Page:One Thousand Simple Soups.djvu/17

 A certain Chinese sage, known as Yuan Mei, has observed that "cookery is like matrimony—two things served together should match." But Chinese matrimony is not like ours, neither is Celestial cooking wholly heavenly, as any one who has spent the night sitting up with chop-suey and a hot-water bag will gladly testify.

Our ideas are more in the way of compensation. One does not go to the pantry with a strip of cold ham, trusting blindly to meet an egg face to face, but rather balances the alkali of fish with the acid of lemon, the smoothness of oil with the tang of vinegar, the thin and watery substance with a thickening of flour or corn-starch. For matrimonial illustrations the reader is referred to Schopenhauer, as this is a cook-book.

Further differences might be pointed out, as, for instance, Dr. Johnson's candid remark to the effect that "women can spin very well, but they cannot make a good book of cookery." This pleasant gentleman was married once toa lady who painted her face, and after her death he made two or three ineffectual passes at matrimony, each charmer eluding him successfully in favor of a man with less intellect and more winning ways.

Returning, for the nonce, from the altar to the tureen, soup is of ancient origin. When too ostensibly ancient it should be thrown away,