The Democratic press. [volume] (Ravenna, O. [Ohio]) 1868-1901, 1890-09-10
NEW ENGLAND COOKING.
The Yankees Have Much to Learn in the
Culinary Art.

AS regular as each summer comes
round there arises in all directions a
wall about the quality of the hotels and
the quantity of money it costs to stay
In them, says the Boston Courier. This
lasts more or less during, the silly
season." Then people come back to
town, recover from the bad food they
have had, and the matter rests until
next year. These complaints are only
too well founded, and we direct atten-
tion to them at this early period of the
year with the faint hope that some
thing may be accomplished by taking
time by the forelock. So far as we
know no one has as yet adventured
upon history of cooking. But a
volume of real research upon that sub
ject would be highly entertaining and
instructive, for national character is,
we suspect, closely connected with
national cookery. 1t would be interest
ing to learn, for instance. how and
why cookery made such excellent
strides in France. Why should that
country have been penetrated with the
true principles of extracting all the
essences from meat twhen Germany and
Great Britain remained in ignorance of
them? 1t has been suggested that the
Roman occupation of Gaul had a con-
siderable bearing upon this, but then
why not upon cookery elsewhere, for
the Romans occupied" everywhere?
1t would be the more Ineligible if the
nobility and the gentry of France had
been accustomed to live in the country
and set an example; but, on the con-
trary, they were notoriously absentees,
except in La Vendee, where we never
heard that the cookery was exception
ally excellent.
When the culinary historian en-
llghtens US as to the cookery in France
we hope that he will also explain why
cookery in America became so excep-
tionally bad. IT has been asserted by
one familiar with the bush inns of
Australia and the roughest inns of the
west of Ireland that nothing comes up
to the villainousness of the table at a
New England hotel. His convictions
on the head became intensified by
particular experience last autumn.
Arriving at 10 at night, after a long,
bitterly cold drive of seven hours over
a mountain road. he begged for sup
per. Certainly; it shall be got ready
at once" he was told. Now, in a
French auberg of the same class would
have been soup, outlets and fried pota-
toes, some sound vim ordinaire, a cup
of coffee and cheese: in England, at
least good bread, meat and beer or
tea. But he was in Vermont, and ex-
perience had taught him to indulge no
gastronomic hopes. Supper was an
nounced with as confident a tone as a
waiter might apprise you of its being
ready at the Parker house. The traveller
entered the fatal chamber. 1t was
gaunt, bare looking, and rendered
more ghastly by the light of one paraf-
tine lamp, which also shed around the
usual fragrance. There was a long
table, heaped with the debris of the
last meal, and mottled with hebdomadal
gravies. Amid these hideous prandial
"reminiscences there had been cleared
what was intended to be an oasis for
his special behoof, and there he found
a leaden and under-baked apple pie,
aanked by doughnuts, to be washed
down with frightful decoction by a
flight of imagination called tea. Alb
horring suicide, he recoiled from the
lethal board. avowing with depreca-
-ory tone, that he dared not touch
hose Vermontian delicacies at so ad-
vanced an hour of the night. Had
hey, he asked, in coaxing tone and
With best company smile, any eggs?
They came. He saw and opened one,
md as the embryo chicken burst from
is seclusion he burst from the room.
de returned to the flesh-pots of New
I ork, vowing that his days of American
pleasure travel were ended.
The strange thing is that in certain
districts whose natural advantages
correspond to the picturesque retreats
n Europe it has not occurred to per-
IONS so intelligent as Yankees usually
ire to give the best of plain fare, with
clean table-cloths and clean napkins.
Take for instance, such place as Pitts
ield. Beautifully situated, and easily
reached by two railroads from New
York, with an exquisite country around
It, the place seems marked out for a
summer retreat. But go to the hotels,
and if you are cursed with any nicely
in the matter of food mealtimes become
a burden to you. Scientists and
have been firmly per-
'uaded that murder originates with
digestion, and we have little
loubt that the atrocities of Jesse
Pomeroy might be traced to the poison
BUS influence of pie.