At a large dinner in Savannah, given to an ex-Mayor of New York, one of the best dinner-givers in that city made the foregoing statement, and the ex-Mayor actually called upon me to substantiate it, declaring it had always been his practice thus to supply his table, when he invited a dozen or more people to dinner. So far from this being the case, I then and there assured my Southern friends that no people in the world lived better than New Yorkers, so far as creature comforts were concerned. I have tested the capacity of the Southern cook alongside of the French _chef_; I had them together, cooking what we call a “Saratoga Lake Dinner” at Newport, a dinner for sixty people; serving alone Spanish mackerel, Saratoga potatoes, soft shell crabs, woodcock, chicken partridges, and lettuce salad. Both were great artists in their way, but the _chef_ came off very much the victor. I doubted then, and I doubt now, if the dinners in London are better than our New York dinners, given by one of the innumerable good dinner-givers. Our material is better in New York, and our cooks are equally as good as those in England. The sauces of the French cuisine are its feature, while there is not a single sauce in African or Southern cooking. The French get the essence and flavor out of fowl, and discard the huge joints. Take for instance, soup; give a colored cook a shin of beef and a bunch of carrots and turnips, and of this he makes a soup. A Frenchman, to give you a _consommé royale_, requires a knuckle of veal, a shin of beef, two fat fowls, and every vegetable known to man. The materials are more than double the expense, but then you have a delicacy of flavor, and a sifting out of everything that is coarse and gross. The _chef_ is an educated, cultivated artist. The colored cook, such as nature made him, possessing withal a wonderful natural taste, and the art of making things savory, i.e. taste good. His cookery book is tradition. French _chefs_ have their inspirations, are in every way almost as much inspired as writers. To illustrate this: when Henry IV. was fighting in the Pyrénées, he told his French cook to give him a new sauce. The reply was, “Where are the materials for it, your Majesty? I have nothing here but herbs and cream.” “Then make a sauce from them,” was the King’s answer. The _chef_ did this, and produced one of the best sauces in the French cuisine, known as _sauce Bearnaise_.