ketchups which populate the tables of this
unfortunate people.England’s culinary standards were not
formed at the Court or in the noble houses;
they remained grounded in the domestic
habits and economies of the countryside.
English cooks ridiculed French cooks for their
essences and quintessences. The French
gastronome Brillat-Savarin (1755–1826) tells
the story of the prince of Soubise being
presented with a request from his chef for 50
hams, to be used at one supper party. Accused
of thievery, the chef responds that all this
meat is essential for the sauces to be made:
“Command me, and I can put these fifty hams
which seem to bother you into a glass bottle
no bigger than your thumb!” The prince is
astonished, and won over, by this assertion of
the cook’s power to concentrate flavor. By
contrast, in her popular 18th-century
cookbook, the English writer Hannah Glasse