pitable
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.

CHAPTER X

SMELLS AND PERFUMES

The old saying, "_De gustibus non disputandum_," is based upon the
fact that both liking and the repulsion evinced by human beings for
different odours (including those odours which we call flavours) are
not matters of general agreement. Thus the smells of garlic and of
onions, and even of assafoetida, are to many men among the most
attractive and appetising in existence--to very many they are, on the
other hand, repulsive. High game, a certain kind of putrid fish
("Bombay ducks"), and again rotten cheese are attractive to many men
and offensive to as many more. Many animals revel in the smell and
flavour of carrion, and even of manure, which they devour. There are
well-known flowers which attract insects, not by the possession of the
sweet perfumes appreciated and extracted by mankind, but by a smell
like that of putrid meat, which so far misleads blue-bottle flies as
to cause them to lay their eggs on the reeking blossom. So diverse are
the tastes of men and animals in these matters that it is remarkable
when we find agreement among them, as, for instance, in the attraction
for butterflies of those delicate scents which also are agreeable to
ourselves in such flowers as the rose, the jasmine, the heliotrope and
the honeysuckle.

There seems to be no rule or principle at work by which smells can be
definitely classed as either pleasant or unpleasant. Even perfumes
carried by some of the inhabitants of Western Europe with the
intention of making themselves att