Morning journal and courier., 1884-07-05
Cookery and Health.

Cookery and Health.
 Curious GastronomIc IndiRerence-Im- provement fn Bread and Drinks Only -Womsn Careless About Eating Use fuI Hints.
 From the London Spectator.l
 We wonder if mankind, taken as body, do care to have nice things to eat3 Educa- ted men in Earope, accustomed to comfort and soIioitoss for health, will open their eyes at the question; but the answer to it is by no means past doubt That the majority of human beings, or possibly all like certain things to eat better than certain other things, may, of course, be true, just as the same as- sertion is true of all the animals which man has closely observed. A dog will follow liver for miles; cat, for all it's dislike of wet feet, will whine with eagerness if it smells fish and horse never forgets the giver of Ieng bit of sugar-cane. Man may have in- stinctive preferences of the same description. He almost certainly has one which is little odd, upon the Darwinian theory, for it occa- sions him enormous inconvenience and ex- pense. Wðer from some instinct preser- vative of health, or from Q mere taste, he distinctly prefers hot food and to gratify this fancy puts himself and his womenkind 8AI over the WOfl0 to the GfO0Dl9 or Cally cooking. Even ''bread" is eaten hot by the majority of mankind-the use of bread which will keep well, being European par ticularity 1; and very few races habitually eat anything cold, except when hot food is unat- tainsble or expensive. They like their rice, or their miIlet, or their wheat cakes, or their vegetables, or their meat just as it comes from the fire. As this practice involves im- men SC additional expenditure for firing which in most places is one of the heavy burdens on the poor-and the loss of at least six hours labor a week, this of itself might be held to prove that 8 taste for pleasant food is universal. Perhaps it is; but except in this one particular it is, we are convinced, neither deep nor widespread. Women are careless about eating everywhere. and the millions of lsboring men find food so difficult to procure that when they have obtained enough they are content, even if the meal IS little hard to eat. If it were not so, they would not have left an art SO important so entirely to extraditionary teaching. would have developed it in 8 way they have not done and would have combined to secure pleasant meals in 8 style they carefully avoid. Among the immense majority of mankind each household cooks for itself, the work falling mainly on the wife, who iR never taught except by her mother, and in the most traditional way. Improvement, if any ls ever made, is exceedingly slow and among some people, the English for one, popular cookery has probably retrograded, owing, in this instance, to the chasm of years which, so to speak, broke or interrupted the popu- lar knowledge of the way to prepare meat. The women found flesh meat difficult to pro- cure and failed to hand down the needful in- struction for it's preparation. Half mankind at least knows nothing of boiling of those who do know, another half will eat their veg etables in g sodden condition. Among the races which eat meat, only limited percent age of persons try to make meat tender-we believe the fesh-eating Mongols form an ex~ ception to this rule, and some of the Polyne- sians-and among those who eat grain there is distinct preference for the under cooking alike of -four, rice and millet, from a belief that such food is more fully satisfying ''I want to feel my 'tomach tiff, :" says one of Charles Reade's characters and he exactly expressed the view of the indistinguishable millions Separateness in cooking is pushed everywhere to preposterous limits, till it is probable that the preparation of food for mankind, which is the second great expense in feeding them, costs three times what it need, and till in many countries proper supply of it is wholly beyond the reach of fuel it is wholly beyond the reach of the poor. In Asia entire peoples burn dung, and even in Europe firing is never quite sufficient And, finally, cooking does not advance new article of diet is occasionally added, like the potato, or 8 new condiment, like pepper but 1t may be doubted if European labor CTS dinner Is made a bit more palatable than the dinner of an Israelite was when the law givers promulgated the curious notion that roast meat was more acceptable to the supe- rior powers than meat boiled or stewed. h. deed, the way to make a kibab, which is known to the humblest in Asia, has been lost here and only the gypsies aware that meat covered with damp clay and placed among the hot ashes is not only delicious, h1,f fho1 1ooko oifh baked or boiled. The naturel way with civilized people, if they cared for nice food, would b4 to intrust the preparation of it to professionals, who would learn their trade by apprenticeship, and necessarily improve but, except in Tuscany and south France, this is hardly done anywhere. though it ought to be the easiest of arrangements. It is only in the making of bread that men combine; and they have only just begun to do that in Europe, and do not do it ip Asia, or, we believe, in most parts of North Amer ica-the western woman making bread for her household as the Mexican woman makes her thin cakes. Yet the world everywhere combines in order to get it's drinks, and the things it 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 anoes- tors called beer.
 
 food and has almost an insane fear of hun ger, which sometimes perverts his whole moral nature-as in the instance of the hor- rible tolsration of ship-wrecked sailors for cannibalism-is comparatively very indiffer- ent to the preparation of his diet. He does not, as @ rule. know even what is good for his health, and shortens his life with half cooked flour which is deadly to the old, or kills of his children in heaps with halt- swelled grain, though he sees in the latter case that they are distended to degree which in his animals would seem to him daneernus or distressing. Every fifth child in India and Africa has disease due exclusively to it's diet. Man takes no trouble whatever to cir- culate knowledge on the sabject and unless he Is dlsgusted with an animal. as western Asiatics are with the pig or contracts hor- TOT such as Hindoos feel for eggs seldom lays down inheIible laws eating, and when he does they not sanitary laws There are fifty lecturers in Europe and America on the abuse of alcohol for one on the abuse of food; and careful instruction on the com parative nutriment in different edibIes, the value to health of thorough cooking, the im- mense utility of sugar to children, and the aid which certain diet would give to the for nation of bone. would be probably thrown away We wait to be corrected by experts, but we do not think that the rather feeble efforts made by the education department in this direction have elicited much popular re- spense, though they are so strongly approved by educased women. Even in London. If we understand Mrs. Davenport Hills paper in Macmillan, the majority of those who profit by the cookery schools do It because they hope to Ee servants, and know that cooking may pay. Here and there exception oc- curs-as in the case of the little girl whose father approved her cookery but that seems to be the rule It is, of course, ve~y good that all candidates for service should learn cookery and tue mode of teaching seems to be perfect in every respect but one-the use of 8 range when the thing to learn is the use of minute grate, or of hot ashes, or of gypsy fire: but the true s'people'' will never learn cooking so. We must awaken an in- terest in the subject first and that, we be- lleve, can be done only by necessarily press- ing the argument of health.
 The multitude everywhere care little what | they eat so that they be but filled; but they | do care to be healthy, and above all that their children should grow up strong" If | they only knew, as doctors and missionaries and experienced barrack sergeants could tell them, what food could be made to do for them, they would very soon alter their tone, ana be clamorous for knowledge. Suppose, as wild supposition, that they only knew what oatmeal and milk, or even oatmeal and gravy, would do for their future lives, what