FOOD AND FLAVOR
FOOD AND FLAVOR
A GASTRONOMIC GUIDE TO HEALTH AND GOOD LIVING
BY
HENRY T. FINCK
"The destiny of nations depends upon what and how they eat."
Brillat-Savarin.
NEW YORK--THE CENTURY CO. 1913
Copyright, 1913, by THE CENTURY CO.
Published, April, 1913
TO LUTHER BURBANK AND HARVEY W. WILEY THE TWO MEN WHO HAVE DONE MOST TO MAKE OUR DAILY FOOD PALATABLE AND HONEST
CONTENTS
PAGE
I UNGASTRONOMIC AMERICA 3
Mark Twain's Patriotic Palate--Food Missionaries in the Far West--Are Women to Blame?--The Danger in our Food--Why the Candy was not Eaten--Dr. Wiley's Poison Squad--Condiments versus Chemical Preservatives--Scotched, not Killed.
II VITAL IMPORTANCE OF FLAVOR 40
Sensual indulgence as a duty--Gladstone and Fletcher--The harm done by soft Foods--Epicurean delights from plain Food--How flavor helps the Stomach--An Amazing Blunder--A new Psychology of Eating.
III OUR DENATURED FOODS 65
Foul Fowl--The French way versus the American--Why do we Eat Poultry?--Is cold storage a Blessing?--Spoiling the American Oyster--"Smoked" ham, bacon and fish--Flavor in Butter--Sweet Butter versus Salt.
IV THE SCIENCE OF SAVORY COOKING 117
Desirable raw foods--Flavor as the guiding principle--The Philosophy of soup-making and eating--Wherein lies the value of vegetables?--Broiling, roasting, baking, frying--Combining the flavors of meats and vegetables--Savory food for everybody--Meat-eating of the future--The folly of vegetarianism--When to use condiments and sauces--Cook books.
V A NOBLE ART 152
The social caste of cooks--Royalty in the kitchen--Rossini, Carême and Paderewski--Looking down on others--Does cooking Pay?
VI THE FUTURE OF COOKING 171
School girls like it--Boys and soldiers as cooks--Traveling cooking schools--English school dinners--Progress in America--Teaching the art of eating--Real epicurism is economical--Fireless cookers--Private versus community kitchens--Scientific electric cooking--Importance of variety in foods.
VII FRENCH SUPREMACY 210
Kitchen alchemy--Seven hundred soups--Savory sauces--Profitable poules de Brese--Digestive value of sour salads--Escarole, tomatoes, artichokes, alligator pears--Vegetables as a separate course--Paris restaurants--Russian and American influences--Provincial local flavors--The world's greatest market places--Model market gardens--Mushrooms and truffles--Training trees for fancy fruits--Bread crust versus crumb--How the best butter is made--Cheese as an appetizer.
VIII EPICUREAN ITALY 309
The cradle of modern cookery--Olive oil and Sardines--Fried fish and fritto misto--Macaroni, the real staff of life--Cooked cheese in place of meat--Birds, tomato paste and garlic.
IX GERMAN AND AUSTRIAN DELICACIES 339
A cosmopolitan cuisine--Delicatessen stores--Sausages and smoked ham--Live fish brought to the kitchen--Game and Geese--In a Berlin market--Vienna bread and Hungarian flour--German menus on sea and land--German, Swiss and Dutch cheeses.
X BRITISH SPECIALTIES 394
Thackeray's little sermon--Dr. Johnson and Samuel Pepys--The Roast beef of old England--Southdown mutton--Wiltshire bacon--Fair play for pigs--Grouse and grilled sole--Covent Garden market scenes--Marmalades, jams and breakfasts--Restaurants, cakes, and plum pudding.
XI GASTRONOMIC AMERICA 452
Sweet corn and corn bread--Griddle cakes and maple syrup--Apple pie and cranberries--Turkeys, guinea fowl and game--Lobsters, scallops, crabs, and fishes--Vegetables steadily gaining ground--The fruit-eaters' paradise Governmental gastronomy--Burbank's new fruits and vegetables.
XII COMMERCIAL VALUE OF FLAVOR 522
Palatability decides permanence--Eating with the eyes--School girls as pure food experts--Pennywise dealers and pineapples--Successful peach-growers--Fortunes from bananas and oranges--Melons, honey and flavoring extracts--Opportunities for women--Feeding flavor into food--Farmers, middlemen, and parcel post.
XIII GASTRONOMIC VALUE OF ODORS 559
Sweet, sour, salt and bitter--A comedy of errors--How flavor differs from fragrance--Important functions of the nose--Educating the sense of smell--Coffee, tea and temperance.
INDEX 583
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE Fred Harvey 6
A Matter for the Health Department 20
Harvey W. Wiley 26
The Old-fashioned Way 29
Horace Fletcher 46
A French Chef's Culinary Alchemy 54
An American Quick-Lunch 57
How they do it in France 75
Where Smoked Hams were Suspended from the Rafters 98
Before Breakfast in the Garden 119
Chafing Dish Cooking 149
A fifteenth-century Kitchen in France 162
Cooking Class at the Wadleigh High School 172
Fireless Cooking in Hawaii 193
The Tour d'Argent and Frederic Delair 217
Carême 218
Boeuf à la Mode 246
Coming to Market, Brittany 263
The World's Greatest Market Place 268
Paris Market Porters 271
Halles Centrales 273
A bit of the great Paris market 276
Macaroni Drying 322
Deer in German Forest 369
Menus on a German Steamer 382-384
The Boar 420
"Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese" 446
London Bill of Fare 448-449
The Sugar Bush 465
Brillat-Savarin 474
New York down town Lunch Menu 484-485
Luther Burbank 510
Burbank's Spineless Cactus 518
Chinese Canal 556
Javanese Tea-Picker and Porter 578