Sugar
Every child understands the use of sugar.in sweet dishes; but the part which it plays in dishes which are not recognised as sweet is not too clearly taught. There was a time, centuries ago, when soups and sauces were loaded with syrup, and when there was a kind of proverb that sugar in a dish was never a fault. The vast majority of cooks nowadays never clearly realize that in one form or another there must be sugar in all their soups and sauces. Not only will a pinch of sugar or a little caramel at the last make all the difference between a good and a bad soup or sauce-but those vegetables, carrots, turnips, parsnips, onions, celery, and the rest, which go for so much towards the goodness of soups and sauces-what are they but so many reservoirs of finely-flavoured sugar? Always the cook has to calculate whether the vegetables which he puts into his messes are sufficiently saccharine; and if they are not sufficiently saccharine, he has to make up for it by so many grains of palpable sugar. Take this, therefore, for a maxim-that the vegetable basket is the sugar-basin of the saucemaker.