Jellies are to cold cookery what consommes and stock are to hot. If anything, the former are perhaps more important: for a cold entree - however perfect it may be in itself - is nothing without its accompanying jelly.
Interpretation
Jellies play a crucial role in cold dishes, much like stocks do in hot dishes.
In this quote, Auguste Escoffier emphasizes the significance of jellies in the realm of cold cooking, likening them to the foundational stocks and consommés that are essential in hot kitchen preparations. He argues that a well-prepared cold dish is incomplete without a complementary jelly, highlighting its importance in enhancing texture and flavor, thus enriching the overall dining experience.
In practice
In a culinary class discussing the fundamentals of cold dishes.
The workman mindful of success, therefore, will naturally direct his attention to the faultless preparation of his stock, and in order to achieve this result, he will find it necessary not merely to make use of the freshest and finest goods, but also to exercise the most scrupulous care in their preparation, for, in cooking, care is half the battle.
Of all the items on the menu, soup is that which exacts the most delicate perfection and the strictest attention.
Stock is everything in cooking, at least in French cooking. Without it, nothing can be done. If one's stock is good, what remains of the work is easy; if, on the other hand, it is bad or merely mediocre, it is quite hopeless to expect anything approaching a satisfactory result.
Original, in French: La bonne cuisine est la base du véritable bonheur. _x000D_ _x000D_ English: Good food is the foundation of genuine happiness.
Soup puts the heart at ease, calms down the violence of hunger, eliminates the tension of the day, and awakens and refines the appetite.
Good food is the foundation of genuine happiness.
Another thing cooking is, or can be, is a way to honor the things we're eating, the animals and plants and fungi that have been sacrificed to gratify our needs and desires, as well as the places and the people that produced them. Cooks have their ways of saying grace too... Cooking something thoughtfully is a way to celebrate both that species and our relation to it.
If we're eating industrially, if we're letting large corporations, fast food chains, cook our food, we're going to have a huge, industrialized, monoculture agriculture because big likes to buy from big. So I realized, wow, how we cook or whether we cook has a huge bearing on what kind of agriculture we're going to have.
In the hands of an able cook, fish can become an inexhaustible source of perpetual delight.
Really, the only way to face the biggest problems we have is for the government to change the way they subsidize food. The way we subsidize food makes it cheaper to go to McDonald's and get a hamburger than a salad, and that's insane.
I'd learned something... Food had power. It could inspire, astonish, shock, excite, delight and impress. It had the power to please me... and others. This was valuable information.
What we need in this country is a general improvement in eating. We have the best raw materials in the world, both quantitatively and qualitatively, but most of them are ruined in the process of preparing them for the table.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.