One of the principal qualifications for authorship in
cookery consists in the knoivledge of the culinary loants and
jpractices of all manners and conditions of men, so that the
rules of food-preparation to be derived from principles and
exemplified by recipes may be capable of application to high
and low conditions. We have endeavoured to conform to
that demand as regards general rules, but if we had to give
elaborate prescriptions, we would have to oppose a practice
according to which recipes are composed for the purpose
not of being executed in the kitchen, but for giving to then-
authors ‘ a false air of magnificence ’ in the eyes of all those
numerous members of society who have not sufficient ex-
perience to find out the deception. The cookery-book of a
late German authoress, collected as much of it was from
the private records of old and wealthy families, neverthe-
less contained a number of such artefacts which remind
somewhat of the few recipes of the French Grimod de la
17
OBJECTS AND RESULTS OF COOKERY
Reyuiere, but possess no trace of the refinement which
their patron of the ‘ Ahnanach cles Gourmands ’ had at
least in view. Most q%Londam housekeepers who have in
later life become domestic encyclopedists endeavour to
achieve the excelsior by mere additions of materials. They
cannot write orthographically or grammatically,* and leave
to the printers’ reader the task of correcting their spelling,
at least in part ; but no benevolent adviser weeds out the
incongruous materials from recipes which were never really
compounded anywhere, but invented at the writing-tahle
for the astonishment of the poor cooks and housewives who
could not bring together so many costly materials on so
liberal a scale as that which sprang from the authoresses’
unbridled and cheap, imagination. The dogmatic manner
in which some of the modern authoresses spoke of decoction
of cow-beef as Kraft Briihen, or power-giving broths, did not
deceive either physiologists or kitcheners, and even those
who overlooked the ungrammatical diction for the supposed
practical wisdom which might perchance have been collected
from aristocratic or even royal kitchens, had to admit that
the possible good to be obtained from the recommendations
of these Kraft Briihen was overpowered by that hypocrisy,
which defaces not a small number of French and German
culinary publications. Happily we know not a single example
of this intellectual aberration in British culinary literature,
and we therefore need not follow the subject any further.
The Delusion of Economical Cookery with ‘ Scraps costing
Nothing.’
We are differently affected by culinary works which pro-
fess to teach what they term economical jiractices, particularly
* Mary Smith, in her ‘ Complete Housekeeper,’ 1772, 8vo., pp. lOo and
247, gave S.auce-Robert as ‘ Roe- Boat-Sauce,’ an Omelette as ‘A Hamlet,
and Queenly Soup as ‘Soupe k la Rain ’ (ex Kitchiner, p. 311, foot-note).
Simpson, pp. 98 and 180, called .lulienne Soup ‘Soup Julian,’ etc. The
style of some modern German culinary works is very vulgar, and dis-
figured by barbarisms of French technical words provided with German
endings.
2
THE SPIRIT OF COOKERY
iS
Page 21
Presented as published in 1895. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
AI-modernized reading of the original text
One of the principal qualifications for authorship in cookery consists in the knowledge of the culinary loants and practices of all manners and conditions of men, so that the rules of food-preparation to be derived from principles and exemplified by recipes may be capable of application to high and low conditions. We have endeavoured to conform to that demand as regards general rules, but if we had to give elaborate prescriptions, we would have to oppose a practice according to which recipes are composed for the purpose not of being executed in the kitchen, but for giving to the authors ‘ a false air of magnificence ’ in the eyes of all those numerous members of society who have not sufficient experience to find out the deception. The cookery-book of a late German authoress, collected as much of it was from the private records of old and wealthy families, nevertheless contained a number of such artefacts which remind somewhat of the few recipes of the French Grimod de la
Reyuiere, but possess no trace of the refinement which their patron of the ‘ Ahnanach cles Gourmands ’ had at least in view. Most olden housekeepers who have in later life become domestic encyclopedists endeavour to achieve the excelsior by mere additions of materials. They cannot write orthographically or grammatically,* and leave to the printers’ reader the task of correcting their spelling, at least in part ; but no benevolent adviser weeds out the incongruous materials from recipes which were never really compounded anywhere, but invented at the writing-table for the astonishment of the poor cooks and housewives who could not bring together so many costly materials on so liberal a scale as that which sprang from the authoresses’ unbridled and cheap, imagination. The dogmatic manner in which some of the modern authoresses spoke of decoction of cow-beef as Kraft Briihen, or power-giving broths, did not deceive either physiologists or kitcheners, and even those who overlooked the ungrammatical diction for the supposed practical wisdom which might perchance have been collected from aristocratic or even royal kitchens, had to admit that the possible good to be obtained from the recommendations of these Kraft Briihen was overpowered by that hypocrisy, which defaces not a small number of French and German culinary publications. Happily we know not a single example of this intellectual aberration in British culinary literature, and we therefore need not follow the subject any further.
The Delusion of Economical Cookery with ‘ Scraps costing
Nothing.’
We are differently affected by culinary works which profess to teach what they term economical practices, particularly
* Mary Smith, in her ‘ Complete Housekeeper,’ 1772, 8vo., pp. lOo and 247, gave S.auce-Robert as ‘ Roe- Boat-Sauce,’ an Omelette as ‘A Hamlet, and Queenly Soup as ‘Soupe k la Rain ’ (ex Kitchiner, p. 311, foot-note). Simpson, pp. 98 and 180, called .lulienne Soup ‘Soup Julian,’ etc. The style of some modern German culinary works is very vulgar, and disfigured by barbarisms of French technical words provided with German endings.
iS