of Holland at the expense of those of other countries—heaven keep me from such injustice!—which would be in me rank ingratitude. Every country has its own kind of women and its own cookery, and in both it is all a matter of taste. One man likes roast chicken, another roast duck; as for me, I love both, and roast goose too.
Regarded from the high idealistic standard, women the world over have a wonderful affinity with the cuisine or cookery of their country, wherever it be. Are not British beauties now—candidly confessed—just so wholesome, nourishing, solid, substantial, inartistic, and yet so admirable as old England's good and simple food: roast beef, roast mutton, pudding in flaming cognac, vegetables boiled once in water, with only two kinds of gravy, of which one is melted butter.[1] There smiles no fricassée, there we are softly deceived by no flattering vol-au-vent, there sighs no refined ragout, there we are not flirted with and flattered by a thousand kinds of stuffed, boiled, puffed, roasted, sugared, piquant, sentimental, declamatory, declaratory dishes such as we find in a French restaurant, and which have a startling
- ↑ I think it was Voltaire who first remarked that England had one hundred religions and only one sauce, i.e., one gravy. Even to-day, while there is very commonly in the United States a different gravy for every roast, there is the same "made" article in England at many very respectable tables for all. But the meat is good.
