FOOD AND COOKERY

Animals, taking one kind with another, nourish themselves on an immense variety of food. The flesh and the blood of other animals of all kinds, warm or cold, the leaves, twigs, fruits, juices of plants, putrid carcases, hair, feathers, skin, bran, sawdust, the vegetable mould or "humus" of the earth's surface, the sand of the sea, with its minute particles of organic detritus, all serve as food to different kinds of animals. Some are very little fettered in their tastes, and are called "omnivorous," others are bound in the strictest way to a diet consisting of the leaves of some one species of plant or the juices of one species of animal. Some of the latter class, under stress or privation, can accommodate themselves to a new food very different in character and origin from that which is habitual to them; others have no elasticity in this respect, and must have their exact habitual food-plant or food-animal, unless they are to die of starvation.

Man exhibits his great powers of accommodation to changed circumstances in respect of food as well as in other matters. If we are to suppose, as is probable, that our original ape-like ancestors fed exclusively upon fruits and an occasional egg or juicy grub, how vast are the changes in diet to which man has habituated himself! Man is sometimes said to be omnivorous, but this is not a sufficient description of the state of things which has grown up as he has spread over the earth's surface. Every race—and even many a small group of men—has its accustomed diet, to depart from which is a pain and a difficulty, even though new kinds of food may be gradually accepted and even become popular. Man has in this, as in so many other things, a large range of possible accommodation, but he has at the same time habits the continuance of which are necessary for the healthy working of the nervous system. The psychical element in the matter of food-habit is important in all higher animals, but most of all in man. The digestive organs are controlled by the nervous system, and the brain acts upon the latter in such a way as to favour or to restrain the "appetite" and the secretion of the elaborate digestive juices, so that fear, surprise, disgust, and "nausea" (that strange product of mental and physical reactions) may destroy appetite and inhibit the digestive process. There are vast populations of men who live on rice, or beans, or meal, and never eat animal food, not even milk (after babyhood), nor cheese, and would be, at a first attempt to eat it, "put off" and disgusted by a mutton chop. There are others who subsist almost entirely on fish, others who live on dried beef, others who live on the fat of whales and seals, and would be for a generation or two injured, half starved, and some of them even killed, by a change of diet. Again, there are others who consider that they must have and will be "ill" unless they had the cooked flesh of an ox or sheep as part of their daily food. Let us examine this latter group a little more fully—a group to which the nations of Europe belong, with the exception of the Italians, who are essentially a meal-, fruit-, and cheese-eating people.

Apparently at a very early time, even before the last glacial period, man had learnt the use of fire, and roasted or grilled the carcases of other animals which he killed in the chase, in order to consume them as food. We have no reason to suppose that man ever made use of the raw flesh of higher animals as his habitual diet. His teeth are not, and never were, from his earliest ape-like days, adapted to true carnivorous diet. Cooked meat is not the food of a carnivor, but is an adaptation of the flesh of animals to the requirements of a frugivorous animal. Probably the use of grain and cultivated vegetable food is a later step in human progress than the roasting of meat. The Neandermen, and even the later Reindeer-men (Cromagnards), had no cultivated fields, but lived on roasted meat (of beasts, birds, and fish) and wild fruits. We know how thoroughly the most ancient Greeks enjoyed the long slices of roasted meat cut from the chine, as told in the Homeric poems, and everywhere in Europe after the neolithic or polished-stone period, meat was a main article of diet, in conjunction with the vegetable products of agriculture. In this country, after the Norman conquest, meat-eating was greatly favoured by the important industry which grew up in hides. The land was well suited for the pasturage of cattle, and owing to the smallness of the population and the abundance of cattle slaughtered for their hides, meat was almost to be had for the asking. It was thus that Englishmen became great meat-eaters and that "the roast beef of Old England" was established. Later the same superfluity of meat—in this case, "mutton"—recurred and became general when wool-growing and the manufacture of woollen goods developed into important industries. Relatively to the population there was more "meat" of oxen and sheep in this country than on the continent of Europe, and this disproportion has been maintained.

But the increase of population has led to a considerable change in the diet of a very large proportion—the poorer part—of the community. Whilst the families of the better-paid working class and all the middle and upper class continue to eat meat, the agricultural labourer and the poorer workmen in towns live chiefly on flour, sugar, bacon, and cheese. Probably they have become habituated to this diet, and, provided that the quantity is sufficient, it cannot be maintained that the diet, in which meat is nearly or altogether absent, is unhealthy. Many vigorous and muscularly well-developed populations in other lands thrive on exclusively vegetable food.

A curious and not altogether comforting reflection is that if the inexpensive and simple food of the agricultural labourer is sufficient, the section of the community which spends from five to ten shillings per head a day on a mixed diet of meat, fish, eggs, and vegetables is guilty of waste and excess. Here, however, the remarkable, and, in fact, exceptional domination of "habit" (in the case of man), in regard to both the actual articles of food and the mode of its preparation, has to be recognised. Such and such inexpensive and unskilfully prepared food may contain more than the necessary amount of proteids (that is, matters like flesh, the casein of cheese and of vegetables, and the albumen of eggs), of hydro-carbons (i.e., fats), of carbo-hydrates (i.e., starch and sugar), yet if you were suddenly to compel a man accustomed to well-cooked meat to live on such food he would be unable to assimilate it, his digestive organs would refuse to work, and he would become, if not seriously ill, yet so ill-nourished and sickly that he would be unfit for his work and readily fall a victim to disease. It is, in fact, impossible to lay down any scheme of diet based on the mere provision of the necessary quantities of food materials whilst ignoring the formed habits of the individual and the relation of the psychical conditions which we call "taste," "appetite," "fancy," "disgust," to the actual processes of digestion and the consequent efficiency of the proposed diet.

No doubt gradually, after a few generations, a whole people may become healthily habituated to a diet which would have been positively injurious to their forebears, and no doubt individuals may be led by fortitude or by necessity in time (perhaps weeks, perhaps years) to acquire a tolerance, or even enjoyment, of food at first repulsive, and therefore injurious. The difficulty in the matter is not that of correctly determining what is physiologically sufficient for the human animal, nor even what would be a healthy diet for a community when once, after a transition period of distress and injury, habituated or "attuned" to that diet. The difficulty is to arrive at a conclusion as to what is really the suitable and reasonable diet for an individual—yourself or one like yourself—having regard to the lifelong habits of the individual, and the consequent nervous reactions established in him or her in relation to the taste, quality, and mode of presentation of food. Robust people, so long as they get what suits their own uncultivated taste, are apt to make very light of what they call "fancies" about food, and to overlook their real importance.

Feeding on the part of civilised man is not the simple procedure which it is with animals, although many animals are particular as to their food and what is called "dainty." The necessity for civilised man of cheerful company at his meal, and for the absence of mental anxiety, is universally recognised, as well as the importance of an inviting appeal to the appetite through the sense of smell and of sight, whilst the injurious effect of the reverse conditions, which may lead to nausea, and even vomiting, is admitted. Even the ceremonial features of the dinner table, the change of clothes before sitting down to the repast, the leisurely yet precise succession of approved and expected dishes, accompanied by pleasant talk and light-hearted companionship, are shown by strict scientific examination to be important aids to the healthy digestion of food, which need not be large in quantity, although it should be wisely presented.

These psychical conditions of healthy feeding are not trivial matters, as we are too apt to suppose. They are part, and a very important part, of the physiology of nutrition, and so deserving of scientific inquiry and of practical attention. They have been made the subject of careful experiment by a Russian physiologist, Pavloff. At a recent meeting of the British Association this matter was brought under discussion in the Physiological Section, and it was pointed out by the author of a very interesting communication that the whole question as to what is and what is not a sound and healthy diet is too often dealt with by writers who ignore the psychical (or shall we say the cerebral?) factor. Cases were cited of dangerous arrest of the power of digesting, or even of swallowing, food which were cured by giving the patient some apparently inappropriate and probably harmful article of food for which he or she had a fancy, such as a grilled salmon-steak, the last thing which would be spontaneously recommended by a medical man to a patient who had been suffering for weeks from inability to take food. The willingness is all—the assent, the approval of the cerebral centres, and the consequent unlocking of the whole arrested mechanism of digestive secretions and movements. Such a case is only an extreme instance. But it is undoubtedly the fact that just as the sight of so small a thing as a drop of blood, or even the word "blood," will on occasion cause a strong, healthy man to faint, so quite a small excess or defect in the accustomed quality of food will at times arrest the appetite and digestive processes of a healthy man. To many a healthy individual one among many flavours and savours associated with agreeable food is necessary in order that healthy appetite and proper digestion may be set going, and the absence of the right flavour and the presence of what is, in his experience, a wrong and disgusting smell or taste in the food set before him, will produce nausea and complete arrest of the digestive processes.

It is apparently owing to this cause that "tinned meats" have proved to be of little value as rations for an army in campaign, for exploring expeditions, and for remote mining camps. It is not that such tinned meats do not contain the necessary constituents of food, or that they contain poisonous substances, but that they produce a sense of disgust, and arrest the digestive processes. Soldiers, travellers, and miners have assured me that they prefer a dry biscuit and dried, or salted, or sugared meat, to the supposed more "tasty" tinned meats, and that such is the general experience of their comrades.

Of similar nature is another very serious trouble, in regard to the healthy feeding of the modern Englishman, which has come upon us in consequence of the quite modern system of huge restaurants, whether in London or in the very large hotels, which are now run in Swiss, Italian and English summer resorts. Hundreds of visitors are "catered for" daily. There is no attempt at anything which deserves the name of cookery. Great monopolists control the supplies, and contract to deliver to these hotels, even in out-of-the-way localities, so much ice-stored, "mousey" fish, "mousey" quails, stringy meat, impossible vegetables and fruits, gathered from the cheapest markets of Europe and of a quality just not bad enough to cause a revolt among the hotel visitors. The heating of the food is done by patent machinery in ovens and by the use of boiling fat. No cook is in these circumstances possible, with his artistic feeling for the production of a perfect result of skill and taste. A kind of bottled meat-flavoured sauce, manufactured from spent yeast, is used to make the soups, and is poured, with an equally nauseating result, over the hard veal, the tough chicken, the "mousey" quails, and the tasteless beef and mutton, which are never roasted, but are baked or stewed in boiling fat—though shamelessly described as "rÔtis" in the pretentious and mendacious "menu" placed on the dinner-table. The consequence is that the tourist, who has been overfed at home, eats very little, and his health benefits. But in such an hotel the man who lives carefully when at home, and desires a simple but properly cooked meal, is reduced to a state of indigestion, semi-starvation and misery.

The Englishman who is disgusted by the new mechanical methods of cookery in the great hotels of Continental "resorts," returns to London, and finds the same atrocious system at work—not only in the public restaurants, but in his club. Nowhere in London can you rely on being served with really fresh fish, however highly you may pay for it. Rarely it is fresh, usually it is not. The ice storage people take good care that you shall not obtain fresh fish, and so retain your taste for it. Nowhere at club or restaurant, with rare exceptions, can you obtain meat roasted in the old-fashioned way on a roasting-jack, carefully "basted" during the process, and served when exactly cooked to a turn. There were, only a few years ago, one or two such places surviving—both clubs and restaurants—where proper roasting was done, but, like the rest, they have now adopted lazy, economical, money-saving methods. Their managers calculate that what they do will serve. It is good enough for the crowd! So at last you abandon the efforts to obtain decent simple food, in club or hotel, and dine with your friend en famille. The same thing confronts you. The joint has been baked in an oven, of which it smells, and is surrounded by a sickly gravy, produced by pouring hot water over it! In conversation with your hostess, you find that she knows nothing whatever about the simplest elements of the preparation of food. She tells you she avoids roasting because it necessitates a large fire and an extra expenditure of £5 a year on coal, and she also purchases those mouldy, frost-bitten potatoes instead of the best, because they cost half as much as sound ones—and she herself does not care for potatoes. They are fattening!

Sometimes at a restaurant or club, served by a foreign "chef," a Yorkshire pudding, as hard as a stale loaf of bread, is handed round in slabs with the so-called "roast" beef. It is not roasted: it is baked beef, and the pudding is an ill-tasting baked mess, also. Nowhere in London in public or private house do I ever see the properly cooked article. True Yorkshire pudding can only be made by placing it under the roasting joint, which drips digestion-promoting essences into the pudding whilst itself rotating, hissing and spluttering—as did the joints roasted in the caves long ago by the prehistoric Reindeer-men. The scientific importance of good roasting and grilling is that a savour is thereby produced which sets the whole gastric and digestive economy of the man who sniffs it and tastes it, at work. Possibly our successors, a generation or two hence, will have learnt to do without this, and will have acquired as intimate and happy a gastronomic relation to what now are for us the nauseous flavours of superheated fat (rarely renewed), and of the all-pervading gravy fabricated by chemical treatment of yeast, as that which we ourselves have acquired in regard to the old-established and painstaking cookery of the early Victorian and many preceding ages.

Medical men who are occupied as specialists with the study of very young children have clearly demonstrated that the implanting of tastes, tendencies and habits in infants of from two to eight years of age has an immense importance in their subsequent development. Character and capacity are really formed in those early years. Food preferences, no less than mental and moral qualities, are then created. Yet the children of both rich and poor are in these early stages either left to haphazard or entrusted to ignorant nursemaids. For those of us who were not born to the present system the transition to the new methods of wholesale cookery is an abomination, and to escape from them a matter of difficulty. We have to secure an ancient roasting-jack and a large clear fire in our own kitchen, and to instruct our cook—since no woman has taught her what she ought to know—in the art of roasting and grilling, in the preparation of Yorkshire pudding, in the mystery of the marrow-bone and the proper and distinct use of garlic, onions, shalots, chives, chervil, tarragon, marjoram, basil, other herbs, and divers peppers, and finally to train her in the supreme accomplishment of the seasoning of a salad.

Maybe that the present established relations of our appetites to the time-honoured savours, by which the ancient Jews sought to propitiate the Deity, are destined to be superseded. On the other hand it is quite possible that all the juggling of modern "machine" cookery is a false step, and injurious to digestion and health. It is not unlikely that there is no relish which has so sure a hold on the digestion of European man, no appeal to the cerebral mechanism controlling the liberation of his gastric juices, which is so infallible as that emanating from "well and truly" roasted or grilled meat.

It is not easy to account for the present neglect of decent cookery and the triumph of the sham French cookery (for it is not French at all!) which is at present foisted on a long-suffering public. Probably the enormously increased number of visitors to foreign resorts and of frequenters of restaurants in London have led to huge enterprise in "catering," and to a monopoly which has driven out of existence the smaller establishments, where alone the artist-cook can flourish. But it seems that the neglect of decent cooking is also due in this country to a racial incapacity and indifference which leads both men and women to despise "taking pains" about small things, and brings them into the world devoid of the desire to carry out with skill those small enterprises on which much of the sweetness and gaiety of life depends.

Even in the time of Charles II the skill and seriousness of French cookery as compared with our own was recognised. The high reputation of Scotch cooks at the present day seems to be due to an inheritance of traditions from the days of close association of the Scotch and French Courts. Up to nearly 100 years ago roasting was as usual a method of cooking meat in Paris as in London. There were "rÔtisseries" in Paris in the old days. High prices and thrift have led to the decadence of roasting as a popular method of cooking meat in France, but the great "chef" in a private house in Paris still produces the most perfect roast beef and roast saddle of mutton (better than you will find in England) in the old-fashioned way. So indifferent, or perhaps hopeless, are Englishmen in regard to cookery that they drink a strong champagne throughout dinner, content to drown the insipid taste of the food in the fine flavour of a drink upon which they can rely. An Englishman dining at a first-rate restaurant will usually spend twice as much for wine as for food, whilst a Frenchman will reverse the proportions. Another difference is one for which women are responsible. In Paris a party of French men and women at a table in a good restaurant enjoy their food, laugh and talk with one another, and do not concern themselves with the company at other tables. It would be bad manners to do so. But English-speaking women, when dining in public, seem to be chiefly interested, not in their food nor in their own party, but in pointing out to one another the celebrities or notorieties or eccentricities seated at other tables. So long as the place is fashionable and noisy, the food is negligible and neglected.

For some reason, which I am unable to discover, the women of England (it is not the case with those of France and Germany) have, with rare exceptions, no interest in or liking for "cookery," and yet the men have left the management of it entirely in their hands. Male "chefs" of English nationality are rare specimens, though they are, as a rule, the best at grilling and roasting. On the other hand, in France, where women no less than men value and understand cookery, there is an enormous body of professional male cooks. English-women of means and education have to such a degree neglected all knowledge of cookery and of the quality and criticism of kitchen supplies, such as meat, fish, birds, and vegetables, that there is no one to teach the poor country girls (who become cooks in the majority of households) the elements of the very difficult and important duties which they are expected—in virtue of some kind of inspiration or native genius—to discharge with skill and judgment: nor is there any head of a household capable of seeing that the necessary care and trouble are given. It is wonderful, under the circumstances, how clever and willing our domestic cooks are. A considerable section of English middle-class women at the present day are allowed by the men, who should guide them so as to make them honourable and useful members of the community, to grow up in complete ignorance of the essential parts of the art of cookery. This was not the case a hundred years ago. Now a large proportion of them have been led by bad example and foolish notions to give up such matters to "the servants," whether they are able to afford competent servants or even to judge of the competence of a servant or not. Many of these "mistresses" now devote themselves exclusively to "dress," "amusements," "charity," "politics," and dabbling inconsequently in various crazes. They are not to blame. It is the men who are to blame who deliberately neglect to give to their womenkind a training and education which shall make them real mistresses of household arts and business, so that they may be thus filled with the happy conviction (which is the one thing they most desire and most often cannot gain) that they are of real use—are really wanted—in the world.

In conclusion, let me tell of a great German sports-man, Major von Wissman, Governor of German East Africa, now no more, who came to see me at the Museum nine years ago. It was his first visit to London, and I took him to lunch at a famous grill-room. Happily, though roasting is dying out, the art of grilling still survives in this country, but nowhere else in Europe. Von Wissman said—"Can I have beer where we are going?" "Yes, certainly," I said. "German beer?" he asked. "No," I replied. "Something much better." When we were seated, I ordered a pint tankard of Reid's London stout for my friend. It was in perfect condition. He put his lips to it in doubt, but did not remove them until, with reverential drooping of the eyelids, he had emptied the tankard. "The very finest beer I have ever swallowed," he said. "What in the name of goodness is it?" I told him, and ordered him more. Soon a perfectly grilled chop and a large, clean, floury potato were before him. He proceeded to eat, and was really and unaffectedly astonished. "But this is marvellous," he said, "wonderful! enchanting! I have never really tasted meat before in my life. Reitzend! Colossal!" He had a steak to follow, and I was pleased to have been able to show him something which I knew (by experience of that city) they could not produce in Berlin. Three days later I went over to the same hospitable grill-room for a chop, and told the gifted grill-cook (the French, in former centuries, had a proverb, "Anyone may learn to be a cook, but one must be born a 'rotisseur'") of the admiration he had excited in the Emperor William's friend. "Yes, sir," he said, "I fancy he did like it, for he came here by himself yesterday and the day before, and took the same grills and stout." Von Wissman was staying at the German Embassy, but was drawn all the way to South Kensington by the sweet savour of the grill-room—an instance of what the physiologists call "positive chemotaxis."

What I have here written on food and cookery is no "gourmet's" praise of indulgence in the pleasures of the table, nor is it an expression of a mere personal preference. It is a protest, based on scientific grounds, against the neglect of one of the bulwarks of health—the honest traditional cookery which flourished in London forty years ago.