experience is that, if a mistress takes an interest in cooking,
she will generally have a fairly efficient cook," said Mrs. Fothergill.
"I agree with Mrs. Sinclair that our English cooks are spoilt by
neglect; and I think it is hard upon them, as a class, that so many
inefficient women should be able to pose as cooks while they are
unable to boil a potato properly."

"And the so-called schools of cookery are quite useless in what
they teach," said Miss Macdonnell.  "I once sent a cook of mine to
one to learn how to make a clear soup, and when she came back, she
sent up, as an evidence of her progress, a potato pie coloured pink
and green, a most poisonous-looking dish--and her clear soups were
as bad as ever."

Said the Colonel, "I will beg leave to enter a protest against the
imperfections of that repast which is supposed to be the peculiar
delight of the ladies, I allude to afternoon tea.  I want to know
why it is that unless I happen to call just when the tea is brought
up--I grant, I know of a few houses which are honourable
exceptions--I am fated to drink that most abominable of all
decoctions, stewed lukewarm tea.  'Will you have some tea? I'm
afraid it isn't quite fresh,' the hostess will remark without a
blush.  What would she think if her husband at dinner were to say,
'Colonel, take a glass of that champagne.  It was opened the day
before yesterday, and I daresay the fizz has gone off a little'?
Tea is cheap enough, and yet the hostess seldom or never thinks of
ordering up a fresh pot.  I believe it is because she is afraid of
the butler."

"I sympathise with you fully, Colonel," said Lady Considine, "and
my withers are unwrung.  You do not often honour me with your
presence on Tuesdays, but I am sure I may claim to be one of your
honourable exceptions."

"Indeed you may," said the Colonel.  "Perhaps men ought not to
intrude on these occasions; but I have a preference for taking tea
in a pretty drawing-room, with a lot of agreeable women, rather
than in a club surrounded by old chaps growling over the latest job
at the War Office, and a younger brigade chattering about the
latest tape prices, and the weights for the spring handicaps."

"All these little imperfections go to prove that we are not a
nation of cooks," said Van der Roet.  "We can't be everything.
Heine once said that the Romans would never have found time to
conquer the world if they had been obliged to learn the Latin
grammar; and it is the same with us.  We can't expect to found an
empire all over the planet, and cook as well as the French, who--
perhaps wisely--never willingly emerge from the four corners of
their own land."

"There is energy enough left in us when we set about some purely
utilitarian task," said Mrs. Wilding, "but we never throw ourselves
into the arts with the enthusiasm of the Latin races.  I was
reading the other day of a French costumier who rushed to inform a
lady, who had ordered a turban, of his success, exclaiming,
'Madame, apres trots nun's d'insomnie les plumes vent placees.' And
every one knows the story of Vatel's suicide because the fish
failed to arrive.  No Englishman would be capable of flights like
these."

"Really, this indictment of English cookery makes me a little
nervous," said Lady Considine "I have promised to join in a driving
tour through the southern counties.  I shudder to think of the
dinners I shall have to eat at the commercial hotels and posting-
houses on our route."

"English country inns are not what they ought to be, but now and
then you come across one which is very good indeed, as good, if not
better, than anything you could find in any other country; but I
fear I must admit that, charges considered, the balance is
against us," said Sir John.

"When you start you ought to secure Sir John's services as courier,
Lady Considine," said the Marchesa.  "I once had the pleasure of
driving for a week through the Apennines in a party under his
guidance, and I can assure you we found him quite honest and
obliging."

"Ah, Marchesa, I was thinking of that happy time this very
morning," said Sir John.  "Of Arezzo, where we were kept for three
days by rain, which I believe is falling there still.  Of Cortona,
with that wonderful little restaurant on the edge of the cliff,
whence you see Thrasumene lying like a silver mirror in the plain
below.  Of Perugia, the august, of Gubbio, Citta di Castello, Borgo
San Sepolcro, Urbino, and divers others.  If you go for a drive in
Italy, you still may meet with humours of the road such as
travellers of old were wont to enjoy.  I well remember on the road
between Perugia and Gubbio we began to realise we were indeed
traversing mountain paths.  On a sudden the driver got down, waved
his arms, and howled to some peasants working in a field below.
These, on their part, responded with more arm-waving and howling,
directed apparently towards a village farther up the hill,
whereupon we were assailed with visions of brigands, and amputated
ears, and ransom.  But at a turn of the road we came upon two
magnificent white oxen, which, being harnessed on in front, drew
us, and our carriages and horses as well, up five miles of steep
incline.  These beautiful fellows, it seemed, were what the driver
was signalling for, and not for brigands.  Again, every inn we
stayed at supplied us with some representative touch of local life
and habit.  Here the whole personnel of the inn, reinforced by a
goodly contingent of the townsfolk, would accompany us even into
our bedrooms, and display the keenest interest in the unpacking of
our luggage.  There the cook would come and take personal
instructions as to the coming meal, throwing out suggestions the
while as to the merits of this or that particular dish, and in one
place the ancient chambermaid insisted that one of the ladies, who
had got a slight cold, should have the prete put into her bed for a
short time to warm it.  You need not look shocked, Colonel.  The
prete in question was merely a wooden frame, in the midst of which
hangs a scaldino filled with burning ashes--a most comforting
ecclesiastic, I can assure you.  All the inns we visited had
certain characteristics in common.  The entrance is always dirty,
and the staircase too, the dining rooms fairly comfortable, the
bedrooms always clean and good, and the food much better than you
would expect to find in such out-of-the-way places; indeed I cannot
think of any inn where it was not good and wholesome, while often
it was delicious.  In short, Lady Considine, I strongly advise you
to take a drive in Italy next spring, and if I am free I shall be
delighted to act as courier."

"Sir John has forgotten one or two touches I must fill in," said
the Marchesa.  "It was often difficult to arrange a stopping-place
for lunch, so we always stocked our basket before starting.  After
the first day's experience we decided that it was vastly more
pleasant to take our meal while going uphill at a foot-pace, than
in the swing and jolt of a descent, so the route and the pace of
the horses had to be regulated in order to give us a good hour's
ascent about noon.  Fortunately hills are plentiful in this part of
Italy, and in the keen air we generally made an end of the vast
store of provisions we laid in, and the generous fiascho was always
empty a little too soon.  Our drive came to an end at Fano, whither
we had gone on account of a strange romantic desire of Sir John to
look upon an angel which Browning had named in one of his poems.
Ah! how vividly I can recall our pursuit of that picture.  It was a
wet, melancholy day.  The people of Fano were careless of the fame
of their angel, for no one knew the church which it graced.  At
last we came upon it by the merest chance, and Sir John led the
procession up to the shrine, where we all stood for a time in
positions of mock admiration.  Sir John tried hard to keep up the
imposition, but something, either his innate honesty or the
chilling environment of disapproval of Guercino's handiwork, was
too much for him.  He did his best to admire, but the task was
beyond his powers, and he raised no protest when some scoffer
affirmed that, though Browning might be a great poet, he was a
mighty poor judge of painting, when he gave in his beautiful poem
immortality to this tawdry theatrical canvas.  'I think,' said Sir
John, 'we had better go back to the hotel and order lunch.  It
would have been wiser to have ordered it before we left.' We were
all so much touched by his penitence that no one had the heart to
remind him how a proposition as to lunch had been made by our
leading Philistine as soon as we arrived, a proposition waved aside
by Sir John as inadmissible until the 'Guardian Angel' should have
been seen and admired."

"I plead guilty," said Sir John.  "I think this experience gave a
death-blow to my career as an appreciator.  Anyhow, I quite forget
what the angel was like, and for reminiscences of Fano have to fall
back upon the excellent colazione we ate in the externally
unattractive, but internally admirable, Albergo del Moro."



  Menu -- Lunch.

  Astachi all'Italiana.  Lobster all'Italiana
  Filetto di bue alla Napolitana.  Fillet of beef with Neapolitan sauce.
  Risotto alla spagnuola.  Savoury rice.

  Menu -- Dinner.

  Zuppa alla Romana.  Soup with quenelles.
  Salmone alla Genovese.  Salmon alla Genovese.
  Costolette in agro-dolce.  Mutton cutlets with Roman sauce.
  Flano di spinacci.  Spinach in a mould.
  Cappone con rive.  Capon with rice.
  Croccante di mandorle.  Almond sweet.
  Ostriche alla Napolitana.  Oyster savoury.