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DINNERS AND DISHES


(Pall Mall Gazette, March 7, 1885.)

A man can live for three days without bread, but no man can live for one
day without poetry, was an aphorism of Baudelaire. You can live without
pictures and music but you cannot live without eating, says the author of
Dinners and Dishes; and this latter view is, no doubt, the more popular.
Who, indeed, in these degenerate days would hesitate between an ode and
an omelette, a sonnet and a salmis? Yet the position is not entirely
Philistine; cookery is an art; are not its principles the subject of
South Kensington lectures, and does not the Royal Academy give a banquet
once a year? Besides, as the coming democracy will, no doubt, insist on
feeding us all on penny dinners, it is well that the laws of cookery
should be explained: for were the national meal burned, or badly
seasoned, or served up with the wrong sauce a dreadful revolution might
follow.

Under these circumstances we strongly recommend Dinners and Dishes to
every one: it is brief and concise and makes no attempt at eloquence,
which is extremely fortunate. For even on ortolans who could endure
oratory? It also has the advantage of not being illustrated. The
subject of a work of art has, of course, nothing to do with its beauty,
but still there is always something depressing about the coloured
lithograph of a leg of mutton.