Page:Letters from England.djvu/189

 English cooking is of two kinds: good and average. Good English cooking is simply French cooking; the average cooking in the average hotel for the average Englishman explains to a large extent the English bleakness and taciturnity. Nobody can beam and warble while chewing pressed beef smeared with diabolical mustard. Nobody can exult aloud while unglueing from his teeth a quivering tapioca pudding. A man becomes terribly serious if he is given salmon bedaubed with pink dextrin; and if for breakfast, for lunch and for supper he has something which, when alive, is a fish, and in the melancholy condition of edibility is called fried sole; if three times a day he has soaked his stomach with a black brew of tea, and if he has drunk his fill of bleak light beer, if he has partaken of universal sauces, preserved vegetables, custard and mutton—well, he has perhaps exhausted all the bodily enjoyments of the average Englishman and he begins to comprehend his reticence, solemnity, and austere morals. On the other hand, toast, baked