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American Vs. English Cookery: French

Writing in 1852, Count d'Orsay complained that even then the culinary art had greatly deteriorated in Paris, and had been transferred to England. At the time referred to, the Frères Provençeaux, Philippe, and the Café de Paris were the most famous restaurants at the French capital, Véry, Véfour, and the Café Anglais having declined in favour. His remarks concerning England applied of course to the nobility, who could outbid the titled classes of France, as today America in its turn is enabled to command the greatest culinary skill. A similar complaint was made by Nestor Roqueplan in 1866 in "Le Double Almanach Gourmand": "The French cuisine has lost much of its originality and special characteristics. We no longer find places devoted to the Flemish kitchen, others to the Normandy, Lyonnaise, Toulousian, Bordelaise, and Provençale kitchens. But France nevertheless is still the country where eating is found at its best."

That French cookery, or, to speak more correctly, Parisian cookery, has deteriorated of recent years there would seem to be abundant evidence. Or is it that such retrogression is owing to the advances in other countries, and that the Parisian cuisine suffers more from such comparison than from any real falling off in merit? Certain it is that the alien who is capable of judging will charge it with having become too rich and highly spiced, if not too careless. There are those who go so far as to say that its future will lie chiefly in the speech of the menu, that none of the strange spellings of "rosbif" will change the nature of the viand, the same remark applying to the cut which is called a "biftek" everywhere save in the land of its origin and in the United States. The fact is that the French, in many arts, unjustly claim a taste so superlative as to be unattainable by other nations, and that French cookery has been tacitly accepted as unparalleled on the same principle that a titled personage is supposed to possess superior accomplishments. Yet French must necessarily remain for all time the classic language of the bill of fare.

Still, the preparation of food continues to be better understood by the average practitioner in France than in any other country. For, as in angling it is "not so much the fly as the hand directing it that secures the trout," so in cookery it is less the recipe than the fine perceptivity of the artist that achieves the perfect dish. So far as America is concerned, it is less the want of capable chefs than the scarcity of good female cooks that is to be deplored. A competent cuisinière is becoming more and more uncommon, and by the average servant cooking is too often considered a mere function to be performed with as little trouble and as much despatch as possible. Besides the lack of proper training, crass ignorance is too frequently a factor which the housewife has to contend with in those who profess to have a perfect understanding of the art of the kitchen. A new cook had come, and there were to be smelts with a tartare sauce to follow the soup. "Can you make a good tartare sauce?" asked the mistress; "if not, I can show you." "Oh, yes; I 've often made one."

In due time the fish, shorn of heads and tails and flanked by a very yellow sauce with a strange taste, made their appearance, and were promptly returned to the kitchen. "Surely, you don't call this a tartare sauce, which is always cold. Besides, where are the chopped pickle, the onion, the capers, the parsley? And what gives it such a queer taste?" "But this is a hot tartar sauce, mum; I asked for the 'tartar,' and the maid gave it to me; I supposed you wanted a cream-of-tartar sauce."

The corrective for such a state of things is difficult to prescribe, unless it be a better understanding on the part of the housewife and the establishment of cooking-classes in all female schools. Another rem- IS Convivas familiares convoca.

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