Food a l'Anglaise To those of us who take an
intelligent interest in food a book from the pen of such an authority as the President of the Wine and Food Society would be welcome at any time ; but coming just now it is especially opportune, bringing fragrant savours from the past and suggesting delicious possibilities fol the future ; by a firm reminder of the particular excellencies of the English Table it Makes a piquant harbinger of peace. Joseph Conrad, in an introduction to a cookery book compiled by his wife, wrote: "Good cooking is a moral agent." And M. Andre Simon, who needs no introduction to either cook of connoisseur, writes : "Cooking is a means to an end : the end being to make food more palatable and more digestible ; that is to say, more enjoyable as well as more profitable." These points are worth making now, since in the past the English have tended to regard the pleasures of the table with Puritan distrust, or else adopted an attitude to the skill of the cook which made us swallow triumphs and failures with an indifference which we considered well-bred The war has effected great changes: today almost everyone can be described as food-conscious. But Basic English Fare has more than a topical value ; how heartening to read the following words: "AH that I have attempted to tell you in this little book is what I, a Frenchman, consider the finest fare of the British Isles, the kind of fare which is not only as good as the best one may get anywhere else in the world, but the kind that is better here than anywhere else, if and when given a fair chance by the cook." M. Simon writes, not as a cook, but as a critic who can tell us "what is good, better and best." His foreword is followed by short sections on Food, Taste, and English Fare. Then some useful hints on the making of A Nice Cup of Tea brings us to Breakfast and the recipes, most of which have been chosen from the Wine and Food Society's own Concise Encyclopaedia of Gastronomy, these range widely but well over fish, flesh, fowl, fruit and vegetables while Cake-making and Sweets and Candies both published by the Good Housekeeping Magazine, have yielded further pleasing items for the benefit of those aspi:ing to culinary excellence. While we tnust perforce wait before we can contrive or eat many of the dishes given here, others can be made and enjoyed now. The keynote of this little book is sim- plicity and all the recipes are (or should be) in normal times within the range of the plain cook or the average middle-class housewife. M. Simon writes with freshness, humour and common sense, giving useful hints to that most important ally of the accomplished cook, the personal shopper: "The fresher the fish the better.• Make sure that the fish you buy is fresh, not by listening to the man who has it to sell but by looking at the fish before you : it tells its own tak. The eyes must be bright and outstanding, the flesh firm or rigid, the smell fresh, the gills red, and the scales firmly fixed to the skin. If there is the least suspicious smell of ammonia or alkali, leave the fish alone." A number of gay little sketches decorate M. Simon's pages. And he, having expertly discussed the question, Should Menus be Written in French or English? leaves us to
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