Condiments According to an 18th-century bon mot attributed to Domenico Caracciolli, with implicit contrast to France: “England has sixty religions and one sauce” — that one sauce being melted butter! And the sharptoothed Alberto Denti di Pirajno begins the chapter on sauces in his Educated Gastronome (Venice, 1950) with these pointed sentences: Doctor Johnson defined a sauce as something which is eaten with food in order to improve its flavor It would be difficult to believe that a man of the intelligence and culture of Dr Johnson… had expressed himself in these terms, if we did not know that Dr Johnson was English Even today his compatriots, incapable of giving any flavor to their food, call on sauces to furnish their dishes that which their dishes do not have This explains the sauces, the jellies and prepared extracts, the bottled sauces, the chutneys, the 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 ...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. .. 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... 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