(_For the Mirror._)
To the artist, the amateur, the traveller, and man of taste in general,
the following gleanings respecting the diet of various nations, are, in
the spirit of English hospitality, cordially inscribed. The breakfast of
the _Icelanders_ consists of _skyr_, a kind of sour, coagulated milk,
sometimes mixed with fresh milk or cream, and flavoured with the juice
of certain berries; their usual dinner is dried fish, skyr, and rancid
butter; and skyr, cheese, or porridge, made of Iceland moss, forms their
supper; bread is rarely tasted by many of the Icelanders, but appears as
a dainty at their rural feasts with mutton, and milk-porridge. They
commonly drink a kind of whey mixed with water. As the cattle of this
people are frequently, during winter, reduced to the miserable necessity
of subsisting on dried fish, we can scarcely conceive their fresh meat
to be so great a luxury as it is there esteemed. The poor of _Sweden_
live on hard bread, salted or dried fish, water-gruel, and beer. The
_Norwegian_ nobility and merchants fare sumptuously, but the lower
classes chiefly subsist on the following articles:--oatmeal-bread, made
in thin cakes (strongly resembling the havver-bread of Scotland) and
baked only twice a-year. The oatmeal for this bread is, in times of
scarcity, which in Norway frequently occur, mixed with the bark of elm
or fir tree, ground, after boiling and drying, into a sort of flour;
sometimes in the vicinity of fisheries, the roes of cod kneaded with the
meal of oats or barley, are made into a kind of hasty-pudding, and soup,
which is enriched with a pickled herring or mackerel. The flesh of the
shark, and thin slices of meat salted and dried in the wind, are much
esteemed. Fresh fish are plentiful on the coasts, but for lack of
conveyances, unknown in the interior; the deficiency however, is there
amply supplied by an abundance of game. The flesh of cattle pickled,
smoked, or dry-salted, is laid by for winter store; and after making
cheese, the sour whey is converted into a liquor called _syre_, which,
mixed with water, constitutes the ordinary beverage of the Norwegians;
but for festive occasions they brew strong beer, and with it intoxicate
themselves, as also with brandy, when procurable. The maritime
_Laplanders_ feed on fish of every description, even to that of sea-dog,
fish-livers, and train-oil, and of these obtaining but a scanty
provision; they are even aspiring to the rank of the interior
inhabitants, whose nutriment is of a more delicate description, being
the flesh of all kinds of wild animals, herbaceous and carnivorous, and
birds of prey; but bear's flesh is their greatest dainty. Rein-deer
flesh is commonly boiled in a large iron kettle, and when done, torn to
pieces by the fingers of the _major domo_, and by him portioned out to
his family and friends; the broth remaining in the kettle is boiled into
soup with rye or oat-meal, and sometimes seasoned with salt. Rein-deer
blood is also a viand with these people, and being boiled, either by
itself or mixed with wild berries, in the stomach of the animal from
whence it was taken, forms a kind of black-pudding. The beverage of the
Laplanders is milk and water, broths, and fish-soups; brandy, of which
they are extremely fond, is a great rarity, and a glass of it will warm
their hearts towards the weary sojourner, who, but for the precious
gift, might ask hospitality at their huts in vain. The diet of the
_Samoides_, resembles that of the Laplanders, save that they devour raw
the flesh of fish and reindeer. For this people, all animals taken in
the chase, and even those found dead, afford food, with the exception of
dogs, cats, ermines, and squirrels. They have no regular time for meals,
but the members of a family help themselves when they please from the
boiler which always hangs over the fire. It is scarcely possible to name
the variety of diet to be found among the Russian tribes; but even in
cities, and at the tables of the opulent and civilized, late accounts
mention the appearance of several strange and disgusting dishes,
compounded of pastry, grain, pulse, vinegar, honey, fish, flesh, fruits,
&c., not at all creditable to Russian gastronomic science. The diet of
the _Polish_ peasantry is meagre in the extreme; they seldom taste
animal food, and both sexes swallow a prodigious quantity of _schnaps_,
an ardent spirit resembling whiskey. The _Dutch_ of all ranks are fond
of butter, and seldom is a journey taken without a butter-box in the
pocket. The boors feed on roots, pulse, herbs, sour milk, and
water-souchie, a kind of fish-broth. In _England_, the edible produce of
the world appears at the tables of the nobility, gentry, and opulent
commercial classes; and upon comparison with that of other nations, it
will be seen that the diet of English artisans, peasantry, and even
paupers, is far superior in variety and nourishment; bread, (white and
brown) vegetables, meat, broth, soup, fish, fruit, roots, herbs, cheese,
milk, butter, and, not rarely, sugar and tea, with fermented liquors and
ardent spirits, are all, or most of them, procured as articles of daily
subsistence by the English inferior classes. In Scotland, the higher
ranks live abstemiously, save on festive occasions; but animal food and
wheaten bread is seldom tasted by the lower orders, who chiefly subsist
on rye, barley, and oatmeal, prepared in bread, thin cakes, and
porridge; this last termed _stirabout_, is simply oatmeal mixed with
water and boiled (being stirred about with a wooden skether or spoon
when on the fire) to the consistency of flour-paste, not very stiff;
this, eaten with milk, forms the chief diet of the Scottish artisans and
peasantry, and, indeed, many of superior stations prefer it for
breakfast to bread of the finest flour which can be procured. Both high
and low are partial to the following national dishes. The _haggis_, a
kind of pudding, made of the offals or interior of a sheep, and boiled
in the integument of its stomach; this dish, both in odour and flavour,
is usually excessively offensive to the stranger; the singed sheep's
head, water-souchie, Scotch soup, (an _olla podrida_ of meats and
vegetables,) chicken-broth and sowens. _Laver_, a sauce made from a
peculiar kind of sea-weed, and _caviar_, introduced from Russia, appear
at the tables of the opulent, and by many are much esteemed. The diet of
the higher ranks of _Irish_ varies but little from that of the same
classes in England and Scotland. Amongst national dishes appear the
_staggering bob_, a calf only two days old, delicately dressed;
hodge-podge, a soup answering to that of Scotland; colcannon, a mixture
of potatoes and greens, seasoned with onions, salt, and pepper, finely
braided together after boiling; and a sea-weed sauce, either laver or
some other, the name of which we do not happen to remember. Potatoes,
fish, (fresh and salted) eggs, milk, and butter-milk, form the principal
support of the inferior class, of Irish; and whiskey the national ardent
spirit of Ireland and Scotland, is but too often, as is gin in England,
the sole support of a host of besotted beings, who drop into untimely
graves, from the _habit of intoxication_.
(_To be continued_.)
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