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Introduction

Introduction the surface when quite raw inside; and therefore-though the new method is neglected and is even forgotten very much-it was put upon the fire between two other slices of beef, which, if burnt upon the grill, could be thrown away. It may still be asked, what has this to do with Châteaubriand, that his name should be attached to a steak so prepared? Here we come into a region of culpable levity. Châteaubriand published his most famous work under the name of Le Génie du Christianisme. The profane wits of the kitchen thought that a good steak sent to the fire between two malefactor steaks was a fair parody of the Génie du Christianisme. If I remember rightly it was at Champeaux' in the Place de la Bourse that this eccentric idea took form and burst upon Paris. As to the amount of sense or of folly displayed in the selection of a name, it is needless to say a word; as to the good sense of the mode of cooking the steak, judgment is pronounced in the fact that, though the Châteaubriand still remains as thick as ever, it is rare now to see it grilled between two other steaks-that being too extravagant. Indeed, in Gouffé's great work on cookery, which must always be mentioned with respect for the good sense and good taste which pervade it, there is not a hint given that the Châteaubriand is to be cooked, or was ever cooked, between the two robber steaks. Most cookery books say not one word of the Châteaubriand, which ranks now as the prime steak of the French table, and which appears in Parisian dinner bills to bewilder the benighted Englishman with a magnificent but unintelligible name. It is scarcely worth while to speak of minor follies. When we find in the most popular cookery books of France that roast mutton and lamb are designated Rosbif de mouton, and Rosbif d'agneau, we recognise that no great harm is done, and only laugh at the awkwardness of a people who cannot detect their own word bœuf when they see it in a different spelling. Or again, when in Introduction English cookery books we find that Palestine soup is not what we should expect-a soup common in the Holy Land, but one made of tubers derived from America, and called, by corruption of Girasole, Jerusalem artichokes, we may rejoice over a jest, and need not complain of practical injury. The disease of the cookery books goes very much deeper than this. Dr. Johnson hit the truth a century ago. "I could write," he says, "a better book of cookery than has yet been written. It should be a book upon philosophical principles. Pharmacy is now made much more simple. Cookery may be made so too. A prescription which is now compounded of five ingredients formerly had fifty in it. So in cookery. If the nature of the ingredients be well known, much fewer will do.". There is no need to talk here of philosophy: all that is wanted is common sense. And one thing is pretty evident-that whereas in the laboratory of the chemist elements are minimised and processes are simplified to the last degree, in the laboratory of the kitchen we see the very reverse, and it is considered the height of science and of art to multiply ingredients and to make processes as intricate and ceremonious as possible. An artistic chef seems to be ashamed of a simple receipt; although it should be the pride of science to reduce labour and to aim at unity. The preparation of a French sauce will soon be as full of forms and ceremonies as the dances and incantations round the witches' cauldron, with its Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog, Adder's fork and blindworm's sting, Lizard's leg and owlet's wing.

The multiplication of ingredients and processes with a long tedious ritual, more than half of which is idle, leads directly to the multiplication of receipts-one scarcely differing from another. There is an old saying that too many cooks spoil the broth; and much the same is true of Introduction cookery books. The multiplication of receipts destroys their usefulness and drives the reader to despair. It is the ambition of an author to make his book as complete as possible and to neglect nothing of value. But he soon finds that every one who starts a new receipt is fanatical over it: there is nothing like it, nothing to be compared with it a new light has dawned upon the world since it was discovered-and whoever has not got his pet secret is in outer darkness. The pet secret may turn upon a detail which is of no importance-but all the same, his fancy has vivified it; and whoever uses black pepper where he would use cayenne, or should venture on claret where he declares for port, is a miserable ass bereft of understanding. The author having to choose a receipt is overwhelmed by the resounding asseverations of enthusiastic gastronomers; and unable to pick and choose among them, or to assert his independence of judgment, determines to be on the right side, and puts down higgledy-piggledy all the applauded receipts that come in his way. There has scarcely ever been a cookery book written of which the most cursory reader could not say that from this cause alone-the multiplicity of uncertain receipts-it contains an immense amount of surplusage. It is a garden full of weeds and good plants run to seed. The prescriptions confuse and sometimes confute one another, and not onehalf of them are convincing. The last new cookery book published in this country proclaims as its recommendation that it contains 10,000 receipts; and nearly all the popular handbooks in the same strain advertise the immense number of their nostrums. Who wants 10,000 prescriptions in a country where most of us get on all our lives with a few dozen good dishes, and where even the fancies of an epicure are limited to a few scores? It has been calculated that there are something like 500 soups; and Carême used to boast that he had turned out about 300. By far the greater number of these he probably prepared Introduction but once in his life; and it is quite certain that the great majority of them were trifling repetitions one of another. How soups can be multiplied we have already seen in the various forms of garden soups, where clear gravy is used.

After all, it is probable that receipts would not be so multiplied in the books but for a great practical fallacy. It is always assumed that a cookery book will make a cook. Nothing can be more false. If a man or a woman has not the soul of a cook, the most minute receipts will only end in failure. Sganarelle is made to say by Molière -" Rôti, bouilli-même chose;" and it is a literal verity that there are persons pretending to be cooks who are as ignorant as Sganarelle, and who cannot tell what is the essential peculiarity of roasting, or why some meats are to be roasted and others only stewed. If on the other hand the soul of the cook is there, it is almost always enough to give general rules and leading principles, and to leave the cook to make variations according to his taste or his means. Lord Byron, in Italy, gave the most minute directions for his plum-pudding; it came out like a broth, and was served in a tureen. There are cooks in the best kitchens who have been shown ever so often how to clarify broth: yet they fail, and have to try over and over again before they can succeed. The great thing, it cannot be too often repeated, is to teach a principle, and then its application to special cases follows as a matter of course. He who has learnt to broil a steak properly does not require a special receipt for broiling a mutton chop; and he who can make half a dozen sauces has really learnt how to make half a hundred without extra receipts.