undoubtedly, “La Gastronome, ou l’homme des Champs à Table; poème
didactique en quatre chants, par J. Berchoux, 1804,” wherein is set
forth, at some length--firstly, the history of cooking; then the order
of the services; and lastly, some fugitive pieces which allude to the
gay science in choice and poetic terms. The book is enriched with some
exquisite copper-plate engravings by Gravelot, Cochin, and Monsiau.
The lines addressed by the author to his contemporaries warning them
against the “repas monstreux des Grecs et des Romains” are full of
repressed dignity and good sound common sense. One puts down the book
with a sense of poetical-gastronomical repletion.
The poetic afflatus has possessed most great cooks, but none with
more practical application than the immortal Alexis Soyer, the hero
of the Crimea and the Reform Club, who, on the death of his wife, a
clever amateur artist, wrote this simple and witty epitaph, “Soyez
tranquille.” Gay’s poem on a knuckle of veal is also worthy of record,
and an anonymous American poet has immortalized the duck in four
pregnant verses.
A very modern poet who writes over the initials of M. T. P. has four
charming verses on the propriety of ladies wearing their hats whilst
dining. The second and third stanzas read as follows:--
Anchovies from Norwegian shores!
Sardines from sunny southern seas!
There’s naught my simple soul adores
One half so ardently as these.
And while I munch the well-fumed sprat,
Sit thou and watch and wear thy hat.
I need no entrée, want no bird,
Nor care for joints, or boiled or roast,
But my imagination’s stirred
By titillating things on toast.
Soft roes the commissariat
Shall serve me opposite thy hat.
Some folks who are not yet very old may remember a quaint part-song or
quartette for male voices, entitled “Life is but a Melancholy Flower,”
which was sung alternately somewhat in this fashion:--
Life is butter!
Melon!!
Cauliflower!!!
Life is but a melancholy flower!
It had much deserved success in its day.
An old recipe for the roasting of a swan is very fairly summed up in
these lines:--
TO ROAST A SWAN
Take three pounds of beef, beat fine in a mortar,
Put it into the swan--that is, when you’ve caught her.
Some pepper, salt, mace, some nutmeg, an onion,
Will heighten the flavour in Gourmand’s opinion.
Then tie it up tight with a small piece of tape,
That the gravy and other things may not escape.
A meal paste (rather stiff) should be laid on the breast,
And some “whitey brown” paper should cover the rest.
Fifteen minutes at least ere the swan you take down,
Pull the paste off the bird that the breast may get brown.
THE GRAVY
To the gravy of beef (good and strong) I opine
You’ll be right if you add half a pint of port wine;
Pour this through the swan--yes, quite through the belly,
Then serve the whole up with some hot currant jelly.
N.B.--The swan must not be skinned.
This poem has been attributed to Mr. George Keech, chef of the
Gloucester Hotel at Weymouth--of course a famous breeding place for
swans.
The following recipe for making a “soft” cheese is said to be by Dr.
Jenner:--
Would you make a soft cheese? Then I’ll tell you how.
Take a gallon of milk quite fresh from the cow;
Ere the rennet is added, the dairyman’s daughter
Must throw in a quart of the clearest spring water.
When perfectly curdled, so white and so nice,
You must take it all out of the dish with a slice,
And put it ’thout breaking with care in the vat,
With a cheese-cloth at bottom--be sure to mind that.
This delicate matter take care not to squeeze,
But fill as the whey passes off by degrees.
Next day you may turn it, and do not be loth
To wipe it quite dry with a clean linen cloth.
This must be done you cannot well doubt,
As long as you see the whey oozing out.
The cheese is now finished, and nice it will be,
If enveloped in leaves of the green ashen tree.
Or what will do better, at least full as well,
In nettles just plucked from the bank of the dell.
In praise of the best food in the world--plain British roast and
boiled--Mr. G. R. Sims has dilated in his weekly columns; a verse from
his perfectly correct and strict “_Ballade_ of New-Time Simpson’s” is
well worth quoting:--
They do not call the saddle “selle”
That you with currant jelly eat;
Boiled fowl’s not _à la_ Béchamel.
Your eyes no foreign phrases meet
That English waiters can’t repeat,
And so to Simpson’s I repair.
The English kitchen’s bad to beat,
Plain roast and boiled are British fare.
The “Envoi,” which commences most cleverly according to traditional
rule, runs as follows:--
Prince’s and Carlton, you I greet,
Savoy, I own your chef is rare;
But you with Simpson’s shall compete.
Plain roast and boiled are British fare.
To come back to recipes, here is one for the famous _Homard à
l’Amèricaine_ written by the chef of the Grand International Hotel
at Chicago, who is quite annoyed with M. Rostand for his obvious
plagiarism in “Cyrano de Bergerac.”
COMMENT ON FAIT LE HOMARD À L’AMÉRICAINE
Prenez un homard qu’on vend
Bien vivant;
Avant qu’il se carapate
Sans vous laisser attendrir,
Sans souffrir,
Détachez-lui chaque patte.
Faites alors revenir
Et blondir
Du beurre en la casserole;
Fourrez-y votre homard
Sans retard,
Mais avant qu’il ne rissole
Ajoutez un court-bouillon
De bouillon
A vous brûler la bedaine!
Faites cuire. Servez-le
Et c’est le
Homard à l’américaine!
Many curious old poems may be found by careful delving in the books our
great-grandfathers used to read, and which we ought to read, but don’t.
For instance, the Roxborough Ballads contain a delightful poem briefly
entitled “The Cook-Maid’s Garland: or the out-of-the-way Devil: shewing
how four highwaymen were bit by an ingenious cook-maid” (1720).
There is a still older ballad in the same collection called “The Coy
Cook-Maid, who was courted simultaneously by Irish, Welch, Spanish,
French and Dutch, but at last was conquered by a poor English Taylor”;
this is in blackletter, and is dated 1685.
A French lady with a happy knack of verse has written the following
rhymed recipe for
SAUCE MAYONNAISE
Dans un grand bol en porcelaine
Un jaune d’œuf étant placé,
Sel et poivre, vinaigre à peine,
Et le travail est commencé.
On verse l’huile goutte à goutte;
La mayonnaise prend du corps,
Epaississant, sans qu’on s’en doute,
En flot luisant, jusqu’aux bords.
Quand vous jugez que l’abondance
Peut suffire à votre repas,
Au frais mettez-la par prudence....
Tout est fini; n’y touchez pas!
Under the title of “Women I have never married,” O. S. of “Punch”
writes delightfully on the lady who knew too much about eating. This
is one of his verses:--
She came. She passed a final word
Upon the _bisque_, the _Mornay_ sole,
The _poulet_ (said she thought the bird
Shewed at its best _en casserole_);
She found the _parfait_ “quite first-rate,”
Summed up the chef as “rather handy,”
Knew the Lafitte for ’88,
And twice encored a fine old brandy.
The following couplets are by--I think--an American author.
Always have lobster sauce with salmon,
And put mint sauce your roasted lamb on.
In dressing salad mind this law,
With two hard yolks use one that’s raw.
Roast veal with rich stock gravy serve,
And pickled mushrooms, too, observe.
Roast pork, sans apple sauce, past doubt,
Is “Hamlet” with the Prince left out.
Your mutton chops with paper cover
And make them amber-brown all over.
Broil lightly your beefsteak. To fry it
Argues contempt of Christian diet.
To roast spring chickens is to spoil ’em;
Just split ’em down the back and broil ’em.
It gives true epicures the vapours
To see boiled mutton minus capers.
The cook deserves a hearty cuffing
Who serves roast fowl with tasteless stuffing.
Nice oyster sauce gives zest to cod--
A fish, when fresh, to feast a god.
The Old Beef Steak Society, otherwise known as the Sublime Society of
Beef Steaks, and of which the full history has too often appeared in
print, entertained the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV, on his
election as a member; the following is a verse of a song written in
honour of the occasion by the poet-laureate to the Society, Captain
Charles Morris of “Pall Mall” fame:--
While thus we boast a general creed,
In honour of our shrine, sir,
You find the world long since agreed
That beef was food divine, sir;
And British fame still tells afar
This truth, where’er she wanders,
For wine, for women, and for war,
Beefsteaks make Alexanders.
I venture to think that this little excerpt from Lafcadio Hearn’s
“Kokoro” is worthy of record here as a piece of real poetry in
prose. It is from a story called “The Nun of the Temple of Amida.”
“Once daily, at a fixed hour, she would set for the absent husband,
in his favourite room, little repasts faultlessly served on dainty
lacquered trays--miniature meals such as are offered to the ghosts of
the ancestors and to the gods. (Such a repast offered to the spirit
of the absent one loved is called a _kagé-sen_, lit. ‘shadow-tray.’)
These repasts were served at the east side of the room, and his
kneeling-cushion placed before them. The reason they were served at the
east side was because he had gone east. Before removing the food, she
always lifted the cover of the little soup-bowl to see if there was
vapour upon its lacquered inside surface. For it is said that if there
be vapour on the inside of the lid covering food so offered, the absent
beloved is well. But if there be none, he is dead, because that is a
sign that his soul has returned by itself to seek nourishment. O-Toyo
found the lacquer thickly beaded with vapour day by day.”
It would be unfair to omit mention of Molière, who so often and wisely
devotes attention to the culinary craft, for which, indeed, he had a
high appreciation. Did he not read his plays to his cook? A typical
passage is that from his “Femmes Savantes,” when Chrysale expatiates to
Philaminte and Bélise.
Que ma servante manque aux lois de Vaugelas,
Pourvu qu’a la cuisine elle ne manque pas.
J’aime bien mieux pour moi qu’en épluchant ses herbes,
Elle accommode mal les noms avec les verbes,
Et rédise cent fois un has et méchant mot,
Que de brûler ma viande ou saler trop mon pot.
Je vis de bonne soupe, et non de beau langage,
Vaugelas n’apprend point à bien faire un potage;
Et Malherbe et Balzac, si savans en beaux mots,
En cuisine peutêtre auraient été des sots.
Very few people, I am afraid, read the entirely delightful verse of
Mortimer Collins, poet, journalist, novelist, epicure (in the best
sense), and country-lover--all in one. He was among the nowadays
less-known masters of gastronomics, a man who, although no cook
himself, knew by intuition and experience just what was right, and
if it were wrong, just why it was wrong. His novels and poems,
although very unequal, do not deserve to be forgotten, for they
contain many fine, thoughtful, and beautiful passages. His burlesque
of Aristophanes, “The British Birds,” is, in its way, a masterpiece.
He wrote much and well on cookery and dining, both in prose and verse.
Here follows one of his sonnets from a sequence addressed to the
months--from a gastronomic point of view.
JUNE
O perfect period of the sweet birds’ tune,
Of Philomel and Procne, known to fable;
Of wayward morns, and never utterable
Joys of the evenglome, beneath the moon!
Cool be thy food, O gourmand, runs the Rune:
Pigeon and quail are suited to the table;
Anchovy and sardine are noticeable;
Red mullet, first of fish, is prime in June.
Richmond and Greenwich tempt the Londoner
To dine where Thames is cool, and whitebait crisp,
And soft the manners are and lax the morals.
But I (when twilight’s breezes softly stir,
Rob the rich roses, though the woodbine lisp)
Dine on my lawn hedged in by limes and laurels.
The “Minora Carmina” of the late C. C. R., whose verse has much of the
charm of J. K. S. and C. S. Calverley, contains a few verses anent the
pleasure of dining out, which are headed
NUNC EST COENANDUM
Although the season sadly
May open, in contrast grim
With those when pleasure madly
Whirled on the wings of Whim--
Though sporting members sigh for
The huntsman, hound, and horn,
And invalids loud cry for
Health-spots from which they’re torn;
Yet e’en to town detested
Comes comfort in the line--
“Your presence is requested”--·
You’re going out to dine.
It would be easy to extend this list indefinitely, but enough is as
good as a feast.
[Illustration: CHAPTER IV
THE SALAD IN LITERATURE]
“I could digest a salad gathered in a churchyard
as well as in a garden. I wonder not at the
French with their dishes of frogs, snails, and
toadstools; nor at the Jews for locusts and
grasshoppers; but being amongst them make them
my common viands, and I find they agree with my
stomach as well as theirs.”
SIR THOMAS BROWNE, “Religio Medici.”
We have it on the authority of Chaucer that salad is cooling food, for
he says:--
... And after that they yede about gadering
Pleasaunt Salades which they made hem eat,
For to refresh their great unkindly heat.
That the eating of green meat is and always has been closely bound up
with healthy human life is a fact which needs no demonstration; but
the constantly recurring references to it in the literature of all
ages would seem to point the moral in so far as salads must always have
appealed peculiarly to those leading a more or less sedentary life.
In a serious Biblical commentary of the eighteenth century, Baron von
Vaerst, a German savant, refers to Nebuchadnezzar’s diet of grass as
a punishment which did not in any way consist in the eating of salad,
but in the enforced absence of vinegar, oil, and salt. That salad adds
a zest to life is proved by St. Anthony, who said that the pious old
man, St. Hieronymus, lived to the green old age of 105, and during the
last ninety years of his life existed wholly upon bread and water, but
“not without a certain lusting after salad.” This is confirmed by St.
Athanasius.
In Shakespeare’s “Henry VI,” Jack Cade remarks that a salad “is not
amiss to cool a man’s stomach in the hot weather.” Cleopatra too refers
to her “salad days, when she was green in judgment, cool in blood.” In
“Le Quadragesimal Spiritual,” a work on theology published in Paris in
1521, these lines occur:--
La Salade moult proffitable
Signe la parolle de Dieu
Qu’il faut ouyr en chascun lieu.
Pêcheurs, entendez ce notable!
All writers agree as to the cooling properties of salads, and
particularly lettuce, on the blood. In his “Acetaria: a Discourse of
Sallets” (1699), John Evelyn says that lettuce, “though by Metaphor
call’d Mortuorum Cibi (to say nothing of Adonis and his sad Mistress)
by reason of its soporiferous quality, ever was and still continues the
principal Foundation of the universal Tribe of Sallets, which is to
Cool and Refresh. And therefore in such high esteem with the Ancients,
that divers of the Valerian family dignify’d and enobled their name
with that of Lactucinii.” He goes on to say that “the more frugal
Italians and French, to this Day, Accept and gather _Ogni Verdura_,
any thing almost that’s Green and Tender, to the very Tops of Nettles;
so as every Hedge affords a Sallet (not unagreeable) season’d with its
proper Oxybaphon of Vinegar, Salt, Oyl, &c., which doubtless gives it
both the Relish and Name of Salad, Ensalade, as with us of Sallet,
from the Sapidity, which renders not _Plants_ and _Herbs_ alone, but
_Men_ themselves, and their Conversations, pleasant and agreeable.”
In praise of Lettuce he has much to say, and waxes almost dithyrambic
as to its virtues. “It is indeed of Nature more cold and moist than any
of the rest; yet less astringent, and so harmless that it may safely be
eaten raw in Fevers; for it allays Heat, bridles Choler, extinguishes
Thirst, excites Appetite, kindly Nourishes, and above all represses
Vapours, conciliates Sleep, mitigates Pain; besides the effect it has
upon the Morals. Galen (whose beloved Sallet it was) from its pinguid,
subdulcid and agreeable Nature, says it breeds the most laudable blood.”
And again: “We see how necessary it is that in the composure of a
Sallet every plant should come in to bear its part without being
overpowered by some herb of a stronger taste, but should fall into
their place like the notes in music.”
Here is a salad recipe, _temp._ Richard II.
Take parsel, sawge, garlyc, chibolles, oynons, lettes,
borage, mynte, poirettes, fenel, and cressis; lave and
waithe hem clene, pike hem, plucke hem smalle wyth thyne
honde, and myng hem wel wyth rawe oyl, lay on vynegar and
salt and serve ytt forth.
This must have been a strong salad, and full-flavoured rather than
delicate. “Honde” is of course “hand,” and to “myng” is to mix. The
etymology of the recipe is interesting.
Old Gervase Markham, in his “English Housewife,” has this quaint
account of how to make a “Strange Sallet.”
First, if you would set forth any Red flower, that you
know or have seen, you shall take your pots of preserved
Gilly-flowers, and suting the colours answerable to the
flower, you shall proportion it forth, and lay the shape of
the Flower in a Fruit dish, then with your Purslane leaves
make the Green Coffin of the Flower, and with the Purslane
stalks make the stalk of the Flower, and the divisions
of the leaves and branches; then with the thin slices of
Cucumers, make their leaves in true proportions, jagged or
otherwise; and thus you may set forth some full blown, some
half blown and some in the bud, which will be pretty and
curious. And if you will set forth yellow flowers, take
the pots of Primroses and Cowslips, if blew flowers, then
the pots of Violets or Buglosse flowers, and these Sallets
are both for shew and use, for they are more excellent for
taste, than for to look on.
Another variety of old “Sallet” is referred to in “The Gentlewoman’s
Delight” (1654), which instructs one
How to make a Sallet of all manner of Hearbs. Take your
hearbs, and pick them clean, and the floures; wash them
clean, and swing them in a strainer; then put them into a
dish, and mingle them with Cowcumbers, and Lemons, sliced
very thin; then scrape on Sugar, and put in Vinegar and
Oil; then spread the floures on the top; garnish your dish
with hard Eggs, and all sorts of your floures; scrape on
Sugar and serve it.
An even earlier work, Cogan’s “Haven of Health” (1589), has the
following reference: “Lettuse is much used in salets in the sommer
tyme with vinegar, oyle, and sugar and salt, and is formed to procure
appetite for meate, and to temper the heate of the stomach and liver.”
Montaigne recounts a conversation he had with an Italian chef who had
served in the kitchen of Cardinal Caraffa up to the death of his
gastronomic eminence. “I made him,” he says, “tell me something about
his post. He gave me a lecture on the science of eating, with a gravity
and magisterial countenance as if he had been determining some vexed
question in theology.... The difference of salads, according to the
seasons, he next discoursed upon. He explained what sorts ought to be
prepared warm, and those which should always be served cold; the way
of adorning and embellishing them in order to render them seductive to
the eye. After this he entered on the order of table-service, a subject
full of fine and important considerations.”
An excerpt from “a late exquisite comedy” called _The Lawyer’s Fortune,
or Love in a Hollow Tree_, is quoted by Dr. King (1709):--
_Mrs. Favourite._ Mistress, shall I put any Mushrooms,
Mangoes, or Bamboons into the Sallad?
_Lady Bonona._ Yes, I prithee, the best thou hast.
_Mrs. Favourite._ Shall I use Ketchop or Anchovies in the
Gravy?
_Lady Bonona._ What you will!
A quaint old book on Salads is entitled “On the Use and Abuse of
Salads in general and Salad Plants in Particular,” by Johann Friedrich
Schütze, Doctor of Medicine, and Grand-Ducal Saxe-Coburg-Meiningen,
Physician at Sonnenburg and Neuhaus: Leipzig, 1758. The learned doctor
adopts the classical division of humanity into the Temperamentum
Sanguineum, or warm and damp, the Cholericum, or warm and dry, the
Phlegmaticum, or cold and damp, and the Melancholicum, or cold and dry.
To each of these classes a particular form of Salad applies, and none
other.
When Pope Sixtus the Fifth was an obscure monk he had a great friend
in a certain lawyer who sank steadily into poverty what time the monk
rose to the Papacy. The poor lawyer journeyed to Rome to seek aid from
his old friend the Pope, but he fell sick by the wayside and told
his doctor to let the Pope know of his sad state. “I will send him a
salad,” said Sixtus, and duly dispatched a basket of lettuces to the
invalid. When the lettuces were opened money was found in their hearts.
Hence the Italian proverb of a man in need of money: “He wants one of
Sixtus the Fifth’s salads.”
Fourcroy and Chaptal, notable chemists of the end of the eighteenth
century, unite in praise of salads, and have written disquisitions on
the dressing thereof; and Rabelais opines that the best salad-dressing
is Good Humour, which is just the sort of thing that one might expect
from him. His references to salad are numerous, and in the one
oft-quoted case humorously apposite.
In the olden time salads were mixed by pretty women, and they did it
with their hands. This was so well understood that down at least to the
time of Rousseau (Littré gives a quotation from the “Nouvelle Heloise,”
VI. 2) the phrase _Elle peut retourner la salade avec les doigts_ was
used to describe a woman as being still young and beautiful. “Dans le
siècle dernier,” says Littré, “les jeunes femmes rétournaient la salade
avec les doigts: cette locution a disparu avec l’usage lui-même.”
Among the gastrological Italian authors of the seventeenth century
I must refer to Salvatore Massonio, who wrote a great work on the
manner of dressing salads, entitled “Archidipno, overo dell’ Insalata e
dell’ uso di essa, Trattato nuovo Curioso e non mai più dato in luce.
Da Salvatore Massonio, Venice, 1627.” The British Museum copy, by the
way, belonged to Sir Joseph Banks. As was usual in those leisurely and
spacious times, there is a most glowing dedication beginning thus: “A
Molto Illustri Signori miei sempre osservandissimi i Signori fratelli
Ludovico Antonio e Fabritio Coll’ Antonii.” There is also a compendious
bibliography of 114 authors consulted and mentioned in this work,
which, indeed, is of considerable importance and of great interest.
Every one knows the oft-told tale of the French _emigré_ who went
about to noblemen’s houses mixing delicate salads at a high fee. Most
authorities refer to him as d’Albignac, although Dr. Doran, in his
“Table Traits,” calls him le Chevalier d’Aubigné; but Grenville Murray,
who generally knew what he was writing about, says that his name was
Gaudet. However, that matters little. He, whoever he was, appears to
have been an enterprising hustler of the period, and it is recorded
that he made a decent little fortune on which he eventually retired to
his native land to enjoy peace and plenty for the remainder of his days.
In Mortimer Collins’s “The British Birds, by the Ghost of Aristophanes”
(1872), there is a poetic tourney between three poets for the
laureateship of Cloud-Cuckooland; the subject is “Salad.” The poet with
the “redundant brow” sings:--
O cool in the summer is salad,
And warm in the winter is love;
And a poet shall sing you a ballad
Delicious thereon and thereof.
A singer am I, if no sinner,
My muse has a marvellous wing,
And I willingly worship at dinner
The Sirens of Spring.
Take endive ... like love it is bitter;
Take beet ... for like love it is red:
Crisp leaf of the lettuce shall glitter,
And cress from the rivulet’s bed:
Anchovies foam-born, like the Lady
Whose beauty has maddened this bard;
And olives from groves that are shady;
And eggs ... boil ’em hard.
The poet with the “redundant beard” chants next.