Eating to live is mere
feeding. Brillat-Savarin, an abstemious eater himself, among other witty
things on the same topic says, "_L'animal se repait, l'homme mange,
l'homme d'esprit seul sait manger._"

Nine people out of ten, when they call a man an epicure, mean it as a
sort of reproach, a man who is averse to every-day food, one whom plain
fare would fail to satisfy; but Grimod de la Reyniere, the most
celebrated gourmet of his day, author of "_Almanach des Gourmands_,"
and authority on all matters culinary of the last century, said, "A true
epicure can dine well on one dish, provided it is excellent of its
kind." Excellent, that is it. A little care will generally secure to us
the refinement of having only on the table what is excellent of its
kind. If it is but potatoes and salt, let the salt be ground fine, and
the potatoes white and mealy. Thackeray says, an epicure is one who
never tires of brown bread and fresh butter, and in this sense every New
Yorker who has his rolls from the Brevoort House, and uses Darlington
butter, is an epicure. There seems to me, more mere animalism in wading
through a long bill of fare, eating three or four indifferently cooked
vegetables, fish, meat, poultry, each second-rate in quality, or made so
by bad cooking, and declaring that you have dined well, and are easy to
please, than there is in taking pains to have a perfectly broiled chop,
a fine potato, and a salad, on which any true epicure could dine well,
while on the former fare he would leave the table hungry.

Spenser points a moral for me when he says, speaking of the Irish in
1580, "That wherever they found a plot of shamrocks or water-cresses
they had a feast;" but there were gourmets even among them, for "some
gobbled the green food as it came, and some picked the faultless stalks,
and looked for the bloom on the leaf."

Thus it is, when I speak of "good living," I do not mean expensive
living or high living, but living so that the table may be as elegant as
the dishes on which it is served.

I believe there exists a feeling, not often expressed perhaps, but
prevalent among young people, that for a lady to cook with her own
hands is vulgar; to love to do it shows that she is of low intellectual
caliber, a sort of drawing-room Bridget. When or how this idea arose it
would be difficult to say, for in the middle ages cooks were often
noble; a Montmorency was _chef de cuisine_ to Philip of Valois;
Montesquieu descended, an