New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1856-12-05

All sorts of queer things are sent to us from time
to time for examination and notice. and 1t is dlfii-
cult to excite surprise in the journalistic mind by
any odd.ooking missiye Once there was dwarf
sent in basket; another time churning machine
and he Yankee along with it, who very cooly be-
gan "to make butter in seven minutes, | rather
guess" But the smartest donation We have had
is in the shape of box which arrived yesterday
FRI IN parts unknown with this note: Country
" fare cooked by American COuntry-wOmen: To
I" the author of the article on Country Fare, as
compensation in part for the trials he has suf-
fered in the country" In this box came
some deliberately baked and excellent bread; a
prime pound of butter; chicken roasted to turn,
and bowl of veritabe apple-sauce. The fair hands
that prepared this delicate cadeau we kiss with all
courtesy. The proverb which says, "GOd sends
"meats but the devil sends cooks" does not apply
in this case. The cooking is positively heavenly. The
bread is equal to manna the butter like the breath
of love; and the chicken might be mistaken for
bird.Of.paradise. Were all the country women SO
adroit and generous as the gentle cooks in question:
the first line of the article which has made such
fuss would never have been penned; but exceptions
prove rules and the average of country cooking yet
remains detestabe. We hope our little bit of trench
ant advice will do good. The stomach is the
man: the palate should be the Waterman that sits
at its portals and admits no improper characters.
How little each of these great truths is acknowl-
edged, travel through the country will exhibit to
very man of taste.
While treating On the eating and living theory in
those observations which have evoked the bOnny box
in question, we might have said more. We might have
cried amen to Moses in his anathema against pork,
for our country is pOrk-cursed. POrk-salty fried
pork-O chemistry o gastric juice This coarse
and greasy food attacks the traveller everywhere in
the West-in the West, whose superabundance of
territory should make beef mutton, lamb, chicken,
game, drug, and leave the forbidden meat to be
resolved into ham to be used, if at all, as kind of
continent aud not as a daily article of food. We
might have cited the fact that friend who Travelled in
the Southwest, Texas included, wasill six months
under the care of physician, who said it was the
coarse porky diet on which he had been
fed and the physician stated also that the case was
not uncommon. We might have acclaimed against
the feather beds instead of mattresses, and so forth
We might have introduced some table,
cloths at some inns that looked if the two thou.
sand hogs driven into the sea, had first run over
them. And much more. But we spoke rather in
sorrow than in anger, and left unsaid many things
that exact justice would have allowed.
The fact is as we stated-that there is in the
country much, very much to be learned of the art
of living. But why should not our country cook
ing be equal to the Parisian' 1t takes genius TO
create new dish; but the recipe once given for it,
any housewife can prepare it as well as Delmonlco.
But certain it is that there is not greater
difference between the wOOd.cuts OF an OLD
ballad and the finest of TOschis engrav-
ipps on steel than between ordinary cooking
and that artistcally refined and humanized.
The food is not the same thing when badly cooked.
"The devil" appears to have interposed his myers
and ruined it for man. In private housenolds'
where each sauce is separate and each dish indi'
yidua and where time is unlimited, there need
never be any bad cooking. In hotels, where an I'M
mense quantity of matter is served up against hme'
the standard may properly be lower than In the pm
vate house; but even here, what comparatively
good cooking we find when there is Intelligent su-
perintendence, and things are prepared according
to rule
Coed folks in the country, to whom our remarks
apply, remember the hints we gave you. Don't
make the commonplace reply that they cook badly
in the town, too-often worse even than in the
country. So they do; and 80 much the worse.
But we were talking about the country, and two
wrongs do not make right