Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 November 1876 — A Matter of Taste. [ARTICLE]

A Matter of Taste.

Each nation, notwithstanding cable telegrams and rapid steamships, retains certain food characteristics. Some of these the stranger naturally remarks as soon as he comes into the country. When the Prince of Wales was here the most striking one to him was the prevalence of the eating of oysters, the smell of them, raw, cooking, and cooked, and the sight of the shells, being unpleasant to him. During his sojourn he was always endeavoring to escape from the smell of them, and to (his day probably his recollections of America are intimately associated with tlie testaceous animals. The amateur of cooked oysters may affirm, and probably with reason, that the Prince did not know what was good; but that is a matter of opinion. The Prince likely, as most Englishman are, is fond of eating lettuce and cheese together, which the amateur of cooked oysters would probably dislike as muca as the royal guest did his favorite food. According to the newspapers, when anothermember of a royal family, not long ago, was traveling through the United States, he said his chief objection to the country was that he could not: get anything to eat; the remark being made after going through the South and West, and before reaching the metropolis. The hope was held out to him in Philadelphia that in New York he would find compensation for the trials which he had undergone in other parts of the Uhibh; but he was skeptical, and counted on little improvement. If a reporter Of the press may be credited, he went so far as to say that we were the worst fed of all civilized people. Borne weight may be at, tached to this opinion, as he who gave it has some reputation as a gastronomer. To go from royalty to the proletariat the workingmen’s delegates from Prance to the Centennial Exhibition complained of the food which was placed before them by their fellow-workmen here. They were simple toilers, unaccustomed to the delicacies of the table. Thus all .classed from well-fed foreign countries appear to entertain much the same opinion as regards the American kitchen. Eating a particular kind’of food, together with the preparation of it, is so much a matter of custom that we are apt to like that best which we have been accustomed to eat; hence it is that the foreigner favors his own nourishment and pronounces against ours to the extent that he does. Man everywhere is almost as tenacious of the form of his food as he is of his religion; errors and abuses in one being nearly as difficult to eradicate as in the other. "But after making due allow-, ance for prejudice in the mind of the foreigner, there is probably foundation for at least a portion of his criticism, entertained! as it is in different lands. There is such unanimity on this head that there is warrant for believing, if an international congress of gastronomy were to be organized, that the United States would not hold the rank of some other nations which we are, wont to regard as considerably behind this one in general civilization.--Al6«rt Rhode*, inGalaxy for November.