terspersed with pips of garlic, which have been bruised and mixed in a big stone, or marble, mortar, pounded with a pestle with a handle as long as that of a broom. It is thus worked up into a paste, which is almost white and almost of the consistency of putty.

Into this mayonnaise is stirred the finely shredded, boiled codfish, which, in turn, is patted out or kneaded on a long shallow platter, on which it is served. In its more dressy form it is sprinkled with the choicest varieties of hard, black truffles, another specialty of Old Provence; these are sliced thin, and, at once, you have the chic and fashionable black and white color-scheme, which is the vogue of the times in all things. It may be garnished with minced, hard-boiled eggs and green herbs, making a variation. in the color-scheme that approaches the compositions of the cubists, which the chef is not, though he is an artist.

There is also morue, sauté aux olives, which is codfish cut into tiny cubes and cooked by simmering in an earthen casserole, with a liberal addition of olive oil highly seasoned with aromatic herbs. It makes an ideal entrée, with a baked potato as a side partner, or perhaps a patate, which is the nearest thing to our sweet potato, and which is seldom seen in France except in these parts.

Another specialty is a cod ragout, stewed up with young burr-artichokes, which thrown into the skillet and cooked to tenderness can be eaten entire. Cod steak fried in olive oil, with a sauce of much pepper and fresh tomatoes, is perhaps the art of bringing this popular fish to the highest degree of culinary perfection. I say fresh tomatoes, because the dried variety is much used here in the south in the form of a paste, which is prepared simply by passing the pulp through a collander and drying it out afterwards in the hot sun of the southland, then to be stored away in crocks to be used as wanted. Tomato sauce, as such, is almost unknown, and is never seen as a condiment.

The most popular form of codfish repast is that which is eaten in conjunction with aioli, the classic sauce of Provençal France. It is the conventional Friday dish on tables of all ranks - just plain, boiled cod with a copious dish of garlicmayonnaise with boiled potatoes and boiled carrots on the side. The pungent, powerful odor of the aioli, which is simply essence of garlic arrived at in the same mortar and pestle fills the streets of all the southland around midday. As my American said: "It will swamp German mustard gas, if they could only get it on the front." But we all learn to eat and to love it, regardless of its effect on the olfactory nerves of newcomers, though one should really retire into seclusion for the round of the clock, after eating it. French boiled cod with a sauce bechamel, the traditional white sauce of the classic French chef, is constantly on the menus,

even in competition with the numerous members of the finny tribes of the fresh fish of the Mediterranean, which run all the way from sole to sea bass.

The fowl par excellence of southern France is the pintard, merely the guineahen. As one gets it at Pascal's, cooked on the broche, it is what the French call a rêve, which is something far different from a nightmare. I believe it is coming, also, into deserved favor in America. I consider it far superior in flavor to the much reputed pheasant. The Midi chefs never stuff it; indeed, they rarely stuff any fowl, and they cook it, head and legs, and serve it garnished with croutons and perhaps a purée of chestnuts, usually, also, with the accompaniment of an escarolle salad. There is, also, a sort of wild duck, known as a becasse, rather strong because it feeds on the fish of the lagoons, but succulent withal. The marcassin is a young wild boar, to go from fowls to animals, and mentioned here because they are often confused by those not in the know.

The southern "game-bird" that the bon provencal adores more than all others

is the tiny grive - call it a thrush, though it is a bit different - which is the crowning delicacy of all southern French repasts. A récherché Marseilles dejeuner. starts with a bouillabaisse and finishes, for its solid plats, with the grive, called vaguely petits oiseaux, for they are usually served in pairs. The process of cooking them is seen at its best at Pascal's, their heads bobbing pathetically as they slowly revolve on the spit; pathetic it is, too, to see these, and other, song birds devoured by the gourmet as they are, more pathetic even to know that they are trapped in their nests at night. There is no bigger game hunted just now, save on the fighting front.

The bouillabaisse of Marseilles would need a book to do it justice. It is better in the restaurants than elsewhere, indeed, it forms the corner stone of their attractions. I introduced the American to it at Basso's, though Pascal does it equally well. It is, however, the vogue to go to Basso's and eat it on the gallery overlooking the newly named Quai des Belges, fronting the Vieux Port, with its ships of many seas. There are others

which go to form a battery of restaurants on the quay, but Basso's takes the palm, with its festoon of fish-stalls and oyster counters and dining rooms hung, perilously, like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

Here is the most amusing outlook in all Marseilles, an admirable interlude to introduce into the middle of a meal. It is a sort of glorified fish-market restaurant, which has extended itself into a feeding place for sea-food specialties almost exclusively. There are three stories of luxuriously appointed dining rooms, with paintings of the Mediterranean sea and shores decorating the walls, and with much glass and gilding. One may eat even on the sidewalk with only a paling like that around a New England garden between one and the hurrying crowd and fakirs, who will reach over and offer their wares, which run all the way from Teddy bears to picture post cards, seashells and monkeys from Ceuta on the African Coast.

Before one tackles the bouillabaisse, one dips into the coquillages, or shellfish, which are numerous and varied, and form the hors d'œuvre of the midday repast of the Marseillais. These are edible curiosities, somewhat resembling our clams and oysters, but largely they are of the nature of mussels and grubby things, which live in palmers' shells, all tasting salt as of the sea, and some having a peculiar aroma of their own, which has to be experimented with before one decides as to whether they are likeable or not. My American told me that people at home were beginning to acquire a taste for moules, or mussels, though I did not know this. Violette de mer is the peculiar name of another of these sea-food specialties, which my friend said looked like a trench. grenade, only it was pulpy. They are extremely mushy, and not at all to the taste of Americans. The oursins, or pincushions of the sea, are better, but there is little to eat inside them to warrant the trouble of opening with a miniature pair of scissors. The crevettes, or prawns,

brought across the Mediterranean from the Lake of Tunis, are better and are much like those of Barataria in Louisiana. Here they are eaten raw, or rather plain boiled, and are not worked up into a salad, as they might be, for they are fat and luscious. Of oysters there is much to be said. Here they are of two varieties, which are all that need to answer to the roll-call the Portugaise, rough and big and coppery, and the Marennes, rather finer in texture and more expensive. There is no cocktail served with them, and they are never cooked, nor served as a garnish for other dishes, save, perhaps, that they will be cut up, in the absence of mussels, and poured over a fileted sole.

Basso's and the others of the Old Port battery of restaurants display all these wares on stalls out in the open, and one may choose the variety, or the size, of the particular breed he may wish cooked and served. The openers and the fishmonger experts will discuss your choice with you like a fitter in a dressmaker's before the waiter carries off your fish to the cook. It is all very ceremonious, though happy-go-lucky and familiar, at the same time. And it takes time to carry the operation through to the end; nothing is hurried, nothing is left to chance.

I told my American he would either love or hate bouillabaisse, as he would the black olives, the raw burr-artichokes and preserved tunny fish. I have known Americans to eat bouillabaisse every day for luncheon for weeks on end, as I have known others who, at the mere sight and smell of it, would turn as yellow as its saffron sauce.

The receipt is not complicated, but you must have the specious Mediterranean fish to have the real flavor. First, the various sorts of fish of its composition are boiled, and their juice used as a base for the sauce, which has added to it onions, smelly herbs thyme and bay leaves, made hot with red pepper and colored generously with saffron, the latter (Concluded on page 50)

Τ'

HE humble bean is helping to win the war. But the bean is no longer cheap. For planting, they cost the farmer this season from $10 to $12 a bushel. The food price at retail is considerably higher. Therefore, it becomes no man to refer irreverently to the bean, whether it be red, white, black or mottled, or whether it be baked, boiled or made into soup.

The exigencies of the war have brought into prominence a comparatively obscure type of bean-pintos, dry-land grown. They are becoming known. They are gaining a reputation. The war is making them, and they are now being grown where none were grown before. Colorado had 35,000 acres of pintos in 1916. Last year she harvested 175,000 acres, an increase of 500 per cent. New Mexico, long the home of the pinto bean, has 300,000 acres, an increase of about 600 per cent over last year, while western Kansas, Nebraska and Wyoming together cultivated some 25,000 acres of

what was practically a new crop for these

states.

A total of 500,000 acres for six states is rather a remarkable showing, in view of the fact that this is a new country, and that the beans were raised by inexperienced growers, many of them bankers, school teachers, business men, railroad These growers are well satisfied with their efforts, for prices are good, and they have the satisfaction of knowing that they have brought to successful harvest a great food crop, raised under semi-arid conditions, where navies and other varieties of beans will not flourish. What is of equal importance, it means a big addition to the food supplies of the United States and its allies, for these beans are not perishable, are easily stored and handled, are very nutritious, and form a highly concentrated and valuable food for the use of the army.

Early threshing returns in the Southwest, this season, indicated a yield in the neighborhood of 400 pounds per acre

on dry land, or a total of approximately 200,000,000 pounds in the six states. referred to. A careful survey of production along the Burlington ine in this section shows that fully 3,000 carloads will be shipped to market. That this enormous production will be utilized is certain, since the pinto has been officially recognized by the War and Navy Departments. In fact, it has been placed on an equal basis with the navy and California pink beans for army use. Only a few weeks ago the Food Commission placed an order for 720,000 pounds of Colorado pintos at 7 cents a pound. This is a good start, but compared with other food products pintos are cheap at this figure.

In the past the pinto has been unjustly discriminated against, and it has not had a fair chance to climb to the place it deserves as a food product. Its origin is obscure, and its name has been against it, the word pinto meaning "spotted." Because of its color and markings it has always sold on the market at a less price than white beans. Yet its type is as well fixed as the navy bean, and it breeds true to type. When baked, the spots vanish, and the bean turns a beautiful brown, while in nutriment, flavor and palatableness it is without a superior. The trouble would seem to be all kinds of nondescript beans yellow, red, brown, black. pink- have been sold as pintos, and the majority of people do not know that this bean is an established variety of great merit. The true pinto is slightly larger than the navy bean, being about the same size and shape as the kidney bean, with a buff-colored body splashed with dark brown flecks.

While a staple product of the Southwest, the pinto bean is practically unknown in the North and East, where the navy bean has been the popular favorite. Yet, according to the Colorado Experiment Station, in food value it is practically identical with the navy, but being more tender in flesh it cooks more easily. Chemical analysis shows that in the total

Grown on the great sun-flooded plains of the West, and drawing its moisture and plant food from far below the surface of virgin soil, the pinto obtains a natural flavor unsurpassed by any other bean. To get the best out of it, however, it needs to be thoroughly cooked. It is an especially good baking bean. For an ordinary meal two cups of pintos should be soaked overnight. In the morning drain, add fresh water to cover and onehalf teaspoonful of soda, and then put on to boil. As soon as they come to a boil, drain and pour cold water over them, rinsing thoroughly. This gives them a firmness that keeps them from getting mushy. Lay a thin slice of pork or bacon in the bottom of a pan, or baking dish, cut up a small onion fine, add this to the beans, and pour all into the pan or dish. Next take a few more slices of pork or bacon and press them down into the beans, adding a little salt, a pinch of ground mustard and a tablespoonful of molasses. Finally cover with water, set in a slow oven and bake from six to eight hours. As the water boils out, add more, being sure that it is boiling water, since cold water. added retards the cooking and toughens. the beans. When thoroughly cooked they will mash at the slightest touch, being a beautiful brown, moist and tender.