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A treatise on the esculent funguses of England: containing an account of their classical history, uses, characters, development, structure, nutritious properties, modes of cooking and preserving, etc. — John Shaqi

Science

A treatise on the esculent funguses of England: containing an account of their classical history, uses, characters, development, structure, nutritious properties, modes of cooking and preserving, etc.

Name: A treatise on the esculent funguses of England: containing an account of their classical history, uses, characters, development, structure, nutritious properties, modes of cooking and preserving, etc.
Author: Badham, David

Badham, David

Mushrooms -- England

In the “sensual philosophy,” of the French school particularly, the
stomach has received marked attention, ranking in that country as the
most noble of the _viscera_.[62] Even in those republican times when no
other rights were held sacred throughout France, the privileges of the
stomach were respected; when men found that they might get on quite as
well, or better, with a bad heart, but that they could not get on so well
without a good digestion, it is not so much to be wondered at if they
made idols of their bellies, established a School of Cooks to rival the
School of Athens, and became famous for “those charming little suppers
in which they used to set the decencies of life at defiance.”[63] But
if in France far too much attention has been paid to the culinary art,
too little attention has surely been paid to it at home; for the art
of cookery, properly understood, is not only the art of pleasing the
palate, but the stomach also.[64] In France, the dinner is the thought
of the morning, and sometimes the business of the day, but in France
everybody dines; in England, where the word ‘dinner’ never occurs till
it is announced, a few wealthy men dine well, the middling ranks badly,
and the poor not at all. Not that even the poorer orders generally want
the necessary materials for such repast; they frequently consume more
butcher’s meat than is consumed by their Continental neighbours; it is
simply that they want skill in preparing it. If it be scanty, they cannot
tell how to make the most of it; if it be homely, they cannot tell how
to improve its flavour by uniting and blending with it a certain class
of inexpensive luxuries, which, though they grow everywhere throughout
the country, are everywhere neglected. Touching the wholesomeness or
unwholesomeness of these, I have now a few words to address to the
common-sense reader; that is, to him who prefers feasting upon funguses
to fasting out of mere prejudice. Formerly men used to refer such
questions as this to their physician; they would

    “Try what Mead or Cheselden advised.”[65]

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

A treatise on the esculent funguses of England: containing an account of their classical history, uses, characters, development, structure, nutritious properties, modes of cooking and preserving, etc.

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