fearing a storm, interfered. "I have a lot more to tell you about
my little Neapolitan book," she went on, "and I will begin by
saying that, for the future, we cannot do better than make free use
of it. The author opens with an announcement that he means to give
exact quantities for every dish, and then, like a true Neapolitan,
lets quantities go entirely, and adopts the rule-of-thumb system.
And I must say I always find the question of quantities a difficult
one. Some books give exact measures, each dish being reckoned
enough for four persons, with instructions to increase the measures
in proportion to the additional number of diners but here a rigid
rule is impossible, for a dish which is to serve by itself, as a
supper or a lunch, must necessarily be bigger than one which merely
fills one place in a dinner menu. Quantities can be given
approximately in many cases, but flavouring must always be a
question of individual taste. Latitude must be allowed, for all
cooks who can turn out distinguished work will be found to be
endowed with imagination, and these, being artists, will never
consent to follow a rigid rule of quantity. To put it briefly,
cooks who need to be told everything, will never cook properly,
even if they be told more than everything. And after all, no one
takes seriously the quantities given by the chef of a millionaire
or a prince; witness the cook of the Prince de Soubise, who
demanded fifty hams for the sauces and garnitures of a single
supper, and when the Prince protested that there could not possibly
be found space for them all on the table, offered to put them all
into a glass bottle no bigger than his thumb. Some of
Francatelli's quantities are also prodigious, as, for instance,
when to make a simple glaze he calls for three pounds of gravy
beef, the best part of a ham, a knuckle of veal, an old hen, and
two partridges."