And the blackest possible lustrous gay tress,
This is the mouth of the Zodiac
When I want a pretty deft-handed waitress.
Bring a china bowl, you merry young soul;
Bring anything green, from worsted to celery;
Bring pure olive oil, from Italy’s soil ...
Then your china bowl we’ll well array.
When the time arrives chip choicest chives,
And administer quietly chili and capsicum ...
(Young girls do not quite know what’s what
Till as a poet into their laps I come).
Then a lobster fresh as fresh can be
(When it screams in the pot I feel a murderer):
After which I fancy we
Shall want a few bottles of Heidseck or Roederer.
The poet of “the redundant hair” then sings his lay in
Tennysonian-Arthurian lines, and is ultimately awarded the laureateship
of Cloud-Cuckoo-Town.
The verses do not show poor Collins at his best, and are only
interesting as relating to the subject of salad. Other songs of his
have never been excelled in a certain delicate charm of fancy and
quaint turns of versification.
Many salads have been mixed on the stage; the most famous perhaps is
the Japanese salad which occurs in Alexandre Dumas fils’ “Francillon”
(produced at the Théâtre Français, 17 January, 1887). It is not
orthodox, and, even when deftly mixed, not particularly nice, the
flavours being coarsely blended. Annette de Riverolles, inimitably
played by Reichemberg of the smiling teeth, dictates the recipe to
Henri de Symeux, originally acted by Laroche. Here is the passage:--
_Annette._ You must boil your potatoes in broth, then cut
them into slices, just as you would for an ordinary salad,
and whilst they are still lukewarm, add salt, pepper, very
good olive oil, with the flavour of the fruit, vinegar....
_Henri._ Tarragon?
_Annette._ Orleans is better, but it is not important.
But what is important is half a glass of white wine,
Château-Yquem, if possible. Plenty of finely-chopped
herbs. Now boil some very large mussels in a small broth
(_court-bouillon_), with a head of celery, drain them
well and add them to the dressed potatoes. Mix it all up
delicately.
_Thérèse._ Fewer mussels than potatoes?
_Annette._ One-third less. The flavour of the mussels must
be gradually felt; it must not be anticipated, and it must
not assert itself.
_Stanislas._ Very well put.
_Annette._ Thank you. When the salad is finished, mixed....
_Henri._ Lightly....
_Annette._ Then you cover it with slices of truffles, like
professors’ skull-caps.
_Henri._ Boiled in champagne.
_Annette._ Of course. All this must be done a couple of
hours before dinner, so that the salad may get thoroughly
cold before serving it.
_Henri._ You could put the salad-bowl on ice.
_Annette._ No, no. It must not be assaulted with ice. It
is very delicate, and the different flavours must combine
peacefully. Did you like the salad you had to-day?
_Henri._ Delicious!
_Annette._ Well, follow my recipe and you will make it
equally well.
A few years ago Mr. Charles Brookfield mixed an admirable salad on the
stage of the Haymarket in the course of his clever monologue “Nearly
Seven.” On 31 January, 1831, “La salade d’oranges, ou les étrennes dans
la mansarde,” by M. M. Varin and Desvergers, was played at the Palais
Royal. The first-named author was a sort of gastronomic playwright, for
he wrote plays called “Le cuisinier politique,” “J’ai mangé mon ami,”
and others.
In the Bohemian quarter of Paris, not so very many years ago, the
students of the _plein air_ school, the _Paysagistes_, used to sing
this song at their convivial meetings:--
Ah! que j’aime avec de la salade,
Un gros morçeau de jambon!
Y a pas danger qu’on soit jamais malade
Quand on mange avec de la salade
Un bon morçeau de jambon.
Amis, cassons les pots, les plats, les verres,
Cassons les verres, les plats, les pots;
Puisqu’il n’y a plus dans l’plat qu’des pommes de terre,
Cassons les verres, les pots, les plats!
“When summer is icumen in,” one naturally turns to the cooling salad,
the refreshing salmon mayonnaise, and the concomitant delights of
mid-season entertaining. Regularly at that time of the year learned
pundits in the daily papers tell us with portentous gravity what we
ought to eat and what we ought to let alone. All this is the direst
nonsense. A man or a woman of sense will eat that for which he or she
feels inclined, and will have the requisite gastronomic gumption to
avoid heating dishes which are unseasonable and unpalatable.
With all changes of the weather sensible people accommodate their diet
to the meteorological conditions; fish is preferable to meat, and fruit
plays its strong suit, because its cooling juices are just what we
yearn to dally with when our appetites are a little under the weather.
All this is axiomatic. Of salads in particular. I should like to give
here and now the recipe of a salad which I have found most soothing
and comforting in hot weather. I may, perhaps, be permitted to act as
godfather and christen it “Vanity Fair Salad.” It is quite simple and
wholesome and toothsome. Here followeth the recipe.
VANITY FAIR SALAD.--Take eight to ten cold cooked artichoke
bottoms (_fonds d’artichauts_), fresh, not preserved, and
the yellow hearts of two young healthy lettuces (_cœurs
de laitue_). Break them into pieces with a silver fork or
your fingers (on no account let them be touched by steel);
add a not too thinly sliced cucumber, peeled; toss these
together. Let them stand for half an hour; then drain
off all the water. Now add two or three tablespoonfuls
of pickled red cabbage, minus all vinegar, and a dozen
sliced-up radishes. Add the dressing. As to this I prefer
not to dogmatize. My own mixture is three and a half
tablespoonfuls of the very best Nice olive oil to one of
wine vinegar and one-half of tarragon, with salt, pepper,
French mustard, and three drops of Tabasco sauce. But this
is a matter of opinion, and I insist on nothing except the
total avoidance of that horrible furniture-polish mixture
sold in quaint convoluted bottles, and humorously dubbed
“salad sauce.” Just before serving sprinkle the salad with
chopped chervil and a suspicion of chives.
Our great-grandmothers had various and curious recipes for the
assuagement of summer fevers and megrims of that nature. From an old
volume of “The Lady’s Companion, or an infallible Guide to the Fair
Sex,” published anonymously in 1743, I cull the following recipe for
“Gascoign Powder.”
Take prepar’d Crabs’ Eyes, Red Coral, White Amber, very
finely powdered, of each half an Ounce; burnt Hartshorn,
half an Ounce; Pearls very finely powdered, and Oriental
Bezoar, an Ounce of each; of the black Tops of Crabs’
Claws, finely powdered, four Ounces. Grind all these on a
Marble Stone, till they cast a greenish Colour; then make
it into Balls with Jelly made of English Vipers Skins,
which may be made, and will jelly like Hartshorn.
Of course, this was never meant to be taken seriously, but the
old cookery-book compilers always thought that a few of these
pseudo-medieval recipes, assumed to have been compounded by the wise
men of old, added a certain dignity to their otherwise quite harmless
volumes.
The late Sir Henry Thompson recommends that the host or hostess should
mix the salad, because not many servants can be trusted to execute the
simple details.
Mixing one saltspoon of salt and half that quantity of
pepper in a tablespoon which is to be filled three times
consecutively with the best fresh olive oil, stirring each
briskly until the condiments have been thoroughly mixed and
at the same time distributed over the salad, this is next
to be tossed thoroughly but lightly, until every portion
glistens, scattering meantime a little finely chopped fresh
tarragon and chervil, with a few atoms of chives over the
whole, so that sparkling green particles spot, as with a
pattern, every portion of the leafy surface. Lastly, but
only immediately before serving, one small tablespoonful of
mild French, or better still, Italian red-wine vinegar, is
to be sprinkled over all, followed by another tossing of
the salad.
“La Salade de la Grande Jeanne” is a pretty child’s story by the
prolific writer, P. J. Stahl (really P. J. Hetzel), telling of the
friendship of a tiny tot named Marie and a cow named Jeanne. They were
born on the same day, but the calf grew to a big cow long before Marie
became a big girl, but they remained firm friends, and Marie always
took Jeanne to the pasture and Jeanne in return took care of Marie.
One day Marie’s little brother Jacques had a brilliant idea. He pitied
poor Jeanne having always to eat her grass just plain without any
dressing. How much better she would enjoy her food if it were properly
mixed into a salad. So Jacques borrowed a big salad-bowl from his
mother, and mixed a bundle of grass with oil and vinegar and pepper and
salt. He put the bowl before Jeanne, who, being a polite cow, tasted
the strange dish. Hardly had her great tongue plunged into the grass
than she withdrew it with a melancholy moo, and swinging her tail in an
expostulatory manner, she trotted off to the brook to take a long drink
of water.
The moral is very trite. “The simple cuisine of nature suits cows
better than that of man.”
[Illustration: CHAPTER V
MRS. GLASSE AND HER HARE]
“Every individual, who is not perfectly imbecile
and void of understanding, is an epicure in
his way; the epicures in boiling potatoes are
innumerable. The perfection of all enjoyments
depends on the perfection of the faculties of the
mind and body; the temperate man is the greatest
epicure, and the only true voluptuary.”
DR. KITCHINER.
Old myths die hard. Nevertheless, as we grow older and wiser and saner
and duller, we drop the illusions of our youth, and one by one our
cherished beliefs fall from us, argued away by force of circumstance,
lack of substantiation, or sheer proof to the contrary.
In this last category we must perforce reckon the excellent Mrs. Hannah
Glasse and her immortal saying, “First catch your hare, then cook it.”
Alas and alack, Mrs. Glasse never existed--“there never was no sich
person”--and, moreover, the cookery book bearing her name, in none of
its many editions, contains the oft-quoted words.
The actual facts, although, indeed, these are open to a certain amount
of dubiety, appear to be as follows. In Boswell’s “Johnson” there are
several references to one Edward Dilly, who with his brother Charles
carried on a flourishing book-shop in the Poultry. Dr. Johnson often
dined with these estimable men, and at their table met most of the
wits and scholars of the day. The great lexicographer referred to the
brothers as his “worthy friends.” It is on record that Edward Dilly, in
the presence of Boswell, Mayo, Miss Seward, and the Duke of Bedford’s
tutor, the Rev. Mr. Beresford, said to Dr. Johnson, “Mrs. Glasse’s
‘Cookery,’ which is the best, was written by Dr. Hill. Half the trade
knows this.”
Now this Dr. John Hill (not Aaron Hill, as assumed by Mr. Waller) was
a rather interesting personality. He was a brilliant man in many
directions, who misused his talents, and devoted his energies to so
many various professions that it is not surprising to learn that he
succeeded permanently in none. It is known of him that he was at
different times apothecary, actor, pamphleteer, journalist, novelist,
dramatist, herbalist, naturalist, and quack-doctor. He took a degree at
St. Andrews, and his nickname was “Dr. Atall.” He married the sister
of the then Lord Ranelagh, and by some manner of means got himself
decorated with the Swedish order of the Polar Star, on the strength of
which he paraded himself as Sir John Hill. No one, however, appears to
have taken him at his own appraisement, for he was the general butt of
wits, epigrammatists, and lampoonists. His death was attributed to the
use of his own gout remedy, and these lines to him still survive:--
For physic and farces
His equal there scarce is;
His farces are physic,
His physic a farce is.
Well, this same John Hill, in his earlier and more obscure days, was
doing hack-work for the booksellers, and also following the business
of an apothecary in St. Martin’s Lane. This must have been in the year
1744 or 1745. He was struck (as who might not have been) by the ease
with which a new cookery book might be compiled by extracting the best
recipes from scores of old ones, and rehashing them with original
remarks and new settings. He had plenty of material to work upon. The
best-known cookery books prior to that date were, according to Dr.
Kitchiner (who wrongly dates Mrs. Glasse 1757), Sarah Jackson’s “Cook’s
Director,” La Chapelle’s “Modern Cook,” Kidder’s “Receipts,” Harrison’s
“Family Cook,” “Adam’s Luxury and Eve’s Cookery,” “The Accomplish’d
Housewife,” “Lemery on Food,” Arnaud’s “Alarm to all Persons touching
their Health and Lives,” Smith’s “Cookery,” Hall’s “Royal Cookery,” Dr.
Salmon’s “Cookery,” “The Compleat Cook,” and many more.
Hill accordingly made up his book, and his introduction was certainly
ingenuous and modest; one phrase will prove this: “If I had not
wrote in the high polite style, I hope I shall be forgiven; for my
intention is to instruct the lower sort.” The sly dog knew his public,
and this is further proved by his not putting his book to the world
through a bookseller, but publishing it himself, and evolving an
entirely new method of distribution. Among his friends he numbered the
ingenious Mrs. Ashburn, or Ashburner, as it is spelt in some of the
later editions. This good lady kept a glass and china shop in Fleet
Street, hard by Temple Bar, and her customers came from the fashionable
squares of Bloomsbury and St. James. Hill made an arrangement with Mrs.
Ashburn, whereby she sold his book over her counter and recommended it
warmly to all the ladies who called at her shop.
In order to make the illusion of authorship more complete, a female
name was wanted for the title page. What could be more simple than
“Mrs. Glasse,” seeing that Mrs. Ashburn kept a glass shop? The exact
title of the _magnum opus_ ran, “The Art of Cookery made Plain and
Easy, which far exceeds anything yet published. By a Lady. Printed
for the author and sold at Mrs. Ashburn’s, a china shop, the corner of
Fleet Ditch, 1745.” The actual name of Mrs. Glasse did not, however,
appear on the title page until the issue of the third edition, for
the book was a great success from the first; every one came to Mrs.
Ashburn’s to buy it, and its popularity vastly helped the glass and
china trade.
About fourteen years ago a lively discussion as to the authentic
authorship of Mrs. Glasse filled several columns in the newspapers, the
principal correspondents being Mr. W. F. Waller and Mr. G. A. Sala. It
was suggested that “first catch your hare” was a misprint for “first
_case_ your hare.” Mr. Waller proved that neither of these passages
occurred in any known edition of the book, although _case_, meaning “to
skin,” would have been entirely legitimate and in place.
Shakespeare says in “All’s Well That Ends Well”:--
We’ll make you some sport with the fox ere we case him
And a reference to Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Love’s Pilgrimage” gives
the lines--
Some of them knew me,
Else had they cased me like a coney.
The actual phrase used is “First cast your hare,” or, in another
edition, “Take your hare, and when it is cast.” This simply means
flayed or skinned, and was commonly used at the time. The verb “to
scotch” or “to scatch” is East Anglian, and has the same meaning. So
much for the authenticity of the quotation.
Curiously enough, in the newspaper controversy above referred to,
George Augustus Sala strongly supported the claims of Mrs. Glasse
herself as the real author, and there certainly appears to be some
circumstantial evidence as to a lady of that name who was “habit-maker
to the Royal family” about that period, although her connexion with
the culinary art is not to be traced. Incidentally Sala mentions a
receipt from a cookery book written by “An ingenious Gaul” towards the
middle of the seventeenth century, which begins with what he terms “A
Culinary Truism,” since changed into “A proverbial platitude”--namely,
the words “_pour faire un civet, prenez un lièvre_.” This is, however,
of course merely a commonplace of the kitchen, and, according to the
learned authority of Dr. Thudichum, the imperative of _prendre_ has not
the _catching_ meaning apparently attached to it by Sala.
Abraham Hayward, Q.C., whose “Art of Dining,” a reprint of certain
“Quarterly Review” articles, must always remain one of the greatest
classics of English gastronomical literature, says that Mrs. Glasse’s
cookery book was written by Dr. Hunter, of York. This is, of course,
an egregious error. Dr. Hunter was the author of “Culina Famulatrix
Medicinæ; or, Receipts in Modern Cookery” (1804, fourth edition),
with the delightful dedication, “To those gentlemen who freely give
two guineas for a Turtle Dinner at the Tavern, when they might have
a more wholesome one at Home for Ten Shillings, this work is humbly
dedicated”; and an exquisite frontispiece of a pig, by Carr, headed
“Transmigration”; but he was in no way responsible for Mrs. Glasse.
[Illustration: LES AUDIENCES D’UN GOURMAND
(A. B. L. Grimod de la Reynière inv. 1804)
[To face page 89]
The case is very fairly summed up by Mrs. Joseph Pennell in “My Cookery
Books.” She says, speaking of Mrs. Glasse: “Her fame is due, not to
her genius, for she really had none, but to the fact that her own
generation believed there was no such person, and after generations
believed in her as the author of a phrase she never wrote.” There
really seems no more to be said on the matter.
It matters little, after all, whether Mrs. Glasse really existed or
not; anyhow, some of her precepts are excellent and endure to this day.
She preached thorough mastication as a primary rule for good digestion.
This is thoroughly sound and praiseworthy.
“Most men dig their graves with their teeth,” so says an old Chinese
proverb, meaning, no doubt, that we all eat too much, and too fast,
and too often, and too promiscuously. The propriety of eating slowly
ought always to be remembered. Mr. Gladstone’s thirty-two bites are
historical. Napoleon was a terribly fast eater, and this habit is
supposed to have paralysed him on two of the most critical occasions
of his life, the battles of Leipzig and Borodino, which he might
have converted into decisive and influential victories by pushing his
advantages as he was wont. On each of these occasions he was known to
have been suffering from indigestion. On the third day at Dresden, too,
the German novelist Hoffmann, who was present in the town, asserts that
the Emperor would have done much more than he did but for the effects
of a shoulder of mutton stuffed with onions.
It is a certain fact, although difficult to prove by statistics, that
a large proportion of the drink consumed by the working-classes is
directly due to the bad cooking which they have to endure in their
homes. Improve the workman’s cuisine, and you will automatically
lessen the drink bill. This is a point of view which philanthropists
and temperance folk might adopt with immense advantage, and with
practically immediate results.
Dr. Max Einhorn has recently written on the subject of correct
eating, which he divides into three distinct headings: Tachyphagia,
Bradyphagia, and Euphagia. The first of these is the common evil
of hasty eating, in which the food is not sufficiently masticated,
and hence enters the stomach without being properly insalivated and
comminuted. Besides the deleterious mechanical effect, tachyphagia also
encourages the taking of large quantities of food in too short a time,
as well as its consumption too hot or too cold.
The rising generation is going to fight tachyphagia tooth and
nail--especially tooth. It is being taught wisely and well by the
disciples of the Cookery and Food Association how to improve the family
digestion, and there is an old saying to the effect that digestion is
the business of the cook, indigestion that of the doctor. It cannot be
too often or too forcibly impressed upon the so-called working-classes,
and upon a good many other classes of society also, that good cooking
does not mean waste and extravagance, but, on the contrary, that
it connotes economy and frugality. A daughter who can cook well is
tantamount to possessing a Savings-Bank account.
Are you a Euphagist? Perhaps, like the immortal M. Jourdain, of
Molière, you may have been one all your life--and never knew it.
Anyhow, it is a question which is being bandied about at dinners just
now a good deal, and as very few people know what a Euphagist really
is, it may be as well to explain. Briefly then, Euphagists are the
modern exponents of the old adage, “Laugh and grow fat.” As a sect, or
a race, or a cult, or whatever they may please to call themselves, they
refuse to take anything seriously at meal-times, which is an entirely
sound and philosophical theory.
The learned German professor above referred to is the inventor, or
discoverer, or resuscitator of the idea, and his doctrine is summed up
in the brief instruction: Bite everything twenty times, don’t worry
whilst eating, laugh at everything--and acquire sound health. After
all, it is a tried truism that there is no digestive as efficacious as
hearty laughter. A solemn diner, especially if he dine often alone, is
almost invariably dyspeptic; whereas a bright, cheery man or woman, who
has a keen sense of humour, and sees the comic side of most things, is
rarely a sufferer from indigestion. “Even our digestion is governed
by angels,” said William Blake, the artist-poet, and (if you will but
resist the trivial inclination to substitute “bad angels”) is there
really any greater mystery than the process by which beef is turned
into brains, and jam into beauty?
Of course we do not laugh enough--at the utmost we giggle unmusically.
Listen to the conversation in general at any restaurant, or even any
dinner party; you will rarely hear a really hearty laugh. It is as
extinct as silver épergnes or peacock-pie.
It is told of an American dining at the Carlton one night that, struck
by the comparative silence of all the diners, he asked one of the
waiters: “Say, does nobody ever laugh here?” The reply came pat enough:
“Yes, sir, I believe there have been one or two complaints about it
lately.” Are we too solemn, or too dull, or too afraid of shocking our
neighbours?
It was not always so. According to that delightful work, “The Household
of Sir Thomas More”: “What rare sport we had with a mummery we called
‘The Triall of Feasting.’ Dinner and Supper were brought up before
my Lord Chief Justice, charg’d with Murder. Their accomplices were
Plum-pudding, Mince-Pye, Drunkenness, and such-like. Being condemned
to hang by ye neck, I, who was Supper, stuft out with I cannot tell
you how manie pillows, began to call lustilie for a confessor, and on
his stepping forthe, commenct a list of all ye fitts, convulsions,
spasms, payns in ye head, and so forthe, I had inflicted on this one
and t’other.”
In those days, no doubt, they did not require to adopt the tenets of
Euphagism, they were well enough without it. To-day, however, as a
change, and a delightful one too, from the hundred and one food-fads
which abound, a general adoption of Euphagism would seem to promise
brighter meals, more fun, and better health.
Among other aids to digestion which are flagrantly neglected is the
taking of one’s food in the open air whenever the thermometrical
conditions of our somewhat erratic climate render it possible.
Just exactly why we take every opportunity of dining in the open air
when we are abroad, and carefully fight shy of it, under more or less
similar circumstances, when we are at home, is one of those questions
which are unsolved, and apparently unsolvable. Our distaste for British
coal may be one answer to the conundrum, and another may be not
unconnected with our national shyness at being seen eating our meals in
public by our fellow-countrymen. Foreigners, of course, don’t count.
Opportunity is not lacking, in London at any rate, for open-air dining.
It can be done at several of the hotels, and in the summer there is
Earl’s Court, where, despite certain obvious drawbacks of access and
other things, it can be enjoyed without much discomfort.