"Many of its dishes are unsurpassed. These
islands produce materials so fine, that no art or elaboration can
improve them. They are best when they are cooked quite plainly,
and this is the reason why simplicity is the key-note of English
cookery. A fine joint of mutton roasted to a turn, a plain fried
sole with anchovy butter a broiled chop or steak or kidney, fowls
or game cooked English fashion, potatoes baked in their skins and
eaten with butter and salt, a rasher of Wiltshire bacon and a new-
laid egg, where will you beat these? I will go so far as to say no
country can produce a bourgeoises dish which can be compared with
steak and kidney pudding. But the point I want to press home is
that Italian cookery comes to the aid of those who cannot well
afford to buy those prime qualities of meat and fish which allow of
this perfectly plain treatment. It is, as I have already said, the
cookery of a nation short of cash and unblessed with such excellent
meat and fish and vegetables as you lucky islanders enjoy.
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