Food and Flavor: A Gastronomic Guide to Health and Good Living: Chapter XIII

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 Chapter II under the headings of "An Amazing Blunder" and "A New Psychology of Eating," in which I pointed out that there is only one unvarying kind of sour and one unvarying kind of sweet and that all the varied and countless pleasures of the table are due chiefly to the sense of smell which enables us to enjoy them if we breathe out through the nose while munching our food.

To this day it seems almost incredible that it should have remained for me to make this extremely important discovery; yet all my researches have failed to bring to light a psychologist who anticipated me. My surprise abated somewhat at the time when the theory was first announced that mosquitoes are responsible for malaria. Having just read Humboldt's travels in South America and Stanley's "Darkest Africa," I remembered that both of these writers had come within an inch of the truth, yet missed it completely. The case of Stanley is really comic. Emin Pasha had informed him that he "always took a mosquito curtain with him, as he believed that it was an excellent protector against miasmatic exhalations of the night." Now, how in the world could these "miasmatic exhalations" (which were held responsible for malaria) have been kept out by a mosquito net when, as Stanley does not fail to note, the same air "enters by the doors of the house and under the flaps and through ventilators to poison the inmates"?

Just as in this case the fixed idea that bad air (malaria) must be responsible for the disease obscured the truth, so the undeserved homage bestowed on the sense of taste blinded those who wrote on this subject, including Brillat-Savarin.

In his "Physiology of Taste" he has a chapter on the senses in which he beats around the bush in the most ridiculous way. He knew that if you have a cold, or hold your nose while eating, "no flavor is perceived in anything that is swallowed"; yet from this he inferred that "all sense of taste is obliterated," although the simplest experiment would have shown him that a cold does not affect the sensations of sweet, sour, salt, bitter, alkaline, or metallic in the least; and after several pages of argumentation he comes to the absurd conclusion that "there is no complete perception of taste unless the sense of smell have a share in the sensation," and that, in fact, "smell and taste form only one sense, having the mouth as laboratory with the nose for fireplace or chimney." You might as well say that sight and hearing form only one sense.

Dr. Charles Henry Piesse, member of the Royal College of Surgeons, is another author who came within half an inch of the truth, yet missed it. He wrote a little volume, "Olfactics and the Physical Senses," which is full of interesting facts and suggestions. Two citations, the first from "The Art of Perfumery," written by Dr. Piesse's father, the second from "Olfactics," will show "how warm" these two men got in their search, as the children say in their play.

To the unlearned nose all odors are alike; but when tutored, either for pleasure or profit, no member of the body is more sensitive. Wine merchants, tea brokers, drug dealers, tobacco importers, and many others, have to go through a regular educational nasal course. A hop merchant buries his nose in a pocket, takes a sniff, and then sets his price upon the bitter flower.

The odors have to be remembered, and it is noteworthy here to remark with what persistence odors do fix themselves upon the memory; and were it not for this remembrance of an odor, the merchants in the trades above indicated would soon be at fault. An experienced perfumer will have two hundred odors in his laboratory, and can distinguish every one by name.

When the breath is held the most odorous substances may be spread in the interior of the nostrils without their perfume being perceived. This observation was first made by Galen. It has been frequently remarked that odors are smelt only during inspiration; the same air, when returned through the nostrils, always proving inodorous. But this is true only when the odor has been admitted from without by the nostrils, for when it is admitted by the mouth, as in combination with articles of nutrition, it can be perceived during expiration through the nose.

Yet this man, who thus came so near the truth, missed it as widely as all the others! Throughout his books he talks as if taste were "it." The number of "different tastes, or flavors" is, "of course, unlimited," he says; whereas, let me say it once more, there are only six tastes: sweet, salt, sour, bitter, metallic and alkaline. Again, he remarks that "the importance of possessing a pure and cultivated sense of taste is very great in certain trades and professions, as, for instance, the occupation of a wine-taster, a tea-taster, a coffee-taster. These persons are all gourmets; the word gourmet signifying a taster." Wrong, from beginning to end. Coffee, tea, and wine "tasters"—the men who sample these articles to adjudge their commercial value—are guided entirely by their Flavor, that is, their appeal to the sense of smell; while epicures owe nine-tenths of their enjoyment of food to that sense and only one-tenth to the sense of taste.

Even Professor Dr. Gustav Jäger, the famous apostle of "all-wool for man's wear," missed the mark. He wrote a book, "Die Entdeckung der Seele," in which he tried to prove that smell is really the most important of our senses, the olfactory nerve being in fact the seat of the soul! Yet this ardent advocate entirely failed to see the truth I have set forth in this book—the fact that to the sense of smell we owe most of the countless pleasures of the table, with all their important digestive and hygienic consequences. Just like all the other misguided writers on this subject, he speaks of differences in taste between lobster and crawfish, or between the eggs of hens, ducks, geese, and so on, although it is the nose and not the tongue that enables us to tell them apart.

HOW FLAVOR DIFFERS FROM FRAGRANCE.

Throughout this volume I have used the word Flavor as if it were virtually synonymous with odor, fragrance, aroma. Strictly speaking, it is not, for taste usually enters as an ingredient; but from a gastronomic point of view the taste is usually so subordinate that it is almost negligible. To say it once more, we hardly enjoy vinegar unless it is fragrant, and while we like the taste of sugar we gladly pay from five to thirty times as much for it when it is flavored and sold as candy.

In the great Oxford Dictionary two definitions of the word flavor are given. It means, in the best literary usage, either a smell, odor, aroma, pure and simple; or it means "the element in the taste of a substance which depends on the coöperation of the sense of smell."

If asked for my own definition I should say that "flavor is the odor of a substance as perceived in breathing out through the nose while we are eating, and usually accompanied by a sweet, sour, salt, or bitter taste." This distinguishes flavor from fragrance, which we perceive in breathing in through the nose; as, the fragrance of a rose or a violet—and this is not accompanied by a taste.

A strawberry has both fragrance and flavor. Persons who cannot eat strawberries may still enjoy their fragrance, which is subtler and more delicious than the flavor. We must try to overcome the foolish prejudice against "smelling at things" (apples, oranges, etc.) at table; for the fragrance of foods also stimulates the appetite and thus helps digestion. When quinces or "pomegranates" (melon gourds) are ripe I often carry one in my pocket, so that I may enjoy its exquisite and beneficial fragrance after meals.

Cantaloupes, pineapples, pomelos (grapefruit), ripe peaches, and some apples and plums are fruits with a fragrance which is even more delicious than their flavor. In other cases—particularly cherries and pears—the flavor is much more important; and in some instances the fragrance is positively disagreeable while the flavor is exquisite.

This is true of the durion. Dr. Paludanus informs us that "to those not used to it, it seems at first to smell like rotten onions, but immediately they have tasted it they prefer it to all other food." The great naturalist, Alfred Russell Wallace, says of it in his great work on the Malayan Archipelago that "the more you eat of it the less you feel inclined to stop. In fact, to eat durions is a rare sensation, worth a voyage to the East to experience."

I remember reading in the London "Telegraph," many years ago, an editorial, presumably by Sir Edwin Arnold, entitled "The King Is Eating Durions." It described His Majesty as being so completely absorbed in this task that his subjects had orders, on penalty of death, not to disturb him even if war should suddenly be declared. The natives give it honorable titles, exalt it, make verses on it. Cannot our Bureau of Plant Industry acclimate this gastronomic marvel somewhere within hailing distance?

Tobacco is one of those things the fragrance of which is more agreeable than the flavor. The time will come when smoking will be given up and tobacco simply burnt, like incense. That will make it harmless, although it will still be as offensive to some as to others it is delightful.

IMPORTANT FUNCTIONS OF THE NOSE.

1. "The fate of innumerable girls has been decided by a slight upward or downward curvature of the nose," wrote Schopenhauer; and Pascal declared that if Cleopatra's nose had been but a trifle larger the whole political geography of this planet might have been different. Owing to the fact that the nasal organ occupies the most prominent part of the face, Professor Kollmann remarks that "the partial or complete loss of the nose causes a greater disfigurement than a much greater fault of configuration in any other part of the face." Of all our features the nose has always been considered the most aristocratic, as well as an important condition of beauty.

2. No less important is the nose as a condition of beautiful speech and song. Jean de Reszke, the greatest tenor and vocal teacher of our time, goes so far as to say that "la grande question du chant devient une question du nez." Unless the stream of tone, when we speak or sing, goes through the nose it lacks beauty and resonance; yet with consistent stupidity we have bestowed the word "nasal" on the sounds produced when the nose is not used as a resonator or "sounding board!" To fully comprehend the important musico-philological function of the nose in giving beauty and variety to tones, read Chapter III of Prof. G. H. Meyer's "The Organs of Speech."

3. The nose is a sort of funnel for warming the air before it enters the sensitive lungs.

4. It is, furthermore, an apparatus for filtering the air on its way to the lungs, which is done with the aid of fine hairs and cilia in the nostrils. Persons who breathe through the mouth have at the age of thirty a gramme of dust in their lungs which they can never get rid of. Mouth-breathing is a cause of catarrh, of unrefreshing sleep, of snoring. Moreover, in the words of Dr. T. R. French, "the habit of breathing through the mouth interferes with general nutrition. The subjects of this habit are usually anemic, spare and dyspeptic."

5. The nose is a sentinel, warning us not to tarry where the air is malodorous and dangerous to health.

6. Lavender water, eau-de-Cologne, attar of roses, and other perfumes are, as everybody knows, effective in curing headaches and resting the tired mind. The "Scotsman" tells an interesting story of Sir William Temple's visit to the India House of Amsterdam where he and his companions were exalted by the tonic effect of the spices and aromas about them. John Evelyn proposed to make London the healthiest and happiest city in Christendom by planting all around it hedgerows of sweetbriar, rosemary, jasmine, etc. The feeling of relief which delights us when we leave the city and step out of the railway car comes from the natural fragrance of the trees, herbs, and flowers. This fragrance makes us breathe deeply, and deep breathing is the greatest of all tonics, as well as a preventive of colds and consumption. A gardener has written of the "thrilling" fragrance of sweet peas, and it is not too strong a word; I myself have often been thrilled by their fragrance, or that of lilies, pinks, or hyacinths wafted across the garden like sweet concords of music.

About ten million dollars a year is the amount spent in the United States on perfumery. The best perfumes are still, and always will be, the natural ones, made in the Riviera and Roumania. Grasse, in southern France, alone uses 1,200 tons of roses, 200 tons of jasmine blossoms, and nearly as many tons of violets every year. Of chemical imitations of the natural perfumes Germany produces annually about $12,000,000 worth. When we try to guess the amount of perfumery the world needs for toilet powders, sachets, dentifrices, and soaps, we realize what an important part the nose plays in commerce. The nation's candy bill exceeds a hundred million dollars a year; and candy is perfumed sugar. The value of the world's annual tobacco crop is about $200,000,000, and the appeal of tobacco is, of course, chiefly to the nose. Some dolt wrote, many years ago, that if you blindfold a smoker he cannot tell the difference between good and bad tobacco. He was evidently anosmic—one of a considerable number of persons whose sense of smell is not developed. To normal smokers the value of a cigar lies in its fragrance, and it is their superior fragrance that makes the product of Cuba the most costly of all cigars.

7. The seventh and most important function of the nose is the one which—mirabile dictu—it remained for me to discover—the function of perceiving and enjoying the countless varieties of flavor that are developed in the food we eat. To what I have already said in proof of this assertion let me add that the nerves of taste are affected by liquids, and those of smell by gases; and the flavored air we breathe out while eating is certainly not liquid!

EDUCATING THE SENSE OF SMELL.

Dr. Piesse errs in saying that the sense of taste can and should be educated. It needs no educating; sweet is distinguished from sour, salt and bitter from the earliest infancy, and that is all there is to it.

The sense of smell, on the other hand, can and should be educated systematically. Kant's reason for saying that it is not worth cultivating was that, in populous regions, particularly, there are more disagreeable than agreeable odors. He might as well have advised against educating the eyes and the ears because in our cities there are more offensive sights and sounds than agreeable ones. An educated sense of smell objects to malodorous surroundings and therefore prompts sanitary reforms. Much has been done in this direction since the days of Kant. The next reform will be to absolutely demand clean, sweet air in schools, theaters, and concert halls.

The principal reason for educating the sense of smell is to protect us against the danger of eating spoiled food, and to enable us thoroughly to enjoy the countless pleasures of the table—dwelt on in this book—on which a good appetite depends. The significance of this was understood by Shakespeare when he wrote:

Now good digestion wait on appetiteAnd health on both.

Ants are the most intelligent of all insects. Their antennæ are organs of smell and so much is their world a world of odors that, as Sir John Lubbock ascertained, an ant accidentally born without antennæ seemed to be as helpless as a blind person among ourselves. Many mammals are greatly dependent on this sense, and there was a time when a large part of the human brain was assigned to its perceptions. More and more the impressions of sight gained on it. The process has gone too far; we must once more strengthen and develop our olfactory nerves and encourage the expansion of the olfactory region in the brain.

The way to do it has been dwelt on repeatedly in the preceding pages. I have taught several persons who were partly anosmic to learn after a short time to distinguish between different foods that had previously "tasted" alike to them; they simply followed my advice of breathing out slowly and consciously through the nose while eating. Keep those two words—particularly consciously—in mind. Never eat in an absent-minded way; and if you are a host or a hostess, please do not tell your guest interesting stories at the moment when he is trying to do justice to the good things you have placed before him!

Children should be told every time they bolt their food or candy that the pleasure of eating lies not in the swallowing of it, but in keeping it in the mouth as long as possible and breathing out through the nose. That will make epicures of them, able to tell good food from bad and thus escape many an illness.

How acute the sense of smell can be made is shown by the fact that it will perceive and distinguish the 1,300,000th part of a grain of attar of roses. It is said that the inmates of an asylum for the blind, whose other senses are sharpened by the loss of sight, can tell on entering a dining-room what viands are on the table.

De gustibus non est disputandum. True; we are all entitled to our likes and dislikes; but many "differences of taste" are simply differences in development and acuteness of the sense of smell. To those in whom this sense is blunted, sweet (unsalted) butter may seem insipid; but should they maintain that it is insipid?

To Turner a man once said he could not see in nature such colors as he used on his canvases. The great painter promptly replied: "Don't you wish you could?"

Epicures are usually born with a keen sense of smell. Once, in crossing a bleak pass in the Alps, I said to my companion: "I smell an orchid!" After considerable search we found it—a tiny blossom—some ten feet from the road. That orchid explains why I have written this book.

COFFEE, TEA, AND TEMPERANCE.

A general educating of the sense of smell may not solve the temperance problem, but it will be a great help.

It would be a blessing if every liquor saloon in the country could be closed. Most of the whiskey and other strong drink sold—at an enormous profit—in these places is adulterated in ways which often make it infinitely more harmful than the pure article would be, under any circumstances. But the unadulterated is an evil, too, because it is usually drunk in excess.

It has been said of the native African that he wants something with a "bite" in it and is not satisfied with a drink that does not go down his throat "like a torchlight procession." But the African is not alone in this peculiarity. There are many thousands of whites who want their whiskey or rum "fiery" above all things; and they want it that way because their sense of smell is not educated to appreciate the higher qualities of liquors—their fragrance, or "bouquet."

"It is a fact," as a well-known mixer of fancy drinks once remarked, "that there are very few good judges of liquor. It is a very old chestnut to set out whiskey when brandy has been called for, and not one in ten can tell the difference. There are few people who can distinguish between high and low priced wines."

The difference between the best wines and the poorest lies chiefly in this, that the best have a maximum of bouquet and a minimum of alcohol. The bouquet is exhilarating, like the alcohol, yet is perfectly harmless. On the bouquet depends the commercial as well as the gastronomic value of wines almost entirely. Now, while some persons who are addicted to strong drink may be hopeless cases, there are thousands who might be saved by teaching them that by educating their sense of smell to the appreciation of bouquet they can get infinitely more pleasure from a refined sort of indulgence than from the bestial alcoholic intoxication which is followed by nausea, headache, by nights and days of misery, by poverty and deadly diseases.

Drunkenness and gluttony are no longer respectable, or even semi-respectable, and further progress in the same direction may be hoped for through efforts at reform along the lines I have indicated. A true epicure would no more dull the edge of his appetite for future pleasures of the table by over-indulgence in food or drink than a barber would think of whittling kindling wood with his razor.

Whiskey drinkers are far from being the only topers. There are also a great many tea and coffee topers. A writer in the "Journal of the American Medical Association" describes the case of a woman, a member of the Temperance Union in her town, who was "a coffee drunkard," having been living for months on little beside black coffee, till she was a wreck. Such cases are common; they have led to the manufacture on a large scale of diverse substitutes for coffee, some of which are not at all bad if taken with sugar and cream.

Some relief is also coming through the increased demand for cocoa, which has the advantage over tea and coffee of being a real food. In the period from 1888 to 1911 imports of cocoa into the United States increased from 6,600,000 pounds to 134,000,000, while those of coffee increased only from 404,000,000 to 800,000,000 pounds, and those of tea from 68,000,000 to 104,000,000 pounds.

That tea is the worst enemy of the Irish peasantry was the burden of a blue book issued a few years ago by the Inspectors of Irish schools. "The tea is so prepared for use that the liquid, when drunk, has the properties of a slow poison. The teapot stewing on the hearth all day long is kept literally on tap; the members of the family, young as well as old, resorting to it at discretion."

It is not only among the peasantry and the city slums that improperly made tea does its deadly work. Among the well-to-do, in all countries, it is far from being in all cases, as it is supposed to be, "the cup which cheers but not inebriates." The strong coffee-colored four-o'clock tea served in English and American homes is a gastronomic atrocity; it is bad for heart, nerves, and stomach. In the United States, in nine cases out of ten, the tea served is an inky fluid, bitter as gall, and devoid of fragrance.

When our Government forbade the importation of artificially colored teas, Consul West wrote from Japan that the planters were induced by this measure to "make greater efforts in future to improve the flavor rather than the color and the appearance" of the tea.

The Flavor is, indeed, the one thing to be considered in raising high-class tea; also, in preparing it. The art of brewing a good cup of tea consists in making it in such a way as to secure a maximum of fragrance and a minimum of the tannin, which is bad for the digestion, and the theine, which is a nerve poison. The rules for making tea may be found in any good cook book. The main points are that the water should never remain on the leaves more than from three to five minutes, and that the teapot should be thoroughly heated because it is only at the boiling point that some of the volatile properties of the leaves, on which the aroma depends, can be properly extracted. A little sugar to sweeten it is permissible; it does not alter the flavor. Milk or cream do; wherefore tea-drinkers who are epicures and like to enjoy the unique fragrance of different kinds of tea, reject them.

The commercial and gastronomic value of coffee is determined by the amount of the aromatic volatile oil which develops in the process of roasting. This fragrant oil is called caffeone. But coffee also has another active principle, an alkaloid called caffeine, which has a strong effect on the vascular and nervous systems and is used as a medicine. Now, the art of making good coffee consists in eliminating, as far as possible, the effects of the caffeine while developing those of the caffeone. To the caffeine are due the wakefulness and digestive disturbances caused by coffee; while the flavorsome caffeone produces the harmless exhilarating effects.

Coffee-roasting is a science which every housewife should study and practise; its neglect accounts for the fact that one so seldom gets a fragrant cup of coffee. The grinding should be done just before the coffee is prepared, and it should be drunk at once. Families having plenty of storage room should buy coffee by wholesale as it improves with age and yields a more mellow beverage. Dealers do not favor this storing because the beans lose weight thereby. Wash the beans before roasting them, and you will have the material for brewing a good cup of coffee.

An effort is being made in Europe to substitute for coffee and tea a beverage which, while having their refreshing effect, contains so small a proportion of the alkaloid substance as to be comparatively harmless, namely maté. In Argentina the use of the maté leaf has increased enormously in recent years, the annual consumption averaging nearly twenty pounds per person, and in Paraguay it is even as high as twenty-nine pounds per inhabitant. North Americans and Europeans have taken to it much more slowly, owing, it is said, to the crude way of preparing the leaves—the drying of them over an open fire, which gives them a smoky flavor. But it is claimed that superior methods of preparation will make maté a powerful rival of coffee and tea, all the more as it is much cheaper. A pound of it makes five times as many cups as a pound of coffee; and, unlike tea leaves, the maté leaves can be used for a second infusion without impairment of the quality.

In beverages, as in foods, Flavor is the decisive factor. The natural flavor of maté seems to be as agreeable as that of tea or coffee, but it is apt to be marred by the suggestion of smoke just referred to. If this can be eliminated, and if it is true that maté, though containing less caffeine than either tea or coffee, is even more stimulating and sustaining, then "Paraguay tea" seems destined to be the domestic beverage of the future.