The Art of Living in Australia: Together with Three Hundred Australian Cookery Recipes and Accessory Kitchen Information by Mrs. H. WickenMuskett, Philip E.
Science
The Art of Living in Australia: Together with Three Hundred Australian Cookery Recipes and Accessory Kitchen Information by Mrs. H. Wicken
Muskett, Philip E.
Australia -- Social life and customs; Cooking, Australian; Health; Hygiene
A reference to the isothermal lines in any physical atlas will be of
considerable value in assisting us to the elucidation of the subject
under consideration. These are certain lines drawn over a chart of the
earth's surface, on which are located those cities and regions where
the mean annual temperature is the same. Thus the mean annual
temperature of Sydney is 62.9 degrees; the corresponding line in the
northern world runs through Naples and Lisbon in Europe, and a little
below the central portion of the United States and California in America.
At Melbourne the average yearly temperature is 57.6 degrees, corresponding
in the old world to a temperature met with at Marseilles, Bordeaux, the
south of France and Northern Italy, while across the Atlantic a somewhat
similar climate obtains about the middle of the United States. The mean
annual temperature at Brisbane is 67.74 degrees; this is the same as that
of Algiers and the southern shores of the Mediterranean generally, and
coincides with that met with in New Orleans and the southern states of
North America. At Adelaide the average yearly temperature is 63.1 degrees,
and the climate is considered to greatly resemble that of Sicily. Now, no
other mode that I am aware of, such as this juxtaposition of localities
where the mean annual temperature is the same, will afford such a
convenient way of contrasting the mode of living which is practised in
Australia with that which is followed by the inhabitants of the regions
referred to in Europe. The cardinal difference, and one which stands
out in bold relief, is that the Australian food habits are
characterised by a preponderancy of meat diet and a corresponding
neglect of vegetable products. On the other hand, the dietary of
Southern Europe is in rational harmony with its climate, and
there is not that insensate insistence of a highly nitrogenous animal
fare to the exclusion of all else. The striking features, then, in
connection with the Australian dietary are this extraordinary
consumption of meat and the faith which is presumably attached to its
food value. It is no exaggeration to say that the vast majority of our
people believe implicitly in the necessity for meat at their three
daily mealy, and not only is this the case in the cooler parts of the
year, but it is practised universally during the height of the summer,
without being modified in the slightest degree. Thus the student of
ethnography is presented with the somewhat curious anomaly of a people
living in a summer temperature of 70 degrees or 80 degrees in the shade,
eating more meat than do the bulk of the inhabitants of Great Britain and
Ireland (with their ice and snow) during their winter months. It is one of
the characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon race, however, this inability to
appreciate the necessity of conforming to new climatic conditions in
which their lot may be cast. It will be the same, too, when the British
restaurant-keeper begins business in Equatorial Africa.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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