meat 96

CHAPTER XV.

A FEW THINGS IT IS WELL TO REMEMBER 105

CHAPTER XVI.

ON SOME TABLE PREJUDICES 108

CHAPTER XVII.

A CHAPTER OF ODDS AND ENDS.

Altering recipes.--How to have tarragon, burnet,
etc.--Remarks on obtaining ingredients not in common
use.--An impromptu salamander.--Larding needle.--How to
have parsley fresh all winter without expense.--On having
kitchen conveniences.--Anecdote related by Jules
Gouffee.--On servants in America.--A little
advice by way of valedictory 111

INDEX 119

CULTURE AND COOKING.

CHAPTER I.

A FEW PRELIMINARY REMARKS.

ALEXANDRE DUMAS, _pere_, after writing five hundred novels, says, "I
wish to close my literary career with a book on cooking."

And in the hundred pages or so of preface--or perhaps overture would be
the better word, since in it a group of literary men, while contributing
recondite recipes, flourish trumpets in every key--to his huge volume he
says, "I wish to be read by people of the world, and practiced by people
of the art" (_gens de l'art_); and although _I_ wish, like every one who
writes, to be read by all the world, I wish to aid the practice, not of
the professors of the culinary art, but those whose aspirations point to
an enjoyment of the good things of life, but whose means of attaining
them are limited.

There is a great deal of talk just now about cooking; in a lesser degree
it takes its place as a popular topic with ceramics, modern antiques,
and household art. The fact of it being in a mild way fashionable may do
a little good to the eating world in general. And it may make it more
easy to convince young women of refined proclivities that the art of
cooking is not beneath their attention, to know that the Queen of
England's daughters--and of course the cream of the London fair--have
attended the lectures on the subject delivered at South Kensington, and
that a young lady of rank, Sir James Coles's daughter, has been
recording angel to the association, is in fact the R. C. C. who edits
the "Official Handbook of Cookery."

But, notwithstanding all that has been done by South Kensington lectures
in London and Miss Corson's Cooking School in New York to popularize the
culinary art, one may go into a dozen houses, and fi