The Arkansaw traveler., 1884-07-19
POPULAR COOKERY.
lLondon Spectator

tLondon Spectator.
 Whether from some instinct preserv- ative of health, or from a mere taste. man distinctly prefers hot food; and to gratify this fancy puts himself and his vomenkind all over the world to the trouble of daily cooking. Even bread is eaten hot by the majority of mankind the use of bread which will keep well being a European particularitv: and very few races habituaIly eat anything cold, except when hot food is un- attainabie or expensive. They like their Eice, or their millet, or their wheafcakes, or their vegetables, or their meat, juss a 1t comes from the fire. As this practice involves immense additional expendi- ture for 6ring-which in most places is one of the heavy burdens on the poor and the loss oi at least six hours labor a week, this of itself might be held to prove that taste for pleasant food is universal.
 Among the immense majority of man. kind each h .usehold cooks for itself, the work falling mainly on the wife, who is never taught except by her mother, and in the most traditional way. Improve ment, If any is ever made, is exceedingly siow; and among some people popular cookery has probably retrograded, owing, in this instance, to the chasm of wears which, 90 to speak, broke or interrupted the popular knowledge of the way to pre- pare meat. The women found fresh meat difficult to procure, and failed to hand down the needful instruction for its preparation. Half mankind at least knows nothing of boiling; of those who do know, another half will eat their vegetables in sodden condition. Among the races who eat meat, only a limited percentage of persons try to make meat tender; we believe the fiesh-eating Mon- gols form an exception to this rule, and among those who eat grain there is a distinct preference for the under-cookiny alike of flour. rice and millet from from a belief that such food is more fully satis- lying.
 But cooking does not advance. A new aTticie of diet IS occasionally added, like the potato or a new condiment like pepper but 1t may be doubted if a Euro pean laborer's dinner is made bit more palatable than the dinner o6 an Israelite was when the lawgiver promulgated the ! cunous notion that roast meat was more 1 acceptable to the superior powers than meat boiled or stewed. Indeed, the way to make kibab, which is known to the | humblest in Asia, has been lost here and only the gypsies are aware that meat covered with damp clay and placed | among the hot ashes is not only delicious | but much more nourisaing than meat either baked CT boiled. The natural way | with civilized people, if they cared for nice food, would be to entrust the preuar- ation of it to professionals, who would learn that trade by apprenticeship and necessarily improve; but, except in Tus- cany and South France, this is hardly done anywhere, though it ought to be the easiest of arrangements. 1t is only in l the making of bread that men combine and they have only just began to do that in Europe, and do not do it in Asia, or we believe, in most parts of North Amer ica-the western women making bread Tor her household as the Mexican woman makes her thin cakes. Yet the world everywhere combines in order to get its drinks, and the thingsit drinks gradually but quite steadily improve. Household brewing is, by the mercy of Providence, dying out; and nobody in Germany, America, or England would now swallow the horrible stuff which our ancestors called beer.