furnish you with a good ice-cream than a
well-cooked mutton-chop; a fair charlotte-russe is easier to come by
than a perfect cup of coffee; and you shall find a sparkling jelly to
your dessert where you sighed in vain for so simple a luxury as a
well-cooked potato.

Our fair countrywomen might rest upon their laurels in these higher
fields, and turn their great energy and ingenuity to the study of
essentials. To do common things perfectly is far better worth our
endeavor than to do uncommon things respectably. We Americans in many
things as yet have been a little inclined to begin making our shirt at
the ruffle; but nevertheless, when we set about it, we can make the
shirt as nicely as anybody,--it needs only that we turn our attention
to it, resolved that, ruffle or no ruffle, the shirt we will have.

I have also a few words to say as to the prevalent ideas in
respect to French cookery. Having heard much of it, with no very
distinct idea what it is, our people have somehow fallen into the
notion that its forte lies in high spicing,--and so, when our cooks
put a great abundance of clove, mace, nutmeg, and cinnamon into
their preparations, they fancy that they are growing up to be French
cooks. But the fact is, that the Americans and English are far
more given to spicing than the French. Spices in our made dishes
are abundant, and their taste is strongly pronounced. In living a
year in France I forgot the taste of nutmeg, clove, and allspice,
which had met me in so many dishes in America.

The thing may be briefly defined. The English and Americans deal in
_spices_, the French in _flavors_,--flavors many and subtile,
imitating often in their delicacy those subtile blendings which Nature
produces in high-flavored fruits. The recipes of our cookery-books are
most of them of English origin, coming down from the times of our
phlegmatic ancestors, when the solid, burly, beefy growth of the foggy
island required the heat of fiery condiments, and could digest heavy
sweets. Witness the national recipe for plum-pudding, which may be
rendered: Take a pound of every indigestible substance you can think
of, boil into a cannon-ball, and serve in flaming brandy. So of the
Christmas mince-pie and many other national dishes. But in America,
owing to our brighter skies and more fervid climate, we have developed
an acute, nervous delicacy of temperament far more akin to that of
France than of England.

Half of the recipes in our cook