Salt, spices, essences,
vanilla, vinegar, pickles, capers, ketchups, sauces, chutneys,
lime-juice, curry, and all the rest, are just our civilised expedients
for adding the pleasure of pungency and acidity to naturally insipid
foods, by stimulating the nerves of touch in the tongue, just as sugar
is our tribute to the pure gustatory sense, and oil, butter, bacon,
lard, and the various fats used in frying to the sense of relish which
forms the last element in our compound taste. A boiled sole is all very
well when one is just convalescent, but in robust health we demand the
delights of egg and bread-crumb, which are after all only the vehicle
for the appetising grease. Plain boiled macaroni may pass muster in the
unsophisticated nursery, but in the pampered dining-room it requires the
aid of toasted parmesan. Good modern cookery is the practical result of
centuries of experience in this direction; the final flower of ages of
evolution, devoted to the equalisation of flavours in all human food.
Think of the generations of fruitless experiment that must have passed
before mankind discovered that mint sauce (itself a cunning compound of
vinegar and sugar) ought to be eaten with leg of lamb, that roast goose
required a corrective in the shape of apple, and that while a
pre-established harmony existed between salmon and lobster, oysters were
ordained beforehand by nature as the proper accompaniment of boiled cod.
Whenever I reflect upon such things, I become at once a good Positivist,
and offer up praise in my own private chapel to the Spirit of Humanity
which has slowly perfected these profound rules of good living.
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