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It is consistent with Montaigne's large-minded habit thus to
applaud the gifts of this master of his art who happened not to be
a Frenchman. It is a canon of belief with the modern Englishman
that the French alone can achieve excellence in the art of cookery,
and when once a notion of this sort shall have found a lodgment in
an Englishman's brain, the task of removing it will be a hard one.
Not for a moment is it suggested that Englishmen or any one else
should cease to recognise the sovereign merits of French cookery;
all that is entreated is toleration, and perchance approval, of
cookery of other schools. But the favourable consideration of any
plea of this sort is hindered by the fact that the vast majority of
Englishmen when they go abroad find no other school of cookery by
the testing of which they may form a comparison. This universal
prevalence of French cookery may be held to be a proof of its
supreme excellence--that it is first, and the rest nowhere;
but the victory is not so complete as it seems, and the facts would
bring grief and humiliation rather than patriotic pride to the
heart of a Frenchman like Brillat-Savarin.
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