20 December: Boreham on the Cook

The Cook
Christmas comes but once a year, and, when it comes, it brings good cheer. The good cheer emanates, very largely, from the kitchen. Man, according to Montaigne, is born a roaster. He is essentially a cooking animal. This is the one unmistakable frontier that separates him from the brute creation. There are, of course, many other things that we do, and that the beasts of the field do not attempt. But, in respect of most of these accomplishments, it can be shown either that the habit is not universal among men, or else that some reasonable approach to it is made by the lower creatures. But, in cooking, we have a sharp, clear line of demarcation. Anthropologists of every school are agreed that the manufacture of fire, and its application to food, are to be found among all tribes and races of men; whilst naturalists are unable to show that any inkling of this potent force has ever been discovered among the furry and feathered dwellers in the forests.

Readers of Jack London's masterpiece are never likely to forget the scene in which White Fang, the wolf, saw, for the first time, the Indians make fire. "Women and children were carrying sticks and branches to Grey Beaver. Suddenly, White Fang saw a strange thing like mist beginning to rise from the sticks and moss beneath Grey Beaver's hands. Then, among the sticks themselves, appeared a live thing, twisting and turning, of a colour like the colour of the sun in the sky." The thing was strange and new to White Fang. These man-animals had some magic by which they could annihilate things that existed and give new shape and movement to objects of all kinds. They were fire-makers, these man-animals; and, being fire-makers, were gods. The very act of fire-making and cooking is, therefore, the sign and seal of our humanity.

The Culinary Art Created Civilisation
Moreover, man's advance in civilisation and refinement has been exactly commensurate with his progress in the art of cooking. Students of Gibbon will remember that in tracing the evolution of the Northern peoples from savagery to Empire, he attaches considerable importance to the character of their diet and the manner of its preparation. During the nomadic stage of national life, when the primitive tribe was simply a roving horde, it drove its herds of cattle continually with it. Meat and milk were the sole articles of food. The camp, never well arranged, often resembled a butcher's shambles; and the historian, after referring to these sanguinary scenes, to the exclusive diet of animal food which resulted from them, and to the crude and barbarous manner in which that food was prepared for consumption, attributes to these factors the perpetuation, through long ages, of the ferocious and barbaric propensities of the people.

But when the nations reached their places of permanent settlement, and devoted themselves in consequence to the pursuit of agriculture, they naturally mingled the fruits of the field with the flesh to which they had been accustomed, whilst the new style of living afforded them leisure to devote to the more careful, more tasteful and more elaborate preparation of their food. Few of the developments of civilisation were more intricate than this. Today we are accustomed to dishes in which all kinds of heterogeneous elements are served together as a matter of course. "In dressing new potatoes," says George Gissing, "our cook throws into the saucepan a sprig of mint. This is genius!" Something is due to the memory of the man who discovered that horseradish is the thing to eat with roast beef; that apple sauce lends an added charm to a joint of pork, that red currant jelly enhances the flavour of jugged hare, that mint sauce blends beautifully with lamb, that boiled mutton is the better for caper sauce, and that strawberries should be served with cream. Think of the nauseous conglomerations that must have been tried and tasted, not without a shudder and wry grimace, before these felicitous combinations were at length launched upon the world! The men or women who wrestled with these problems represent a band of pioneers whose paeans have never yet been sung.

Sublimity That Lurks Behind The Sordid
In his "Minor Moralities," Edward White stresses the importance of paying honour to the cooks among us. The dinner table, he points out, is not merely a piece of furniture at which we take our places when hungry, to glut our appetites. It is the emblem of geniality, of conviviality, of hospitality. "Dining in company," he says, "is a divine institution," and he argues that they should be highly esteemed and amply rewarded who, by their artistry, make that divine institution pleasing and attractive. There hangs at the Louvre a notable painting by Murillo in which the artist pictures the interior of a kitchen. But the toilers moving to and fro are not mortals in work-a-day garb, but shining white-winged angels. One serenely puts the kettle on the fire to boil; one is lifting a pail of water with most perfect grace; one is at the dresser, taking down the plates; whilst a youthful cherub is moving here and there, his face radiant at being permitted to take part in such sacred tasks. The charm of the picture lies in the fact that no incongruity strikes the beholders. It seems the most natural thing in the world that the angels should be busying themselves with pots and pans.

Or perhaps the cook is priestly rather than angelic. With priestlike solemnity he presides over an imposing hecatomb of slaughtered victims. Innocent victims, too, and innocent victims who have died that, by dying, they may nourish the life of others more guilty than themselves. Upon this holocaust of sacrificial blood the cook gazes continually; and he must be as blind as the blindest bat who does not perceive in all this a reflection of that great vicarious law that is the very crux and climax of the most sublime revelation. Whether the cook recognises it or not, the kitchen table is an altar, and he himself is a priest, presiding every day over those scenes of solemn sacrifice by which men live.

F W Boreham

Image: A cook