Chapter II: may be regarded as an Intermezzo--but a most important one, (2)

Why do we eat poultry, anyway? Surely not merely because we want food. If that were the case, why waste money on expensive chicken or turkey, when we could get the same amount of nourishment from many other foods at a mere fraction of the cost? _The reason why we eat chicken in preference to those other foods is that we want to enjoy its flavor._ And we do _not_ want frozen, undrawn poultry, not only because the freezing spoils the flavor but because the leaving of the entrails in the animal makes it unwholesome.

One of the main arguments of the packers in favor of leaving fowls undrawn is that they dry out sooner when drawn. A more deadly boomerang it would be difficult to throw. There is only one way in which the drying carcass of a fowl can get its moisture: from the contents of the entrails. That is what is meant by osmosis. Thus out of their own mouths the packers stand convicted of offering the public fowl which is disgustingly tainted.

The best part of the fowl--the second joint--gets the taint soonest, because it lies nearest the intestines. The wings and drumsticks get it last. It is important to know this, because it explains why experts may differ as to the time it takes to spoil the flavor of a stored bird. Usually the process is quite rapid.

The whole question of the tainting of meat by osmosis deserves much more attention than it has received. A wild boar has to be eviscerated at once after being killed. If this is not done, none of the meat is fit to eat except the head--which explains why "wild boar's head," and the head alone--often figures on bills of fare in France and Germany. My wife, who was brought up in Southern France knew a wealthy silk merchant, a great hunter in his own domains, who always promptly removed the entrails of the boars he killed, before the carcass grew cold, the consequence being that all the meat was good to eat, as his friends were given many a chance to find out.

For several years some of the New York butchers have indulged in the custom of exhibiting in their windows the carcasses of lambs with their pelts still on. If a Paris butcher did that, the first of his customers coming along would ask him if he didn't know that unless the pelt is taken off at once after killing a _mouton_, the meat gets from it a disagreeable "sheepy" flavor--which is a very different thing from the unique and delicious flavor properly dressed mutton has.

Perhaps the most striking illustration of the rapid action of osmosis is provided by venison, which is unfit to eat if the deer has been tortured by a cruel chase. Its terror affects the digestive juices, and the whole body becomes tainted.

IS COLD STORAGE A BLESSING?

In an editorial entitled "Cold Storage Hardly a Blessing" the New York "Times" called attention during the holiday season of 1911 to the fact that the price of cold-storage turkeys was six cents a pound less than that of the fresh-killed birds. "This difference of almost 25 per cent. is an admission by the cold-storage people, forced from them by unalterable public opinion, that their much-wanted wares are to just about that extent inferior to those which they vociferously declare to be no better."

Quoting the happy expression that cold-storage fowls taste "as if they had been buried and dug up again," the same writer remarks: "None of us really knows how fowls do taste after they have gone through that process. We can imagine the flavor, however, and do, noses helping tongues."

Were it not for the storage people, chickens and eggs would come into our markets fresh, cheap, and in abundance at the time when they are at their best. But it is precisely when they are at their best and cheapest that the storage men corner the market and hold the goods till they are good no more; whereupon they sell them at their own prices, largely increased through gambling. In view of such facts the "Times" refers to cold storage as "a baleful invention."

A baleful invention it certainly is--and a needless one, too. To quote Dr. Wiley again: "Poultry is a food product which under the present scientific methods of production can be furnished in a fresh state all the year. The necessity for cold storage, therefore, is not so apparent in this case as in that of fruit and other perishable foods."

The American public, surely, will not much longer tolerate the present condition of affairs. There are packers and packers. Some are more careful and cleanly in their methods than others; but cold-storage fowl at its best is more or less denatured, and at its worst it is worse than denatured, putting us almost on a level with the African Bushmen who, when they kill a sheep, eat the entrails with their contents. I would no more eat such undrawn storage poultry as is placed daily before thousands of my countrymen than I would the flesh of a hyena or a vulture.

It was estimated that, in 1912, $75,000,000 worth of poultry was consumed in New York City. Of this, only $1,500,000 represented the business done in live chickens, and nearly all of this went to the Kosher butchers of the East Side. Surely Christians cannot afford to be less cleanly than Hebrews in regard to what they put in their stomachs.

The time has come for Christians to gird up their loins and fight for untainted food on their tables, too. There is encouragement in the information that in one season 1,100 more cars of live poultry were shipped to New York City than the season before (1910), and that plants were being established near the city for providing poultry freshly slaughtered and dressed. The consumer must, however, make sure that the fowls are not only freshly killed but drawn within a few days; the second joint is sometimes tainted on the second day. Butchers and poultry dealers would make friends if they gave up the habit of charging for fowl at so much a pound including the intestines. Let them charge more per pound for the meat alone, refusing under any conditions to have an undrawn bird in their shops, and the poultry business will soon be doubled, nay, quintupled.

The fact that fresh fowl costs more than frozen is due to artificial conditions which can be remedied and _must_ be remedied. For the present, if you cannot afford a six-pound fowl, try one weighing three pounds. If your dealer understands--as mine understands--that you will not under any circumstances eat a cold-storage bird he will supply a fresh one. What you want is not quantity but quality--particularly the true chicken Flavor. In the chapter on Savory Cooking it will be shown how a few pounds of fresh chicken can be made to yield their delicious flavor to a dish much larger and much cheaper than would be afforded by a fowl double its size cooked in the usual way.

In Europe, most persons travel third class on the railways because they cannot afford first or second. In this country, nearly everybody can afford to travel first class. Americans are always bound to have the best of everything--if they know how to get it. Only in the gastronomic world are they--with the exception of the Jews--traveling third class--eating third-rate poultry prepared by third-rate cooks. This cannot last. We can afford the best. Let us have it.

SPOILING THE AMERICAN OYSTER.

Nowhere in the world are oysters more abundant than in America. Nowhere are they cheaper or better. As a rule, too, we cook them well, in various styles; but in the opinion of most epicures a cooked oyster is an oyster spoiled. Its food value in any case, raw or cooked, is very small, and it is chiefly as a relish that those who know how to eat value it. But for years the public has been allowing the men who market oysters to eliminate the very elements which give them relish by soaking them in fresh water, which makes them bloated, blonde, and tasteless.

The dealers declare that many consumers demand them that way; floating makes them bigger. There are such consumers; they sacrifice quality for quantity; they know not that usually the best oysters by far are the small brunettes straight from the deep sea; and they further demonstrate their gastronomic obtuseness by smothering their oysters under several strong condiments, which in themselves would destroy their delicate, natural Flavor.

In some of our States the government has come to the rescue of the epicure--who is in despair at this wholesale denaturing of his favorite delicacy--by enacting laws against the soaking of oysters because few of the streams in which this is done are free from typhoid and other deadly germs; but many of us do not feel sure that the health boards (because of indolence or "graft") exercise the necessary supervision, and therefore we deprive ourselves of the cheap luxury which Europeans have most reason to envy us. At banquets, where everybody used to eat oysters on the half-shell, it is noticeable how many plates the waiters remove that have not been touched.

Having thus summed up the indictment, let us consider a few of the more important details.

The London "Lancet" of April 22, 1911, had an editorial article on Shell Fish and Disease in which it pointed out that while from the nature of the case the testimony is usually of a very circumstantial kind, "which only becomes convincing in its cumulative aspects," there are instances on record like the outbreaks following certain banquets in Southampton and Portsmouth which admitted of no doubt as to the source of the disease.

Dr. H. T. Bulstrode made a comprehensive report upon enteric fever and gastro-enteritis in England to the Local Government Board of London, in 1906, in which he showed by means of maps how many of the mussel, oyster, and cockle beds were exposed to contamination, his revelations being, as the "Lancet" remarks, "decidedly disquieting." Even in cases where the shellfish were collected from locations relatively remote from contamination by sewage they were likely to be "brought back and cleansed on shore much too near the mouths of sewers." England is thus in the same predicament as the United States, but that is small comfort for us.

In an address before the New York Academy of Sciences delivered by Dr. George A. Soper, President of the Metropolitan Sewerage Commission and reported in the "Times" of March 14, 1911, it was pointed out that there are over 500 sewer outlets discharging into the rivers and harbor of New York each day a volume of sewage that would fill the channel of the East River from the Brooklyn Bridge to a distance of fifteen miles. "New York gets many of its oysters from Jamaica Bay--about a million bushels a year. The water at this section is heavily polluted, and to this can no doubt be traced a great part of the typhoid that breaks out in this city. The Board of Health has found that 15 per cent. of all typhoid is due to the eating of polluted shell fish."

James L. Kellogg, professor of biology in Williams College, in his admirable book on Shell Fish Industries[4] sums up the results of his thorough study of this subject in a chapter on Bivalves in Relation to Disease. It may be stated as a fact, he says, that "epidemics are sometimes caused by eating uncooked oysters. Several times they have been traced directly to that source. The evidence collected on that point in this country and abroad is conclusive."

There are four reasons for objecting to the process of "floating" oysters. The first--the danger of conveying a deadly disease--has been sufficiently dwelt on. Let us now consider the second:

Were all oysters taken from the ocean and not near the mouths of harbors or rivers that bear sewage, no one need ever hesitate to eat them raw. The trouble lies in the fact that, as Professor Kellogg puts it, "before food mollusca are marketed they are _almost invariably_ placed for a few hours in fresh water to undergo what the oystermen term the drinking process. Oysters sold in shell as well as those that have been shucked are usually subjected to the fresh water treatment. To make delays and the cost of transportation as light as possible, the localities selected for this are almost without exception in harbors or river mouths near large markets. In very many cases such waters bear the sewage of cities of hundreds of thousands of inhabitants."

With these facts--which have often been pointed out--before him, is it necessary to call the reader's attention to the circumstance that even if it had never been proved that oysters can serve as conveyers of deadly diseases, the process of floating them--that is, _bloating them with sewage_--must be condemned as unspeakably vile and disgusting?

What aggravates the matter is that oysters have what Professor Kellogg calls "wonderfully efficient mechanisms for _straining dangerous organisms out of the water_." "Several gallons of water every day pass through the gills of every full-grown oyster or clam, and every solid particle is removed from it and remains in the body." "It is thus plain that even if relatively few in the water, the chances are that a dangerous number of disease organisms will be strained out of it by these shellfish."

Indeed, were it not for the fact that most of these disease organisms are destroyed by the digestive fluids of oysters and those who eat them, there would be vastly more typhoid fever than there is now from the thirty million bushels that are sent to our markets every year from our shore beds. The danger comes from the organisms on the gills, or on the shell, which, in that case, it is not safe to handle.

Berlin has its _Rieselfelder_--vast meadows and gardens made fertile with the city's sewage. This liquid sewage is subjected to such thorough chemical treatment that ere it reaches its destination it is perfectly harmless. When the _Rieselfelder_ were opened, the city fathers had such confidence in their chemist that they ceremoniously drank some of this water. It was a disgusting, though perfectly safe thing to do. The eating of our sewage-bloated oysters is both disgusting and unsafe.

"Cleanliness is next to godliness" is a motto which it is even more important to apply to the inside of the body than to the outside.

After this demonstration of the dangers and the filthiness of the process of floating oysters, it is needless to advance further arguments. But in order to complete the rout of the "floaters"--who have long fought so fiercely for the privilege of spoiling the American oyster--reference must be made to the two other indictments against them, because of the interest and importance attaching to them. One is moral and legal; the other, gastronomic.

Dr. Wiley sums up the two in one sentence: "Not only does it (floating) deceive the customer in regard to the size of the oyster but it deprives the oyster of its proper taste and flavor."

Osmosis comes into play in "floating," as he further points out: "By this process the body of the oyster affects a plumpness and largeness which materially increases its selling qualities, as it increases its weight and size and, therefore, the profits of the dealer. The principle of this process depends upon the fact that when a soft substance like an oyster, containing a mineral salt in its composition, is brought in contact with water, a process of diffusion takes place which is known in chemical physics as osmosis, whereby water passes through the cell walls and enters the cells of the oyster and the mineral substance thereof is forced out into the external water. Larger volumes of water pass into the cells than accompany the particles of mineral matter to the outside of the cells and the result is a swelling of the oysters and consequent increase in the size and weight by the addition of pure water, but at the expense of the natural salt, mostly chloride of sodium or common salt, which the oyster contains."

Thus does science confirm and explain the epicure's perception that oysters are denatured by being soaked in fresh water--_deprived of the tang of the sea_, which tang to any one who knows anything about the art of eating constitutes ninety-five per cent. of the value of an oyster.

There are exceptions to my statement that small oysters are the best. Some epicures prefer the large, adult Lynnhavens to the small Blue Points; and the Lynnhavens certainly are among the finest in flavor. But men who do prefer the naturally large oysters, or oysters that have been _legitimately_ fattened in _salt_ water, ought to be the first to fiercely resent the floating which is done to deceive them as to the _real_ size of the oysters they pay for, and gives them denatured oysters, bloated and sickened with sewage water.

Three centuries ago Massachusetts boasted oysters a foot in length, and in Maine a shell has been found measuring three inches over a foot. We need not worry, however, at the decreased size of our bivalves; it makes them more tender--though, to be sure, also less nutritious. In any case, however, the nutritive value of an oyster is so insignificant as to be practically negligible. How ludicrously small it is, is shown by Dr. Wiley. For one hundred pounds of shelled oysters, he says, only about ten pounds of meat are found. In ten pounds of the meat there is over 80 per cent. of water; so that "_the actual nourishment contained in 100 pounds of oysters is reduced to a little over one pound!_"

Could anything more triumphantly demonstrate the comparative importance of Flavor over nutriment in this, the most delicious of all sea foods?

Yet it is to this all-important Flavor that our dealers show such brutal indifference, not only in the various ways pointed out in the preceding pages but in other ways. For instance, oysters spoil even more rapidly than fish and should therefore be kept alive to the last possible moment before serving. Yet how lamentably seldom is this done! It can be done not only in cities on the coast, but in those of the interior, it being possible to keep oysters alive and in excellent state for consumption for a week or ten days or even longer.

It would be unjust to the oystermen to accuse them of perpetrating all their crimes against shellfish from sheer greed for extra gain. Ignorance also comes into play. Only one opener in fifty seems to know that the best thing by far about an oyster is the liquid in its shell. Watch the other forty-nine and you will see them wantonly wasting this precious, fragrant liquid, and in many cases they will serve the oyster on the flat shell, so that you get no juice at all. Always ask for them on the deep shell and don't be afraid, after you have transferred the morsel to your mouth to drink the liquid from the shell. It may not look elegant, but elegance be hanged!

Dealers who wish to get rich quick by creating an unprecedented demand for oysters with the real tang of the sea should bear all these things in mind and further prepare themselves by reading pages 158 to 164 of Dr. Wiley's _Foods and their Adulteration_. Then let them remember that honesty is the only profitable policy. The public is not in a mood to be fooled and trifled with any longer.

In the autumn of 1912 Dr. Wiley called attention (in "Good Housekeeping" for November) to the important fact that under present conditions not only is it seldom safe to eat raw oysters, but that they are particularly risky in two of the "R" months--September and October--because of the danger of pollution due to the crowding at the seashore, which is becoming greater and greater as the summers wear on, many of the resorts being near beds in which oysters thus become sewage-contaminated even before they are "floated" by dealers.

In September, 1912, the Bureau of Chemistry published its Bulletin 156 on _Sewage Polluted Oysters as a Cause of Typhoid and other Gastro-Intestinal Disturbances_, by George W. Stiles, Jr., Chief of the Bacteriological Laboratory. He reviews the literature on the subject, showing how in many cases epidemics of typhoid and other diseases were traced to the eating of raw shellfish, and then relates how, with a detective ingenuity worthy of a Sherlock Holmes or a Burns, seventeen cases of typhoid and eighty-three cases of gastro-enteritis following a banquet held at Goshen, N. Y., in October, 1911, were traced directly to eating Rockaway oysters floated at Indian Creek, and twenty-six other cases, ten of them typhoid, were traced to the eating of Rockaways, some of which came from the same lot furnished for the Goshen banquet.

The Rockaway oysters thus got a "black eye," but if perhaps the worst offenders, they are by no means the only ones. "All the oysters of New York Bay, Narragansett Bay, and the Potomac River, the waters near Norfolk, Va., and the mouth of the James River, the mouths of the Connecticut and Merrimac Rivers, and other industrial streams, and the continental border of Long Island Sound, are open to suspicion," says Dr. Wiley, and should not be eaten raw. More and more, too, will object to eating them cooked. Boiled filth does not appeal to the imagination.

The plain and distressing truth is that our great shell fish business, the pride of Gastronomic America, will be ruined altogether unless the barbarous custom of discharging the sewage matter of cities and villages into rivers and the ocean is stopped. It seems incredible that we, with our incalculable wealth, should be so far behind Europeans, especially Germans, in this matter of keeping our sea food clean and edible. The disposal of sewage matter after German methods is the most important problem now before the American public, more important by far than tariff questions, warships, irrigation projects and Panama canals.

Typhoid fever could be reduced to a minimum were the sewage disposed of scientifically as it is in some German and English cities. The startling assertion that in 1909 there were more cases of typhoid in the United States than of plague in India was made by Dr. Allan J. McLaughlin, of the United States Public Health Service at a meeting in New York, December 5, 1912, of the Association of Life Insurance Presidents. The typhoid fever rate per 100,000 is, in Berlin, only 2.9; in London it is 3.3; in Vienna, 3.8. In Boston it is 11.3; in New York, 11.6; in Chicago, 13.7; in Philadelphia, 17.5; in Washington, 23.2; while in Milwaukee and Minneapolis it rises to 45.7 and 58.7 respectively. The annual loss to the country from these fever cases is put at $100,000,000.

"SMOKED" HAM, BACON, AND FISH.

Some Americans have an inexplicable prejudice--which, however, is fast disappearing--against fresh pork and against sausages, but bacon and ham are relished universally, and it is therefore of national importance that they should be made appetizing. But they fare as badly as our bivalves and our fowls. Time was when a crisp slice of bacon would give zest to a whole breakfast, but the bacon served now in nineteen cases out of twenty has no more flavor than sawdust; it is eaten without pleasure, and therefore burdens the stomach for hours. Virginia ham has maintained its supremacy and there are a few packers of other hams and bacon who uphold a high standard; but most of them have succumbed to the temptation of curing their pork products with cheap preservatives which denature them, making them as flavorless as floating makes the oysters, and cold storage the poultry.

Has the reader ever spent a summer in a farmhouse and casually come into a corner of the woodshed where smoked hams were suspended from the rafters? If so, he will remember the appetizing fragrance which suddenly made his mouth water and make him long for breakfast. Some persons think they do not like smoked meats; but they almost invariably do when they thus come across the real thing.

Smoke is not only the best of all preservatives, it is also the most valuable of condiments, imparting to meats or fish a delicate aroma without altering their natural flavor. A famous Austrian physiologist, Professor Brücke, pointed out many years ago that smoked meats are more digestible than fresh meats; but he did not give the reason, which is that the delicate yet penetrating Flavor added by the smoke creates an appetite and thus causes a flow of digestive juices to the stomach. The American consumer is now usually deprived of this healthful condiment and wholesome pleasure because those who handle pork products have discovered that they can save much time, trouble, and money by soaking them, as just intimated, in cheap solutions of chemicals instead of smoking them in the old-fashioned way, carefully and _slowly_.

Farmers are busy folk and therefore naturally eager to learn ways of lessening their labors. They consequently succumb readily on reading an alluring advertisement like the following, clipped from a paper published in a Western village:

"=Smoke Your Meat With a Brush=

There's a new and better way of smoking meat. You accomplish
in but a trifle of time all that you can by the tedious old
fashioned process. Your meat will be hard and firm, it will be
protected from all germs and insects and it will have a more
delicate flavor than if smoked in the old way. Use

=Brown's Condensed Smoke=

It contains all the preservative elements of the smoke,
without the rank, disagreeable elements. You simply apply it
with a brush or sponge, giving the meat one or two coats, and
the smoking is done. Price 75c."

In England, also, long famed for its deliciously flavored smoked hams and bacon, the farmers and packers have been approached by the tempter. "A case in point," says the "Lancet" of February 5, 1910, "is seen in a rapid method of making hams, bacon, and certain fishes appear to be smoked by applying to them a fluid called 'smoke essence.'"

Is it straight dealing, it asks, to call an article painted over with smoke essence "smoked"? "We had occasion recently," this leading medical journal continues, "to examine a specimen of smoke essence in the laboratory, and the results of the analysis were interesting. We found it to consist chiefly of creosote, analine dye, and a salt of iron." Even if such a mixture is harmless "that fact does not justify leading a consumer to suppose that a bloater, a tongue, a rasher of bacon or ham, treated by this simple process, had been adequately cured by the operation well known as 'smoking.' There can be no question at all that the color is added to complete the disguise, and we feel bound to admire the ingenuity of the inventor of a mixture who puts into it a salt of iron which is calculated to give a side of bacon an appearance of natural rustiness."

In conclusion, the "Lancet" expresses its regret that such matters as these affecting the purity of the food supply were not "strongly dealt with" when the Departmental Committee on Food Preservatives and Coloring Matters issued its recommendations nearly a decade previously.

It is passing strange how patiently the average Englishman, and still more the average American, allows himself to be fooled by food manipulators whose chief aim is to save time, trouble, and expense.

The familiar definition of genius as "a capacity for taking pains" is incorrect, but such a capacity is certainly necessary for the production of the best foods, including bacon and ham. We Americans, speaking collectively, lack it and that is one of the main reasons why we must be branded as an ungastronomic nation.

A striking illustration of the importance the Bohemians, for instance, attach to such matters is found in the village of Wallern, where a coöperative society has been formed for the sole purpose of getting meats smoked in the best possible manner, with beech wood.

The point I wish to call special attention to is that the pork products in this model house are smoked, according to the size of the pieces, for a period of _two to three months_.

In a recent _American_ book on pigs these directions are given: "If the hams are to be smoked they should be hung in the smoke stoves _at least three days_."

Three days! In Germany and Austria, where the world-famed Westphalian and Prager hams are cured, six weeks is the minimum time for a good article. The maximum, for the highest-priced hams, is three months.

We are now in a position to understand why so many Americans imagine they do not like smoked meats. They have in mind either such meats as have been chemically "smoked," miles away from any smoke house or stove, or such as have been actually smoked, but too briefly, or in too strong smoke.

Dealers have slyly taken advantage of the naturally growing aversion to "smoked" meats. "Slightly Smoked" is a label one often sees now, and ere long, if not checked they will have the audacity to say to a housewife asking for smoked ham or fish or bacon that they have "none in stock," there being "so little demand for it."

That is the way many of the best things are crowded out of the market.

In conclusion, let me whisper in the reader's ear the secret why those who handle pork products and fish are so eager to get rid of the smoke house that during the process of smoking the ham and bacon may lose up to twenty per cent. of its weight.

"But why does the dealer not charge more, to make up for loss of weight?" He does, dear Madam. He charges more every year and saves the full weight, too, by avoiding the smoke house. The joke is on you. He will do this as long as you meekly tolerate it. He will tell you with a look of injured innocence that you are "the first one to complain"--and perhaps you are, though merely one of many thousands who have been fooled.

As I have said, there are exceptions. A few firms are selling real smoked ham and bacon, and they are coining money. Others will perhaps find out ere long that it pays better to please the public than to fool it.

At present, the outlook seems hopeless. Some years ago, when there were still a few dealers left who did not try to get rich quick at the expense of your stomach and health, I used to lunch often on smoked fish. But in the year 1912 you could not--at least I could not--get a genuine smoked fish for love or money. One day in December, I walked into a delicatessen store in which I saw through the window a plateful of whitefish, a variety which is particularly good smoked. They were choice specimens, but after a sniff at them I beat a retreat with, I presume, a disgusted expression. "What's the matter with those fish?" asked the dealer. "They are a first-class article." "Fine fish," I retorted, "but they are not smoked." "They may not be smoked enough...." "They are not smoked at all," I interrupted, "they are chemically preserved and dyed to save weight." "You seem to know more about it than I do," he said. "I certainly do," I answered: "If they were smoked I would take a dozen of them."

Fancy the situation--to be unable, in the second largest city of the world, to get smoked fish! I have tried dozens of places, always with the same result. If others refused to buy the denatured stuff offered, smoked fish would soon be in the market again.

The best foreign methods of smoking meats are described in No. 3655 of the Daily Consular and Trade Reports (Washington, December 8, 1909). Fortunes are in store for all American packers who will follow those methods and advertise _honestly_:

"We give our pigs clean food, feeding a fine flavor into our hams and bacon; we do not destroy this flavor with chemical preservatives but intensify its appetizing qualities by the use of beechwood smoke."

Where beechwood or hickory, oak, or maple are not available, corn cobs make a cheap and satisfactory substitute.

FLAVOR IN BUTTER.

On every table in the land, except that of the very poor, there is one article which appears two or three times a day all the year round, and that article is butter. More than $300,000,000 worth of it is consumed every year in the United States. One would therefore suppose that the public would insist with all its might and main on having its butter good. It does no such thing, but meekly accepts the indifferent and often vile stuff offered by dealers--an unpalatable lubricator which I would no more think of eating than I would axle grease.

A few years ago Miss Alice Lakey, chairman of the food investigating committee of the National Consumers' League, said that "ninety-five per cent. of all samples of butter submitted were adulterated. We are eating practically no pure butter."

While there is evidence to show that butter was made four thousand years ago, it seems to have taken some nations a long time to "catch up with the procession." We are a long way ahead, on the whole, of the Spaniards, who, as late as the seventeenth century, kept butter in medicine shops "for external use only" (doubtless there were good reasons!) and who to this day hardly know what edible butter is; or of the Irish of that same century who are spoken of by James Houghton as rotting their table butter by burying it in bogs. But we are lamentably behind some of the European nations, notably the French, Germans, Austrians, and Swiss, in the making and the appreciation of first-class butter.

In some of our leading restaurants and hotels, as well as in expensive clubs and the residences of wealthy families, one may come across such butter; but one is not sure of getting the real thing even after paying the highest price. I seldom eat it at home--there are too many disappointments--and when I travel in the United States I rarely have the courage to try it. In rural summer resorts we have found that the only way to get edible butter is to make it ourselves.

As regards Europe, on the contrary, I can repeat what I have said about poultry: that during a five months' trip in 1912 I did not once have butter placed before me which I could not eat with pleasure.

The unwillingness of Americans to take pains in the preparation of foods to which I have referred as one of the main indications of our being an ungastronomic nation is strikingly illustrated in the department of butter-making, wherein it is the chief cause of our inferiority.

Our Government has done its best to enlighten the butter-makers. In 1904 the Department of Agriculture published, for free distribution, Farmers' Bulletin No. 241: "Butter-making on the Farm," by Edwin H. Webster, Chief of Dairy Division, Bureau of Animal Industry; and, in 1905, Circular No. 56 of the same Bureau: "Facts Concerning the History, Commerce and Manufacture of Butter," by Harry Hayward, assistant chief. These pamphlets contain in concise form invaluable information which, if generally utilized, would revolutionize the butter business.

Mr. Webster refers to "the great amount of poor butter made on the farm," and Mr. Hayward also confesses that "a very small percentage of all dairy butter made is of really high grade."

When one reads of all the diverse precautions that must be taken to ensure a good article, and bears in mind the characteristically American unwillingness to take pains with the things that are put into our stomachs, one wonders not that our butter is so inferior.

A few of the hundred-and-one precautions necessary to secure a first-class article may be briefly mentioned. The cow must be kept carefully cleaned, particularly the udder, and so must the hands of the milker, and the pail which holds the milk. "The habit of some milkers of wetting their hands with milk just as they begin is a filthy practice and the cause of much bad milk and poor butter." There must be no hidden, inaccessible places in the pails, nor must rusty tinware be used, because it imparts a metallic flavor to the milk. Some of the so-called washing powders are very objectionable. The walls of the barn must be whitewashed, and the ventilation such that the air is changed every few minutes. The pails must be rinsed first with cold, then with boiling water. The milk must be removed as soon as possible from the barn, where it readily absorbs dust or bad odors from the air, and then stored in a cold place, far away from decaying vegetables or fruits or other things, the odors of which it might absorb. The sun should pervade the cold storage room but not look on the milk. If possible, the cream should be collected by means of a separator, for the proper handling of which there are a number of rules, the neglect of any one of which will spoil the butter. It is absolutely necessary to cool the cream thoroughly, immediately after separating, and to avoid mixing of cold with warm cream. Then there are a number of directions concerning churning; working the butter to get out the milk and water; packing; marketing; feeding the cows, and so on, none of which can be disregarded with impunity.

This complexity of the art of butter-making may help to explain the situation in America, but does not excuse it, for in the gastronomic countries of Europe people are not too lazy, ignorant, or indifferent to turn out a first-class article every day in the year.

What I wish to call particular attention to is that all these precautions necessary for the making of first-class butter relate to its Flavor. _Persons buying butter for any other purpose than the enjoyment of its Flavor are extremely foolish_, for they can get the same amount of fat and general nourishment very much cheaper in a hundred other ways.

It is for the sake of securing an agreeable aroma or Flavor that all the rules just enumerated, and two-score more, must be observed. If this is not done--if only one or two of them are neglected--there are developed in the milk, or the cream, or the churned butter, bacteria of a very disagreeable kind, which will convert butter that might have been of the highest grade into a second, third, or fourth grade article, or one quite unfit for human consumption, because of excessively rancid, fishy, smoky, tallowy, leeky, soapy, cheesy, or other flavors. The art of butter-making consists in eliminating all disagreeable flavors and fostering the agreeable ones.

Renovated or process butter is made of butter in which, on account of careless manufacture or storing, the disagreeable bacteria have so got the upper hand of the agreeable ones that even those persons who, because of a slender purse or an imperfectly developed sense of smell, are contented with fourth-grade butter, refuse to buy it. This stuff (often sold, _horribile dictu_, as "cooking butter") is subjected to a process of purification, which makes it a wholesome and nutritious article of diet. Yet it is sold at a much lower price, for the reason that it is inferior in Flavor to good butter.

The long and fierce fight between the butter-makers and the manufacturers of oleomargarine is also in the final analysis, a question of Flavor.

Oleomargarine is a mixture of vegetable and animal fats, diversely mixed. This mixture is churned with milk to impart a butter Flavor; or there is added to it more or less butter, in which case it is known commercially as butterine, although legally it is classified as oleomargarine.

If made honestly, of clean material, and unadulterated with borated Chinese egg-yolks, or with preservatives, oleomargarine is a perfectly unobjectionable and wholesome food. The trouble is that, as Dr. Wiley has pointed out (1911), "there has been a constant disposition on the part of dishonest manufacturers and dealers, since the time when oleomargarine became a commercial commodity, to sell it as butter. Although the penalties of National and State laws are very severe in this respect the practice is continued. The opportunity for gain is so great that the cupidity of the manufacturer overcomes his fear of punishment and disgrace."

There has been much outcry because of the special tax on oleomargarine and the severe laws against selling it as butter. As a matter of fact these laws should be even more severe and much more rigidly enforced. The practice of selling it as butter not only defrauds the consumer but it tends to drive real butter out of the market, since such butter cannot be produced at nearly so low a cost as margarine, especially if made with the care and expenditure of time necessary for the production of first-class butter. The best butter costs five or six times as much as the best margarine. It is needless to say that in the compounding of "butterine" the best butter is not likely to be used.

By mixing milk or butter with his fats, the manufacturer of margarine confesses that his own product lacks the one thing which gives butter its advantage, for table use, over a dozen other fats that might be chosen--its appetizing Flavor, which makes it digestible and enables us to eat it with relish every day in the year. It is owing to this superiority that pure butter is entitled to legal protection against unfair competition.

It might be argued that the American farmer, whose butter is, as we have seen, usually of a low grade, does not deserve the protection the Government gives him against the underselling of the margarine maker, because good oleomargarine is preferable to bad butter. Such protection is, however, due to the associated system of manufacture known as creameries. The creamery, which in 1900 had already usurped one-half the butter business in the country, "has done much," as Mr. Hayward remarks, "to improve the quality of American butter, and if all butter came direct from creameries there would be no such quantities sold by producers at prices which are often actually below the cost of production, as is the case at the present time."

SWEET BUTTER VERSUS SALT.

There are now a number of model creameries in the United States turning out butter which would probably equal the best European were it not habitually spoiled by the injudicious use of a "starter" to turn the cream quite sour, and by the addition of salt. The subtle and much disputed question of sour cream versus sweet will be discussed in the chapter on French Supremacy. That of "salt or no salt" must be disposed of now.

The assertion frequently made that unsalted butter tastes insipid to most users is not confirmed by my own experience. No doubt the subtle aroma of sweet butter escapes many who are partially anosmic (a frequent defect analogous to color-blindness), or who have neglected to train their sense of smell, or who have deadened their olfactory nerve by excessive smoking or drinking of strong liquors, so that they cannot appreciate the delicate aroma of European butter. But I have come across many Americans at home and abroad who, given a fair chance, instantly and emphatically preferred the unsalted butter.

Once I made a special experiment at a rural boarding house in Maine. Of a dozen persons at the table only one liked salt butter better; two had no decided preference, while the other nine voted, after a fair trial and comparison, for sweet butter first, last, and all the time.

The only trouble was that much more was consumed of the sweet than had been eaten of the salt; which shows the folly of those dealers who think they are smart in selling pounds of salt at the price of butter, whereas in truth they would sell twice as much butter if they left it sweet, because that kind is so much more palatable and tempting. Boarding house keepers will always order salt butter.

Undoubtedly the vast majority of Americans at present prefer, or think they prefer, salted butter. To convince them that this preference simply proves that their gastronomic education has been neglected, let me add a few significant details.

Dr. Wiley, in whose taste, judgment and knowledge we all have so much faith says that "the best grade of butter is that which receives no treatment other than the washing and working process to which attention has been called. This kind of butter is known as natural or unsalted or uncolored butter, that is, a fresh, sweet product of an agreeable aroma, palatable, of fine texture and grain, and is the best product of its kind for human consumption. It also brings the highest price on the market."

Until a few years ago it was almost impossible, even in New York City, to get unsalted butter. To-day it is usually served in the most expensive hotels and restaurants, some of the wealthy folk use it at home, and the general customer has a chance to buy it in a few places, at fancy prices. It is seldom as good as the same product in the humblest inn of Continental Europe, but it is improving from year to year.

In connection with this fact it is interesting to read the words of Chief Hayward, in the Government publication already referred to.

"_What is known as the highest class trade demands a much lighter salted butter than is demanded for the lower grades. Furthermore, there is an increasing tendency on the part of the best trade to ask for a butter containing less and less salt. Butter which has a clean, pure flavor needs little salt; that which is off-flavor or tainted in any way is improved by being strongly salted._"

In other words, the worse the butter, the more salt it needs, and the better the butter the less salt it needs. From this it follows logically that the best butter needs no salt at all.

The notion that salt "brings out" the Flavor is ridiculous; it spoils it. In the gastronomic countries of Europe the consumer would no more allow salt to be put into the butter he eats than into the cream he puts in his coffee, or the ice-cream he takes for his dessert.

There is absolutely no excuse for continuing the barbarous practice of denaturing American butter by the addition of salt. It does not even help to make it keep. On this point Dr. Wiley remarks: "It is a common supposition that salt in butter is a preservative. This is true when used in large quantities, that is, in quantities which render the butter somewhat unpalatable. The very small quantity of salt used purely for condimental purposes cannot be regarded as aiding in any material way the preservation of the product."

There is also a comic side to the question and the joke is on the butter-maker and dealer. I have already pointed out that we are tempted to eat much more of the sweet butter than of the salt. There is another weighty reason why the makers would profit by leaving out the salt. Dr. Wiley observes that "there is a tendency on the part of the greedy manufacturer to add excessive quantities of salt because it is very much cheaper than the butter itself and thus he hopes to add to the profit of the industry. On the contrary this practice usually results in loss, since such highly salted butter naturally brings the lowest price."

The funniest part of the story remains to be told. By throwing in handfuls of salt the maker not only lowers the market price of his butter but also decreases its weight! Read Assistant Chief Hayward's explanation of this seeming paradox:

"Butter will usually weigh less after the salt has been added and the butter worked than before. This is due to the fact, already mentioned, that salt unites, or collects, the small drops of moisture into drops so large that they can be separated from the butter, and, as the total weight of the water or brine thus separated exceeds the weight of salt added, the butter consequently loses weight by reason of salting."

If, _in spite of all this_, the butter-maker and dealer persist in foisting strongly salted butter on you, beware! It can only be because, as Chief Hayward has pointed out, "that which is 'off flavor' or tainted in any way, is improved by being strongly salted." Do you wish to habitually eat bad butter thus "improved"? Can it be possible that you do not resent being the dupe of the astute butter men?

IV

THE SCIENCE OF SAVORY COOKING

DESIRABLE RAW FOODS.

Nobody wants a boiled or fried orange or grapefruit for breakfast. Other fruits, such as apples, pears, peaches, plums, cherries, grapes, and diverse berries are often cooked, in many ways; but when ripe, sound and of good stock, they usually "taste" better raw than cooked. We do not boil our melons, nuts, or radishes, nor, as a rule, our celery and green-salad leaves of various kinds, or our cucumbers. Tomatoes make an excellent stew, but they are better still sliced raw, with vinegar and oil, and best of all eaten out of hand right off the plant.

These things nearly everybody knows. Many, however, are not aware that the best thing about a cabbage is the core, eaten raw, and that carrots, turnips, and particularly peas, when young and tender, are far better raw than cooked. Raw carrots taste a little like celery. One of my chief delights when on a farm is to stroll about the garden and orchard, sampling the various vegetables, berries, and fruits just before breakfast.

A tolerable case might thus be made out for those faddists who preach the gospel of raw food. Like all fads, it is nevertheless foolish. Were we to accept it, we might still eat sun-dried meat, or ham, sausages, and fish thoroughly smoked, but we would hardly care to eat raw bacon, or veal, or mutton, or poultry, or beef (though a "beefsteak à la Tartare" is edible when buried under diverse "trimmings" from the delicatessen store). I should like to see a faddist eat a raw potato or beet, or a plateful of raw pumpkin, squash, or beans!

Were we to live on raw foods altogether, we might survive to tell the tale, but we should have to give up that infinite variety which is the chief spice of our diet. At the same time one of the great arts of civilization would vanish from the earth--an art which does as much to distinguish us from animals as the fine arts do--more so, in fact, for birds sing and beavers build houses, but no bird or other animal ever cooks its food.

FLAVOR AS THE GUIDING PRINCIPLE.

"Cookery is an art which almost more than any other has civilized mankind," as President E. B. Tylor of the British Anthropological Association has truly said.

Nor is it only an art; it is also a science--or rather, it is becoming a science. From time immemorial cooks have, by instinct or accident, often done the right thing; but in the absence of a guiding principle, scientifically formulated, they have much more frequently made a mess of it.

There are four reasons for cooking food: to sterilize it; to make it more nutritious; to make it more easily digestible; and to improve or vary its Flavor.

Cooking destroys the germs of typhoid and other diseases which may lurk in food products, and it also retards the general decomposition which may result in ptomaine poisoning.

It has long been believed that raw or semi-raw meat is more nutritious than meat which has been moderately cooked; but this is not true. It is true, on the other hand, that in the ordinary methods of cooking there is often a considerable loss of nutriment. The United States Department of Agriculture has had a number of experiments made to place this question on a scientific basis.[5] Much remains to be done, but in the end it will doubtless be found that there is no appreciable loss if French methods are followed.

That cooking makes most foods more digestible it is needless to prove. Even fruits which taste better raw, digest more readily when cooked. A great many persons who cannot, for instance, eat apples, find them not only agreeable but easily assimilated and most beneficial to health when stewed or baked. Cereals (particularly oatmeal) and many vegetables and meats need cooking--sometimes hours of it to make them easy to masticate and digest.

_The main object of cooking, however, is to preserve and develop the countless savors latent in good raw material, to combine them or to add others where the material is deficient in natural Flavor._