One of the oldest Parisian restaurants is the Boeuf à la Mode which, for more than a century, has owed its vogue in part to its special way of preparing and serving the dish after which it is named.

A specialty of these restaurants is pancake. In our own country "French pancake" is usually a thick, leathery griddle cake rolled round a spoonful of jelly and served tepid on a tepid plate. In Paris the head waiter himself attends to the important function of putting the finishing touches on the cakes. They are brought in from the kitchen thin, crisp, and hot; but that is not enough. The waiter has before him a chafing dish into which he puts one of the cakes, with a hard sauce, and some liqueur which is set on fire. He has also before him a pile of hot plates for each of the diners; into one of these plates each cake is transferred when ready and brought to you by another waiter, to be eaten red-hot. It is worth a trip across the Atlantic to eat those pancakes.

Mutton on the best Parisian menus is not simply mutton. It is mutton of a particular "vintage," and in some cases the name of the breeder of the sheep is printed on the bill of fare.

Fruit is brought to the table in large baskets. Cherries, and particularly the fragrant wild strawberries, seem doubly appetizing when served that way. A fragrant French melon sometimes perfumes a whole dining-room. Those who have to count their francs, however, had better inquire as to prices before indulging freely in fancy fruits.

Very expensive, though worth the money, are the langoustes, which are as good as the American lobster. Better still are the écrevisses, or crawfish, which are kept on sale alive in the great market place, and are therefore always good, and safe to eat.

Some restaurants are favored for their lunches, others for their dinners, still others for their late suppers. In this last class, it is needless to say, vulgar extravagance prevails. Usually there is the latest kind of dancing, or music, or some other kind of stupefying noise, and gastronomy takes a back seat.

Warm weather brings into favor the summer restaurants, in which usually one can lunch or dine in the garden or under a tree. That the breathing of outdoor air while eating is as great an appetizer as the savory food itself, is one of the many lessons we have yet to learn of the French and other Europeans.

How did the restaurants of Paris get their culinary supremacy?

During the Revolution many of the nobles were ruined, and their chefs—among them Méot, Robert, Roze, Véry, Leda, Legacque, Beauvilliers, Naudet, Edon became caterers to gourmets at large. "Beauvilliers, who established his restaurant about 1782, was for fifteen years the most famous restaurateur of Paris, and provided liberally such delicate and sublimated dishes as those which had hitherto been found only on the tables of the king, of the nobles, and of the farmers-general. The great restaurateurs of modern Paris are nearly all successors of one or the other of the famous cooks above mentioned," as Theodore Child pointed out.

In the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris I came across books giving curious glimpses of the restaurants at earlier periods. In 1574 there was published a "Discours sur les causes de l'extrême cherté qui est aujourd'hui en France et sur les moyens d'y remédier." The author complains that people are no longer satisfied with three courses but must have meats in half-a-dozen styles, with sauces, hachés, pasticeries, all sorts of salmigondis, etc. Every one he says, now goes to dine at Le More, Sanson, Innocent, or Havart, "maistres de volupté et despense, qui en une chose publique bien policée et reglée seraient bannis et chassez comme corrupteurs des mœurs."

This diatribe against the providers of savory food as corruptors of public morals who, if the police tended to its duty, would be chased from the city, seems to indicate that Puritan ideas on the subject of the enjoyment of food once prevailed even in France.

As late as 1842 there were only seventeen restaurants in Paris, where now there are more than seventeen times seventeen. At the date mentioned, most of them were near the Palais Royal, and one could dine for two francs—forty cents!—while lunch was only a franc and a quarter. There were places where a workman could get, for twenty centimes (four cents), bread, wine, soup, and meat enough for a meal.

In Paris, as elsewhere, prices have soared since that time, but correspondingly cheap eating places abound in all quarters. The lowest-priced restaurants likely to be patronized by tourists and resident foreigners are the Duval, and other "Bouillons," at which one who knows may get good dishes. Well-to-do Parisians and foreigners may often be seen in these eating places, and one of them actually has a star of excellence in Baedeker.

At one of these establishments I had one of the best petites marmites I have ever eaten. If you don't know what a petite marmite is I am sorry for you. I have dined repeatedly with a Frenchman noted both as artist and epicure, and each time he ordered petite marmite. If you ask a French head waiter's advice in London or Paris, he is more likely than not to suggest petite marmite. It is so good, and the making of it gives such a deep insight into French methods that I will quote the recipe by Escoffier in his "Le Guide Culinaire." It is for ten people.

Nutritious elements: 2 lbs. beef, one lb. lean, the other well mixed with fat, as the end of a rib. 1 marrowbone wrapped in cheese-cloth, 1 fowl—not too young and tender, giblets from four fowls. Liquid: 3 litres (about three quarts) of white consommé—recipe follows—the seasoning to be added just before serving.

Aromatic elements: 2-5 lb. carrots (200 grammes), 2-5 lb. nearly ripe turnips, 3-10 lb. leeks (150 grammes), 1 small celery heart, 1/2 lb. cabbage, blanched, cooked separately with bouillon and drippings.

"Observations: The 'Petite Marmite' consommé is served without clarifying, and owes its merit only to the materials which it contains and the extreme care brought to its preparation. It must be served slightly fat. Its special savor, different from clarified consommé, must recall the homely Pot-au-feu, and be recognized unmistakably in Croute au pot, Consommé à la Bouchère, and others of which it is the base, the only difference being that these consommés do not need absolutely to have fowl in them, whereas it is rigorously obligatory in the Petite Marmite.

"For 10 litres of white consommé 7 kilos of beef (between 14 and 15 lbs.) 4 kilos being lean meat, the other 3 soup bone, 21-5 lbs. carrots (5 or 6), 900 grammes (nearly 2 lbs.) turnips, 1 lb. leeks, 2-5 lb. parsnips, 2 medium-sized onions, 3 cloves, 3 cloves of garlic, 3 pieces celery, 14 litres (14 quarts approximately) cold water, 70 grammes brown salt (salt that has not been purified). Cook five hours.

"Observations: Simple consommé is habitually cooked 5 hours, which is quite sufficient to get all the nutritious elements from the beef. On the other hand this is quite insufficient for the bones and fails to extract their nutritive principles. To obtain this result slow cooking from 12 to 15 hours is necessary. In great kitchens it has become the habit to make a first consommé with the bones (crushed) which will cook at least 12 hours. This consommé is then used for a second cooking of the meat alone which takes about 4 hours, that is only the time necessary to cook the meat. This second operation can be shortened by cutting meat and vegetables in small pieces and clarifying them as usual."

As the American practice of bluffing—of charging a high price for a poor thing, to make the consumer think it must be good—is not a Parisian trait, the more expensive the restaurant, the better the food is likely to be.

Next to the Bouillons, in the culinary hierarchy, are the Brasseries. At these, one can get well prepared dishes at reasonable prices, which are always marked on the bill of fare; and, as the name indicates, one can take a glass of beer or a bottle of mineral water instead of the expensive wine which the highest class restaurants expect every one to order, on penalty of perhaps not being served with a meal prepared in the chef's best mood.

These leading restaurants are at present in the throes of a serious struggle for existence; pessimists go so far as to predict the extinction of the whole species in the not very distant future. The Maison Dorée and the Café Riche had to make way some years ago for business houses that could better afford to pay the soaring rents, and in 1912 the Durand was transformed into a tailoring establishment. Of the old classical restaurants the Tour d'Argent, Lapérouse, Paillard, Bœuf à la Mode, Voisin, hold their own, yet I have dined in them on evenings when they were anything but crowded.

Doubtless the custom of some of these places of not affixing prices to the viands offered on the bill of fare has had something to do with bringing about this result. Even a well-to-do diner does not always care to be entirely at the mercy of the head waiter in the making-up of his bill. But it is the multiplying of the brasseries that is chiefly responsible for the decline of the high-priced restaurants, and another dangerous rival that has helped to bring it about is the palatial, up-to-date hotel. Some of these hotels employ as good chefs as the leading restaurants and offer as abundant opportunities for sumptuous and savory repasts, at prices tall enough to please the most reckless visitor from New York or Buenos Ayres.

Gourmets will doubtless continue to frequent the classical restaurants as long as they maintain their high standard. It would be a historic as well as a gastronomic calamity to have them disappear. If necessary the Government should give them a subvention as it does to the Opéra and the Théâtre Français; for these epicurean establishments have done quite as much as the theaters to make France famous among the civilized nations of the world.

It is owing to them that French long ago became the culinary world-language. Go wherever you please, from Paris to Berlin, to Lucerne, Milan, Vienna, Constantinople, Tokio; or, in the other direction, to London, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Melbourne,—everywhere, at the leading restaurants, you will find the menu printed in French, and, in case of a course dinner, the viands offered in the order prescribed by French gourmets.

In Germany, after the Franco-Prussian war, chauvinistic attempts were made to banish French words from the bill of fare. These attempts were, as Hermann Dunger frankly admits in his Verdeutschungswörterbuch (1882), a failure; in some cases the comic consequence was that Germans who recognized a dish under its French name hadn't the remotest idea what it was when translated into their own language. Like the Italian forte, piano, adagio, diminuendo, and other musical expression marks, French gastronomic words have become parts of a spontaneous Esperanto—a world-language, which has come to stay; a perpetual reminder of the most important contribution made by the great French nation to modern civilization—the gradual substitution, everywhere, and particularly in Germany and England, of refined methods of preparing food in place of the barbarous mediæval ones prevalent until two centuries ago.

We get an interesting glimpse of French gastronomic leadership by glancing at the words successively adopted by the Germans. In 1715, when the "Frauenzimmerlexicon" of Amaranthes appeared, the following French words had already gained currency, among them: bouillon, carbonade, champignon, côtelette, coulis, crème, à la daube, entremets, farce, fricadelle, fricandeau, fricassé, gelée, hachis, marinieren, omelette, pikant, potage, ragout, saucisse; and for most of these there was no exact equivalent in German.

During the time of Louis XV Germany further imported the following: dejeuner, diner, souper, dessert, entrée, fumet, haut-goût, poularde, saucière, sorbet, table d'hôte, bonbon, champagne, limonade, liqueur.

To a later period belong braiser, bœuf à la mode, consommé, filet, hors d'œuvre, konserve, roulade. These as well as the words gastronome and gourmand were imported during the early decades of the nineteenth century. To the second half of the century belong croquette, entrecôte, flan, remoulade, meringue, purée, vol-au-vent. The word menu was not adopted in Germany till after 1850.

RUSSIAN AND AMERICAN INFLUENCES.

In Paris as in New York one can make a gastronomic tour of the world. While the French, in return for all the culinary terms they have lent their neighbors seem to have adopted only one Teutonic word ("Bock," for beer), they amiably tolerate the presence within their walls of German and Austrian restaurants, some of which are excellent, though thoroughly exotic from the French point of view. In one of them the host is so much of an epicure himself that in his delight with the Viennese menu he sketches for you, he will blow a kiss at the enjoyments it calls up in his imagination.

Most Germans and Austrians, however, are glad to frequent the French restaurants while in Paris, and the same, as Col. Newnham-Davis informs us, is true of the English visitor, though if he desires a chop or a steak, he can have one made to order in one of the many grill rooms in foreign style that have come into existence, and in one of which the joints of beef and mutton are wheeled to the tables and carved there to order, as in some London eating houses. The Italians are more apt to cling to their own style of cookery, and they have plenty of places adorned with Chianti bottles where they can have their spaghetti, their risotto, their fritto misto, and their other excellent fries. The Spanish also have places where they can indulge their appetite for home dishes; and so have many other nations, including Greeks, as well as the Turks and other Orientals.

Of all the foreigners only two, the Russians and the Americans, have had a definite influence on the French cuisine and menu—and not to their advantage, it must be confessed.

From the Russians the Paris restaurateurs borrowed the custom of beginning a meal with hors d'œuvres, or appetizers. I remember the time when the hors d'œuvres in France simply meant radishes, butter, and a few thin slices of sausage which were placed on the table at once and against indulging in which the guide books warned tourists unless they were prepared to face a substantial addition to their bill. To-day, the price of the appetizers is usually noted on the bill of fare, and it is not at all high, even at the aristocratic restaurants. Cold smoked salmon, tunny fish, sardines, baby artichokes in oil, various vegetable, fish, and lobster salads, cold eggs, sliced sausages, and sundry other delicacies are offered, with bread and butter.

These things undoubtedly are good, and they are appetizers; but they are also appetite destroyers—quite too substantial to preface an elaborate dinner. In Russia and Scandinavia, where the extreme cold creates a ravenous appetite and a great capacity for stowing away things, they may be all right; but in temperate climes, and for dwellers in cities who get little exercise, they are too heavy. When I see one of these displays of cold dishes I always think what a tempting lunch they would make all by themselves; but if I eat them before dinner I certainly cannot enjoy what follows as much as I would without them; and that, I believe, is the experience of most diners who are not neighbors of the Eskimos.

It is different with caviare and oysters. These are merely appetizers, containing little nourishment; but caviare is not for everybody, and as for oysters, since they must be served ice-cold, it is unwise to chill the stomach by beginning with them. Let them follow the soup, which is, because of its warmth and its stimulating effect on the digestive glands, the best thing to begin a meal with. Muskmelons and grapefruit may be allowed to precede it if served without ice, which certainly impairs their flavor.

While adopting the Russian hors d'œuvre habit, the Parisians have had too much taste and moderation to indulge in its Gargantuan extremes. The performances of Russians and Swedes border on the miraculous.

If Russians in Paris cannot everywhere indulge in the riotous profusion of hors d'œuvre they have at home, they can do so at La Rue's, which has a full line of them and also of diverse other "mets Russes nationaux."

Americans who wish to eat ham and eggs, or hash, or corn muffins, griddle cakes, breakfast cereals and that sort of thing, may find them in hotels and in not a few of the restaurants. American lobsters, at Eiffel Tower prices, are on every menu, and there are places where oysters from across the Atlantic, as well as native, can be ordered raw, scalloped, fried, broiled, or in diverse stews, tout comme chez nous. The numerous grill rooms are also accommodating, though they do not open early enough to offer an American breakfast, while the hotels seldom venture on anything beyond bacon and eggs before lunch time.

It would be well if the Parisians ate an American breakfast and followed it up with a lighter lunch; but it would require another revolution to bring about such a reform.

Paris has become considerably Americanized. One can hardly wonder at having our cotton seed oil served instead of the noble juice of the olive at the cheap restaurants; but when I found that it was used unblushingly at some of the more expensive places I was shocked at this sign of decadence—or effrontery—and visions of cold storage poultry, salted butter, and doughy bread with inedible crust—but no! such things no one would ever dare to place before Parisians!

The fact that their own olive oil is not as a rule equal to the best Italian may have made them for the moment tolerant of the American invader. The health authorities speak of diverse other substitutions and adulterants as being in use; but these are not necessarily American, though we lead the world in our tolerance of them.

What the Parisians chiefly complain about in reference to American influence is that it has introduced our national vice of hurry into the kitchen and the dining-room. When so many of the wealthiest patrons of the restaurants expect to get dishes served at a moment's notice, to be gulped down and hastily followed by others, the very strongholds of gastronomic France—slow cooking and leisurely eating—are assailed.

The chief danger to the French cuisine lies in the fact that, as Mr. Paderewski put it in a talk I had with him on this subject, "it is so much easier to prepare a meal the American way."

South Americans, though they have little to boast of at home in the way of pleasures of the table, adapt themselves more easily to French ways, and as they are rapidly increasing in numbers in Paris and spend even more money than the North Americans, their influence will perhaps counteract that of the impatient visitors from the United States, who usually know so much more about making dollars than about spending them rationally.

Every American has attended banquets at which there was more to feast the eyes than the palate. In the Figaro Marcel Prévost complained (1910) that this sort of thing was gaining in Paris. "Mangeront-ils?" he asked—will Parisians of the future eat? Judging by the present tendency, they will not, he answers—they will feed. They will take nourishment, but gastronomy, the art of dining with intelligence and pleasure, will have ceased to exist. In the house the cause of this change is what Prévost calls the "progrès de la coquetterie féminine." Women, to be sure, were never the greatest of the culinary artists, but they used to pay some attention to food and its preparation, whereas at present their chief thought is of the appearance of the dining-room and the table. The linen, the porcelain, the glassware, must be of the finest, the flowers of the costliest, but the food and wine are provided by a paid caterer, who seldom knows his business. As for eating in restaurants or hotels, that is no better. The famous "maisons" have disappeared, to be replaced by huge palaces, in which everything is showy and sumptuous but the food everywhere the same, without distinction or individuality. What is worse, the younger generation does not seem to regret this. French youth even drink American cocktails and are not ashamed!

While there is no doubt some truth in these allegations they are absurdly exaggerated. Complaints as to the decadence of French cookery have been made at regular intervals—like the complaints about the disappearance of great singers. I once amused myself by writing an article covering three centuries, in which I quoted the laments of each generation over the decline of the art of song as compared with the brilliant achievements of the preceding generation of singers. Were it worth while I might compile equally amusing evidence on the subject of the French cuisine. Thackeray complained of a similarity of dinners. Charles Monselet in 1879, looked "in vain for the tables that are praised or the hosts that are renowned." In 1866 Nestor Roqueplan complained that the French "no longer find places devoted to the Flemish kitchen, others to the Normandy, Lyonnaise, Toulousian, Bordelaise, or Provençal kitchens." But he had the good sense to add that "France nevertheless is still the country where eating is found at its best."

So it is at the present day, and is likely to be for years to come. No matter how many of the best chefs are taken away by American millionaires or Russian Grand Dukes, Paris remains the world's high school of culinary art.

PROVINCIAL LOCAL FLAVORS.

While there may be fewer opportunities than there were formerly to get special Lyonnaise, Toulousian, or Bordelaise dishes in Paris, the Provinces themselves offer abundant opportunity to study and enjoy the infinite variety of French cookery. How large a field is open to the student may be inferred from the fact that Col. Newnham-Davis devotes no fewer than seventy pages of his "Gourmet's Guide to Europe" to a study of the inns, hotels, and restaurants of Provincial France. He found that "almost every town of any importance has some special dish or some special pâté of its own; there are hundreds of good old inns where the cuisine is that of their province, and there are great tracts of country which ought to be marked by some special color on all guide-book maps, where the cookery is universally good."

This noted English epicure advises gourmets who have time to journey leisurely and especially those who have an automobile at command, to make a journey of gastronomic exploration in the district between Montpellier and Toulouse, which is "a cradle of good cooks" and where some of the traditions of cookery of the old Romans still linger. The land of the Meuse, the Moselle, and the Saône is another and more northerly paradise of good cooking. "In Dordogne there is not a peasant who cannot get a traveler en panne a truffled omelette which would make an alderman's mouth water ... and all the Midi from the Alps to the Pyrenees is a happy hunting ground for the gastronome."

My own experience in these regions is much more limited, but wherever I followed this epicure's advice I found him a reliable guide. In most parts of France, however, a guide to good cheer is hardly needed, for you can stop at almost any inn with the assurance of getting a savory lunch, dinner, or supper. In Provençal inns garlic is no doubt used too freely, but no harm can come to those who cannot stomach it, since its warning appeals as distinctly to the nose as the rattlesnake's does to the ear.

The Pyrenees are famed for trout and chicken. The chicken we found excellent, the trout less so. An innkeeper with whom I discussed the matter admitted frankly that they left something to be desired in the matter of flavor. A Parisian epicure to whom I had mentioned trout one day, shook his head and suggested sole or turbot instead.

Sole is at its best at Dieppe. In that town there is a restaurant, formerly frequented by Whistler, where the waiter, to please fastidious guests, proudly serves soles caught with his own hands in the early morning hours.

Cannes has a hotel the guests of which can go to a tank and with a net catch the particular fishes they want to eat half an hour later. At Aix-les-Bains there is a caterer who "will not have any salt-water fish in his larder, for Aix in summer is so hot that sea fish do not always come to table quite fresh, and this risk he will not run, in the interest of his clients."

America is not the only country where oysters are cheap. At Caen one pays only ten or twelve cents for a dozen of the best bivalves from Ouistreham and Courselles.

All along the French coast, west and south, one comes across dishes which owe their unique and usually delicious flavor to some special variety of shell fish, peculiar to the place, which is added to the sauce.

Marseilles is perhaps the best place for experimenting with shell-fishes new to the visitor's palate. That this city owes its international fame largely to a special marine stew called bouillabaisse everybody knows. As I have eaten this dish in Marseilles itself but once and that so long ago that I do not remember the details, I will quote Col. Newnham-Davis's graphic remarks on it:

"The Southerners firmly believe that this dish cannot be properly made except of the fish that swim in the Mediterranean; the rascaz, a little fellow all head and eyes, being an essential in the savory stew, along with the eel, the lobster, the dory, the mackerel, and the girelle. Thackeray has sung the ballad of the dish as he used to eat it and his recette, because it is poetry, is accepted, though it is but the fresh-water edition of the stew. If you do not like oil, garlic, and saffron, which all come into its composition, give it a wide berth; but I should mention that the bouillabaisse at the Reserve is quite a mild and lady-like stew compared to that one gets at Bregailla's or the restaurants of the Rue Noailles."

Marseilles is not far from Italy, but before we proceed to that country, to learn what it can teach us in regard to wholesome and enjoyable foods, we must return for a moment to Paris to consider a few more of the specialties in which it asserts its gastronomic supremacy.

However interesting the Provinces may be because of their local dishes and delicacies, and because of the proof they afford that the value of well-cooked food is appreciated throughout France, their most important function, from our point of view, is that of providing the first-class material out of which the Parisian cooks prepare their chefs d'œuvres of culinary art. This material is sent daily from all directions to the metropolis in special express trains, to be offered for sale in the Halles Centrales, which, to the lover of good food and beautiful flowers, is one of the most interesting spots on earth.

THE WORLD'S GREATEST MARKET PLACE.

Emile Zola made these Halles Centrales the background of one of his naturalistic stories, "Le Ventre de Paris." Even his realistic and graphic descriptions fail, however, to convey an adequate idea of the colossal food traffic carried on in this market place, which, to be sure, is now much bigger than it was when he wrote his novel, not long after the erection of the vast structure, in 1851.

Ten pavilions there are in this building, each of them containing two hundred and fifty stalls. Retail dealers are installed in the front pavilions, while the others are occupied by the wholesale vendors, whose business also overflows into the streets leading to the market place. For the storing of provisions there is further a cellar under the Halles, divided into twelve hundred compartments.

To see this food market in its most characteristic aspects one has to get up long before the sun. It was half past four on a May morning when my wife and I unbolted the door of our hotel and hailed an auto-taxi to take us to the Halles. All Paris was still in bed, with the exception of the street-cleaners, who were giving the city its morning bath, a few chauffeurs, and the market gardeners, porters, vendors and buyers whose business it is to bring and distribute the daily provisions of the French metropolis. The following details as to what we saw are taken from an article written by my companion:

"At this early hour buyers are still rare. Inquisitive Americans may wander about with the freedom of disembodied spirits, and without attracting much more attention. We kept discreetly out of the way of hurrying porters and of swearing cartmen who were bringing their huge loads of vegetables to market. From the carts enormous mounds of carrots, long white turnips, cauliflowers, salads of all kinds, cabbages, sorrel tied in neat packages, radishes black and red, were being unloaded and stacked with incredible dexterity and rapidity, each mound a picture; the carrots and turnips were built up in square fortresses, the vegetables turned outward with perfect regularity, an orange and white feast to the eye, as well as a promise of joys to come for the palate. Beside these are heaped pointed cabbages of freshest green; cauliflowers as white as bridal bouquets; lettuces laid head down; escarole and romaine lying on their sides, displaying round, appetizing tips; chicory, a frizzled tangle of greenish white; while nearby bee-hive heaps of rosy radishes add another vivid color note.

"A little farther on our noses are greeted by the most exquisite perfumes, coming from large baskets of strawberries—the big cultivated ones—and the still more fragrant wild berries, the 'petites fraises des bois' which Parisians so dote on. Cherries, too, are plentiful, but they do not fill the air with luscious odors, as do the strawberries, though their deeper red, the gloss of their perfect surface and the contrasting pale green of their stems are a delight to the eye.

"The æstheticism of the Paris Halles is one of its dominant characteristics. Flowers appear in every corner mixed in with the stalls for edibles. Although a whole cross-street is given over to them, they are too abundant, Paris loves them too well, and needs too many for them to find sufficient room in one place only. A whole long block is devoted to bleuets, the simple corn flowers of the fields, packed in bunches a foot square; but roses reign supreme, pink, red, tea, moss, of all varieties, picked fresh and adding their perfumes to those of fruits and vegetables.

"There are also masses of irises, France's flower, yellow and blue; spicy pinks, ranging from white to dark red, through all the shades from palest salmon to deep rose; pansies, purple or yellow, bunched by colors; peonies, rose-scented, long stemmed, heavy-headed, in crimson, in pink, in white; Iceland poppies, bitterly fragrant, white, yellow, orange.

"It is almost impossible to tear one's self away from this riot of color and perfume, but there are so many sights that demand attention.

"Even the dead are not forgotten in the great market, for in one section of the Halles, under its huge resounding roof, one may buy the bead wreaths which are made to adorn French graveyards. There is almost a western American atmosphere in this light touching upon death in this center of vivid life, and once more we realize the kinship between French and Americans—except in the matter of eating, in which alas, we are so far behind them.

"The fish market does not open till late, for Paris wants its fish fresh caught, but there is the meat market to see, and there are still streets and streets of vegetables, streets filled with people, especially of busy porters with full or empty 'hottes'—the large baskets used in carrying vegetables—on their backs; or with the flat fruit baskets, four feet by two and a half, balanced on their heads, on which they carry loads of other baskets filled with strawberries, walking along as calmly as if they were alone in the world, and as if the streets were not slippery with vegetable leaves. We found it difficult to keep our footing on this green refuse from cabbages and lettuces, carrots and turnips, which had been cut off at one blow by the men who stacked them. But it was all fresh, clean, and sweet smelling.

"By six o'clock the vegetable mounds had disappeared almost entirely, as if melted away by the rising sun, and one understands why photographs of the Paris market are so scarce. When the sun finally shines through the soft morning haze there is little left to snap-shot. Three porters in blue blouses with 'hottes' on their backs politely consented to pose, and a pretty Parisian girl, brown-eyed and red-cheeked, had gladly stood near her pile of sorrel to be caught in the camera.

"The artichokes do not pose well. Great baskets heaped with these green scaly globes fill one street, but to catch them is next to impossible. First a cart gets stalled in front of a particularly fine group, and when that is gone there is a mass of people who must pass. Every one who notices the photographic attempts asks 'Is it for the Cinéma?'—the Paris rage of the moment—and one good-natured, impertinent Parisian asks if photographs are for sale and at what price. He is really so 'sympathique,' in the French sense, that one immediately confides one's desires and difficulties to him.

"At the chicken stalls, where the would-be photographer has to change a film, she finds an exhibition of the lower-class rudeness, and also of the lower-class politeness of the French market woman. From a corner which seemed to belong to no one she is rudely requested to move on, while ten steps farther on she is made welcome, given a chair, questioned about the 'Cinéma,' and apologized to for the lack of civility of the other woman.

"At another stall among the vegetables, one saucy young woman gets well laughed at by her companions. She is not too busy to notice the strangers, and, after looking them over with rather an impertinent stare, she remarks that it is 'funny to see these English people in Paris.' A laughing rejoinder from the strangers that they are not English but Americans makes her look abashed, much to the amusement of the other women.

"In this retail department there are plenty of string beans which are better in Paris than anywhere else, but the best of which an ignorant American would not think of buying. They are small and thin, and streaked with black, almost as if rusted. To the eye they are far less tempting than the thick rich green beans in our markets, but in taste they are more luscious. On the other hand, French peas are not equal, usually, to the English and American ones, being harder and less sweet, and therefore their flavor is not impaired, as ours would be, by the fact that the market-women sell some of them shelled. A real genre picture they make, three of these women, dropping the pale green pearls into wooden bowls, and talking even faster than they shell.

"We passed rather hastily through the meat market, although that is quite as interesting in its way as the other quarters, but we were especially desirous to see the fish market in its glory. However, we had a rapid view of great beef carcasses hung in rows, hundreds of lambs, calves and other creatures, and of the neat stalls where calves' heads, pigs' and lambs' feet, livers, sweetbreads, brains, and even lungs are all hung in neat array, or displayed attractively on slabs. French dealers know to perfection how to set off their wares. They have special methods of presenting their fine poultry so that no buyer can resist them, no matter what the price may be for turkeys, ducks, capons and poulardes.

"Vine and other leaves for decorative purposes are sold regularly in the market, and no one who has not seen it can imagine how much more tempting a fine Camembert or Pont l'Evêque can appear when it is set carefully on a fresh green leaf. The large cheeses cannot be thus decorated, but the smaller ones, as well as the pats of Normandy butter and the tempting little brown pots of delicately sour 'crème D'Isigny,' are always displayed in this way. The fine fruits, too, are made the object of solicitous care; in one corner of the market we ran across two men who were tenderly unloading the most fragrant melons, and arranging fine peaches, six in a box, laid carefully on a bed of soft white cotton. The perfect bunches of grapes for which some wealthy American may, later in the day, pay a fabulous price at the Café de Paris or at Voisin's, are temptingly exhibited in the same manner. It is strange that Paris is generally more æsthetic and artistic in its food and flower displays than in those of the many other luxuries and fashions it provides for the world.

"At six-thirty the fish market opens, and as one approaches, the deafening noise of the wholesalers, crying their wares, and selling to the highest bidder, fills the ears. The nose, too, takes cognizance of the perfume of the sea, the salt freshness of recently caught fish, quite different from the ancient and fish-like smell of an ordinary New York fish stall. We breathe it in with almost as much pleasure as we did the fruit, vegetable and flower perfumes. Here again the eyes are satisfied as well as the nose. Pale brown fish in a pale brown basket may be an accident, but it is a happy one. Quantities of spiny 'langoustes,' with long feelers, splotched with yellow and red; of lobsters with huge claws; of neatly arranged soles, lying in pairs; of beautifully marked Spanish mackerel, of great white skates, and of many other sea-fish are being rapidly transferred from the wholesale to the retail departments. In the fresh-water section, huge tanks, with water flowing in rapidly from great faucets, hold carp, eels, and other fish, all alive; but the greater number of tanks are filled with scrambling hundreds of crawfish, the much prized French 'écrevisse,' which, with the langoustes, reach the high-water mark for shell-fish prices in the restaurants—but they are worth it. The écrevisse is no better than our Oregon crawfish, but the latter are being rapidly exterminated, whereas in France the delicious creatures are properly protected.

"In this same section another French delicacy, snails, are for sale. Boxes full of them may be seen, some of the snails remaining patiently in their home corral, while others, more adventurous, were crawling up the fish tanks, or had even dropped to the floor, owing to their too great desire to explore the world.

"The market itself is quite as much inclined to spread as the snails. All the adjacent streets are filled with shops for edibles, especially of the less perishable variety, like cheeses of all kinds, some as big as auto-wheels. The cabarets do a brisk business in feeding the providers of Paris food, but foolishly we failed to try one of these places to discover what kind of breakfast the food-raisers themselves eat, and we went back to our hotel hungry, past all this mass of eatables, past cafés which were just being opened, where floors were being washed and chairs lay inhospitably on the tables. One almost felt as if Paris never was ready to eat breakfast."

Besides the Halles Centrales there are a number of smaller covered markets distributed over the city, much frequented on certain days by all classes. Women everywhere are fond of shopping, but in France foreigners as well as natives revel in the joys of marketing. Read, for instance, this joyous outburst of an American girl dwelling in Paris for her musical education:

"Now the mystery why the shops and galleries are almost deserted by the French on Wednesdays and Saturdays is explained. They are all at the market,—a dense struggling, chattering mob, pawing away at the fresh country produce, while above the din rise the shrieks and howls of the booth venders. A lively, a typically French scene. You get one of those French net-work bags, which will stretch to hold nearly a bushel of supplies, and sail into the thick of the fray. By the time you are out on the other side you are loaded to the ears with enough stuff to last the party a week and have spent just four francs. Celery, one cent a bunch. Fresh country potatoes, 35 cents a bushel. Country killed meats at one-half city prices. It is more fun than a circus, and from that time on you will set aside an hour every Wednesday and Saturday to go a-marketing, as one of the prime joys of life."

MODEL MARKET GARDENS.

The biggest vegetables and fruits are by no means always the best. But, given a good variety, the ideal to be aimed at is to have it as big as possible while still young and tender.

This ideal the French market-gardeners live up to, and that is what makes their productions a joy, first to the eyes, and then to the palate.

Intensive cultivation is the key to the mystery of how it's done. Expert testimony is to the effect that the market gardens in and around Paris are "the best and most thoroughly cultivated patches of ground in Europe." From them "at least threefold more produce is gathered than from similar extent of garden-ground elsewhere." Though the climate is far from mild—and even in the harshest months—whole trainloads of lettuce heads and other vegetables are sent daily from Paris to other cities, some of them as far away as Russia.

Eight crops in one year are frequently gathered from a garden. No time is wasted; while, for instance, the cos lettuce in one bed rears its head on high, the ground underneath is already carpeted with the green leaves of a young crop of escaroles. This rotation is one of the secrets of success. Thorough cultivation and enrichment of the soil constitute another, some of the crops being grown in beds made up almost entirely of manure. But mainly, it is "owing to the abundant watering of these gardens that the Paris markets are throughout the hot season better supplied with crisp, tender, fresh vegetables than any other capital in Europe."

Water makes up nearly the whole substance of most vegetables—for instance, over 88 per cent. of carrots, 90 of cabbage, 93 of lettuce and pumpkins, 95 of cucumbers. Withhold it on a few sunny days, and the vegetables become mere masses of tough fiber. As long ago as 1878, W. Robinson, F. L. S., whose words I have just cited, called attention in his valuable and beautifully illustrated book on the Parks and Gardens of Paris to the anomalous fact that though all failures in English gardens are attributed to "want of sun," nevertheless if there is a warm and sunny season the market supplies soon run short, owing to the absence of any preparation for watering garden crops. "Three warm days in July show their effect in Covent Garden, inconvenience the housekeeper, and injure and reduce the supplies of vegetable food at a time when these are more than ever important for health."

Since that time, no doubt, some improvement has been effected in England, but Covent Garden Market is still largely dependent on French gardeners for its best products, in the line of vegetables, and also of fruits and berries.

MUSHROOMS AND TRUFFLES.

One of the most interesting chapters in Mr. Robinson's book is on Mushroom Culture in Caves Under Paris, those he visited being at Montrouge, just outside the fortifications. The beds are from sixty to eighty feet under the street and from this single cave the daily gathering averaged from four hundred to fifteen hundred pounds, the favorite size of the mushroom gathered being about that of a chestnut.

There are thousands of abandoned stone quarries in France, hundreds of which are used by mushroom growers, who earn many millions a year by thus catering intelligently and zealously to the palates of their countrymen—and of foreigners, too, for there is a large export trade—in mushrooms, fresh, canned, powdered, bottled in oil or butter, or preserved in other ways.

An odd detail about these caves is that, although they are well ventilated, the mushrooms refuse, after a while, to grow in them till after a general cleaning out and a rest of a year or two.

Although, both as a separate dish and as an ingredient of diverse sauces, soups, stews, and gravies, mushrooms play an important part in the cuisine of the French, they seem on the whole to risk the eating of fewer varieties than are consumed in some other countries. About a thousand different varieties are known to botanists, yet in Paris, as I was informed by a professor of the University of Lyons, only twenty-five kinds are commonly eaten, while in the markets of Lyons only half-a-dozen sorts may be offered for sale. One cannot but admire this prudent self-denial on the part of a race so addicted to the pleasures of the table.

In Germany there are frequent expositions of mushrooms and other fungi, for educational purposes. In England the Board of Agriculture issued in 1912 a little book entitled "Edible and Poisonous Fungi," with colored pictures of more than a dozen good mushrooms besides the one usually consumed (Agaricus Campestris). An English friend of mine likes to recall the days of his boyhood when his breakfast consisted of several platefuls of mushrooms which he gathered every morning fresh under the trees.

In American forests mushrooms grow in superabundance, but few are gathered for the table, though most of them are harmless. Speaking of the hills of the Blue Ridge Mountains near Harper's Ferry Dr. Wiley says he has seen "large areas of the forest almost covered with these growths in August and September, but the courage leading to their consumption was wanting."[10]

A picture in the Fliegende Blätter shows a little girl bringing a basket of mushrooms from the woods. Being asked by the pastor in passing if she is not afraid her family may be poisoned, she answers cheerfully, "Oh, no! We sell these."

The nutritive value of mushrooms is small. It is on account of their delicious and varied Flavors that they are gathered and cultivated; and Flavor, as has been pointed out so many times in the preceding pages, is so important to good digestion and consequent health that it is a great pity that in eating them one runs the risk of a painful death; at least in the case of wild mushrooms, some of which aggravate their offensiveness by trying to look as much as possible like certain harmless specimens.

While truffles, like mushrooms, grow all over Europe, as well as on other continents, in many varieties, it is the French, again, who have taught the world the most valuable lessons regarding their diverse uses for flavoring soups, sauces, meats, and gravies.

The French varieties happen to be the best of all, especially those grown in Périgord and in the Department Vaucluse, which was reafforested in 1858 with oaks, in the shade of which these fungi are particularly at home.

In Russia, formerly, bears were used to unearth them, but to-day pigs and trained dogs are relied on for locating the ripe specimens—a feat which man, with his inferior powers of smell, cannot imitate; the result being that when he tries to harvest them himself, great waste results through the uncovering of unripe specimens. Maybe, some day, our noses will be so well trained that truffle-hunters will be able to get along without pigs, dogs, bears—or flies, which, in warm weather, hover over the spots where the ripe fungi are hidden from the eye.

Truffles are expensive, and therefore often adulterated—with dirt, to increase their weight, with unripe tubercles that have little or no flavor, and in various other ways, including the making of artificial truffles from potatoes. An English writer says that the "false truffle" (Scleroderma vulgare) "is extremely common on the surface of the ground in woods, and is gathered by Italians and Frenchmen in Epping Forest for the inferior dining-rooms of London, where continental dishes are served. It is a worthless, offensive, and possibly dangerous fungus."

TRAINING TREES FOR FANCY FRUITS.

Good fruit is more abundant and cheaper in the United States than anywhere in Europe. When sun-ripened and picked at the right time, it is all that fruit should be. Unfortunately, it is not usually brought into our markets in that condition.

The Paris restaurants have a way of adorning their entrance with a stand covered with various kinds of properly ripened fruit, the fragrance of which serves as an appetizer preceding the hors d'œuvre or the soup. They are extra choice fruits, and expensive, but in the markets one can buy the same very much more reasonably.

In the raising of fruit the French rely less on climate than on their own skill and care. The best peaches eaten in Paris do not come from the Sunny South, but from the neighborhood of the city, where they are grown against walls, and carefully cultivated and protected. When visiting France at the request of the London "Times" to study the methods which have made fruit in that country so good, Mr. W. Robinson found it a common thing to see a professor of fruit-culture and his class assembled round a tree, pruning it and discussing every operation as it goes on.

The pupils have much to learn, for the French do not simply cultivate trees in orchards as we do, but subject them to much trimming and bending of the branches so as to secure the best distribution of the sap and the greatest amount of sunlight and warmth.

The Japanese have taught us how to prune a chrysanthemum plant so as to make it produce giant blossoms. Our florists make use of the same method to concentrate the sap and vigor of a root and stem in a single perfect American Beauty rose. It is not size alone that is aimed at. Sometimes the result of such a method is a thing like the Belle Angevine pear which, though flavorless, may fetch a guinea in London because of its size and beauty. As a rule, however, Flavor is carefully safe-guarded. The leaves are kept trimmed so as to enable the sun to do its best in developing an aroma.

Outside of France the finest collection of espalier fruit trees I have seen is on Paderewski's estate, at Morges, on the Swiss side of Lake Geneva. It is surprising what a variety of forms the trees can be made to assume, as the fancy of the cultivator decides.

BREAD CRUST VERSUS CRUMB.

Although the publishers of this book, when they asked me to write it, generously allowed me as much elbow room as I might desire, I must resist the temptation to dwell much longer on the details of French gastronomic leadership. To exhaust the subject would require a whole volume much bigger than this. Before closing this long chapter, however, I must dwell briefly on three more important kinds of food—bread, butter, and cheese—in the making of which the French excel.

Unlike ourselves and our English cousins, they partake of nothing but bread and butter for breakfast, wherefore it is not surprising that they take particular pains to have these good. Bread is also eaten at other meals much more freely than in other countries, including Germany and Austria, which alone rival France in the making of it.

The best French bread is made in such a way that to have it in prime condition it must always be fresh. At all hours, therefore, one sees boys hurrying along the streets with baskets loaded with tall loaves. Without exaggeration, these loaves are often a yard long, but no thicker than a man's forearm. This is the Parisian bread par excellence, and what is most characteristic about it is that it is practically all crust.

Bread is regarded as the staff of life—an English writer, Winslow, called it so as long ago as 1624—and it has become so more and more in recent centuries. It is therefore of the utmost interest to know how the French, who admittedly know more about good food and the best cooking than any other people in the world, bake their bread. They bake it, as I have just said, in such a way that it is nearly all crust.

Nearly all crust! And the French, it is needless to say, dote on this crust. For the crumb they have no liking; often you may see a Frenchman poke out with his thumb what little crumb there is and leave it on his plate.

How different this from the practices prevalent among the least gastronomic of civilized nations—the English and the Americans!

The English way was graphically described in the "Observations on Mastication" which Dr. Campbell contributed to the London "Lancet" (July and August, 1903):

"Witness the fashion of eating bread-and-butter at any place of refreshment, and the last thing you will be served with is a plateful of crusts of bread. Many establishments, indeed, make a regular practice of giving away their crusts as unsaleable. Thus, the rectangular loaves used for bread-and-butter in the aërated bread-shops are cut transversely into slices, each loaf thus yielding two end crusts which are put into baskets for the poor, only the soft crumby pieces being reserved for the customers."

Similar practices prevail in the United States and Canada.

The lowest biological specimen—mere gastronomic protoplasm—is the pale, ten-dollar-a-week clerk whose deadly substitute for bread is the half-baked dough ("butter cake") he eats at lunch time—a dyspeptic mess without the suspicion of a crust on it. His taste, unfortunately, is shared by some of the well-to-do, whose education has been neglected. Two youths walked into the breakfast room of an Italian hotel one morning and sat down at the table next to ours. The first thing they did was to push away the nicely browned crusty rolls and ask the waiter if he had any "soft bread." He had none, of course. He should have told them—I came near doing it myself—that those Italian rolls, though not equal to the best Parisian, had much more flavor and were much more digestible than the home-made crumb they were crying for—like babes for pap, though their teeth looked sound.

In many New York hotels and restaurants, imitations of Parisian loaves or rolls are now placed on the tables. Some of them are quite good—a great improvement on the ordinary American bread—yet most of the diners look at them askance. In downtown lunch places, if you fee the waiter regularly, he will not insult you by putting a crusty end piece on your plate. I always fee well, and therefore have the greatest difficulty in making the waiters believe that I sincerely, honestly and truly prefer an end piece—a particularly brown one at that. Some of them look at me with the incredulous expression of the farmer who, on seeing a giraffe, exclaimed, "There ain't no such animal!"

It is needless to say that I prefer the golden-hued end-piece because I find it infinitely richer in flavor than the crumb. It is for the same reason, principally, that the French insist on having crusty bread. There are other reasons—they may not be aware of them but instinctively they act on them. Let me give them in the words of a distinguished medical man—the same Dr. Campbell, Physician to the London Northwest Hospital, whose words I have just quoted. "Loaves," he writes, "should be shaped so as to give a maximum of crust and a minimum of crumb, and should be baked hard. Such loaves are quite as nutritious as the ordinary ones, and much more digestible, containing as they do an abundance of dextrine and not a little maltose, and compelling efficient mastication, especially if eaten, as they should be, without any fluid. A lady who has been catering for a large number of girls gives the bread in this way, and she tells me that there is keen competition for the most crusty portions."

The words I have italicized are of the utmost significance. They show that if English—or American—girls, or boys, or women and men—prefer crumb to crust, it is not owing to innate depravity but to lack of opportunity to learn better. Give them a chance to ascertain the superiority of crust to crumb and they promptly take to it as if they were in Paris born.

They cannot be blamed for neglecting American crust, for the crust of the ordinary American bread actually is inferior to the crumb, being tough, leathery, and flavorless. But the American crumb is nearly always indigestible. The moral of the story is that we should discard it in favor of Parisian crusty bread, boycotting every baker who does not honestly try to surround his loaves with crisp, toothsome crust.

Ordinary American bread is greatly improved in flavor and digestibility when it is toasted. Toasting is the conversion of crumb into crust. It is resorted to daily by hundreds of thousands of Americans who, either knowingly or instinctively, adopt this way of avoiding the soggy bread which ruins the stomach and undermines the health. On this point let me cite the words of another medical expert, Dr. Alexander Bryce, author of "Dietetics," "Modern Theories of Diet," "The Laws of Life and Health," etc., endorsing the views of Russia's most eminent physiologist:

"Pavlov demonstrated that the chewing of fresh, moist bread [such as most Americans insist on having] produced no secretion of saliva worth mentioning, but dry bread caused the saliva to flow in large quantities. Stale bread, crust of bread, toast, zwieback (double-toasted bread), and plenty of biscuit compel fairly prolonged mastication with plenty of saliva, while soft bread is usually bolted with no production of digestive juice of any consequence."

Besides the yard-long loaves referred to, the French have an endless variety of breads, one of the best of them being the crescent-shaped "croissants" usually served with the morning coffee. Different provinces and towns have their own special kinds, but Paris is the paradise for bread-eaters; elsewhere, the bread is not so uniformly excellent, though nearly always better than that served in most other countries.

While the preponderance of crust over crumb is the most important aspect of Parisian bread, there are a number of other things to which it owes its excellence. For a high-class product it is important to select flour made of wheat which has a particularly fine flavor. The Flavor is also largely affected by the milling, the way the dough is made and kneaded, the quick or slow fermentation, the kind of oven used and its temperature, the length of leaving the bread exposed to the heat, and many other things.

A French baker's apprentice has to go through a four-years' course of studies before he is considered an expert. Is it a wonder that such favorable results are achieved? But besides his knowledge he must have an infinite capacity for taking pains. Plus on se donnera de peine pour pétrir la pâte, plus on obtiendra de pain, et meilleur il sera. On n'a rien de bon sans travail. "The more trouble you take in kneading the dough, the more bread you will get, and the better it will be. You cannot get anything good without work."

So say the authors—there are three of them—of the "Nouveau Manuel Complet du Boulanger," published in Paris by L. Mulo. It is a book of 626 pages with 93 illustrations. Besides an introduction which gives a bird's-eye view of the history of baking, there are ten chapters treating exhaustively of wheats and flours and their adulteration; on the making of dough and the different kinds of leaven; on troughs and ovens; on diseases of bread; on the peculiarities of the breads of various countries, including, of course, those of France, Austria and Germany as the most important.

Summing up their conclusions, the authors of this encyclopedic work say, under the subhead, "Signes Caractéristiques d'un Pain Bien Fabriqué," "Well-made bread must be light, well-raised and well-puffed up. Its color must be a particular yellow, shading into brown; it must be resonant when it is struck; its surface must be smooth, the inside full of cavities and grandes crevasses; its crumb white, very spongy and very elastic."

HOW THE BEST BUTTER IS MADE.

"If I were king," exclaimed a Sicilian shepherd boy, "I would have goosefat with my bread every day."

While the ancient Greeks and Romans already made many varieties of bread, butter was known to them only as a medicine, olive oil being generally used in place of it in the preparing of meals.

It was probably in Italy that really palatable butter was first churned, and very good butter is made in that country to-day; (that poor Sicilian boy had evidently never tasted any, else he would have preferred it even to goosefat!) but the best butter in the world is marketed in Paris. Not once, during half-a-dozen sojourns in that city, have I had butter served which it was not a pleasure to eat.

While bad butter, such as most Americans eat daily, seems to be virtually tabooed in France, there are of course many degrees of excellence. In May, 1912, we visited a number of the leading Paris restaurants with the special object of studying these degrees. Everywhere the butter was very good, but the best, my wife and I agreed after repeated trials, was served at the Bœuf à la Mode. I therefore asked the head-waiter to find out from the dairy just how it was made. He did so, and received in reply a letter which is herewith reprinted in a translation:

In response to your communication of the twentieth I take pleasure in answering your questions. Our butter is always made with the cream of the previous day and after this cream has fermented twelve hours. In this way to-day's milk is skimmed at about noon and the cream is cooled to 37-40 degrees [Fahrenheit], then it is put in a place where it rises to 42°-47° [Fahrenheit] and at this temperature it is kept as nearly as possible till the next morning, when it is churned.

This method is a satisfactory one, and our butter is right.

Believing that these directions will prove to be what your customer wishes I beg you to receive my best salutations.

Marchand.

The information given in this letter relates to one point only, as that was the only point I had inquired about.

What I wanted to know was whether this super-excellent butter was made of sweet cream or of sour cream.

Edwin H. Webster, Chief of the Dairy Division, states in No. 241 of the Farmers' Bulletins, issued by the United States Department of Agriculture, that "practically speaking, all butter used in this country is churned from sour cream. Sweet cream butter to most users tastes flat and insipid." He adds that the American dairyman, when his cream is not sour, deliberately makes it so by adding a "starter," which is nothing more nor less than "nicely soured milk."

In the Paris bookstalls we bought everything we could find as to the French practices in this respect, and furthermore we spent hours in the Bibliothèque Nationale studying the documents relating to it.

D. Allard, Professeur Départmental d'Agriculture, says in his book "Le Beurre": "It is generally remarked that in the regions which produce the finest and best-liked butter, la Normandie and la Bretagne, great care is taken to let the cream turn sour before it is churned. There is here certainly a result of fermentation, for one can, as we have said, impart these qualities to sweet cream by adding select ferments.

"Besides this, fermentation gives another advantage: it makes the cream easier to churn and increases the yield of butter.

"One must not go too far, however. The farmers know very well that the cream of a whole week gives a butter of unpleasant flavor.

"It is therefore the uniformity of fermentation that ensures uniformity in the production of butter; which explains the importance of this question."

Another writer, V. Houdet, Ingénieur-Agronome, Directeur de l'Ecole Nationale des Industries Laitières de Mamirolle, says in his book "Laiterie, Beuerrerie, Fromagerie" (fourth edition, 1912):

"No matter whether the cream has been obtained by letting the milk stand in a low temperature or by means of a separator, it does not, if churned at once, yield anything but a sweet butter, of pure taste but without bouquet and without finesse.

"In order that the butter may have the aroma, and particularly the nutty flavor which the consumers desire and which considerably increases its market value, it is necessary that the cream should ferment, should become soured, before it is churned, for it is particularly on this treatment, this maturation (ripening), that all the qualities of the product depend.

"While the cream is fermenting, the sugar of milk it contains is changed into lactic acid which reacts in the measure of its production on the glycerides, saponifies them while liberating the volatile acids which impart to the butter its perfume and make it keep better.

"At the same time, as with all fermentation, it is necessary to stop in time; an excessive development of acid would yield a strong butter, rapidly undergoing a change and becoming rancid."

Director Houdet also points out, as did Professor Allard, that by souring the cream the yield of butter is "very appreciably increased."

Judging by these remarks, the French way is like the American: the cream is ripened (soured) before churning. Must we, therefore, conclude that the enormous difference (apart from the salt question) between the average American and the average French butter is due chiefly to American carelessness in regard to a number of details, particularly the degree of acidity and the regulation of the temperature which the French authors just quoted declare to be of the utmost importance in the manipulation of the cream while ripening?

Or is our butter usually so inferior because so much of it is marketed after undergoing cold storage, whereas the French get theirs fresh, as they do their poultry? Years ago the State Railway began to run special butter trains from Normandy, Brittany, and the La Rochelle district, which reach the Paris market early in the morning, refrigerating cars being used in summer, so that the butter always arrives in perfect condition.

Doubtless, such differences help to explain the inferiority of our butter; but a question of even greater importance which we must now consider, is this: Is it true that the best butter owes its fine flavor to the ripening of the cream—the churning of sour cream instead of sweet?

The fact that dairymen in France as well as in America do use fermented cream does not necessarily prove this to be the case; for, as we have seen, there are two other very important reasons for ripening the cream: sour cream is more easily churned, and it yields more butter than sweet cream does. This being the case, most dairymen, being human, would naturally be tempted to use acid cream even if it were possible to make a still finer butter with absolutely sweet cream.

That this is possible, is the belief of many experts and epicures. A German lady in Berlin, who has had much experience, informed me that sweet-cream butter was in that region preferred by those who could indulge their appetites all they liked, whereas the sour-cream butter was ordered by those who wished to curb the appetites of their customers (in taverns, &c.). An English official, Francis Vacher, remarks in "The Food Inspector's Handbook," in which he gives the results of his experiences in sampling, that "it seems superfluous to say that butter of fine flavor cannot be made from sour cream. Yet much butter is made from sour cream, particularly in small farms and dairies."