The Cooks Decameron | Page 3

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The Cook's Decameron: A Study In Taste
Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes
By
Mrs. W. G. Waters
"Show me a pleasure like dinner, which comes every day and lasts an
hour." -- Talleyrand circa 1901

To
A. V.
In memory of Certain Ausonian Feasts

Preface
Montaigne in one of his essays* mentions the high excellence Italian
cookery had attained in his day. "I have entered into this Discourse
upon the Occasion of an Italian I lately receiv'd into my Service, and
who was Clerk of the Kitchen to the late Cardinal Caraffa till his Death.
I put this Fellow upon an Account of his office: Where he fell to
Discourse of this Palate-Science, with such a settled Countenance and
Magisterial Gravity, as if he had been handling some profound Point of
Divinity. He made a Learned Distinction of the several sorts of

Appetites, of that of a Man before he begins to eat, and of those after
the second and third Service: The Means simply to satisfy the first, and
then to raise and acute the other two: The ordering of the Sauces, first
in general, and then proceeded to the Qualities of the Ingredients, and
their Effects: The Differences of Sallets, according to their seasons,
which ought to be serv'd up hot, and which cold: The Manner of their
Garnishment and Decoration, to render them yet more acceptable to the
Eye after which he entered upon the Order of the whole Service, full of
weighty and important Considerations."
It is consistent with Montaigne's large-minded habit thus to applaud the
gifts of this master of his art who happened not to be a Frenchman. It is
a canon of belief with the modern Englishman that the French alone
can achieve excellence in the art of cookery, and when once a notion of
this sort shall have found a lodgment in an Englishman's brain, the task
of removing it will be a hard one. Not for a moment is it suggested that
Englishmen or any one else should cease to recognise the sovereign
merits of French cookery; all that is entreated is toleration, and
perchance approval, of cookery of other schools. But the favourable
consideration of any plea of this sort is hindered by the fact that the
vast majority of Englishmen when they go abroad find no other school
of cookery by the testing of which they may form a comparison. This
universal prevalence of French cookery may be held to be a proof of its
supreme excellence--that it is first, and the rest nowhere;
but the victory is not so complete as it seems, and the facts would bring
grief and humiliation rather than patriotic pride to the heart of a
Frenchman like Brillat-Savarin. For the cookery we meet in the hotels
of the great European cities, though it may be based on French
traditions, is not the genuine thing, but a bastard, cosmopolitan growth,
the same everywhere, and generally vapid and uninteresting. French
cookery of the grand school suffers by being associated with such
commonplace achievements. It is noted in the following pages how
rarely English people on their travels penetrate where true Italian
cookery may be tasted, wherefore it has seemed worth while to place
within the reach of English housewives some Italian recipes which are
especially fitted for the presentation of English fare to English palates
under a different and not unappetising guise. Most of them will be
found simple and inexpensive, and special care has been taken to

include those recipes which enable the less esteemed portions of meat
and the cheaper vegetables and fish to be treated more elaborately than
they have hitherto been treated by English cooks.
The author wishes to tender her acknowledgments to her husband for
certain suggestions and emendations made in the revision of the
introduction, and for his courage in dining, "greatly daring," off many
of the dishes. He still lives and thrives. Also to Mrs.