Page:Early Reminiscences.djvu/162

122 "Mais pas à l'ordinaire; si nous avons du monde, c'est une autre affaire."

"Sans doute, Madame; mais c'est dommage, parce-que vous avez des viandes si excellentes."

"Ah ou! mais en Angleterre la cuisine n'est en gneral qu'une nécessité, en France c'est une science"

How humiliatingly true this is! God gives the meat, and Ignorance sends the cooks. Consider our vegetables, boiled in water, flabby, flavourless; the peeled potato utterly tasteless as boiled, the spinach insufficiently comminuted; peas, French beans, boiled without any after treatment in a pan, with a little sugar and much butter. And meat! veal cutlets sans pulped sorrel; rabbit without black sauce! And as to our soups, varied between clear and white, and both insipid. There exist in the world a thousand flavourings, utilized in France and in Germany, unknown to, despised by English cooks. I once bought an exquisite cabinet containing behind its carved and gilded valves a nest of little drawers that a hundred years ago had contained spices for the kitchen. Those drawers are redolent of them still, yet for a century have contained none of these ingredients. And what English housewife would dream of enclosing the flavouring materials for soups in a cabinet so honourable, of cedar, ebony, ivory and gilding? Now for our sequel to a similar interview.

"En Angleterre le diner est une nécessité; en France c'est une science, un art, une poésie. Ce qu'est la musique—un opera, pour l'oreille; la peinture, la sculpture pour les yeux; la rose, les violettes, les parfums pour les narines, est un bon diner ou un bon dejeuner pour le palais."

I have read—I have the book still—a Frenchman's travels from Plymouth to Lynton. At breakfast in Plymouth he had ham and eggs. At Tavistock he asked for lunch, and was served with ham and eggs. He went on to Okehampton, where he dined and slept, and was served with ham and eggs. Next day he drove through Hatherleigh, where again he was served with ham and eggs. At Barnstaple once more, ham and eggs—on reaching Lynton for his supper, ham and eggs.

You cannot go into the smallest cabaret in France without receiving an excellent meal. For instance, I arrived hungry at S. Guilleume-le-Desert—mark it—Le Desert, and did not