Chapter VII

, convincingly prove the commercial wisdom of intensive farming and of providing city folk with the tenderest and most flavorsome vegetables, berries, and fruits. We have too much "long-distance food" (canned or frozen); what we want is short-distance produce.

Paris is the model for us; it enjoys what Professor Ferrero, in _Le Figaro_, has rightly called the ideal condition, being a city fed by fresh supplies from the adjacent country. Our aim should be to make each of our large cities a "hub" connected by thousands of spokes with suburban market gardens.

In these gardens women as well as men can find employment; it has been claimed that their careful truck farming in garden and field shows better results than the work of men.

Short-distance farming increases profits by decreasing transportation charges. A vivid illustration of future possibilities is given by an expert in these words: "Long Island is about the size of Holland. Its population is about the same. The produce taken out of the soil in Holland is twenty-one times that which is taken from the soil of Long Island. If Long Island were brought under proper cultivation it alone would produce the larger part of the vegetable products required by the six millions of people in New York City and vicinity." The retail middleman and the parcel post would in that case suffice.

At present the big profits in the food business go chiefly to the gambling middlemen--the jobbers. This must be changed. Possibly the prices will not become lower; but if the method just suggested is carried out, the quality (flavor) of the food we eat will be vastly improved and the profits will go to those who deserve them--the market gardeners. Let us do all we can to make their work as alluring and profitable as possible in order to greatly increase their numbers. To the lowering of the cost of food we ourselves can largely attend by stopping our sinful waste and taking to heart the methods taught in the preceding pages of economizing in our food without lowering its nutritive value or diminishing its pleasurableness.

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XIII

GASTRONOMIC VALUE OF ODORS

SWEET, SOUR, SALT, AND BITTER.

In the London "Zoo" one day, as we were nearing the bear den, we heard the most heartrending cries on the part of one of its denizens. It sounded as if some bruin were being murdered or vivisected. In reality, the wails and tears were all due to the fact that one of the animals "wanted more"--more of the jam which an attendant was distributing to his charges in turn by the spoonful. That bear had a particularly "sweet tooth"; but is not bruin proverbial for his love of wild honey? It is a _casus belli_ with many a swarm of bees.

If you wish to make a horse love you, let him take cubes of sugar from the palm of your hand. As for dogs, they are supposed to be about as carnivorous as carnivorous can be; yet I have heard of a dog who, for months, daily brought a basket of meat from the village butcher and never touched it; but one morning some horehound candy was put in the basket and that was too much for his integrity; he stopped on the way and ate it all up. I felt inclined to doubt that story until I found that Laddie, my own beautiful collie, invariably was much more eager for sugar than for meat (with the possible exception of imported Lyons sausage). Candy and sweetened cream are his ideas of ambrosia and nectar.

To make friends with cows and sheep you need salt. With a few handfuls of it in your pocket you can soon make them leave the richest grass and come crowding around you when you take your daily walk in the fields. We ourselves crave salt in food, but we do not lick it eagerly as some domestic as well as wild animals do. In Central Africa, however, where it is a luxury hard to get, men and women devour it with the same zest that our youngsters show for candy.

So far as I know, no animal likes sour things; plain water would be invariably preferred to lemonade. Cows and pigs, to be sure, eagerly eat apples, and other fruits, and so do horses; they eat them though they be sour; but if you give them a whole bushel, they pick out the sweet ones first.

The liking for sour things is a human attribute. School children are often more eager for a pickle than for a stick of candy; and adults as well as the young ones enjoy tart or sub-acid fruits of all kinds. What could be better than a pie or a tart made of green gooseberries or sour currants? I would give all the confectionery and sweet cakes in the world for a tree of sour cherries. Of the delights of sour salads I wrote at length in the chapter on French supremacy.

Bitter herbs are eaten sometimes by browsing animals, but I doubt if they would select them by choice. The liking for bitter foods and drinks is not only a human attribute; it is a specifically epicurean trait. How very much better Scotch marmalade made of bitter oranges is than marmalade made of ordinary oranges! Slightly bitter also is the best pomelo. Bitter almond is a favorite flavoring for cakes and candies. The best of all salads, escarole and the endive tribe in general, are bitter. Bottled "bitters" are widely used as appetizers.

Physicians of all periods have agreed that bitter substances increase the appetite. Professor Pawlow considers them the strongest of all stimulants to a jaded palate. He inclines to the belief that "bitters not only act directly on the gustatory nerves in the mouth, but that they also act on the mucous membrane of the stomach in such a way that sensations are generated which contribute to the passionate craving for food."

A COMEDY OF ERRORS.

While thus admitting the gastronomic and therapeutic value of bitters, I must nevertheless call attention to the fact that their allurements, as mere sensations of _taste_, are not considerable. We would not care so much for Scotch marmalade as we do were it not for the pungent fragrance of the Seville orange which accompanies its bitter taste; or for the bitter grapefruit were it not so highly perfumed. Hops are valued for their tonic bitter but still more for their agreeable odor, without which beer, for instance, is a flat failure. We never eat quinine for fun, because it has no fragrance to modify its intense bitter; nor, for the same reason, would we use strychnine as a condiment even though it were as harmless as sugar.

Now, what is true of bitter, is true also of all other sensations of taste--salt, sour, and sweet. Considered as mere sensations of taste they have no great gastronomic value--not great at any rate when compared with the sensations of smell. On this point I need not dwell, as I discussed it briefly in