NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS IN FOOD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12931, 29 July 1905, Page 5 (Supplement)

NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS IN FOOD.

I'jVhiiY country has its individual manners and-customs in the method' of .presenting and combining its different foods. -What forms a, single course on the menu of one land is not infrequently only a simple accessory to some more important'.culinary production in another, and in. this, despite the march of the times, one notes a certain conservatism. Very probably the warlike or nomadic habits of far-away ancestors in early historic times may ■ have something to do with it. In few English houses are vegetables' served separately as a course by themselves. We make an exception, for instance, in the ease of asparagus, of artichokes jrnd cauliflowers, but in presenting the latter as a dish " a part' the British cook invariably feels it incumbent; upon her to introduce the cheese element as'a kind of apology.. : The traveller in prance, delights in " little peas in butter, ' and all the other delicious forms in which vegetables are encountered there, 'but 011 her return to native shores she returns to the old monotony, if not with gratitude, at least with placidity. Why should the watery, stringy mass we call by the mysterious title of " green's"—often a misnomer— so' frequently placed before the unwilling gaze, when out of these same materials may be provided the most delicious vegetable course'/ In America the "habit of mixing cheese with salad, is very common. To. them the French plan of presenting an oil and vinegar mixture with cress, endive, and chervil as an accompaniment to chicken or. game is nothing short of barbarous, and to the transatlantic palate ft concoction singularly wanting in flavour. Provided the cheese is of the right age and flavour the amalgamation is not one to be despised.