a dinner on a July evening in the open air in the country. One such
lingers most pleasantly in my memory. It was at a charming house in
Hampshire. We dined on a marble terrace, on which soft rugs had been
placed. The night was still enough for the candles on the table to
burn without guttering. Below the terrace was a rose-garden, full of
bloom, and in a shrubbery, not too close to the house, a Hungarian band
played discreetly. The dinner, according to my recollection, was not
extraordinarily good, but whatever it may have been, the surroundings,
the _mise en scène_, were such that almost anything would have been
appetizing and delightful. Why cannot more of this sort of thing
be done? We cannot all possess marble terraces, rose-gardens, and
Hungarian bands; but the permutations of the idea are innumerable, and
I beg to present it to summer hostesses for development and improvement.
Exigencies of climate will probably never permit us to realize the al
fresco meals suggested by a Watteau, a Boucher, or a Fragonard, and it
is, indeed, more than questionable whether the French cuisine, which
was flourishing round and about that period, was ever designed for the
_dîner sur l’herbe_, which is, and was, an essentially bourgeois meal.
At any rate, a curious old book in four volumes, “Les Soupers de la
Cour; ou L’Art de Travailler toutes sortes d’Alimens,” by Menon, which
was published in Paris _au Lys d’Or_ in 1755, contains many appallingly
long menus, some comprising five services and forty or more dishes,
expressly designed to be eaten out of doors. No less an authority
than Carême, however, says that these menus (and they are certainly
extraordinarily elaborate) were the result of pure imagination on the
part of _feu_ M. Menon, and were never actually carried out.
In our days even our shooting lunches tend to greater extent than can
usefully be accommodated on the grass; and we are accordingly bidden to
a farm-house, a tent, or sometimes a garnished barn. The lunch under
a hedge, unloaded from the pony and spread temptingly on the grass,
is almost a thing of the past, which, according to some old-fashioned
fogies, is a pity.
Be that as it may, there is one open-air lunch which can never be
altogether improved away. That is the river lunch, either in a punt or
a skiff, with a table deftly made of the sculls and the stretchers.
Moreover, it has this inestimable advantage: it is practically
impossible for more than two to partake of a boat lunch with comfort.
It can, of course, be done, but at a sacrifice of leg room--and other
things. Of course the more dignified motor-launch lunches, served at a
real table, do not count, for are they not the same as those eaten on
dry land?
It was, I think, the late Sir William Vernon Harcourt who once remarked
that “we are all Socialists now.” By the same token we may say to-day,
“We are all motorists now,” and really, taking it by and large, the
luncheon part of a motor trip is by no means the least interesting.
That British hotels, with very few exceptions, leave much to be desired
is the tritest of truisms. Bad cookery, shocking attendance, and
old-fashioned appointments, combined with disproportionate expense,
are almost universal, and a big fortune awaits any Boniface who, with
a good house on a much-frequented road, instals a really good cook,
preferably a Frenchman and his wife, not necessarily a high-priced
individual, and makes a speciality of well-cooked, daintily served,
appetizing lunches and dinners.
We have all met, only too frequently, the miserable sham lamb, which
is mere mutton saucily disguised with mint; the nearly raw cold beef;
the maltreated chop; the apologetic steak; the absurd parody of a
salad; the sad and heavy apple tart; and the anything but real Cheddar
cheese. All these things are absurd and quite unnecessary.
It is really just as easy to cook a good dinner as a bad one. _Experto
crede._
The usual alternative for the foregoing bill of fare is a cheap and
nasty imitation of a French menu, where nothing is true to name, and
only the frills on the cutlets are what they pretend to be. It really
should not be difficult to give a well-cooked fillet of sole, a tender
chicken, an omelet _aux fines herbes_, and a dish of vegetables in
season, _sautés au beurre_; but if you asked for a lunch of this sort
at a wayside British inn you would be put down at once as a lunatic.
Why?
The question of packing a motor lunch is one of some difficulty
and niceness. Personally, I do not for one moment believe in those
elaborate ready-fitted baskets, of which the makers are so inordinately
proud. Such a basket seldom fits the lunch, and I find by experience
that a good-sized empty basket of convenient shape is far more
practical.
The cutlery, glass, and china may be fixed, as a matter of convenience,
although I do not consider even that to be necessary, for in packing
up one is always trying to fit a table-knife into the place made for a
teaspoon.
My ideal basket or hamper is quite bare inside (to begin with), and the
cates, bottles, knives, forks, and spoons are packed therein, tightly
and carefully, so as to prevent shaking and rattling.
A good method of keeping a salad fresh and crisp, by the way, is to
hollow out a loaf of bread, cut off a slice at the top in the form of a
lid, and pack the salad inside. Japanese paper serviettes are useful;
little and big cardboard plates and dishes are to be bought for a
trifle; fruit travels best if surrounded with green leaves; Devonshire
cream in pots is an appreciable luxury; coffee can be made in the
_cafetière gourmet_, if boiling water be handy. And, lastly, don’t
forget the corkscrew!
According to the calendar, spring begins officially on 21 March. But
the _restaurateurs_ can beat Dame Nature, who, presumably, edits the
calendar (another lady’s paper!), by at least six weeks. For the season
of _primeurs_ commences six weeks earlier, and coming before their
time, they are appreciated all the more for their vernal suggestion
of the flavour of the real thing, arriving in due season when all the
world and his wife may eat thereof.
Early green peas, for instance, which have hitherto been imported from
Algiers, come from Nice, also the famous _Lauris_ giant asparagus,
white and succulent. This earliest open-air asparagus, of indubitable
excellence, is to be had at about thirty-eight to forty-five shillings
per bundle of fifty heads. It is worth the price.
Now too is the time to eat the real Pauillac lamb, reared on the salt
marshes of Pauillac, young, fat, white, and so luscious that it melts
in the mouth. The whole young lamb barely weighs fourteen pounds, and a
cut of this veritable _pré salé_, so often badly imitated and misnamed,
is worth a king’s ransom.
But perpend when you order the dish at a restaurant. The _maître
d’hôtel_ will recommend a leg, because it has the better appearance;
the knowledgeable diner, however, will inevitably prefer the shoulder,
which is the quintessence of delicacy.
According to M. Roche, of Duke Street, Adelphi, the greatest authority
on _primeurs_ in London, early spring is the time beyond all others to
indulge in the toothsome _crêtes de coq_, or cockscombs, without which
no self-respecting dish _à la financière_ is complete. The _haricots
verts gris_, from Spain, are also in excellent condition. They are not
much to look at, but the flavour is just exquisite. They cost about
three shillings a pound.
The far-famed _poulet du Mans_ and equally attractive _poularde de
Bresse_ are on the market at about twelve and sixpence each, but there
is, I regret to say, a deal of fiction attending the appearance of
these plump and pleasing birds on the usual London restaurant bill of
fare. Either of them forms an imposing line on the menu, but see that
you get the _real_ French bird, and not the ordinary Surrey barn-door
fowl, which, however good in its way--and I should be the last to
underrate the product of my own county--is of distinctly inferior
flavour compared with its better-bred Gallic cousin.
The timely _primeurs_ in the way of salads are numerous: the _mâche_
is in excellent condition, and so is the _barbe de capucin_, duly
blanched in cellars; the _Chicorée de Bruxelles_ is a welcome change;
and although the _romaine_ at one and sixpence each are expensive, they
are large-hearted and good of their kind.
The craze, however, for early vegetables may easily be overdone. A
rather well-known gourmet, who has a place in the country, grows all
his “early-out-of-the-season” stuff under glass. He was entertaining
some friends in the month of May, and gave them very excellent new
potatoes, boasting the while of their rarity. “My good man,” said a
guest, “there is really nothing at all extraordinary in getting new
potatoes in May, one can eat them anywhere.” But he had reckoned
without his host. “Of course you can,” was the reply, “if you want
_ordinary_ new potatoes. These of mine are early potatoes of _next_
season but one!”
“If I drink any more,” said Lady Coventry at Lord Hertford’s table, “if
I drink any more, I shall be _muckibus_.”
“Lord!” said Lady Mary Coke, “what is that?”
“Oh,” was the reply, “it is Irish for _sentimental_.”
This was dinner-table conversation one hundred and fifty years ago,
_teste_ Horace Walpole. They were franker in those days.
“This wine,” said a notable host to one Mr. Pocock of Bristol, “costs
me six shillings a bottle.”
“Does it,” asked the guest, with a quaint look of gay reproof; “then
pass it round, and let me have another six penn’orth!”
In the eighteenth century, Sir Walter Besant tells us, people
habitually ate and drank too much; citizens and aldermen grew
portentously fat; well-bred people would gnaw bones with their fingers
at public banquets; an imperial quart of ale was a day’s ordinary
allowance, and a man would drink his six bottles of port at a
sitting. Another illustration of a lusty appetite may be quoted from
the Memoirs of Sir Walter Scott. He and his friend, Mr. Shortreed,
on one of those Liddesdale raids when he was so brisk-hearted and
jovial, rode over one morning from Clenchhead to breakfast with Thomas
Elliott of Tuzzliehope. Before starting at six o’clock, just to lay
their stomachs, they had a couple of ducks and some London porter, and
were, nevertheless, well disposed on their arrival at Tuzzliehope for
a substantial breakfast, with copious libations of whisky punch, which
did not in any degree incapacitate them, for they were able to pursue
their journey, picking up fragments of border minstrelsy as they went
along. And it was not only on country excursions that meat and drink
were consumed _ad libitum_; the ordinary diet of the men of the period
was what we would call redundant, and their feasts were Gargantuan. A
dinner given by James Ballantyne on the birth-eve of a novel is thus
described:--
The feast was gorgeous, an aldermanic display of turtles and venison
with the suitable accompaniments of iced punch, potent ale, and
generous Madeira. When the cloth had been drawn and many toasts had
been honoured and songs sung, the claret and olives made way for
broiled bones and a mighty bowl of punch, and when a few glasses of
the hot beverage had restored their powers, the guests were ready to
listen to the new romance, read aloud by Ballantyne _ore rotundo_. A
novel, under these circumstances, especially if of the somewhat lengthy
and descriptive nature current at that period, must have been at once
stimulating, satisfying, and soporific.
There is authority and to spare as to the comparative plethora of
food which was piled on the table to incite, provoke and assuage
the decidedly healthy appetites of our forbears. In No. 148 of “The
Tatler,” Addison writes:--
“At last I discovered, with some joy, a pig at the lower end of the
table, and begged a gentleman that was near to cut me a piece of it.
Upon which the gentleman of the house said with real civility: ‘I am
sure you will like the pig, for it was whipt to death.’”
In those days a sucking-pig was supposed to acquire greater succulence
through flagellation. What with burning down a house (although only a
Chinese one) to make roast pork, and flogging a baby, the pigs must
have had rather a hard time. An eighteenth-century pig underwent
various vicissitudes from which a twentieth-century pig is exempt.
Goethe has a story in his “Campaign in France” that, after a long and
tiring fight, some of Prince Louis Ferdinand’s soldiers looted a heavy
locked-up kitchen-dresser, in which they heard something heavy rolling
about. They concluded it was food, and as they were well-nigh famished
they took it out to the camp and broke it open. To their horror and
disgust, all it contained was a weighty cookery book. However, they
made the best of a bad job, and as they had no supper, they sat round
the camp fire and one man after the other read out a succulent receipt
from the book, and thus they tried to pretend that they were enjoying
a gorgeous supper. This is, indeed, the true spirit of appreciative
gastronomy, and the table-manners of these hungry but easily appeased
warriors must have been the quintessence of simplicity and good
taste. For, after all, a dinner in its diurnal regularity is the most
perennial of delights. Bulwer Lytton, in “Pelham,” says:--
“A buried friend may be replaced, a lost mistress renewed, a slandered
character be recovered, even a broken constitution restored; but a
dinner once lost is irremediable; that day is for ever departed; an
appetite once thrown away can never, till the cruel prolixity of the
gastric agent is over, be regained. _Il y a tant de maîtresses_ (says
the admirable Corneille), _il n’y a qu’un diner_.”
Speaking of the close of the Tudor period, William Harrison, a
contemporary historian, writes:--
“I might here talke somewhat of the great silence that is used at the
tables of the honourable and wiser sorte generallie over all the realme
(albeit that too much deserveth no commendation, for it belongeth to
guests to be neither muti nor loquaces) likewise the moderate eating
and drinking that is dailie seene, and finallie of the regard that
each hath to keepe himselfe from note of surfetting and drunkenesse
(for which cause salt meat, except beefe, bacon, and porke, are not
anie whit esteemed, and yet these three may be much powdered); but
as in the rehearsal thereof I should commend the nobleman, merchant,
and frugall artificer, so I could not cleare the meaner sort of
husbandman of verie much bobbling (except it be here and there some odd
yeoman) with whom he is thought to be merriest that talketh of most
ribaldrie....”
Very similar were the precepts taught to our remoter forefathers.
In the “Accomplish’d Lady Rich’s Closet of Rareties, or Ingenious
Gentlewoman’s Delightful Companion” (1653) ladies are told when
carving at their own table to “distribute the best pieces first, and
it will appear very comely and decent to use a fork.” The lady is also
requested to sit at table “with a straight body,” and “_even though
she were an aunt_,” to refrain from resting her elbows upon the table.
She must not “by ravenous gesture display a voracious appetite,”
and if “she talked with her mouth full, or smacked her lips like a
pig, or swallowed spoon meat so hot that tears came to her eyes, she
would be taken for an underbred person, even if she were really an
Earl’s daughter.” But folk were almost exaggeratedly delicate in those
days. It is related by the worthy Dr. Walker in his “Sufferings of
the Clergy” that a pious parish priest was ejected from his cure by
the Commonwealth Puritans because he was formally accused of “eating
custard scandalously.” But the etiquette of the table dates back to the
very earliest ages. Of the five hundred and sixty-five Chinese books
on Behaviour, catalogued by a learned mandarin, no fewer than three
hundred and sixty-one refer directly to the ceremonial of the Chinese
dinner-table. It is remarkable too that among the Sybarites it was
customary to invite ladies to dinner a year beforehand, ostensibly to
give them time to beautify themselves.
In the year 1557 one Seager published his “Schoole of Vertue, a booke
of good Nourture for Children,” wherein the following instructions are
set forth in rhyme.
When thy parentes downe to the table shall syt,
In place be ready for the purpose most fyt;
With sober countenance, lookynge them in the face,
Thy hands holding up, thus begin Grace;
“Geve thankes to God with one accorde
For that shall be set on this borde,”
And be not careful what to eate,
To eche thynge lyvynge the Lord sends meate;
For foode he wyll not se you peryshe,
But wyll you fede, foster and cheryshe;
Take well in worth what he hath sent
At thys time be therwith content
Praysinge God!
So treatablie speakynge as possibly thou can,
That the hearers thereof may thee understan,
Grace beynge said, low cursie make thou,
Sayinge “much good may it do you.”
Finally, the following epitaph on a gourmand, written by an unknown
poet, seems to sum up the true inwardness of the gastronomic ideal:--
Ci-gît un gourmand insigne
Dont l’exercice le plus digne
Fût de manger à tout propos.
Se voyant réduit à l’extrême,
Il aurait mangé la mort même;
Mais il n’y trouva que des os.
[Illustration: CHAPTER VI
MENUS]
“I hope you’ll have all you’re thinkin’ you’re
havin’ an’ more too,--but less if you’d like it.”
The Lunatic Lady in
FRANK STOCKTON’S “Rudder Grange.”
According to the old Greek authorities, the original Seven Sages of
the kitchen were: Agris of Rhodes, who first taught the bone method of
dressing fish; Nereus of Corinth, who made the conger a dish for the
gods; Orion, who invented white sauce; Chariades, who achieved yellow
sauce; Lampriadas, who discovered brown sauce; Atlantus, who made
the most perfect restorative; and Euthynus, who cooked vegetables so
exquisitely that he was named Lentillus.
These several gentlemen, combined into one, would not be all too
learned in the niceties of gastronomy to be able to put together a
modern dinner menu. Nowadays we want something more than mere quantity.
The Gargantuan repasts of our forefathers are not for us. In those
days, maybe (or perhaps not), unlimited exercise, hunting, and the like
made these gross meals comparatively digestible; but we live in more
delicate times, and want our viands fewer in number and more carefully
cooked, with less added flavour and more of their own natural juices.
It is very true that one-half of the world does not know how the other
half dines. We follow one another in sheep-like fashion round the few
better-known restaurants, eating the same dinners, drinking the same
wines, and seeing the same people week after week, in a dull monotony
of sameness.
And yet there are a few quite nice, respectable, meetable sort of folk,
who, with the cosmopolitan habit strong upon them, know their London
well enough to be able to dine every night in a different country, and
remain all the time within a shilling cab-fare of Piccadilly.
How is it done, you will ask? It is really very simple.
Say you want a French dinner, light, delicate, and appetizing, go to
Kettner, in Church Street, Soho, or to Dieudonné, in Ryder Street, and
you will find _un petit diner très-fin_, as good as you will obtain
anywhere in Paris. If you patronize the former very old and very quaint
establishment, ask to look over the kitchens; they are as neat and
clean as those in a painting by an old Dutch master. As to the menu,
you cannot do better than leave yourself in the hands of the _maître
d’hôtel_.
If you are inclined to dine _à l’Italienne_, go to Pagani’s, in Great
Portland Street, and order _Minestrone_; _Sôle à la Pagani_; _Pollio
alla Contrabandista_, and macaroni; take plenty of Parmesan cheese with
everything, and imagine yourself in Florence. Do not forget to drink
the special _Lacrima Christi_, and inspect the “autograph-room” on the
second floor.
Again, suppose you desire to spend a Teutonic evening and regale
yourself on German delicacies. Hie then to the old Gambrinus, in Regent
Street, run by the excellent Oddenino of the Imperial. Call the _Ober
Kellner_ and _bestell_ yourself _Fleisch Brühe_, _Karpfe in Bier_,
_Kalbskotlette mit Celeri salat_, and _Dampfnudeln_. As the American
critic remarked: “If you like that sort of thing that’s just the sort
of thing you’ll like.”
I have lunched Turkishly in the City off _Kabobs_, kid stuffed with
pistachio, and most excellent rice-milk and cinnamon. There used to
be a Spanish restaurant in Soho, where they gave you _Escudella_,
_Estofado_, and the world-renowned _Gaspacho_; but I rather think that
this place came to an untimely end, owing to lack of patronage. Many
Russian dishes, such as _Bortsch_, _Blinis_, _Koulbiac_, and _Shtshi_,
are to be met with on the ordinary menus of the best restaurants; and
the Swedish _Smorgasbord_, or exaggerated _Zakouska_ of the Russians,
is occasionally put before one as _hors d’œuvre à la Suédoise_, which
is, of course, quite wrong, because the real thing ought to be eaten
standing up at a side-table, and not sitting down at the dinner-table.
However, these are the necessary tributes to convention.
“_Œufs à la coque!_ Of course not! I want hens’ eggs, ordinary
barn-door fowls’. What silly people these foreigners are!”
The average Englishman travelling abroad has really not got much beyond
that stage of insular and ignorant prejudice. But why should he go
abroad at all, when here in his native London he can, if he so desires,
get a dinner cooked after (sometimes very much after) the fashion of
almost any country in the world?
A dining tour in London, covering the cuisines of a score of different
nationalities, is not difficult, and, moreover, it is vastly
instructing. Properly approached, the cooks will be found to be only
too glad to show what they can do in serving dishes of their own
homeland. They appreciate the compliment of being asked to illustrate
their national bill of fare, and, as practically everything can be
procured in London, it is an interesting experiment to spend ten days
in dining in foreign countries--and going home to one’s own bed every
night.
Do you wish to cross that ridiculously disappointing ocean called the
Atlantic and try an American dinner? Come with me to the Criterion and
instruct the American chef to prepare the dinner on the lines shown
below:--
Chicken Okra. Clam Broth.
Salt Cod and Hash. Oyster Fritters.
Mixed Turkey and Corn.
Stuffed Red Peppers.
Terrapin Maryland. Chipped Beef.
Scalloped Sweet Potatoes. Cold Slaw.
Graham Pudding.
New England Indian Pudding.
Temperance Punch.
This programme calls for little explanation. The okra cooked with the
chicken gives it a peculiar and quite delicious flavour. The clam is a
dulcet combination of the oyster, the mussel, and the scallop.
One of the most valuable products of the United States (gastronomically
speaking), the terrapin must be eaten to be believed. It must also be
specially imported. It is a species of turtle--but even more so--and
quite exquisite in its subtlety. New England Indian pudding, according
to the recipe of Mrs. Henry W. Blair, wife of the now or former Senator
for New Hampshire, is compounded as follows:--
Two quarts of milk, one cup of meal, one cup of molasses,
half a cup of sugar, one teaspoonful of salt, one teaspoon
of cinnamon or ginger, two eggs. Heat one quart of milk,
milk-warm, then slowly stir in the meal, and keep stirring
gently until it thickens, but does not quite boil. Remove
from the stove and add the molasses, sugar, salt, and
spice. Then beat the eggs well and stir them in. Pour
into the pudding-dish, remove the mixing-spoon, and turn
the second quart of milk in. Send immediately to the oven
without mixing, and cook steadily for five hours.
There are a dozen Chinese restaurants in London, but they are in the
East--the very far East--and you must make paradoxically for the West
India Dock Road and then inquire of a policeman--who probably will not
know. This Chinese menu given is a typical one.
MENU