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.
When you acknowledge, as you must, that there is no such thing as perfect food, only the idea of it, then the real purpose of striving toward perfection becomes clear: to make people happy, that is what cooking is all about.
It's still possible to savor the remarkable foods that millennia of human ingenuity have teased from milk. A sip of milk itself or a scoop of ice cream can be a Proustian draft of youth's innocence and energy and possibility, while a morsel of fine cheese is a rich meditation on maturity, the fulfillment of possibility, the way of all flesh.
Bread is for us a kind of successor to the motherly breast, and it has been over the centuries responsible for billions of sighs of satisfaction.
Of all smells, bread; of all tastes, salt.
Food for us comes from our relatives, whether they have wings or fins or roots. That is how we consider food. Food has a culture. It has a history. It has a story. It has relationships.
In an age when so many groups are rolling out restaurants faster than your local baker makes donuts, my goal is that each restaurant feels hand-crafted. That they have their own soul.
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