The Landmarks club cook book : a California collection of the choicest recipes from everywhere / comp. by the Landmarks club (incorporated).

  • Landmarks Club.
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The Landmarks club cook book : a California collection of the choicest recipes from everywhere / comp. by the Landmarks club (incorporated). Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    SPANISH-AMERICAN COOftEKY BY CHAS. F. FUMMIS E generic food habits of all long-established peoples are invariably based upon the average hygienic requirements of their habitat. The fruit-and-vegetable diet of the tropics; the om- niverous but heavily meat-consuming diet of northern lands; the still more heating fat diet of the polar regions—all are essential, in a broad way, to people in those respective envi- ronments. They have not been reasoned out by philosophers, indeed; but they have been arrived at by the slow, sure, common-sense gravitation of the race in its natural condi- tions. It is only in over-civilization, when other things than our real bodily needs begin to dictate our menu, that dyspepsia becomes our tenant. And it is a stupid traveler who mocks the ancient wisdom of the country as to what in that county should be eaten. In the most important parts of Spanish America, and particularly in the high and dry regions—the “ arid lands ” like California, Arizona, New Mexico, the great Mexican plateau, Peru, etc.—the unconscious experimentation of centuries has shaped a general dietary plan of its own ; varying in details with the locality, but harmonious enough to be reckoned as a class by itself. It is, of course, the oldest American “School of Cooker},” with more than 350 , years at its back ; and it is also the most wide-spread. It probably also derives more from the wisdom of a still re- moter American antiquity than does an} other national cuisine on this continent. If we incline to turn up our noses at Indians as instructors in eating, we may remember that they taught us potatos of both sorts — for not only the sweet, but the “ Irish ” potato were exclusive natives of