Wild boars no longer roam the forests of England. Sportsmen do their
pig-sticking in the jungles of India. But venison in season is still
in evidence, and the hare will never be extinct, though he now comes to
London chiefly in shiploads from Australia.
The well-informed editor of the "Hors d'Œuvre" department of the
"Pall Mall Gazette" gives an amusing glimpse of the situation as
regards English and Scotch venison, which he considers a veritable
delicacy, preferable to the highly-sauced venison of France and Germany:
"We ought really to eat more venison when in season, but if the
ordinary housewife were asked to provide it quite in the ordinary way
for an ordinary dinner at home, she would be entirely nonplussed. 'But
the butcher does not keep it.' 'Try the poulterer.' 'The poulterer
says he can get it at a day's notice.' Why all this fuss? Venison
is a national dish; it is not expensive; it is most nutritious and
wholesome. Some one ought to 'buck up' the venison market."
Among British feathered animals the best is the grouse, "the only
really native game bird of these islands." It comes to London by fast
expresses from the North--recently also from Ireland, which would be
a finer grouse country, were it not for poachers. For the first days
of the season grouse bring easily a guinea a brace in London market,
cheaper ones being cold-storage suspects. Later on--thanks to rational
methods of game preservation--they pour in daily by the tens of
thousands and come down to 8s. or less a brace. Though never as cheap
in the restaurants as partridge is in Germany, grouse is worth its
price when cooked in the English way, which preserves all the woodland
flavor of the bird.
English farmers have not waked up to the opportunities that lie in
catering to the demand for fresh-killed poultry of all kinds. The best
restaurants get their supplies usually from France. There is in the
Kingdom not even one adult fowl per acre of cultivated land. Here are
possibilities of tremendous improvements, for, as Professor Edward
Brown of the Ontario Agricultural College has truly said: "Masses of
people living under highly artificial conditions must have food high
in nutritive elements, easily digested and palatable, in which respect
eggs stand first among all natural products and poultry not far behind."
A well-known poulterer is cited as saying in regard to the London
markets: "Fat goslings and ducks are in good demand, and the best
prices are being given for them. One hundred and fifty years ago tens
of thousands of geese and turkeys were reared in Suffolk, Norfolk,
Cambridgeshire, and adjacent counties. The numbers now are, in
comparison, insignificant. Nevertheless, the industry is one which
might be made one of great importance and quite comfortable profits."
A very different situation confronts us when we look at the supply of
seafood. Here the British Isles hold their own in competition with any
country, and the methods adopted to ensure a daily supply of fresh
fish cannot be too urgently commended to American fish dealers.
One of the most interesting sights in London is Billingsgate market.
Fish have been sold here for several centuries, but under changing
conditions. No longer will you find here the "fat, motherly flatcaps,
with fish-baskets hanging over their heads instead of riding-hoods,
with silver rings on their thumbs, and pipes charged with 'mundungus'
in their mouths, sitting on inverted eel-baskets and strewing the
flowers of their exuberant eloquence over dashing young town-rakes
who had stumbled into Billingsgate to finish the night.... But the
town-rakes kept comparatively civil tongues in their heads when they
entered the precincts of the Darkhouse. An amazon of the market,
otherwise known as a Billingsgate fish-fag, was more than a match for
a Mohock," as George Augustus Sala remarked in his "Twice Round the
Clock, or the Hours of the Day and Night in London."
Gone are these amazons who by their abusive speech gave a new word to
the English language. Men now monopolize Billingsgate Market, and the
joke of it is that these men, as we found them at six o'clock on a
September morning, are the very pink of politeness, most courteously
ready to answer your questions regarding different fishes, and cockles,
and periwinkles, though they know you are not there to buy. Even
the rough, hurrying fish-porters make way for you to pass, and the
auctioneers stop to warn you against places where your clothes might
get soiled by drippings.
Billingsgate is now entirely given over to the wholesale fish-trade.
The smell of it, fish-like but not ancient--for it is a clean
place--easily guides you to the spot from the nearest station of the
subway's inner circle. The streets near it are wet with the drip of
fish-filled boxes, and crowded with wagons that are being loaded with
the town's provisions of sea food--strictly fresh every day.
Billingsgate Market being on the water's edge all the fish is unloaded
direct from the fishing boats. Processions of porters come from the
boats, each with a great box full of fish balanced on the top of his
head, on a queerly-shaped, padded, waterproof hat made expressly for
this work. The fish are kept cool with loose ice, but are not frozen.
The Spanish mackerel with their dark markings and opaline sides offer
the most beautiful sight of all, so freshly caught that their colors
are as vivid as when they left the water.
Besides these are whitings, flounders, pale-brown sole, halibut,
turbot, all shining from the sea, and among the shellfish may
be seen oysters, huge crabs, lobsters,--white flecked dark green
ones--periwinkles, and cockles. The latter look somewhat like very
small clams, and they are sold cooked, having been separated from their
shells by large sieves.
In the best New York restaurants you are not sure of getting fresh fish
when you order it. In the best London restaurants you are. Probably
some of the fish we saw that morning at Billingsgate was served to
us that evening for dinner. I mean sole, of course. We were to be in
London only a week on this occasion, and when you are in London a week
only it would be unutterably absurd not to eat grilled sole at least
once a day, for you cannot get anything equal to it anywhere else in
the wide, wide world.
There are some, I know, who place turbot above sole, and others even
prefer plaice. Put no faith in such people; they could never be
honestly elected to a place on the bench of the Gastronomic Supreme
Court. Turbot is delicious, and so is plaice, and so are chinook salmon
and our shad and whitefish. Each of these _seems_ the best of all
fishes while you are eating it; but sole actually _is_ the best. How do
I prove this? Like the musician who boasted he was the best horn player
in the world, I do not prove it; I admit it.
Seriously speaking, there can be no doubt that if a vote were taken on
this question among the epicures of Europe, sole would win by a large
majority. In Germany the _Seezunge_, or "sea-tongue," is the choicest
of marine delicacies, and in France the chef's chief glory is his sole
and the special sauce he serves with it. But nowhere is the sole so
juicy and flavorful as in England; nor is it disguised there with any
sauce, being served usually right off the grill. Grilled Sole is one
of England's great specialties.
Whitebait is another. It is not a distinct species but consists of
the fry of herrings, smelts, sprats, sand-eels, weevers, etc. It is
supposed to have been first served in 1780. To this day no tourist
who likes good things to eat omits a trip to Greenwich to enjoy a
dish of whitebait at headquarters in the ship tavern. When Thackeray
was there he indulged in these reflections: "Ah, he must have had a
fine mind who first invented brown bread and butter with whitebait!
That man was a kind, modest, gentle benefactor to his kind. We don't
recognize sufficiently the merits of those men who leave us such quiet
benefactions. A statue ought to be put up to the philosopher who joined
together this charming couple."
Yarmouth bloaters and other cured fish are British specialties relished
the world over. But the best of them is Finnan haddock, so named
after Findon, a fishing village near Aberdeen where haddock smoking
with peat or oak dust has attained perfection. There are flavorless
imitations, preserved with pyroligneous acid. The genuine are cured in
smoke houses. The condimental value of smoke is illustrated by the fact
that while fresh haddock is by no means rated among the finest fishes,
finnan haddie is one of the very best of cured fishes.
The Whitstable oyster is still another marine specialty enjoyed,
not only throughout the British Isles as one of the most precious
"natives," but also on the Continent. Far away Austria imports only
$10,000 worth of oysters a year from all sources, but from Berlin and
other German cities come large orders for the best English bivalves.
France also takes them, but not on a large scale, as her own oyster
production is large.
The best Whitstable oysters--from the coasts of Kent and Essex--are
known as royals and cost in restaurants three or four shillings a
dozen, which is considerably more than the price charged in our own
restaurants. Whether they are worth more is a much disputed point. Most
Americans object to what they call the coppery taste in English and
Northern European oysters. Paderewski agreed with those who pronounce
the English oyster superior to the American. I suggested that he
probably had had the "floated" American oysters only. Certainly I have
never tasted oysters with a more delicious Flavor than genuine Blue
Points, Cotuits and Lynnhavens. The English natives are small, juicy,
and fragrant of the sea--great appetizers indeed.
Alas, in England also the sewage plague has cast its blight on the
shellfish business. Two decades ago 160,000,000 oysters are said to
have been landed annually. In 1911 the number fell forty or fifty
millions short of that figure because of typhoid fever and other
diseases traced to the eating of oysters from polluted beds. The
importation of American oysters was only at the rate of 100 barrels a
week in 1911, as against 2,000 barrels fifteen years earlier.
Of the other British shellfish the periwinkle is much appreciated
by the epicurean French who, not satisfied with importing them from
England in bulk have also brought them over to plant in their own beds.
They are boiled a few minutes in salted water and served with butter as
an entrée, usually at the second morning meal.