sa. "Like the poet, the consomme
is born, not made. It must be clear from the beginning, an achievement
which needs care and trouble like every other artistic effort, but one
nevertheless well within the reach of any student who means to succeed.
To clear a soup by the ordinary medium of white of egg or minced beef
is to destroy all flavour and individuality. If the stock be kept from
boiling until it has been strained, it will develop into a perfectly
clear soup under the hands of a careful and intelligent cook. The
fleeting delicate aroma which, as every gourmet will admit, gives such
grateful aid to the palate, is the breath of garden herbs and of herbs
alone, and here I have a charge to bring against contemporary cookery. I
mean the neglect of natural in favour of manufactured flavourings. With
regard to herbs, this could not always have been the rule, for I never
go into an old English garden without finding there a border with all
the good old-fashioned pot herbs growing lustily. I do not say that the
use of herbs is unknown, for of course the best cookery is impossible
without them, but I fear that sage mixed with onion is about the only
one which ever tickles the palate of the great English middle-class. And
simultaneously with the use of herb flavouring in soup has arisen the
practice of adding wine, which to me seems a very questionable one. If
wine is put in soup at all, it must be used so sparingly as to render
its presence imperceptible. Why then use it at all? In some sauces wine
is necessary, but in all cases it is as difficult to regulate as garlic,
and requires the utmost vigilance on the part of the cook."

"My last cook, who was very stout and a little middle-aged, would always
use flavouring sauces from the grocer's rather than walk up to the
garden, where we have a most seductive herb bed," said Mrs. Wilding;
"and then, again, the love of the English for pungent-made sauces is
another reason for this makeshift practice. 'Oh, a table-spoonful of
somebody's sauce will do for the flavouring,' and in goes the sauce, and
the flavouring is supposed to be complete. People who eat their chops,
and steaks, and fish, and game, after having smothered the natural
flavour with the same harsh condiment, may be satisfied with a cuisine
of this sort, but to an unvitiated palate the result is nauseous."

"Yet as a Churchwoman, Mrs. Wilding, you ought to speak with respect
of English sauces. I think I have heard how