THE BURNT OFFERING OF THE JEWS 179 



importance in their subsequent development. Character 

 and capacity are really formed in those early years. Food 

 preferences, no less than mental and moral qualities, are 

 then created. Yet the children of both rich and poor are 

 in these early stages either left to haphazard or entrusted 

 to ignorant nursemaids. For those of us who were not 

 born to the present system the transition to the new 

 methods of wholesale cookery is an abomination, and to 

 escape from them a matter of difficulty. We have to 

 secure an ancient roasting-jack and a large clear fire in our 

 own kitchen, and to instruct our cook — since no woman has 

 taught her what she ought to know — in the art of roasting 

 and grilling, in the preparation of Yorkshire pudding, in 

 the mystery of the marrow-bone and the proper and distinct 

 use of garlic, onions, shalots, chives, chervil, tarragon, 

 marjoram, basil, other herbs, and divers peppers, and finally 

 to train her in the supreme accomplishment of the season- 

 ing of a salad. 



Maybe that the present established relations of our 

 appetites to the time-honoured savours, by which the 

 ancient Jews sought to propitiate the Deity, are destined 

 to be superseded. On the other hand it is quite possible 

 that all the juggling of modern " machine " cookery is a 

 false step, and injurious to digestion and health. It is 

 not unlikely that there is no relish which has so sure a 

 hold on the digestion of European man, no appeal to the 

 cerebral mechanism controlling the liberation of his gastric 

 juices, which is so infallible as that emanating from " well 

 and truly " roasted or grilled meat. 



It is not easy to account for the present neglect of 

 decent cookery and the triumph of the sham French 

 cookery (for it is not French at all !) which is at present 

 foisted on a long-suffering public. Probably the enor- 

 mously increased number of visitors to foreign resorts and 

 of frequenters of restaurants in London have led to huge 



