The New York herald., 1922-10-08
To Please the Palate
BY ]. X. MUMFORD.

the day when a little tablet laden with
concentrated calories shall finally drive
cooks to join the bartenders in innocuous
desuetude.
It's all a matter--as I said in the be-
ginning-of climate, culture and pocket
book-plus perhaps a pinch of tradition.
But changes are on the way, and it is
not amiss to begin to collect all the odds
and ends of knowledge concerning food
before it becomes itself tradition. You
may look with fine scorn on the fellow
human who makes god Of his stomach"
or digs his grave with his teeth.'' but
what has engrossed the time and thought
of a world, since the crust got hard
enough for man to find solid place to
stand on, can be no mean subject for
thought or research. What folks eat, the
world around, and how tasty it is, is GER
tainly more piquant subject to the av-
erage human than whether the palace
zooic strata in the bed of the Rio de la
Plata contain proof of mans presence in
South America 200 years ago. There
fore, what indictment can stand against
the man who has made it a collateral pur-
pose of his days to eat in as many
languages as possible? A very proper
study of mankind it seems fair to say. is
the vittles of mankind. They reveal him
as nothing else can do.
To keep humanity stocked and running
through the aeons has taken a powerful
lot of food. Still humanity-at least the
lucky part of it-has gone right on through
the centuries getting its three meals day
and in England and Germany they pre-
fer six.
In New York. half of peoples time is
spent eating, getting ready to eat and
getting over it, and since the saloons de-
parted and people took to lickering up at
home, every third shop is a restaurant
But there is yet no fixed or definite char
acter to New York vittles. The bill of
fare is in a formative stage. America is
the same hodgepodge in food that it is
in population. Immigrating races from all
the world have set up here their food
of them takes on a pervasive aroma of
Colonial New England. Again the climate
and the tradition. The Italian restaurant
doesn't stay italian. It's only a matter of
time when it must provide succulent as
sortment of "pie"-or perish.
The struggle to carry on with the simon
pure French or italian, Hungarian, Swe-
dish, Turkish, Chinese or Hawaiian food
schedule ends invariably in the triumph
of ham and eggs and the New England
boiled dinner. The native dishes-the drros
con polio or the fulIte kohlhoUen or the
fritto misto-you can get them by coming
around on Tuesdays and Fridays The rest
of the time you might as well be in
Childs's or the Eagle Hotel in Poughkeepsie
for all the foreign flavor you will find.
But they all leave their mark We are
the melting pot. Along with a composite
population-an amalgamated race-we are
building a composite dietary. When it is
blent it will be worth eating. Until then
it is a patchwork and a lottery. The
Frenchman has taught us the artistry as
well as the nutritive value of soup. The
italian brother has made garlic respectable
and established forever the fact that the
pasta of the Mediterranean has a wider
range of uses than to be baked In a basin,
puddled with milk in the middle and caked
with cheese on top. Spaghetti, with an