WHOLESALE FOOD, MECHANICAL COOKERY 177 



factured from spent yeast, is used to make the soups, and 

 is poured, with an equally nauseating result, over the hard 

 veal, the tough chicken, the " mousey " quails, and the 

 tasteless beef and mutton, which are never roasted, but 

 are baked or stewed in boiling fat though shamelessly 

 described as " rotis " in the pretentious and mendacious 

 " menu " placed on the dinner-table. The consequence is 

 that the tourist, who has been overfed at home, eats very 

 little, and his. health benefits. But in such an hotel the 

 man who lives carefully when at home, and desires a 

 simple but properly cooked meal, is reduced to a state of 

 indigestion, semi-starvation and misery. 



The Englishman who is disgusted by the new mechan- 

 ical methods of cookery in the great hotels of Continental 

 " resorts," returns to London, and finds the same atrocious 

 system at work not only in the public restaurants, but in 

 his club. Nowhere in London can you rely on being 

 served with really fresh fish, however highly you may pay 

 for it. Rarely it is fresh, usually it is not. The ice 

 storage people take good care that you shall not obtain 

 fresh fish, and so retain your taste for it. Nowhere at 

 club or restaurant, with rare exceptions, can you obtain 

 meat roasted in the old-fashioned way on a roasting-jack, 

 carefully " basted " during the process, and served when 

 exactly cooked to a turn. There were, only a few years 

 ago, one or two such places surviving both clubs and 

 restaurants where proper roasting was done, but, like 

 the rest, they have now adopted lazy, economical, money- 

 saving methods. Their managers calculate that what they 

 do will serve. It is good enough for the crowd ! So at last 

 you abandon the efforts to obtain decent simple food, in 

 club or hotel, and dine with your friend en famille. The 

 same thing confronts you. The joint has been baked in an 

 oven, of which it smells, and is surrounded by a sickly 

 gravy, produced by pouring hot water over it ! In con- 



12 



