Fortunately, there is plenty of scope in vegetarian cooking not merely for refinement, but even elegance. Do not despise the sprinkle of chopped parsley and red specks of bread-crumbs coloured with cochineal, so often referred to throughout the following pages. Remember that the cost of these little accessories to comfort is virtually nil. We must remember also that one sense works upon another. We can please the palate through the eye. There is some undoubted connection between these senses. If you doubt it, suck a lemon in front of a German band and watch the result. The sight of meat causes the saliva to run from the mouths of the carnivorous animals at the Zoo. This is often noticeable in the case of a dog watching people eat, and it is an old saying, “It makes one’s mouth water to look at it.” In the case of endeavouring to induce a change of living in grown-up persons, such as husband or children, there is perhaps no method we can pursue so efficacious as that of making dishes look pretty. A dish of bright red tomatoes, reposing on the white bosom of a bed of macaroni, relieved here and there by a few specks of green—what a difference to a similar dish all mashed up together, and in which the macaroni showed signs of dirty smears!

We have endeavoured throughout this book to give chiefly directions about those dishes which will replace meat. For instance, the vast majority of pies and puddings will remain the same, and need no detailed treatment here. Butter supplies the place of suet or lard, and any ordinary, cookery-book will be found sufficient for the purpose; but it is in dealing with soups, sauces, rice, macaroni, and vegetables, sent to table under new conditions, that we hope this book will be found most useful.

As a rule, English women cooks, especially when their title to the name depends upon their being the mistress of the house, will often find that soups and sauces are a weak point. Do not despise, in cooking, little things. Those who really understand such matters will know how vast is the difference in flavour occasioned by the addition of that pinch of thyme or teaspoonful of savoury herbs, and yet there are tens of thousands of houses, where meat is eaten every day, who never had a bottle of thyme at their disposal in their lives. As we have said, if we are going to make a great saving on meat, we can well afford a few trifles, so long as they are trifles. A sixpenny bottle of thyme will last for months; and if we give up our gravy beef, or piece of pickled pork, or two-pennyworth of bones, as the case may be, surely we can afford a little indulgence of this kind.