it has been strained, it will develop into a perfectly clear soup
under the hands of a careful and intelligent cook. The fleeting
delicate aroma which, as every gourmet will admit, gives such
grateful aid to the palate, is the breath of garden herbs and of
herbs alone, and here I have a charge to bring against contemporary
cookery. I mean the neglect of natural in favour of manufactured
flavourings. With regard to herbs, this could not always have been
the rule, for I never go into an old English garden without finding
there a border with all the good old-fashioned pot herbs growing
lustily. I do not say that the use of herbs is unknown, for of
course the best cookery is impossible without them, but I fear that
sage mixed with onion is about the only one which ever tickles the
palate of the great English middle-class. And simultaneously with
the use of herb flavouring in soup has arisen the practice of
adding wine, which to me seems a very questionable one. If wine is
put in soup at all, it must be used so sparingly as to render its
presence imperceptible. Why then use it at all? In some sauces
wine is necessary, but in all cases it is as difficult to regulate
as garlic, and requires the utmost vigilance on the part of the
cook."

"My last cook, who was very stout and a little middle-aged, would
always use flavouring sauces from the grocer's rather than walk up
to the garden, where we have a most seductive herb bed," said Mrs.
Wilding; "and then, again, the love of the English for pungent-made
sauces is another reason for this makeshift practice. 'Oh, a
table-spoonful of somebody's sauce will do for the flavouring,' and
in goes the sauce, and the flavouring is supposed to be complete.
People who eat their chops, and steaks, and fish, and game, after
having smothered the natural flavour with the same harsh condiment,