Chapter II: may be regarded as an Intermezzo--but a most important one, (8)

Many years ago Sir Henry Thompson tried to persuade the British to substitute olive oil for lard. His advice affords at the same time an amusing glimpse of a certain culinary custom: "Excellent and fresh olive oil, which need not be so perfect in tint and flavor as the choicest kinds reserved for the salad bowl, is the best available form of fat for frying, and is sold at a moderate price by the gallon for this purpose at the best Italian warehouses. Nothing, perhaps, is better than clarified beef dripping, such as is produced, often abundantly, in every English kitchen; but the time-honored traditions of our perquisite system enable any English cook to sell this for herself, at small price, to a little trader round the corner, while she buys, at her employer's cost, a quantity of pork lard for frying material, at double the price obtained for the dripping. Lard is, moreover, the worst menstruum for the purpose, the most difficult to work in so far as to free the matters fried in it from grease; and we might be glad to buy back our own dripping from the aforesaid little trader at a profit to him of cent per cent, if only the purchase could be diplomatically negotiated."

MACARONI THE REAL STAFF OF LIFE.

Next to olive oil the best edible thing Italy gives to the world is macaroni in its many varieties. We import more than four million dollars' worth of it yearly, and we have learned, by raising durum wheat, to make a fair imitation of the products of a Gragnano factory; but most of all this is probably eaten by the Italians who have come to live with us.

In the average American household macaroni is far too seldom served. In one of its varieties, it might advantageously replace potatoes served at one at least of our three daily meals. Just why we should have potatoes served at every meal I have never been able to understand. Most desirable substitutes, besides macaroni, are boiled chestnuts, rice and hominy, the rice and hominy being particularly good when fried. Not that I would say a word against potatoes. Baked, fried, boiled, steamed, mashed, hashed and browned or with cream--in all these and many other ways they are good, and it would be a calamity to be deprived of them because they not only make an excellent accompaniment to other foods, especially to meats, but are also most tasty when served as a separate course, in the French style. But enough is as good as a feast. What we need is variety; and sometimes, when we have to economize on meat, we need something more nutritious than potatoes.

Potatoes impose much work on the kidneys, wherefore those afflicted with rheumatism should avoid them. Besides, macaroni has many times the value of potatoes as a flesh former. It owes this value to the large amount of gluten in it, the potato being useful chiefly as a heat-producer.

Gluten is a word the meaning of which everybody should know.

When wheat flour is kneaded in a current of water most of the starch is removed and there remains a sticky substance which is called gluten. It is the nitrogenous, or flesh-building, part of the flour. In ordinary wheat flour there is enough of this gluten to make the dough cohere and to give the bread a food value apart from that coming from the large percentage of starch in it which is a heat-producer. In macaroni wheat there is a smaller percentage of starch and a much larger percentage of gluten. Genuine macaroni which is made of the best durum wheat flour has nearly twice the amount of gluten as the highest grade wheat flour.

Bread is generally called "the staff of life," but in Italy macaroni is the staff of life, and it has a much better title to this designation than bread because it contains so much more of the body-building gluten.

"Gluten is to wheat what lean is to meat," as Charles Cristodoro has tersely put it. "When you think," he writes, "of macaroni flour, it is like going to the butcher and buying a roast and getting less bone, less gristle, and less fat, but about twice as much lean for the money. A butcher who would give his customers twice as much lean meat as another butcher would get all the trade in the neighborhood."

In other words, macaroni is both bread and meat. It is not merely a side-dish, as many American and English housewives fancy, but a complete meal in itself, although, owing to the mildness of its Flavor, it is generally relished more when cooked with tomatoes, or a little chopped meat, or, better still, some cheese or butter or both, because, like bread, macaroni is deficient in fat, some of which it needs to make a dish well balanced as to nutritive ingredients.

For lunch there is perhaps nothing quite so desirable as a dish of macaroni thus prepared. At present it is difficult to get such a dish properly cooked, except in our Italian and French restaurants. But I believe the time will come when every American and English business man and woman will have a chance to eat an appetizing and easily digestible lunch in a macaroni cook-shop.

This point seems of such great importance that I shall emphasize it by citing Sir Henry Thompson's advice.

"Weight for weight, macaroni may be regarded as not less valuable for flesh-making purposes, in the animal economy, than beef and mutton. Most people can digest it more easily and rapidly than meat; it offers, therefore, an admirable substitute for meat, particularly for lunch or midday meals, among those whose employments demand continuous attention during the whole of a long afternoon. To dine, or eat a heavy meal in the middle of the day is, for busy men, a great mistake: one nevertheless which is extremely common, and productive of great discomfort, to say the least."

Macaroni might, this eminent dietician suggests, be prepared at the restaurants "as a staple dish, in two or three forms, since it sustains the power without taxing too much the digestion, or rendering the individual heavy, sleepy, and incompetent afterwards."

All these remarks refer to macaroni generically--the whole macaroni family, which is a big one. Its best known members are spaghetti, and vermicelli; but there are many others equally good and known only to Italians. Among these are _fidelini_, _stellete_, _tagliarini_, _lasagnetti_, and many others. Altogether, I am told, there are about fifty varieties of _pasta_--which is the generic name for all of them.

The most delicately and deliciously flavored of them all is _tagliatelli_, but it is hard to get. Beware of substitutions!

"Subito! Subito!" exclaimed the waiter at the Vapore restaurant in Venice when, for the first time, I had ordered this--to me--unknown dish and finally asked him why he did not bring it. He had gone out specially to buy some fresh butter to cook it with, and when it came on the table--_tagliatelli al burro_--it was a feast for the gods. If you gave me the choice, at your expense, of all the dishes on the elaborate lunch bill of fare of the most expensive New York restaurant and tagliatelli al burro was one of them, tagliatelli with butter I would order.

There is also such a thing as gluten bread, made for persons of weak digestion or troubled with diabetes; but it is said that one tires of this.

No one ever tires of the macaronis. I could eat a dish of them three times a day and smack my lips after each.

To be sure, there is macaroni and macaroni. An Italian can tell the genuine by its smoothness, its clear yellow color, its hornlike toughness and general glutinous aspect. The genuine is not necessarily imported; a good brand is, as I have said, made in America of real durum wheat; but in this, as in all other things, eternal vigilance is called for; the world is full of gay deceivers. Macaroni made of ordinary wheat flour is poor stuff, but fortunately it is easily distinguished from the real thing. Being deficient in sticky gluten, it is not able, when it is subjected to the drying process, to bear its own weight and is therefore laid out flat instead of being "poled"--that is, thrown over reed poles on which it is exposed first to sunlight and then to damp cellars and shaded storehouses. Therefore, to get the real Italian Flavor, look for the flattened pole marks at the bend in the end of the macaroni.

While macaroni is the national dish of Italy, it is as great a mistake to suppose that all Italians eat it three times a day, as it is to think that rice is the daily diet of all Japanese. Rice, in Japan, is a luxury to be served in the poorer families only on holidays, or in case of illness. Professor Chamberlain relates in his _Things Japanese_ that he once heard a beldame in a village remark to another with a grave shake of the head, "What! Do you mean to say that it has come to having to give her rice?" the inference being that the case must be alarming indeed if the family had thought it necessary to resort to so expensive a dainty.

In the same way it has been said about Italians that it is as accurate to assert they live on macaroni, as to assert that Americans live on turkey. Some do, many don't.

When I arrived in Japan, some of the geishas were convulsed with laughter over my clumsy efforts to eat with chopsticks. I found it a good deal like fishing--never knew when I'd get the next bite. Macaroni eating is less difficult to the inexperienced, yet many Americans seem to be in doubt as to how it should be done. (Maybe that is one reason why it is not served as often as it should be.) The approved Italian way is to gently spear a stick of it with the fork, convey the end to the mouth, and suck it in without much waste of time. An American observer was so impressed by this process that he came to the conclusion that the Italians have reels in their throats.

Another way is to wind the paste round your fork till there is a wad that just fits your mouth. But there is no loss of Flavor if the macaroni is cut into convenient pieces and eaten _ad libitum_ any way you please.

The most astonishing sight I witnessed during my seven visits to Italy was at Naples. We had hired a cab in front of the hotel and told the driver we wanted to see the people enjoying their open air life. He took us to a street where everything, including cooking and eating, was done outside the houses. Presently he stopped at a place where macaroni was being cooked in a huge kettle. A beggar ran up and offered to eat some right out of the boiling water if we would pay for it. The cook ladled a huge portion into a tin basin and the man swallowed it all in a few seconds, steaming hot. His stomach must have been lined with asbestos. The driver had in the meantime, also at my expense, taken a large glass of wine; but instead of being in league with the cook, as I supposed he would be, he told me to "give him a lira--quite enough," and drove off rapidly before the macaroni man could vociferate his demands for more.

Mabel Phipps Bergolio, the American lady whose remarks on frying were quoted on another page, hardly thinks it true that the Italians are too poor to eat macaroni. "My husband thinks it depends upon the part of Italy they live in. Here, the _contadine_ eat _minestrone_--a thick soup made of oil, garlic, and all kinds of vegetables which they cultivate here. In Piedmont rice is the principal food, because it is grown there in large quantities. In the mountains near here, our maid tells me, they eat minestrone and chestnuts all the year round and nothing else. In the South, Naples, etc., macaroni is eaten and is cheaper there than in this part of the country on account of the flour which is raised there. Garlic and oil are used in preparing it, and this, with fruit, seems to be the food of the _meridionale_. In the North potatoes and polenta are eaten in large quantities in regions where the soil is adapted to raising tubers and corn."

COOKED CHEESE IN PLACE OF MEAT.

It would be sufficient honor for one nation to provide the world with the best olive oil and the _real_ staff of life. But Italy lays claim to another gastronomic distinction.

It is generally conceded that the Americans and also the English, French, Germans, Russians and Scandinavians, eat more than is necessary, especially meat. In a previous chapter attention was called to the fact that, in the cooking of the future, meat is destined, for diverse reasons, to be used largely, if not chiefly, as a condiment to be added to equally nutritious but cheaper foods. The Italians, more than any other nation, have shown how this can be done without any real deprivation.

When our greatest man of letters, Mr. Howells, was consul in Venice and gathering the material for his delightful book on life in that city, he was impressed particularly by the surprisingly small scale on which provisions for the daily meals were bought and the general absence of gluttonous excesses: "As to the poorer classes, one observes without great surprise how slenderly they fare, and how with a great habit of talking of meat and drink, the verb _mangiare_ remains in fact for the most part inactive with them. But it is only just to say that this virtue of abstinence seems to be not wholly the result of necessity, for it prevails with other classes which could well afford the opposite vice. Meat and drink do not form the substance of conviviality with Venetians, as with the Germans and the English, and in degree with ourselves; and I have often noticed on the Mondays at the Gardens, and other social festivals of the people, how the crowd amused itself with anything--music, dancing, walking, talking--anything but the great northern pastime of gluttony."

After describing the meals and referring to the great market at the Rialto and the way provisions are distributed throughout the city, he says: "A great Bostonian, whom I remember to have heard speculate on the superiority of a state of civilization in which you could buy two cents' worth of beef, to that in which so small a quantity was unpurchasable, would find the system perfected here, where you can buy half a cent's worth."

Half a cent's worth of meat will not go very far, even in Italy, but for a few cents' worth you can get enough to impart the Flavor of veal, lamb, or chicken to a pot of farinaceous food or a dish of vegetables, and that is all a true epicure needs to be happy.

Throughout Italy, especially in the South, meat is used sparingly. Large joints are seldom cooked, because of the effect of the warm climate in spoiling animal food rapidly. But there is another food which does not thus deteriorate and which is therefore used largely as a substitute for meat, and that is cheese.

To speak of cheese as a substitute for meat seems odd to those who--like most Americans--have been brought up to look on cheese with French eyes, as a dessert. The Italians also have cheeses--notably Gorgonzola, a variety of Roquefort--which are eaten at the end of a meal; but more characteristically Italian is the use of cheese as an ingredient of various cooked dishes, which take the place of meat.

While the statement made by one writer that the Italians put cheese into everything they eat is an exaggeration, it is true that many of their dishes are thus enriched; and it is this enriching of foods with cheese, to make up for the absence or scarcity of meat, that constitutes one of the great lessons Italy is teaching the world. Gastronomically, this lesson is as valuable as what France has taught the world regarding the dessert usefulness of ripened cheese as an appetizer; and from an economic point of view it is much more important, because meat is becoming dearer every year, whereas cheese is not only cheaper but _more nutritious_ than meat.

More nutritious--yes, twice as nutritious. In Farmers' Bulletin 487, entitled _Cheese and its Economical Uses_, two of our Government's nutrition experts published a table (p. 13) based on a series of experiments which show that "cheese has nearly twice as much protein, weight for weight, as beef of average composition as purchased, and that its fuel value is more than twice as great. It contains over twenty-five per cent. more protein than the same weight of porterhouse steak as purchased, and nearly twice as much fat."

Thus does science justify the culinary practices of Italy, and explain how it happens that the sturdy sons of that land, instead of being, as many foolishly suppose, idlers, habitually indulging in _dolce far niente_, can and do accomplish the hardest manual labor, notably railway building--abroad as well as at home--on a diet which contains little or no meat.

Among the first things that strike one on visiting Italy the first time is the universal custom of putting grated cheese in the soup.

Being hot, the soup dissolves the cheese at once; and this is a point of great importance. There is an impression the world over that cheese is indigestible, and this is correct so far as raw cheese is concerned, unless it is taken in small quantities at dessert and carefully munched with a hard cracker or a crusty roll of bread. Cooked cheese, however, is easily digested--provided the cook knows her business and does not follow the British custom, graphically described by the eminent chemist, W. Mattieu Williams, of making, for instance, "macaroni-cheese," which is "commonly prepared in England by depositing macaroni in a pie-dish, and then covering it with a stratum of grated cheese, and placing this in an oven or before a fire until the cheese is desiccated, browned, and converted into a horny, caseous form of carbon that would induce chronic dyspepsia in the stomach of a wild-boar if he fed upon it for a week."

How it should be prepared, it is not the mission of this volume to indicate. The best cook books reveal the method and so does the Farmers' Bulletin (No. 487) just referred to. This bulletin should be, indeed, bound and placed in the kitchen of every American and English home, as it goes into the subject in much more detail than any of the cook books. There are in it pages on Kinds of Cheese Used in American Homes, The Care of Cheese in the Home, The Flavor of Cheese, Nutritive Value and Cost of Cheese and Some Other Food Materials, Home-made Cheeses, Cheese Dishes and Their Preparation, Cheese Soups and Vegetables Cooked with Cheese, Cheese Salads and Sandwiches, Cheese Pastry, etc.

Especially important are the pages devoted to a description of "Cheese dishes which may be used in the same way as meat." Under this head we find, among many other things, and with the recipes in full, references to cheese sauces, corn and cheese soufflé, macaroni and cheese, baked rice and cheese, cheese rolls, nut and cheese roast, Boston roast, baked eggs with cheese, cheese omelet, fried bread with cheese, cheese with mush, cheese croquettes, oatmeal with cheese, etc.

Doubtless the best cooking cheese is Parmesan; but when the genuine article cannot be obtained in bulk (never buy it grated, in a bottle) it is better to use Swiss or even American cheese (cheddar). The Dutch Edam is also excellent for the kitchen, as good as when eaten raw. Of the Italian uncooked cheeses for the table, the best are Gorgonzola and, particularly, Caciocavallo. This is not, as its name suggests, made of mare's milk. It looks like a rag doll, is similar to Edam in consistency and has a very pleasant and unique Flavor owing to its being slightly smoked. Beware of American imitations, cured with "liquid smoke."

In times of meat scarcity and high prices it is well to remember that hard-working men can (as experiments have shown) fully sustain their strength for months on the cheapest of all products of the dairy--cottage cheese made of skim milk, to which, just before eating it, some cream is added for fat and flavor. Strange to say, in all the literature on this matter I have never seen any reference to the transformations to which cottage cheese can be subjected. By standing a few days, it gets a ripening flavor that appeals to epicures, and if it is then boiled it assumes a consistency like that of Port Salut, making another pleasant variant.

A helpful little volume for those who wish to know how the Italians use cheese in cooking and how they make a number of other national dishes is Antonia Isola's "Simple Italian Cookery." Here are receipts showing how _risotto_, and other rice dishes, _ravioli_, polenta, _gnocchi_ of farina or potato, are made (all of them delicious and desirable in American and English homes, particularly the gnocchi), and how eggs, fishes, vegetables, and meats can be cooked in tempting Italian ways. The chestnut, as a matter of course, is a frequent ingredient in the dressings and the pastry.

BIRDS, TOMATO PASTE AND GARLIC.

While the Italians are sparing in their use of meat, it must not be supposed that they do not know how to make the most of it when they do indulge in it. They are born cooks--it's a great pity none of them are ever to be found in our "intelligence offices"--and their experts know as well as the great French chefs how to prepare a savory roast, stew, broil, entrée, or dessert. In the making of sauces, the blending of meat and vegetable flavors, the cooking of fish and shellfish, one also finds much variety and local Flavor on the peninsula. Details as to those points may be found in abundance in the forty pages Col. Newham-Davis devotes to this country in his "Gourmet's Guide to Europe."

To enjoy the national and particularly the local varieties of Flavor, it is well to take only a room in an Italian hotel and eat in the restaurants. I always do this, paying a little more for the room, which is only fair to the host. The trouble with these hotels is that the table d'hôte, though usually good, is not Italian but French, and in Italy you want something different, to get an idea of the variations in flavor of the spaghettis, the minestrone soups, the gnocchis, the risottos, and so on. Sometimes the hotel has attached to it a locally conducted restaurant, in which case it is needless to hunt for another.

For one of their gastronomic habits the Italians are justly denounced by other Europeans--their slaughter of millions of birds, largely blackbirds, siskins, green-finches, and other song birds, that yearly seek a refuge among them on their flight to or from the north. All efforts to curb this slaughter have so far proved unavailing. The difficulty is double: the birds are very good to eat and the common people cannot understand our point of view. Lina Duff Gordon, in her book, "Home Life in Italy" (which takes the reader right into the kitchens and the market places), tells about one of the hunters: "Once, when he offered us a bunch of blackbirds strung together by the neck, which he said made an excellent roast, we seized upon the opportunity to deliver a lecture on the shooting of singing birds. He listened so attentively that we rejoiced at having made an impression on an important convert, until looking up with eyes very wide open, he exclaimed: 'Ah! Sangue della Madonna! Then you have no sport in England!'"

It is hardly fair to chide the Italians for making too much use of garlic, unless we include in our censure the French--particularly those of the Southern provinces--and the Spaniards, who not only put it in their food but eat it raw in chunks. On this point I may be permitted to cite from my "Spain and Morocco" some remarks on a peasant who drove me from Baza to Lorca: "At noon he took his lunch, composed of ten raw tomatoes, half a loaf of bread, a piece of raw ham, and a large bulb of garlic consisting of a score of bulblets, which he took one at a time to flavor his portions. It is doubtful if he expected another meal that day, and in watching him a brilliant theory came to my mind:--perhaps the poorer classes in Spain are so fond of garlic for the reason that they have so little to eat; for, as it takes several days to digest a bulb of it, they always feel as if they had something in their stomachs."

In the best Italian restaurants, as in those of Paris, it is understood that garlic, while delicious for flavoring, is so only in homœopathic doses. Moreover one can always dine without garlic by simply saying to the waiter, when ordering a dish, _senz' aglio_.

Whether Italian peasants eat raw ham, as that Spanish teamster did, I do not know. Ham is not an Italian specialty. At Naples one may get the genuine smoked article, but it is so expensive that only the wealthy folk can afford it. But in his enthusiastic addiction to tomatoes that Spaniard was akin to the Italians. How they do love them--raw or cooked--more even than we do, if that be possible. Next to cheese, nothing is so frequently added to the macaronis as tomato sauce, either as we make it, or in the form of the paste which is one of the unique Italian products that ought to be better known in other countries.

The best tomato paste comes from the Province of Naples, where it is made of a small variety of the fruit which has a special Flavor that is much relished. This, to be sure, they do not waste on foreigners. What is exported is, as we read in the "Daily Consular and Trade Reports" (Dec., 1910), usually not even second rate, but "of the third quality," which is "of course, very inferior, because it contains little tomato extract and is almost entirely liquid. There is no demand for it in the Italian market, and it is prepared exclusively for exportation to America, where it meets the requirements of the immigrant peasants from Sicily. The latter, when at home, either do not use any tomato paste or consume a certain kind of hard tomato paste (_conserva di pomidoro_) which is made by the peasant women."

Consul Hernando de Soto further informs us that "tomato paste of the first and second quality also is exported, though in much smaller quantity, from Palermo to the United States, where it is patronized by a more prosperous class of Italians and also, it is stated, by some Americans."

Many more Americans would buy tomato paste were they sure of not getting the third-class article after paying for the best, as happens with so many things we eat.

IX

GERMAN AND AUSTRIAN DELICACIES

A COSMOPOLITAN CUISINE.

In the matter of cuisine the Germans are the most cosmopolitan of all peoples; they learn eagerly from other nations, and sometimes improve on the original. They like variety; when traveling, unlike the English and Americans, they prefer things new to them, and it has been justly said that one of the Germans' chief objects in touring is to enjoy exotic pleasures of the table.

At home they avoid monotony by frequently supping in restaurants or beer gardens, the whole family being taken there, including the dog, unless a great crowd is expected because of a special musical treat, in which case the public is informed that "_Hunde dürfen nicht mitgebracht werden_."

And how enthusiastically these burghers discuss the diverse good things placed before them! A Berlin author maintains that three-fourths of all Germans, and four-fifths of their cousins, the Austrians, talk more about eating than about anything else, and that the most successful novels in their countries are those in which there are descriptions of banquets that make the mouth water. No need of preaching gastronomy to them!

To deny that the Germans have a cuisine of their own, as some of their own writers have done, is folly. While they have set a good example in being willing to learn from their neighbors--as the Italians learned from the Orientals and the French from the Italians--they have also originated and improved a number of things gastronomic which deserve to be transplanted to other countries.

A contributor to the "Frankfurter Zeitung" points out that "more than one dish which in Germany, France, and England is relished under a French name was originated by German cooks." He exhorts these cooks to give the dishes they create German names, choosing such as a foreigner can pronounce. England has succeeded in adding some of its food names--like beefsteak, Irish stew, mock-turtle soup, pudding, roast beef, toast--to the world-language, and the French have shown by their adoption of _Lied_, _Concertmeister_, _Hinterland_, _Bock_, etc., that they would not balk at German culinary terms.

DELICATESSEN STORES.

As a matter of fact some German terms have already become part of the world-language--among them sauerkraut, pumpernickel and the names of various sausages and cheeses. The most eloquent testimony to German international influence is, however, the ubiquitous delicatessen store. In New York there is one every few blocks, and these places are patronized by many who are not Germans. To be sure, few of these shops equal the originals in Munich, Dresden, or Berlin, in variety and gorgeousness of display.

Edward Grieg, like most of the great composers, was an epicure. It is related of him that one of his favorite amusements was to gaze at the displays of good things in the delicatessen stores. One day, while lingering before one of these windows he said to the American composer, Frank Van der Stucken: "What an ideal symphony! How perfect in all its details, in form, contents, and instrumentation!"

Grand gastronomic symphonies they are, indeed; and what is more, the appeal of these delicacies is to the palate as well as to the eyes. When a German pays his good money he wants something good to eat, and if he is fooled, woe to the culprit. Strict are the laws, and enforced they are, too. Officers of the health boards visit the stores at unexpected times, taking away samples for chemical analysis. Fines are inflicted for the least lack of obedience to the pure food law, while gross offenders may be punished by life-long imprisonment with hard labor.

The examiners, of course, visit not only the delicatessen stores but the butcher shops, groceries, bakeries and all places where food is offered for sale.

In Berlin there is a special institute for the inspection of foodstuffs which is directly under the control of the police. It makes chemical and bacteriological examinations of things offered for sale. Purchasers who suffer from the ill effects of foodstuffs have the privilege of applying to the police, who promptly make an examination of the suspected article. This does not cost the complainant a penny and the expense to the city of this invaluable institute is only about $12,000 a year.

Encouraged by the knowledge of these facts, a German may boldly enter any delicatessen store, confident of getting things that will taste good and do no harm. And what a variety of luxuries is spread out before him!

Cold roast joints of all the butchers' meats are placed in line on the counter, with hams, raw or cooked, and sausages diverse, all eager to be sliced to suit. I say eager because these things--especially the sausages and the hams--taste so good that it surely must give them altruistic joy to be eaten. Cold fowl is there, too, ready for the carving knife, or to be taken away whole. The Germans often lunch or sup on these sliced meats, huge platterfuls of which are brought on the table--_Gemischter Aufschnitt_--and none of it is wasted, you may be sure.

Chicken and fish salads diverse, including herring salad, and potato salad--one of Germany's great contributions to the world's gastronomic treasure--are at hand, as well as another international delicacy of Teutonic origin--sauerkraut, raw or cooked; and sauerkraut _is_ a delicacy; nor is it indigestible when cooked the right way and long enough. Proof of its high standing is provided by the fact that France's gastronomic high priest, Brillat-Savarin--whose famous work on the _Physiology of Taste_ has become so popular that a penny edition of it is sold in the streets--puts it, with partridge, on the menu of one of three fine dinners he suggests. The French, indeed, are almost as much addicted to the eating of sauerkraut as are the Germans. In England and America not a few persons foolishly sneer at it as "rotten cabbage." It is no more rotten than pickles are rotten, for it is simply pickled cabbage--cabbage pickled in its own juice plus salt, and soured by fermentation.

The pickles eaten by Germans are not all sour; they like, almost better than the sour kinds, the dill pickles, which are cucumbers preserved in a liquid flavored with the blossoms and seeds of an umbelliferous Oriental plant, _anethum_, cultivated in German gardens for its spicy aroma. Teutons seem to take to this naturally; with others it is an acquired taste, like that for olives.

Smoked or soused herrings, sprats, and diverse spiced fish (_marinirt_) are always on sale in the delicatessen stores, and they are acknowledged among the best specialties of Germany. Eel and other fish in jelly are other characteristic edibles the Fatherland has reason to be proud of; and have you ever eaten cold goose in an acidulated meat jelly? It is worth while going to Berlin, just to taste this Prussian _Gänseweisssauer_.

Smoked Pomeranian goosebreast is always in stock; its taste is not unlike that of raw smoked ham and there is no danger of trichinosis, though, to be sure, that danger from eating ham has been reduced in Germany to a minimum by the strict system of meat inspection.

The heads and feet of calves, sheep, and swine, wild and domestic, are much in demand; a wild boar's head often is the center of interest in the show window of a delicatessen store. Of course there are also canned meats and vegetables, with diverse fancy groceries and cheeses of various countries, together with crackers and breads of diverse shape, size, and color. But enough has been said to show that a German delicatessen store is a treasure house of appetizing foods, many of them peculiar to the Fatherland, and most of them agreeable to the palate of a real gourmet.

It is possible that a thousand years hence Bismarck's fame as a statesman may have waned; but Bismarck herring will continue to be served in all lands until the seas are fished out. On a warm summer day, when you are not hungry and yet feel a vague longing for something piquant, try a Bismarck herring with potato salad. You will bless me for the advice. It is very good for the stomach, too, the doctors say.

SAUSAGES AND SMOKED HAM.

The French have excellent sausages and so have the Italians. They are hard to beat, and yet, in the matter of variety and general excellence, the Germans as makers of _würste_ are supreme.

Various are the tastes of sausage eaters, but all of them may be gratified west of the Rhine. I have before me a book by Nicolaus Merges bearing the title "Internationale Wurst und Fleischwaaren Fabrikation." Concise directions are given in it for the making of more than a hundred and fifty kinds of sausages, all of which are manufactured in Germany, though some are of foreign origin.

Why so many kinds of sausage? There is not much difference in their nutritive value. They are made in different ways simply to secure variety in Flavor, to please all palates.

The book referred to shows how this variety is secured. Different meats are used and these are diversely blended, spiced, and cured. The possibilities are unlimited; the hundred and fifty varieties in the Merges volume are a mere fraction of the total number, nearly every locality having its special kind.

Of liver sausages there are two dozen varieties, the cheapest being made from ordinary beef liver while the _Gänselebertrüffelwurst_ (goose-liver-truffle sausage) may cost a dollar a pound. Of sausages in which blood is used there are more than a score. These are cheap, and--well, if they cost nothing I wouldn't eat them.

The biggest of all the sausages is the Cervelat made in Braunschweig (many German towns have become world-famed by the making of some particularly well-flavored sausage, cheese, cake, or beer). The Brunswick brand is compounded of beef and pork, both lean and fat. The Westphalian variety includes less beef. Some kinds of Cervelat exclude pork, containing only beef or veal. There is also a homœopathetic Cervelat. It is intended for convalescents, and has a minimum of fat and spices. A kosher Cervelat is made for Hebrews.

Beef from old cows is not in the best repute, yet for the making of Salami it is preferred to the tenderloin of a young steer. (The toughest meat sometimes has the richest Flavor.) Salami hails from Italy, but special varieties of it are made in Germany, as well as in Holland, Switzerland, Russia, and Hungary.

It is needless to give details regarding Plockwurst, Mettwurst, Knoblauchwurst, Knackwurst, Schwartenmagen, etc., in all their transformations. In some varieties anchovies, kidneys, or brains are used.

Bärenwurst is not often seen now, as bears are getting scarce. Horse meat of course is used (why not?) for cheaper sorts, and the bow-wow joke of the comic papers is not altogether without foundation. American Indians agreed with the Chinese in regarding dog meat as a great delicacy--the dish of honor to be served to guests. Dog meat sausage may be quite legitimate, as long as it is honestly labeled as such.

There is a story of a wealthy Berlin butcher whose son had been promoted in the army by Moltke, and who, to show his gratitude, advised the Field Marshal never to eat sausage. But those days of uncertainty are past. Inspection is now so strict in the Fatherland that one can safely eat whatever is offered.

When the eminent German novelist, Ernst von Wolzogen, visited the United States (1911) he exclaimed, on the eve of departure, to a reporter for the New York "Staatszeitung": "Great heavens, if you knew what an indescribable longing has often seized me in your country for a good German sausage! No--for their food I cannot envy the Americans."

Considering the large number of Germans in the United States it seems strange that they do not insist on having as good sausage made here as on the other side. But they do not. The home-made sausage is usually compounded of worthless scraps, and is apt to be indigestible. As for the "imported" Cervelat and other kinds, they are often so in name only--which explains that wail, _de profundis_, of Freiherr von Wolzogen.

American sausages made after English or original recipes are generally spoiled by an excessive amount of sage. Sage should always be used homœopathically, else it overpowers all other flavors. Were I Czar in the realm of gastronomy I should forbid the use of sage altogether.

The next time you go to Europe do not forget to make an automobile trip from Munich to Berlin, taking in Nuremberg on the way. We did that, with some friends, in the summer of 1912, and when we reached the city of Hans Sachs we steered straight for the Bratwurstglöcklein, a little eating shop, known by name at least, to epicures the world over, though only one dish is cooked in it, and that dish, as the name indicates, is sausage.

Five _Würstchen_, no bigger than your thumb, are served with a portion of sauerkraut. The cost is half a mark--twelve cents--a portion and you can have as many encores as you like. Some of us took four, and so tender and tasty were the little things, as well as the _kraut_ that we had no occasion to regret it. After all, we were mere tyros, as our waiter informed us; he has known many a man to eat a dozen portions or more and not send for an ambulance--at least, that's what he said. The number of portions served daily vary from 3,000 to 5,000; the record is 25,000 served on a day when there was a Sängerfest.

Nuremberg has two other eating places similar to this, but the Bratwurstglöcklein maintains its preeminence, owing to its traditions; for it was in its little rooms that the men who (with the aid of the Bratwurstglöcklein) made that city famous--among them Sachs, Welleland and Dürer--used to gather for food and drink.

After we had paid our bill--not a ruinous one for an automobile party--we started for the next town on our list, after buying a few boxes of the world-famed honey cakes (_Lebkuchen_) of the town. We all had seen the other sights of Nuremberg before. Besides, we were on a gastronomic trip, and discipline had to be preserved.

Observation has convinced me that Americans would be as enthusiastic sausage eaters as the Germans are if they could get them as well made and cooked. In a large New York down-town restaurant you can see, on certain days, half the guests ordering "country sausages," which, though good, are not to be mentioned on the same day as those of the Bratwurstglöcklein. The inference is inevitable that a lunch-room serving honest duplicates of the German delicacy would prove a gold-mine.

The proprietor of another down-town restaurant who provides excellent little Frankfurters informed me he got them at a certain shop in which two butchers had successively made their fortune by simply manufacturing these honest little sausages and really smoking them instead of using "liquid smoke." It makes such a difference to the palate as well as the stomach.

Genuine Frankfurters are made of solid meat (not lungs) and they are always smoked. They are known as Frankfurters throughout the greater part of Germany and Austria, but in Frankfort they call them Wiener Würstel, to dignify them, presumably, as exotics.

Smoked sausages and other meats are in great vogue among the Germans, whose addiction to them gives them the right to pose as true epicures. Do they not provide the whole world with smoked goosebreast, Hamburger Rauchfleish, and the best of all hams, the smoked Westphalian?

In South Germany they have a special word for smoked meats, Geselchtes, or Selchware. The composer Brahms never missed a chance to get a dish of "G'selchtes"; it gave him an appetite when nothing else would.

Bismarck, the most famous of German gourmets, took great delight in feasting on smoked meats and fish--Spickgans, Spickaal, Schinken, &c. He knew as much about the different varieties and the places they came from as any dealer in delicatessen, as we know from the table talk recorded by Dr. Moritz Busch.

Smoked Westphalian ham has carried the fame of Germany to the lunch tables of all parts of the world; and not a whit inferior in Flavor is the Austrian variety, Prager Schinken. Raw or cooked, these are among the superlative delights of the epicure, ranking with caviare, Camembert, and canvasback duck.

On the appetizing quality of properly smoked meats which makes the mouth water and facilitates digestion I have already commented.

German and Austrian hams owe their fame to the fact that they are smoked and otherwise cured scientifically, regardless of cost, with a view to developing the most delicate Flavor.

The first thing to be noted is that the men who cure the meats do not dare to denature them (_i. e._, spoil their natural Flavor) by soaking them in solutions of chemicals which are not only injurious to health but which would make it possible for them to hide the putrescence of spoiled meats--as is so often done in America.

The law on this point is very strict. By orders of the Imperial Federal Council, dated July 4, 1908, the following substances have been forbidden: Boric acid and salts thereof, formaldehyde, the hydroxides and carbonates of the alkaline salts, sulphurous acid and the salts thereof, the salts of hyposulphurous acid, hypofluoric acid and salts thereof, salicylic acid and its compounds, chloric acid and salts, and all coloring matter.

Consul Talbot J. Albert, of Brunswick writes that "the German inspection laws, especially in regard to hams and all hog products are so strict that their adulteration would be immediately detected, the products confiscated, and the manufacturer severely punished."

The ingredients used in the curing of hams before they are smoked are salt, saltpeter, and pepper. The quantity of these and other ingredients and the method employed are business secrets difficult to ascertain.

In America, sugar-cured ham is advertised in large letters. Sugar, no doubt, is a good preservative, and it is harmless, but somehow it seems as incongruous with meat as salt is with cream or butter. Ask an epicure if he would like his oysters with sugar, and see him shudder. In Germany, hams are seldom sugar-cured.

"The Daily Consular and Trade Reports" for December 8, 1909, contains such information on the subject of smoked sausages and hams as the consuls in various German cities were able to gather. They found that sausage is smoked up to three or four weeks, unless it is to be eaten at once. The smoking makes it lose some weight and cost more--but what of that, as long as the Flavor is improved? The American way is to save the full weight by using chemicals and then sell the denatured stuff as "smoked" meat. It is profitable to the packer. The consumer--well, it serves him right if he continues to buy such stuff without a protest.

Of the contributors to the Consular symposium on smoked meats in Germany, Vice-Consul Frederick Hoyermann of Bremen gave the most informing account.

"The fresh ham is put into pure common salt (sodium chloride) and is kept therein for about three weeks, whereupon it is washed and air-dried. After having been exposed to the air for about eight days it is ready for the _smoking process, which lasts from six to eight weeks_. It is hung up in the smoke of beechwood chips, which must burn slowly so as not to create heat or evolve too much smoke. The ham must be smoked thoroughly but gradually, and must remain cool while undergoing the process. Thereupon it is cleaned and is then ready for use."

Now note what the same writer says about the "quick-smoking" process: "Hams are smoked by a simpler and cheaper process, pine wood being used for smoking instead of beech, the time allowed for smoking is considerably reduced, and stronger smoke applied. Hams thus cured are, of course, inferior in quality, as they lack in Flavor and are not fit for export, because only high-class meats will pay the cost of transportation."

The so-called Westphalian hams do not all come from Westphalia. The name is generally applied to choice hams which have been smoked thoroughly but gradually in accordance with the methods indicated in the preceding paragraphs.

One more important detail. The Germans know the value of feeding Flavor into food. As Consul Carl Bailey Hurst, of Plauen wrote: "The best and most durable hams are those of hogs which have been fed during the few weeks previous to slaughtering on acorns or corn."

Juniper berries are sometimes thrown on the beech wood while hams are being smoked, in the belief that that still further improves their Flavor. Maybe it does--I have had no opportunity for comparisons. Possibly it is a mistake. The Germans, though they make the best hams and sausages in the world, are as a nation far from impeccable; in the use of spices, in particular, they often blunder grossly. It is surely an aberration of taste to mix cloves, bay leaves, cinnamon, caraway seeds, sage, or ginger with the preserving fluid; for these strong condiments destroy the individual Flavor of the meat.

Excessive use of spices is the chief blemish of German cookery. Many otherwise well-made dishes are spoiled by the addition of pungent condiments which completely monopolize the palate. The excessive use of these condiments is a survival of medieval coarseness. I shall not dwell on this, however, or on other deplorable relics of the coarse appetite of former generations, because the object of this book is not to point out the shortcomings of European nations but to call attention to practices in which they are ahead of us. Let us therefore proceed to another department of gastronomy in which the Germans (and their neighbors) can teach us useful lessons.

LIVE FISH BROUGHT TO THE KITCHEN.

The Paradise of fish-eaters is Copenhagen. New York and other American port towns could get some very important hints from the way things are done there. Before 1892 it was difficult to bring live fish into the town without contaminating them with sewage and spoiling their flavor. In that year a general sewage system was constructed by which the city's sewage is carried two kilometers out into the open sea, thus putting an end to the contamination of the ocean front and the harbor. The gratifying results of this reform were described by the London "Lancet's" representative at the Sanitary Congress in Copenhagen, October, 1910:

"This not only puts an end to the nuisances that used to arise, but enables boats full of live fish to come close to shore and right into the town by means of the fresh-water canals. In this manner at least the smaller fish are kept alive till the moment they are sold. Any number of wooden boats are pierced with holes and filled with fish; these boats just float on the surface of the water, and the living fish is taken out of them when wanted. But as every one cannot go to the water's edge to buy fish, there are water tanks on wheels and the live fish is brought to the doors of the people's houses.

"Never before," this sanitarian continues, "have I been in a town where all the fish, whether cheap or dear is so beautifully fresh. The principal fish market was built by the municipality and is let to a wholesale fish salesman. It is a delight to see how clean and bright these premises are kept. There is no spreading the fish on slabs so that dust and dirt may settle on them. Very pretty tessellated tile tanks are filled with running water, and here the smaller fish swim about."

In Berlin and other German cities the fish are also brought alive to the kitchen. An eminent artist who is also an ideal hausfrau, Mme. Gadski, informed me that she wouldn't think of buying a dead fish. "They are brought to the kitchen alive, and I reject those that are not swimming about," she said.

The Germans are great eaters of fresh-water fishes, and there are ingenious arrangements for bringing them to market alive.

The large fish of the ocean cannot, of course, be delivered alive, but the transportation facilities are now so excellent that not only the more expensive kinds, like sole, turbot, and sterlet, but the cheaper sorts, like cod, haddock, plaice, and herring, are brought to city and town markets in prime condition.

A German culinary authority specially calls attention to the fact that the "ancient and fish-like smell" is a thing of the past. In the days when transportation facilities were less adequate this odor made it necessary to boil fish in two waters, throwing the first away. Now the cook has only the natural odor of the unspoiled fish to deal with, which, being agreeable, is carefully preserved in the cooking.

The fishing places off the German coast are visited daily by fast steamers to collect the catch. The boats are provided with refrigerating apparatus, and so are the express trains which at Stettin, Geestemmünde, Cuxhaven, and other coast towns, take the fish from the boats and carry them at full speed to the cities all over the Empire.

The same excellent arrangements for keeping the fish cold without spoiling their flavor by freezing them are to be found on German steamers. On the eighth day out on the _Kaiserin Auguste Victoria_ I found the salmon as fresh-tasting as if it had just been caught. "How do you do it?" I asked Captain Ruser; and he explained the system--the refrigerating arrangements which, with steady ventilation, provide a frigid atmosphere without actually freezing the fish or the meat.

Such things cost time and money; but the Germans, being a gastronomic nation, consider them worth while, on sea as well as on shore.

Hamburg sets a good example in showing what a municipal government can do in the way of providing the people with fresh fish and telling them what to do with them. The following is from the "Fremdenblatt" of that city; similar notices frequently appear in the newspapers: