Doubtless the attitude towards the pleasures of the table which
displeased Thackeray was largely a sham, a mere pretense, though to
some extent it was a Puritan reaction from the gross gluttony in which
Englishmen indulged in ye olden times, as did the Germans, the Romans,
the Russians, the Dutch, and many others.
Dr. Samuel Johnson was an amusing and amazing example of inconsistency
in his gastronomic preaching and practice. To Mrs. Piozzi he remarked
that "wherever the dinner is ill got up there is poverty or there is
avarice, or there is stupidity; in short, the family is somehow grossly
wrong." To Boswell he said: "Some people have a foolish way of not
minding, or pretending not to mind, what they eat. For my part, I mind
my belly very studiously, and very carefully; for I look upon it that
he that does not mind his belly will hardly mind anything else."
Yet on other occasions Boswell heard him talk with great contempt
of people who were anxious to gratify their palates. He sneered at
gluttons, yet he was one himself. "When at table he was totally
absorbed in the business of the moment: his looks seemed riveted to
his plate; nor would he, unless when in very high company, say one
word, or even pay the least attention to what was said by others, till
he had satisfied his appetite; which was so fierce, and indulged with
such intenseness, that, while in the act of eating, the veins of his
forehead swelled, and generally a strong perspiration was visible."
He told Boswell he had never been hungry but once; upon which that
biographer comments: "They who beheld with wonder how much he ate upon
all occasions, when his dinner was to his taste, could not easily
conceive what he must have meant by hunger." Yet he was a man of
discernment: he used to descant critically on the dishes which had been
at table where he had dined or supped, and to recollect very minutely
what he had liked. According to Mrs. Piozzi, his favorite dainties were
"a leg of pork boiled till it dropped from the bone, a veal pie with
plums and sugar, or the outside cut of a salt buttock of beef." He
surely needed a Parisian education!
The same witness throws a limelight on the doctor's peculiarities
by remarking with regard to drink that "his liking was for the
_strongest_, as it was _not the flavor but the effect_ he sought for
and professed to desire."
In other words, strength and quantity were of greater importance
to him than quality (Flavor); and in this he was a true descendant
of his predecessors, one of whom has left an amazing record of his
appetite. The home menus of Samuel Pepys included on one occasion
"a dish of marrow bones, a leg of mutton, a loin of veal, a dish of
fowl, three pullets, and a dozen larks all in a dish; a great tart, a
neat's-tongue, a dish of anchovies, a dish of prawns, and cheese." More
astonishing still is the following repast, prepared, as he boasts, by
his "own only mayde": "We had a fricassee of rabbits and chickens, a
leg of mutton boiled, three carps in a dish, a great dish of a side of
lamb, a dish of roasted pigeons, a dish of four lobsters, three tarts,
a lamprey-pie, a most rare pie, a dish of anchovies, good wine of
several sorts, and all things mighty noble." This dinner, he exclaims,
joyously, "was great." It certainly was.
If England is to the present day classed among the ungastronomic
nations, by her own epicures as well as by foreigners, it is due
largely to this indulgence in "great" dinners, this regard for
quantity--especially of meats--at the expense, usually, of quality and
artistic cooking. Generally speaking, the English have been slower
than the Italians, the French, and the Germans in discovering the
gastronomic importance of the more delicate Flavors developed by the
cooking, which is done _con amore_. _Koche mit Liebe_ is the title of a
German cook book, and there certainly are more housewives in the three
countries named who cook for their families "with loving devotion" to
their task than there are in England or America.