Soup Jubilee

Entries for what he whimsically called "a new Blue Riband of the World's Soup Tureen" were called for in London last week by elegant Managing Director George Reeves-Smith of swank Claridges, the Berkeley and the Savoy. His hostels, Mr. Reeves-Smith announced, will award a Silver Jubilee Commemoration Cup and Medals for the three best recipes for vegetable soups, submitted by cooks the world over.

"The French monopoly of the world's best soups can and must be ended," said Hotel Tycoon Reeves-Smith, opening London's Food & Cookery Exhibition. "Many countries, such as the United States and Great Britain, grow better vegetables than they have in France."

Appealing to the rest of the world to join France on the Soup Standard, Blue Ribboner Reeves-Smith, who worked as a lad in the discriminating French wine house of Calvet et Cie. in Bordeaux, declared, "In France the working classes have a higher standard of cooking, more interesting food and a greater variety of food at less cost than in England, notwithstanding that food is cheaper here.

"Vegetable soups," continued Mr. Reeves-Smith, "form an important part of the French working class dietary. Millions of Frenchmen lead a healthy and active existence on nothing but vegetable soup, bread and wine. The omission of these appetizing, nourishing and easily prepared soups is the most serious--I might almost say fatal--omission from the dietary of the English working class. There is no reason why they should not be introduced into England."

Referring to the London County Council's cookery school, Mr. Reeves-Smith mentioned its Mr. I. Kriens as "the most successful cookery instructor in Europe." and English reporters rushed to ask him how to make vegetable soup. "Most people," said Cookery's Kriens with asperity, "think the way to make vegetable soup is to just boil vegetables in water. They should first be 'sweated' in fat to bring out the flavor."

"What do you think of labor-saving devices for the kitchen, Mr. Kriens? All these wonderful automatic egg-beaters and things at this Show! Do you think they will give English housewives more leisure in which to study cooking and become better cooks?"

"In the average housewife's kitchen, where only a little food is prepared at a time," answered Mr. Kriens, "the labor-saving device is hardly worth the trouble of keeping it clean." Thus rebuffed, Show newshawks pecked out reams about its solid butter fan-dancer by Sculptor R. A. Adamson (see cut), described as "the Show's centre of real attraction."

As his parting shot, Most-Successful-Cookery-Instructor Kriens gloomed, "English household cooking was better a hun-dred or even 25 years ago than it is today, and it is getting worse."

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