COOKERY. 199 
a sure taste, a delicate palate, and must never forget that 
“seasoning is the rock on which indifferent cooks make ship- 
wreck.” This is to say, that in the sublime culinary art, sense. 
tact, and experience are better than the learning which only 
exhibits, and sometimes defeats itself, in over-elaboration, and 
costly excess. President Loubet, at the Culinary Show in 
Paris (1902), said to the assembled chefs, and scullions: “ France 
is famous all over the world for her literature, her arts, and her 
Cookery. Thanks to French Cookery, plebeians like you, and 
me receive crowned heads at our tables. Continue, then, to be 
good cooks: attend well to your sauces, and devote to them 
all your talent, so that they in return may heap honour upon 
yourselves.” ‘The man,” said Brillat Savarin, ‘“ who invents 
a new plat is a greater benefactor to the human race than the 
man who discovers a new planet.” But a natural.aptitude for 
the art of cooking must be possessed—‘ On peut devenir jruitier ; 
on est né rotisseur.” 
In the time of our Queen Elizabeth the red-nosed cook ruled 
omnipotent in big kitchens; his sceptre was a rolling-pin, a 
case of knives swung at his side, and chests of spices were his 
crown jewels. Local dishes were then strictly retained. Devon- 
shire had its white pot, and clouted cream ; Cornwall its herring, 
and pilchard pies; Hampshire was renowned for its honey ; 
and Gloucestershire for its lampreys. In 1750 the first public 
Restaurant was founded in France at Paris by a cook named 
Boulanger, over whose shop and dining rooms was displayed 
the Latin inscription, ‘‘ Venite omnes quit stomacho laboratis, 
et ego restaurabo vos””—‘‘ Come to me all you who are hungry, 
and I will restore you to comfort.” : 
Broadly speaking, it may be said that most forms of cooking 
actually lessen the digestibility of animal foods, and increase 
that of vegetable foods. Moreover, it is found by doctors that 
many sick persons can take raw, or much underdone meats more 
easily than other forms of nutriment. The general effect of 
cooking on the structure of meat is to lessen the consistence of 
its fibres by converting into soft gelatin the hitherto firm 
connective tissue which holds them together, also to remove 
fat by melting it down; the chief result of cooking on meat 1s 
to diminish its amount of water. That meat is rendered less 
digestible in proportion to the degree of cooking which it receives, 
is shown by the ascertained fact that three and a half ounces 
