Suprême Truite Alexandra.
Médaillons de Homard Moscovite.
Côtelettes d’Agneau Princesse.
Chaudfroid de Mauviettes Carême.
Aspic de Foie Gras Lucullus.
Cailles à la Jeannette.
Galantine Volaille Périgourdine.
Bœuf Braisé à la Moderne.
Poularde du Mans à l’Andalouse.
Jambon d’York.
Langue à l’Ecarlate.
Salade Impériale.
Gelée Orientale. Charlotte Souveraine.
Crême Victoria.
Macédoine de Fruits aux Liqueurs.
Gâteau Fédora. Pâtisserie Parisienne.
Glaces Bouquetières. Friandises.
Dessert.
We all know, in a vague sort of way, that the best, in fact the only
real _pâté de foie gras_ comes from Strasburg. This succulent if
somewhat dyspeptic dish claimed as inventor for a long time a certain
Mathieu, chef in the Prince Bishop of Strasburg’s household (Cardinal
Rohan). But this is an error. The real originator was one Close, chef
to the Maréchal Saxe, who came to Strasburg in the train of his famous
master and took up his permanent abode there, marrying Mathieu’s widow.
It was he and none other who started the goose-liver tureen business
in a small shop in the Meisengasse, where, according to comparatively
recent reports, it is still carried on. His imitators, of course, are
numberless, and some of them very good.
This menu from the Carlton Hotel practically explains itself. If it
err at all, which is doubtful, it is on the right side, namely, that of
lightness and digestibility:--
Royal Natives, Caviar, Blinis.
Stchi Germiny.
Mousseline de Merlans aux Ecrevisses.
Cailles au Nid.
Selle de Chevreuil à l’Allemande.
Haricots Verts.
Volaille Truffée.
Salade.
Asperges Vertes Sauce Hollandaise.
Biscuit Glaçé aux Perles des Alpes.
Dessert.
The _Blinis_ served with the Caviar is annexed from the Russian
cuisine, and is a kind of light sponge or yeast mixture, technically
known as a “savarin” without sugar, baked in small pans, and sent to
table hot with a sauce of sour cream. _Stchi_, or _Tschi_, is also
Russian. It is primarily an army soup, or broth, made of beef, slightly
thickened with a brown _roux_ and flavoured with sour cream. It is
usually served with small, fried _choux_ paste-balls.
It is not usual to write the menu of a banquet in the language of
ancient Rome, but it appears the practice survives in Bavaria. Witness
the following in “Latin de Cuisine”:--
Epulum
paratum die Consecrationis
A.R.D. Baronis de Ow
Episcopi auxil. Ratisbonnensis in aula
Episcopali.
Sorbitio cum globulis jecoralibus et lucanicis,
Jes ex linguis bovinis factum cum panificio.
Caro bovina cum brassica capitata.
Assum vitulinum cum lactuca.
Coffea.
Potabimus cerevisiam ex hordeo bavarico coctam
in officina cerevisiae Episcopali.
Sit saluti!
This formidable-looking legend, on being translated, reads:--
Banquet prepared on the day of the consecration of the
Right Reverend Baron von Ow, Suffragan Bishop of
Regensburg in the episcopal palace.
Soup with liver and sausage.
Ox-tongue broth with bread.
Beef and cabbage.
Roast veal and lettuce.
Coffee.
We shall drink Bavarian barley beer
brewed in the episcopal brewery.
May it do us good!
It is not on record, I think, who the original inventor of picnics was;
nor does it much matter. There may be mention of them in Shakespeare,
and certainly Nebuchadnezzar would seem to be one of the earliest
picnickers in history; but whosoever may first have suggested the
unpacking of a heterogeneous collection of cold cates on a greensward,
under a summer sun, must have had a good digestion, a pair of knees
that bent both ways, and (it is to be hoped) a positive passion for
washing up.
Anyhow, it behoves me to make one or two diffident suggestions as to
how the usual monotony of the convivial basket may be varied. Take the
conventional pigeon pie, for instance--a truly good thing in its way,
but capable of improvement. Angel Pie, according to Mr. Gubbins, is an
agreeable change, and his recipe in “Cakes and Ale” may very well be
followed. Eliza Acton’s pigeon pie is very good too; and it is quite
worth the trouble to note the directions carefully.
But picnics need not be all pigeon pie. Let me recommend a
toothsome _Chaudfroid de Foie-gras en caisses_, which is just round
or oval-shaped slices of _foie gras_ masked with white or fawn
_chaudfroid_ sauce, set in _soufflé_ cases, and decorated with slices
of truffle. After the First, a _Ballotine de Perdreau Souvaroff_ is a
pleasant change. The dainty bird is stuffed with goose-liver farce and
truffles, done up like galantine, and braised, pressed, and glazed.
Although personally I am of those who prefer the unadulterated
partridge, there are many quite worthy folk who do not, and for such I
quote the above. Other suitable picnic dishes, rather out of the usual
run, are _Cuisses de Volaille Belle Alliance_ (or Waterloo, if you will
have it so); _Filets de Bœuf en Chaudfroid_; _Pain de Volaille aux
Truffes_; and _Ris d’Agneau à l’Amiral_, which is lamb’s sweetbread
in oval slices, masked with white sauce, decorated with slices of
truffles, and dressed on a vegetable aspic border, with salad in the
centre.
A new salad always adds lustre to the dullest picnic. Try this:
Potatoes, cold, in slices, plentifully besprinkled with peas and a few
broad beans. Or, again, red cabbage with cucumber. In either case the
mixture must be carried separately in a bottle, and only poured out
at the last moment; then “fatigue” the salad thoroughly, and see that
all the liquid is absorbed from the bottom of the bowl. The following
picnic menu is put up by Fortnum and Mason in convenient baskets,
and when unpacked may be guaranteed to assuage the cravings of the
hungriest.
MENU
Saumon, Salade de Concombres.
Homard à la Parisienne.
Chaudfroid de Mauviettes à la Chasseur.
Poularde à l’Ivoire.
Pigeon Pie.
Jambon d’York.
Pressed Beef. Tongues.
Salade Panachée de Haricots Verts et Tomates.
Gâteaux Parisiennes.
Dessert.
Café.
Glaces Variées.
In addition to all these nice things, the baskets contain the necessary
materials for tea, such as bread, butter, _petits fours_, cakes, and
such-like.
The following menu is one of a dinner at Prince’s Restaurant, and calls
for no special remark, save perhaps to emphasize the deft juxtaposition
of the entrée, roast, and bird, which lead up to one another, so to
say, in a subtle succession of delicately contrasted flavours.
MENU
Hors d’œuvre à la Parisienne.
Potage Bortsch à la Czarine.
Suprême de Saumon Crême d’anchois.
Aiguillette de Volaille des Bacchantes.
Noisette d’Agneau Edouard VII.
Pommes Nouvelles à la Menthe.
Bécasse rôtie à la Broche.
Salad Mimosa.
Salsifis à la Poulette.
Bombe glacée. Diable Rose.
Corbeille de Friandises.
Canapé Princesse.
Dessert.
Café.
One of our French friends who came over here to enjoy _l’entente
cordiale_--and British hospitality--was returning to France with
an English acquaintance. On landing at Dieppe, after rather a rough
crossing, John Bull asked Jacques Bonhomme, “Well, did you lunch on
board?” “_Non, mon ami_,” was the reply, “_tout au contraire!_”
One may always trust the cuisine at the Savoy. There is a thoroughness
of conception about every specially ordered dinner which bespeaks the
eye, the hand, the brain of the master. Take the following menu, for
example, which, charmingly printed on a graceful little silk Japanese
fan, formed an exquisite meal of some originality.
MENU
Melon Cantaloup. Petite Marmite.
Crême Portugaise. Truite à la Saatz.
Whitebait Diablé.
Caille Bridget. Medaillon de Béhague à l’Estragon.
Petits Pois à la Française. Pommes Savoyarde.
Soufflé de Jambon à la Hongroise. Neige au Kirsch.
Caneton au Sang.
Haricots verts et tomates en salade.
Fonds d’artichauts à l’Italienne.
Framboises glacées à la Vanille. Friandises.
Pailles de Parmesan. Corbeille de Fruits.
Note the graceful juxtaposition of the Hungarian ham and the Kirsch,
followed by duck and French beans. It is touches such as these which in
their poetic elegance and subtlety force one to recognize what the high
art of cookery really means.
To whom hath it not fallen to take the female faddist in to dinner?--I
speak, of course, from the masculine point of view. The plethoric dame,
for instance, who says, “Thank you, I only eat toast, and I prefer
it _very_ crisp”; or the earnest spinster who talks for miles about
proteids and other abominable scientific non-gastronomics; or the
materfamilias who laments the absence of Benger from the dinner-party
menu? Like the poor, such as these are always with us.
There are fashions in these things, as in everything else. Now and
again one comes across a real Fletcherite, who chews his or her food
eighty-seven times and allows it to disappear by a slow process of
gradual deglutition. Mr. Horace Fletcher himself is, I am given to
understand, a man of irreproachable morality, and the possessor,
moreover, of a beautiful _Palazzo_ on the Grand Canal at Venice; but,
whether for good or ill, he has introduced a deal of dullness into the
modern dinner party. It is obviously impossible to keep up a ready flow
of brilliant conversation when every mouthful has to be masticated unto
seventy times seven times. Such a salutary procedure puts a damper on
prandial discourse, and makes a dinner only one degree less lively than
a funeral. It would seem preferable to suffer tortures of indigestion
rather than act as a dinner-party wet-blanket.
A former generation suffered from the Andrew Clark regime, and I can
even remember a dinner menu divided into halves, one of which was
headed “Clarkists,” and was confined to the dishes prescribed by that
eminent medico, and the other half labelled “Just ordinary folk”--and
it was much the better programme of the two. A little later one met the
weird folk who produced from hidden recesses mysterious little silver
boxes, from which they extracted little white pilules “to be taken
between each course”--but I have noticed that these people usually ate
a remarkably hearty dinner, despite, or perhaps because, of these same
pilules.
One comes across, too, the Stokerites, with their peculiar antipathies,
the “Natural Feeders,” the “Little Grangers,” and the _maigre tous
les jours_ sort of folk. As for the vegetarians, there is little to
be said for or against them. They are, of course, fully justified
in their opinions, but they do give a lot of bother at an ordinary
dinner party. I may be unfortunate in my vegetarian friends, but it
always appears to me that after a time they seem to assimilate certain
characteristics of the food they eat, and eventually become very like
their favourite vegetables; so much so that they might almost be
accused of cannibalism. Certain it is that I can spot a carrot-eating
man by his hair, an onion-lover by his breath, and a Brussels-sprout
devotee by his whiskers.
Take it, however, by and large, the food faddist, be it a he or a she,
is rarely a pleasant table-companion, and in these times of strenuous
dining he, she, or it, is usually a poor conversationalist and a poorer
critic; which is a pity.
It is quite a mistake to imagine that a good dinner can afford to
despise the adjuncts of a well-decorated table. Nothing could be more
fallacious. One’s sense of taste should not alone be titillated. One’s
palate-gusto is distinctly enhanced by something pleasant to look upon,
by something artistic to accompany the mere mechanism of mastication,
by a general sense of beauty and non-flamboyant restfulness.
We have gone far in this direction during the past two or three
decades. There are many happily still surviving among us who remember
vividly, and not without a certain amount of awe, the vast erections
which appeared on the dinner-tables of our forbears. The silver branch
candelabra, the epergnes, the great piles of fruit, the towering
“set-pieces,” the bushy and umbrageous plants and flowers, the plates
of mixed biscuits, and the various impossible dishes of confectionery
which nobody was expected to eat.
But all this has disappeared, and one is no longer obliged to talk to
one’s opposite neighbour through a jungle of horticulture. Flowers
are best shown in low bowls, either china or silver, there are no
useless impedimenta, the tiresome trails of smilax have long since been
relegated to Peckham dinner-tables, and we have at last arrived at an
era of plenty of elbow-room, discreet floral decoration, and a clean
sweep of ridiculous encumbrances.
Some hostesses, indeed, cultivate the Japanese grammar of the
arrangement of flowers, which gives a particular and especial value
to each leaf, branch, and stalk. Others again will have merely half a
dozen blooms, all told, on the table, but each bloom perfect of its
kind, and displayed to the best advantage. High vases are as obsolete
as the dodo, and people are gradually becoming alive to the fact that
four or five exquisite roses in a big flat Hawthorn dish are more
decorative than all the miserable little white china cupids in Regent
Street.
The choice of odours, too, is an important consideration. No hostess
with any consideration for the olfactory nerves of her guests would put
strongly perfumed flowers on the dinner-table. They would only destroy
the flavour of the cates, and cause annoyance rather than pleasure.
Even the lovely syringa, which a good lady once described as “a
respectable gardenia,” is too strong, and at the most a purely neutral
scent is permissible.
In the height of summer I have met a single water-lily floating in a
copper dish in the middle of the table; the lily was so perfect in
itself that any other decoration would have seemed superfluous and
impertinent. The stalks of flowers seen through clear glass are as
beautiful as the blooms, and an arrangement of green leaves only,
with no flower at all, is, if rightly understood and designed, very
difficult to beat.
Only recently, dining in an artist’s studio, I was delighted with a
few sprays of medlar blossom on the table, and a mass of hydrangea on
the sideboard, immediately below a shelf of old pewter. The harmony
was wonderfully beautiful. Such touches of taste entirely alter the
character of a dinner, and from a mere feeding party it becomes an
artistic pleasure. For, after all, the mere act of eating is not in
itself beautiful.
Reverting to the food-faddist, there are some who, quite apart from
doctors’ reasons, have the most peculiar likes and dislikes. Some never
touch soup; others positively like boiled veal; and it is on record
that Dr. Johnson poured lobster sauce over his plum-pudding. It is
not easy to understand this extraordinary combination of the great
lexicographer, but the story has good authority.
Some folk, quite worthy folk too, like cold meat and pickles, even
when abroad; others make a point of drinking the wine of the country.
It is told of the great Duke of Wellington that when journeying
through France with Alava, in 1814, on being asked at what time they
should start next day, he invariably replied “At daybreak.” And to the
question what they should have for dinner, he always answered, “Cold
meat.” “_Je les ai eu en horreur, à la fin_,” Alava declared, “_ces
deux mots-là_--‘daybreak’ _et_ ‘cold meat.’”
The menu of a good summer dinner is always interesting. Here is one
which should amply satisfy the most fastidious. It was cooked by
one of the best chefs in London, and seems to me to contain some
particularly interesting features.
MENU DU DINER
Zakuska.
Potage à la Dauphine.
Purée d’asperges à la St. Georges.
Filets de Sole Bagration.
Saumon froid à la Doria.
Ris de Veau en Caisses à la Périgueux.
Petites Croustades Glacés à la Montglas.
Selle de Mouton froid.
Courges farcies.
Cannetons Sautés. Sauce Bigarade.
Salade de Choux Rouges.
Maïs à l’Américaine.
Macédoine de Fruits.
Bombe de Juillet.
Glace de Crème aux Truffes.
Another hot-weather menu is a comparatively simple luncheon, and is
principally remarkable for the fact that it is entirely cold, from
the prawns to the coffee. We have all of us, of course, had many cold
lunches, racing, motoring, at Henley, or elsewhere, but as a rule
these casual meals lack character and homogeneity; they are of a
“chucked-together” sort of nature, and whilst serving a useful purpose
of their own, can hardly be called perfect pictures of their kind. No
such objection can, I think, be made to the subjoined.
MENU DU DÉJEUNER
Crevettes Roses.
Consommé en Gelée.
Salade de Poisson.
Truite froide. Sauce Rémoulade.
Filet de Bœuf aux Légumes Glacés.
Poulet Provençale.
Salade Miladi.
Pêches Daisy Miller.
Coupe Jacques.
Café Glacé.
The following little story from Mr. G. W. E. Russell’s “Londoner’s
Logbook” has a delightful gastronomical moral, which might be
adopted, with advantage, by many hosts of to-day: “‘Come and dine
at eight--pot-luck, you know. Don’t dress.’ That hospitable formula
recalls a genial knight who dwelt in Berkeley Square, and, applying
his whole mind to the subject of dinners, attained to high perfection
in the art of giving them. Two benevolent practices of his invention
linger pleasantly in the memory. He caused each course to begin at
a different point at the table, so that every guest in turn got the
first chance at a dish. He dealt out the asparagus like cards, an equal
number of pieces to each guest; and if on completion of the deal he saw
that any one had got smaller pieces than his neighbours, he used the
residue to redress the inequality. Surely such are those actions of the
just which smell sweet and blossom in the dust.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration: CHAPTER VII
OYSTERS]
“Tom, whom to-day no noise stirs,
Lies buried in these cloisters;
If at the last trump
He does not quickly jump;
Only cry ‘Oysters!’”
_Epitaph on a Colchester Man’s Grave_
If you have eaten an oyster at Colchester or Faversham, in August,
fresh from the sea; or a melting native at Milton, the best oyster
in the world, in October; a Helford native in Cornwall; Whispered
Pandores and Aberdours at Edinburgh, on the “Feast of Shells,” one
hundred for a shilling, dripping in Prestonpans sea-water; Carlingfords
and Powldoodies, of Burran, at Dublin; or even a Jersey oyster at St.
Heliers, you know what an oyster should be.
These are the words of wisdom, written some thirty years ago by
Herbert Byng Hall, a gastronomic writer of some eminence, who had made
a special study of the Oyster, and wrote thereon learnedly and _con
amore_.
Somehow or other there is something persuasively and personally
intimate in one’s relations with an oyster, or with a couple of dozen
oysters, for that matter. One does not feel the same sentimental regard
for the pig that provides one with one’s morning rasher of bacon
that one does for the merest preprandial oyster. And this feeling of
friendship, almost intimacy, is always to be found in the writings of
those who dilate upon “the breedy creatures,” as Christopher North
called our illustrious bivalves in the “Noctes Ambrosianæ.”
Dr. Kitchiner, for instance, says: “Those who wish to enjoy this
delicious restorative in its utmost perfection must eat it at the
moment it is opened, with its own gravy in the undershell; if not eaten
absolutely alive, its flavour and spirit are lost. The true lover of an
oyster will have some regard for the feelings of his little favourite,
and contrive to detach the fish from the shell so dexterously that the
oyster is hardly conscious he has been ejected from his lodging till he
feels the teeth of the piscivorous gourmet tickling him to death.”
There are other instances innumerable of a certain dainty touch in
dealing with oysters. Contact with them seems to engender humour, good
nature, and a tricksey spirit. Huxley called oysters “a delicious flash
of gustatory lightning”; and there is a story told of the great master,
G. F. Watts, who was challenged by Millais and Leighton to produce a
humorous picture, whereupon he painted a primitive man and woman on the
seashore. The woman is looking with awestruck admiration at the man who
has just swallowed an oyster. The man himself appears very doubtful as
to the result. The picture was called “B.C. The First Oyster.”
It was originally said in a very old number of the “North British
Review,” that “he must have been a very bold man who first swallowed
an oyster.” An old legend assigns the first act of oyster-eating to a
very natural cause. It is related that a man walking by the sea one day
picked up an oyster, just as it was in the act of gaping. Observing
the extreme smoothness of the interior of the shell, he insinuated his
finger between them that he might feel their shining surface, when
suddenly they closed upon the exploring digit, with a sensation less
pleasurable than he anticipated. The prompt withdrawal of his finger
was scarcely a more natural movement than its transfer to his mouth. It
is not very clear why people (including babies) when they hurt their
fingers put them into their mouths; but it is very certain that they
do, and in this case the result was most fortunate. The owner of the
finger tasted oyster juice for the first time, as Elia’s Chinaman,
having burned his finger, first tasted crackling. The savour was
delicious; he had made a great discovery; so he picked up the oysters,
forced open the shells, banqueted upon the contents, and soon brought
oyster-eating into fashion.
That tender personal regard for the innocent oyster, which I have
just referred to, is very manifest in one of the most widely known
poems in the English language. I mean Lewis Carroll’s “Walrus and the
Carpenter.”
“O Oysters, come and walk with us!”
The Walrus did beseech.
“A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
Along the briny beach;
We cannot do with more than four,
To give a hand to each.”
* * * * *
“O Oysters,” said the Carpenter,
“You’ve had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?”
But answer came there none.
And this was scarcely odd, because
They’d eaten every one.
The kindly regard for the susceptibilities of the oysters is kept up
even until the dire _dénoûment_ of the drama. Again we are touched by
a fragment by the same author, of which, alas, we shall never know the
full purport. It runs thus:--
I passed by his garden and marked, with one eye,
How the owl and the oyster were sharing a pie.
(_Cætera desunt._)
Mr. Thomas Hardy did not, I am sure, in the title of his novel, “The
Return of the Native,” intend to celebrate the coming of oysters into
the dinner menu, but it seems to sum up in a brief and pithy phrase
one of the great events of the autumn. The old convention that oysters
are only eatable in those months which are spelled with an “r” has, of
course, much to be said for it; at any rate, so far as British oysters
are concerned.
Abroad it is different, and the _parcs aux huîtres_ at French
watering-places give quite excellent oysters in August, and even in
July. The _huîtres de Marennes_, _huîtres d’Ostende_, and the tiny
little green ones are by no means to be despised, although they do
not, perhaps, quite come up in lusciousness of flavour to the real
Whitstable native.
We are somewhat oyster-spoiled in this country, and particularly in
London. We go to Scott’s, Sweeting’s, Driver’s, Hampton’s, Rule’s, or
any first-class oyster shops, and we get, as we know we shall get, the
very best brand of the very best oyster in the world; fresh, clean,
untainted, and uncontaminated, which, after all is said and done,
cannot be vouched for in the case of second-rate hotels and caterers.
Whether to drink champagne, Chablis, stout, or nothing with oysters
is a nice point which has not as yet been authoritatively decided. Of
course, champagne and Chablis go far to assimilate the oyster, but at
the same time there are those (and--dare I confess it?--I am amongst
the number) who are venturesome enough to assert that the oyster, pure
and simple, requires no alcoholic addition. Drink Chablis, or a light
hock, _after_ the oyster feast, by all means; but when eating your two
or three dozen on the deep shell (always order them on the deep shell)
imbibe their own liquor only, and be thankful.