When Lord Bacon complained of what was in his time carpet gardening, he said: “You may see as good sights, many times, in tarts.” Miss Edgeworth ENGLISH AND FRENCH COOKERY 447 mentions the desert island at Rosamond’s wedding dinner, on which the bride and bridegroom were represented by two figures seated on a mount, with a piece of rock-candy at their feet, and gravel walks of shot comfits intersecting the island in all direc- tions. But we have gone beyond all this in the present fashion of many colours and so-called decorations. It is true now, as Dr. Johnson said, that “ wherever the dinner is ill got there is “ poverty, or there is avarice, or there is stupidity. In short, “ the family is somehow grossly wrong, for a man seldom thinks “ with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner, “ and if he cannot get that well dressed he should be suspected “ of inaccuracy in other things.” * English cooks should pride themselves on preparing our excellent English meat, fish and vegetables as well as possible, observing the most scrupulous cleanliness, wasting nothing that can be used, and serving every dish with the utmost neatness. Great attention should be paid to delicate flavouring, and to the preparation of those sauces which often make all the difference between the clumsy and the artistic serving of a dinner. Bread Sauce and Melted Butter ought never to fail in excellence, especially as they are the two standard English sauces. Indeed, Melted Butter has often been called our only sauce, and yet how seldom it is made properly ! When Baron Hullock died, some fifty years ago, a legal contem- porary of his exclaimed with genuine emotion, “ What an “ irreparable loss ! He was a good man, an excellent man. He “ had the best melted butter I ever tasted in my life ! ” The difference between a gourmet and a gourmand cannot be better shown than by comparing the dinner chosen by Lord Dudley and the favourite dishes of Dr. Johnson. A goxmnet indulges a delicate and fastidious taste ; a gourmand swallows quantities of the food which pleases a generally coarse palate. Dr. Johnson’s special dainties, according to Mrs. Thrale (“ Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D.,” page 102), were “a leg of “pork boiled till it dropped from the bone, a veal-pye with “ plums and sugar, or the outside cut of a salt buttock of beef.” Of these dishes Dr. Johnson would eat enormous quantities and in great haste, and so totally absorbed was he in his food that he did not even pay attention to remarks addressed to him. After * “ Life of Dr. Johnson.” G. B. Hill. Vol. i, p. 467. 448 ENGLISH AND FRENCH COOKERY dinner he would pour melted butter as well as cream into his chocolate, and it was not unusual for him to finish the lobster sauce by spreading all that remained of it on his plum-pudding. In spite of these coarse habits Dr. Johnson often boasted of the niceness of his palate. Possibly he was rather a glutton than a gourmand.

AI-modernized reading of the original text

When Lord Bacon complained of what was in his time carpet gardening, he said: “You may see as good sights, many times, in tarts.” Miss Edgeworth mentions the desert island at Rosamond’s wedding dinner, on which the bride and bridegroom were represented by two figures seated on a mount, with a piece of rock-candy at their feet, and gravel walks of shot comfits intersecting the island in all directions. But we have gone beyond all this in the present fashion of many colours and so-called decorations. It is true now, as Dr. Johnson said, that “ wherever the dinner is ill got there is “ poverty, or there is avarice, or there is stupidity. In short, “ the family is somehow grossly wrong, for a man seldom thinks “ with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner, “ and if he cannot get that well dressed he should be suspected “ of inaccuracy in other things.” * English cooks should pride themselves on preparing our excellent English meat, fish and vegetables as well as possible, observing the most scrupulous cleanliness, wasting nothing that can be used, and serving every dish with the utmost neatness. Great attention should be paid to delicate flavouring, and to the preparation of those sauces which often make all the difference between the clumsy and the artistic serving of a dinner. Bread Sauce and Melted Butter ought never to fail in excellence, especially as they are the two standard English sauces. Indeed, Melted Butter has often been called our only sauce, and yet how seldom it is made properly ! When Baron Hullock died, some fifty years ago, a legal contemporary of his exclaimed with genuine emotion, “ What an “ irreparable loss ! He was a good man, an excellent man. He “ had the best melted butter I ever tasted in my life ! ” The difference between a gourmet and a gourmand cannot be better shown than by comparing the dinner chosen by Lord Dudley and the favourite dishes of Dr. Johnson. A gourmet indulges a delicate and fastidious taste ; a gourmand swallows quantities of the food which pleases a generally coarse palate. Dr. Johnson’s special dainties, according to Mrs. Thrale (“ Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D.,” page 102), were “a leg of “pork boiled till it dropped from the bone, a veal-pye with “ plums and sugar, or the outside cut of a salt buttock of beef.” Of these dishes Dr. Johnson would eat enormous quantities and in great haste, and so totally absorbed was he in his food that he did not even pay attention to remarks addressed to him. After * “ Life of Dr. Johnson.” G. B. Hill. Vol. i, p. 467. dinner he would pour melted butter as well as cream into his chocolate, and it was not unusual for him to finish the lobster sauce by spreading all that remained of it on his plum-pudding. In spite of these coarse habits Dr. Johnson often boasted of the niceness of his palate. Possibly he was rather a glutton than a gourmand.

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