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"Of making books there is no end," and as this is no less true of cookery books than of those devoted to each and every other subject of human interest, one rather hesitates to add anything to the sum of domestic literature.
But while every department of the culinary art has been elaborated ad nauseam, there is still considerable ignorance regarding some of the most elementary principles which underlie the food question, the relative values of food-stuffs, and the best methods of adapting these to the many and varied needs of the human frame.
This is peculiarly evident in regard to a non-flesh diet.
Of course one must not forget that there are not a few, even in this age, to whom the bare idea of contriving the daily dinner, without the aid of the time-honoured flesh-pots, would seem scarcely less impious than absurd, as if it threatened the very foundations of law and order.
Nothing is more common than to hear people say most emphatically that vegetarian diet is no good, for they "have tried it."
We usually find upon enquiry, however, that the "fair trial" which they claim to have given, consisted of a haphazard and ill-advised course of meals, for a month, a week, or a few days intermittently, when a meat dinner was from some reason or other not available.
To avoid any very serious risks, however, she fortified herself as strongly as possible with the other unconsidered trifles-soup, sweets, curds and cream, strawberries, &c., but despite all her precautions, by tea- time the aching void became so alarming that the banished joint was recalled from exile, and being "so famished" she ate more than she would have done at dinner.
As people get into more wholesome ways of living, the tendency is to have fewer courses and varieties at a meal, but just at first it may be as well to start on the basis of a three-course dinner.
One or other of the dishes may be dispensed with now and then, and thus by degrees one might attain to that ideal of dainty simplicity from which this age of luxury and fuss and elaboration is so far removed.
