easy and luxurious in France. A breakfast, or a dinner, of courses,
well-cooked, and well-served into the bargain, you may eat at many a
wayside station. Wine, ordinary as its name, perhaps, but still good
and honest, is to be had for a paltry sum whenever the train may stop.
Crisp rolls, light _brioches_ tempt you to unwise excesses. Not a
province, scarce a town, but has its own special dainty; nougat at
Montélimart, sausages at Arles, _pâté de foie gras_ at Pèrigueux; and
so you might go on mapping out the country according to, not its
departments, but its dishes. These, however, the experienced traveller
would gladly sacrifice for the delicate, strong, refreshing,
inspiriting _bouillon_, served at every _buffet_. This it is which
helps one to forget fatigue and dust and cinders, and the odious
Frenchman who will have all the windows shut. _Bouillon_, and not
wine, gives one new heart to face the long night and the longer miles.
With it the day's journey is well begun and well ended. It sustains
and nourishes; and, better still, it has its own æsthetic value;
perfect in itself, it is the one perfect dish for the place and
purpose. No wonder, then, that it has kindled even Mr Henry James
into at least a show of enthusiasm; his bowls of _bouillon_ ever
remain in the reader's memory, the most prominent pleasures of his
"Little Tour in France."
Equally desirable in illness and in health, during one's journeys
abroad and one's days at home, why is it then that soup has never yet
been praised and glorified as it should? How is it that its greatness
has inspired neither ode nor epic; that it has been left to a
parody--clever, to be sure, but cleverness alone is not tribute
sufficient--in a child's book to sing its perfections. It should be
extolled, and it has been vilified; insults have been heaped upon it;
ingratitude from man has been its portion. The soup tureen is as
poetic as the loving cup; why should it suggest but the baldest prose
to its most ardent worshippers?
"Thick or clear?" whispers the restaurant waiter in your ear, as he
points to the soups on the bill of fare. "Thick or clear,"--there you
have the two all-important divisions. In that simple phrase is
expressed the whole science of soupmaking; face to face with first
principles it brings you. But whether you elect for the one or the
other, this great fundamental truth there is, ever to be borne in
mind: let fresh meat be the basis of your _consommé_ as of your
_bisque_, of your _gumbo_ as of your _pâtes d'Italie_. True, in an
emergency, Liebig, and all its many offshoots, may serve you--and
serve you well. But if you be a woman of feeling, of fancy, of
imagination, for this emergency alone will you reserve your Liebig.
Who would eat tinned pineapple when the fresh fruit is to be had?
Would you give bottled tomatoes preference when the gay _pommes
d'amour_, just picked, ornament every stall in the market? Beef
extract in skilful hands may work wonders; the soup made from it may
deceive the connoisseur of great repute. But what then? Have you no
conscience, no respect for your art, that you would thus deceive?
Tinned soups also there be in infinite variety, ox-tail, and
mock-turtle, and _Julienne_, and gravy, and chicken broth, and many
more than one likes to think of. But dire indeed must be your need
before you have recourse to them. They, too, will answer in the hour
of want. But at the best, they prove but make-shifts, but paltry
make-believes to be avoided, even as you steer clear of the soup
vegetables and herbs--bits of carrot and onion and turnip and who
knows what?--bottled ingeniously, pretty to the eye, without flavour
to the palate. One does not eat to please the sense of sight alone!
When, heroically, you have forsworn the ensnaring tin and the
insinuating bottle, the horizon widens before you. "Thick and clear":
the phrase suggests but narrow compass; broad beyond measure is the
sphere it really opens.
Of all the Doges of Bobbio, but one--if tradition be true--sickened of
his hundred soups. Three hundred and sixty-five might have been their
number with results no more disastrous. Given a cook of good instincts
and gay imagination, and from one year's end to the other never need
the same soup be served a second time.
A word, first, as to its proper place on the _menu_. The conservative
Briton might think this a subject upon which the last word long since
had been spoken. If soup at all, then must it appear between _hors
d'oeuvre_ and fish: as well for Catholic to question the doctrine of
infallibility as for self-respecting man to doubt the propriety of
this arrangement. But they don't know everything down in Great
Britain, and other men there be of other minds. Order a dinner
in the American West, and a procession of smiling, white-robed
blacks--talking, alas! no more the good old darkey, but pure
American--swoop down upon you, bringing at once, in disheartening
medley, your blue-points, your gumbo, your terrapin, your reed birds,
and your apple pie. What sacrilege! In the pleasantest little
restaurant in all Rome, close to the Piazza Colonna, within sound of
the Corso, was once to be seen any evening in the week--may be still,
for that matter--a bemedalled major finishing his dinner with his
_minestra_ instead of his _dolce_. But if a fat, little grey-haired
man once consent to wear a coat scarce longer than an Eton jacket, may
not, in reason, worse enormities be expected of him? Truth to tell,
the British convention, borrowed from France, is the best. If, in
good earnest, you would profit by your _potage_, give it place of
honour at the top of the _menu_. Leave light and frivolous sweets to
lighter, more frivolous moments, when, hunger appeased, man may unbend
to trifles.
What the great Alexandre calls the _grand consommé_ is the basis of
all soup--and sauce making. Study his very word with reverence; carry
out his every suggestion with devotion. Among the ingredients of this
consummate _bouillon_ his mighty mind runs riot. Not even the
adventures of the immortal Musketeers stimulated his fancy to wilder
flights. His directions, large and lavish as himself, would the
economical housewife read with awe and something of terror. Veal and
beef and fowl--a venerable cock will answer--and rabbit and partridges
of yester-year; these be no more than the foundation. Thrown into the
_marmite_ in fair and fitting proportions, then must they be watched,
anxiously and intelligently, as they boil; spoonfuls of the common
_bouillon_ should be poured upon them from time to time; there must be
added onions and carrots, and celery and parsley, and whatever
aromatic herbs may be handy, and oil, if you have it; and after four
hours of boiling slowly and demurely over a gentle fire, and, next,
straining through coarse linen, you may really begin to prepare your
soup.
If to these heights the ordinary man--or woman--may not soar, then
will the good, substantial, everyday _bouillon_, or _pot-au-feu_--made
of beef alone, but ever flavoured with vegetables--fulfil the same
purpose, not so deliciously, but still fairly well. In households
where soup is, as it should be, a daily necessity, stock may be made
and kept for convenience. But if you would have your _pot-au-feu_ in
perfection, let the saucepan, or _marmite_--the English word is
commonplace, the French term charms--be not of iron, but of
earthenware: rich tawny brown or golden green in colour, as you see it
in many a French market-place, if the least feeling for artistic
fitness dwells within your soul. Seven hours are needed _pour faire
sourire le pot-au-feu_--the expression is not to be translated. Where
soups are concerned the English language is poor, and cold, and
halting; the speech of France alone can honour them aright.
With good _bouillon_ there is naught the genius may not do. Into it
the French _chef_ puts a few small slices of bread, and, as you eat,
you wonder if terrapin or turtle ever tasted better. With the addition
of neatly-chopped carrots and onions, and turnips and celery, you have
_Julienne_; or, with dainty asparagus tops, sweet fresh peas, tiny
stinging radishes, delicate young onions, _printanier_, with its
suggestions of spring and blossoms in every mouthful. This last,
surely, is the lyric among soups. Decide upon cheese instead, and you
will set a Daudet singing you a poem in prose: "_Oh! la bonne odeur de
soupe au fromage!_" _Pâtes d'Italie_, _vermicelli_, _macaroni_, each
will prove a separate ecstasy, if you but remember the grated Parmesan
that must be sprinkled over it without stint--as in Italy. Days there
be when nothing seems so in keeping as rice: others, when cabbage hath
charm, that is, if first in your simmering _bouillon_ a piece of
ham--whether of York, of Strasbourg, or of Virginia--be left for three
hours or more; again, to thicken the golden liquid with tapioca may
seem of all devices the most adorable. And so may you ring the changes
day after day, week after week, month after month.
If of these lighter soups you tire, then turn with new hope and
longing to the stimulating list of _purées_ and _crèmes_. Let
tomatoes, or peas, or beans, or lentils, as you will, be the keynote,
always you may count upon a harmony inspiriting and divine; a rapture
tenfold greater if it be enjoyed in some favourite corner at
Marguery's or Voisin's, where the masterpiece awaits the chosen few.
Or if, when London fogs are heavy and life proves burdensome, comfort
is in the very name of broth, then put it to the test in its mutton,
Scotch, chicken, or dozen and more varieties, and may it give you new
courage to face the worst!
But if for pleasure solely you eat your soup, as you should, unless
illness or the blue devils have you firm in their grasp, a few
varieties there be which to all the rest are even as is the rose to
lesser flowers, as is the onion to vegetables of more prosaic virtue.
Clams are a joy if you add to them but salt and pepper--cayenne by
preference--and a dash of lemon juice: as a chowder, they are a
substantial dream to linger over; but made into soup they reach the
very topmost bent of their being: it is the end for which they were
created. Of oysters this is no less true. Veal stock or mutton broth
may pass as prosaic basis of the delicacy; but better depend upon milk
and cream, and of the latter be not sparing. Mace, in discreet
measure, left flowing in the liquid will give the finishing, the
indispensable touch. Oh, the inexhaustible resources of the sea! With
these delights rank _bisque_, that priceless _purée_, made of
crayfish--in this case a pinch of allspice instead of mace--and if in
its fullest glory you would know it, go eat it at the Lapérouse on the
Quai des Grands Augustins; eat it, as from the window of the low room
in the _entresol_, you look over toward the towers of Notre Dame.
Be a good Catholic on Fridays, that, with _potages maigres_--their
name, too, is legion--your soups may be increased and multiplied, and
thus infinity become your portion.
THE SIMPLE SOLE
Have you ever considered the sole: the simple, unassuming sole, in
Quaker-like garb, striking a quiet grey note in every fishmonger's
window, a constant rebuke to the mackerel that makes such vain parade
of its green audacity, of the lobster that flaunts its scarlet
boldness in the face of the passer-by? By its own merits the sole
appeals; upon no meretricious charm does it base its claim for notice.
Flat and elusive, it seems to seek retirement, to beg to be forgotten.
And yet, year by year, it goes on, unostentatiously and surely
increasing in price; year by year, it establishes, with firm hold, its
preeminence upon the _menu_ of every well-regulated _table d'hôte_.
But here pause a moment, and reflect. For it is this very _table
d'hôte_ which bids fair to be the sole's undoing. If it has been
maligned and misunderstood, it is because, swaddled in bread-crumbs,
fried in indifferent butter, it has come to be the symbol of hotel or
_pension_ dinner, until the frivolous and heedless begin to believe
that it cannot exist otherwise, that in its irrepressible bread-crumbs
it must swim through the silent sea.
The conscientious _gourmand_ knows better, however. He knows that
bread-crumbs and frying-pan are but mere child's play compared to its
diviner devices. It has been said that the number and various shapes
of fishes are not "more strange or more fit for contemplation than
their different natures, inclinations, and actions." But fitter
subject still for the contemplative, and still more strange, is their
marvellous, well-nigh limitless, culinary ambition. Triumph after
triumph the most modest of them all yearns to achieve, and if this
sublime yearning be ever and always suppressed and thwarted and
misdoubted, the fault lies with dull, plodding, unenterprising humans.
Not one yearns to such infinite purpose as the sole; not one is so
snubbed and enslaved. A very Nora among fish, how often must it long
to escape and to live its own life--or, to be more accurate, to die
its own death!
Not that bread-crumbs and frying-pan are not all very well in their
way. Given a discreet cook, pure virginal butter, a swift fire, and a
slice of fresh juicy lemon, something not far short of perfection may
be reached. But other ways there are, more suggestive, more inspiring,
more godlike. Turn to the French _chef_ and learn wisdom from him.
First and foremost in this glorious repertory comes _sole à la
Normande_, which, under another name, is the special distinction and
pride of the Restaurant Marguery. Take your sole--from the waters of
Dieppe would you have the best--and place it, with endearing,
lover-like caress, in a pretty earthenware dish, with butter for only
companion. At the same time, in sympathetic saucepan, lay mussels to
the number of two dozen, opened and well cleaned, as a matter of
course; and let each rejoice in the society of a stimulating mushroom;
when almost done, but not quite, make of them a garland round the
expectant sole; cover their too seductive beauty with a rich white
sauce; re-kindle their passion in the oven for a few minutes; and
serve immediately and hot. Joy is the result; pure, uncontaminated
joy. If this be too simple for your taste, then court elaboration and
more complex sensation after this fashion: from the first, unite the
sole to two of its most devoted admirers, the oyster and the
mussel--twelve, say, of each--and let thyme and fragrant herbs and
onion and white wine and truffles be close witnesses of their union.
Seize the sole when it is yet but half cooked; stretch it out gently
in another dish, to which oysters and mussels must follow in hot,
precipitate flight. And now the veiling sauce, again white, must have
calf's kidney and salt pork for foundation, and the first gravy of the
fish for fragrance and seasoning. Mushrooms and lemon in slices may be
added to the garniture. And if at the first mouthful you do not thrill
with rapture, the Thames will prove scarce deep and muddy enough to
hide your shame.
Put to severest test, the love of the sole for the oyster is never
betrayed. Would you be convinced--and it is worth the trouble--experiment
with _sole farcie aux huîtres_, a dish so perfect that surely,
like manna, it must have come straight from Heaven. In prosaic
practical language, it is thus composed: you stuff your sole with
forcemeat of oysters and truffles, you season with salt and carrot
and lemon, you steep it in white wine--not sweet, or the sole is
dishonoured--you cook it in the oven, and you serve the happy fish
on a rich _ragoût_ of the oysters and truffles. Or, another tender
conceit that you may make yours to your own great profit and
enlightenment, is _sole farcie aux crevettes_. In this case it is wise
to fillet the sole and wrap each fillet about the shrimps, which have
been well mixed and pounded with butter. A rich _Béchamel_ sauce and
garniture of lemons complete a composition so masterly that, before
it, as before a fine Velasquez, criticism is silenced.
_Sole au gratin_, though simpler, is none the less desirable. Let your
first care be the sauce, elegantly fashioned of butter and mushrooms
and shallots and parsley; pour a little--on your own judgment you have
best rely for exact quantity--into a baking-dish; lay the sole upon
this liquid couch; deluge it with the remainder of the sauce,
exhilarating white wine, and lemon juice; bury it under bread-crumbs,
and bake it until it rivals a Rembrandt in richness and splendour.
In antiquarian moments, _fricasey soals white_, and admit that your
foremothers were more accomplished artists than you. What folly to
boast of modern progress when, at table, the Englishman of to-day is
but a brute savage compared with his ancestors of a hundred years and
more ago! But take heart: be humble, read this golden book, and the
day of emancipation cannot be very far distant. Make your _fricasey_
as a step in the right direction. According to the infallible book,
"skin, wash, and gut your soals very clean, cut off their heads, dry
them in a cloth, then with your knife very carefully cut the flesh
from the bones and fins on both sides. Cut the flesh long ways, and
then across, so that each soal will be in eight pieces; take the heads
and bones, then put them into a saucepan with a pint of water, a
bundle of sweet herbs, an onion, a little whole pepper, two or three
blades of mace, a little salt, a very little piece of lemon peel, and
a little crust of bread. Cover it close, let it boil till half is
wasted, then strain it through a fine sieve, put it into a stew-pan,
put in the soals and half a pint of white wine, a little parsley
chopped fine, a few mushrooms cut small, a piece of butter as big as
an hen's egg, rolled in flour, grate a little nutmeg, set all together
on the fire, but keep shaking the pan all the while till the fish is
done enough. Then dish it up, and garnish with lemon." And now, what
think you of that?
If for variety you would present a brown _fricasey_, an arrangement in
browns as startling as a poster by Lautrec or Anquetin, add anchovy to
your seasoning, exchange white wine for red, and introduce into the
mixture truffles and morels, and mushrooms, and a spoonful of catchup.
The beauty of the colour none can deny; the subtlety of the flavour
none can resist.
Another step in the right direction, which is the old, will lead you
to sole pie, a dish of parts. Eels must be used, as is the steak in a
pigeon's pie for instance; and nutmeg and parsley and anchovies must
serve for seasoning. It is a pleasant fancy, redolent of the days gone
by.
"BOUILLABAISSE";
_A Symphony in Gold_
Hear Wagner in Baireuth (though illusions may fly like dust before a
March wind); see Velasquez in Madrid; eat _Bouillabaisse_ in
Marseilles. And eat, moreover, with no fear of disenchantment; the
saffron's gold has richer tone, the _ail's_ aroma sweeter savour,
under hot blue southern skies than in the cold sunless north.
How much Thackeray is swallowed with your _Bouillabaisse_? asks the
cynical American, vowed to all eternity to his baked shad and
soft-shelled crab; how much Thackeray? echoes the orthodox Englishman,
whose salmon, cucumberless, smacks of heresy, and whose whiting, if it
held not its tail decorously in its bread crumbed mouth, would be cast
for ever into outer darkness. Sentiment there may be: not born,
however, of Thackeray's verse, but of days spent in Provençal
sunshine, of banquets eaten at Provençal tables. Call for
_Bouillabaisse_ in the Paris restaurant, at the Lapérouse or
Marguery's (you might call for it for a year and a day in London
restaurants and always in vain); and if the dish brought back
something of the true flavour, over it is cast the glamour and romance
of its far southern home, of the land of troubadours and of Tartarin.
But order it in Marseilles, and the flavour will all be there, and the
sunshine and the gaiety, and the song as well; fact outstrips the
imagination of even the meridional; the present defies memory to outdo
its charm.
And it must be in the Marseilles that glitters under midsummer's sun
and grows radiant in its light. Those who have not seen Marseilles at
this season know it not. The peevish finder of fault raves of drainage
and dynamite, of dirt and anarchy. But turn a deaf ear and go to
Marseilles gaily and without dread. Walk out in the early morning on
the quays; the summer sky is cloudless; the sea as blue as in the
painter's bluest dream; the hills but warm purple shadows resting upon
its waters. The air is hot, perhaps, but soft and dry, and the breeze
blows fresh from over the Mediterranean. Already, on every side, signs
there are of the day's coming sacrifice. In sunlight and in shadow are
piled high the sea's sweetest, choicest fruits: mussels in their
sombre purple shells; lobsters, rich and brown; fish, scarlet and gold
and green. Lemons, freshly plucked from near gardens, are scattered
among the fragrant pile, and here and there trail long sprays of salt,
pungent seaweed. The faint smell of _ail_ comes to you gently from
unseen kitchens, the feeling of _Bouillabaisse_ is everywhere, and
tender anticipation illumines the faces of the passers-by. Great is
the pretence of activity in the harbour and in the streets; at a
glance, mere paltry traffic might seem the city's one and only end.
But Marseilles' true mission, the sole reason for its existence, is
that man may know how goodly a thing it is to eat _Bouillabaisse_ at
noon on a warm summer day.
But when the hour comes, turn from the hotel, however excellent; turn
from the Provençal version of the Parisian Duval, however cheap and
nasty; choose rather the native headquarters of the immortal dish.
Under pleasant awning sit out on the pavement, behind the friendly
trees in tubs that suggest privacy, and yet hide nothing of the view
beyond. For half the joy in the steaming, golden masterpiece is in the
background found for it; in the sunlit harbour and forest of masts; in
the classic shores where has disembarked so many a hero, from ancient
Phenician or Greek, down to valiant Tartarin, with the brave camel
that saw him shoot all his lions! A _coup de vin_, and, as you eat, as
you watch, with eyes half blinded, the glittering, glowing picture,
you begin to understand the meaning of the southern _galéjade_. Your
heart softens, the endless beggars no longer beg from you in vain,
while only the slenderness of your purse keeps you from buying out
every boy with fans or matches, every stray Moor with silly slippers
and sillier antimacassars; your imagination is kindled, so that later,
at the gay _café_, where still you sit in the open street, as you look
at the Turks and sailors, at the Arabs and Lascars, at the Eastern
women in trousers and niggers in rags, in a word, at Marseilles'
"Congress of Nations," that even Barnum in his most ambitious moments
never approached, far less surpassed, you, too, believe that had Paris
but its Canebière, it might be transformed into a little Marseilles on
the banks of the Seine. So potent is the influence of blessed
_Bouillabaisse_!
Or, some burning Sunday, you may rise with the dawn and take early
morning train for Martigues, lying, a white and shining barrier,
between the Etangs de Berre and Caronte. And there, on its bridges and
canal banks, idly watching the fishing-boats, or wandering up and down
its olive-clad hill-sides, the morning hours may be gently loafed
away, until the Angelus rings a joyful summons to M. Bernard's hotel
in the shady _Place_. Dark and cool is the spacious dining-room; eager
and attentive the bewildered Désirée. Be not a minute late, for M.
Bernard's _Bouillabaisse_ is justly famed, and not only all
Marseilles, but all the country near hastens thither to eat it on
Sundays, when it is served in its _édition de luxe_. Pretty
Arlésiennes in dainty fichus, cyclists in knickerbockers, rich
Marseillais, painters from Paris join in praise and thanksgiving. And
from one end of the world to the other, you might journey in vain in
search of an emotion so sweet as that aroused by the first fragrant
fumes of the dish set before you, the first rapturous taste of the
sauce-steeped bread, of the strange fish so strangely seasoned.
But why, in any case, remain content with salmon alone when
_Bouillabaisse_ can be made, even in dark and sunless England? Quite
the same it can never be as in the land of sunburnt mirth and jollity.
The light and the brilliancy and the gaiety of its background must be
ever missing in the home of fog and spleen. The gay little fish of the
Mediterranean never swim in the drear, unresponsive waters that break
on the white cliffs of England and the stern rocks of the Hebrides.
But other fish there be, in great plenty, that, in the absence of the
original, may answer as praiseworthy copies.