The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-06-14

such as tropical people everywhere are
 exceedingly fond of, getting their car
 bon preferably from sugary foods
 rather than from fat. The Mexican palate has to have a foreign education | really to like pickles which all Ameri cans appear to crave. So exotic are pickles that the Spanish name "encur- tides" have given place to ''peekles" | by which even the Spanish shopkeep CTS know them best. There Is q grow l ing demand here among the Mexican people of the better class for oatmeal and other American cereals, physicians recommending them for anaemic peo-
 pie and for delicate children.
 In a cosmopolitan city like this there is a give-an-take in dishes, and so it comes about that in many households Mexican, French and American cu- linary preparations come on the table.
 The cooks who succeed one another in
 the city restaurants contribute to the
 growing variety of the bill of fare. The
 result is that the distinctively Mexican
 cuisine must be looked for in small
 places remote from the capital
 There are many Mexicans, especially
 lodiGp, W IlO bo HUI llhC iOlCioh SpOAAiii6i
 and some of them travelling in the
 United States have been known to re-
 gard with something like abhorrence
 most of the great and splendid hotels.
 There is nothing to eat in the United
 States,' say these periodically pre-
 judiced ladies' Mexican dishes are apt
 to be most savory, spiced and perhaps puiquant with pepper. When one has grown accustomed to the best Mexican cooking, American dishes seem insipid. Not few Anglo-Saxon residents com plain that when they go home on visit they find the cuisine very tame.
 The best Mexican cooks, who have inherited the old traditions, keep up many of the old Spanish dishes, and it is fortunate that the Spanish 'al- bondiguillas" Greatly a Morish meat balD has been retained. It is not the tasteless connection of the careless American cook, but Is an artistic com pound with spices and delightful sauces varying in color and flavor according to taste Rice in the Valencian i style is very Spanish, and few cooks prepare it well. When an old fashioned | Mexican cook, such as may be found | in fine old families, presents a dish of | "arroz la valenciana" then you have a true gourmet's dellcacy, worthy of Brillat Savarin himself
 As for sweetmeats, old fashioned and | wealthy families keep up the Arabian ucstom of having many on the dinner table. sometimes half a dozen distinct | kinds. There are good housekeepers who can make several hundred vari- cites of "dulces," and 1t is said that the art is a most difficult one. The best Mexican families live well, spend- Ing lavishly on the table, and women n country houses, the men away, sit Town at noon to dinners of many The "picked-up' dinners is not a Mexican notion; in this lavish and people of means like to have a we'll supplied table.
 In many an hacienda house the table s set out abundantly, and the cooking s most appetlZing. Tn remote places n the country one finds cooks who are indeed jewels" possessed of culinary ore and proud to exercise their art Ind it is cause for philosophic medita- ion that so many of the dishes intro
 uced into Spain by the Moors, who in urn got their culinary traditions from he Saracens and Persians as we'll as heir architecture, should still survive !; n this pleasant land of Mexico.
 Arabic names persist in all our itchens here in Mexico, and the com honest utensils are found to suggest he Moors and their wonderful civili- ation. Some day an enthusiast will ppear who will make a book about the :, lf1uence of the Moors on the Latin :, merican cuisine which has been varied l Mexico. Central America, and the |, ,wer tropics, by the profusion of dis :. American roots, herbs and :. 'uits. It is fertile theme we'll worthy !, f investiga tion, and far mcce import z mt than grave dissertatio~s on Pan- o merican topics. We must eat sev- 'al times day; internat tional law is n abstraction remote from our daily |, ves.-Mexican Herald. ',