That the English do not live on butcher's meats and marine food alone,
is made manifest by a matutinal visit to Covent Garden.
"In Covent Garden a filthy noisy market was held close to the dwellings
of the great. Fruit women screamed, carters fought, cabbage stalks and
rotten apples accumulated in heaps at the thresholds of the Countess
of Berkshire and of the Bishop of Dunham"--such is Macaulay's picture
of this market at the close of the seventeenth century. It is still
given up entirely to vegetables, fruits, and flowers, but is now
clean, orderly, and not especially noisy, as markets go--not so noisy,
perhaps, as some of the operas performed in the neighboring Covent
Garden Theater, the resort of fashionable society.
In September we found the flower pavilions the most interesting part
of the market. Chrysanthemums with rich, deep-colored blossoms were
the reigning favorites. Conspicuous among their rivals were the
dahlias, gaudy and varicolored, some of them solid as cabbage heads,
others strangely-quilled. Bright autumn leaves, recalling New England,
attracted our attention. In one spot golden chrysanthemums and melons
of exactly the same shade made a beautiful picture.
On the whole the vegetable quarters are not specially interesting,
particularly when one has seen the Halles Centrales of Paris. Flowers
do not, as in Paris, crowd in among them, nor are the streets
picturesque and slippery with many shades of green refuse. The carts
are not emptied as they are in Paris, but form each its own stall.
All the vegetable pictures are "skied," and are far less attractive
than when they lie, in orderly confusion, all over the market streets.
Celery, the first we had seen, was enormous, but deep green, instead of
white, like ours. Many of the provisions are packed and sold hidden in
large round baskets. A perfect tower of Babel, ten baskets in all, is
one man's load, carried on his head, but they are evidently empty, as
two seem to be as heavy a weight as a man cares to balance when they
are full.
George Meredith is quoted as having said to a friend that he would be a
vegetarian if he could get his vegetables decently cooked.
There are a few vegetarian restaurants in London, and probably there
would be many more if the English knew, as several Continental nations
know, the art of cooking greens and roots in a savory manner. Sir Henry
Thompson grew enthusiastic over the "delicious characteristic flavor"
of English garden peas, picked young and cooked _à l'Anglaise_, which
is a better way than any French fashion of cooking them. Vegetable
marrow tastes better in England than anywhere else, and the mushrooms
are good. But on the whole England has a great deal to learn from
France regarding variety and the best ways of growing and cooking
vegetables.
Salad plants, in particular, are not appreciated as they should be.
Read this wail, for an illustration, from a Covent Garden market report
in the London "Telegraph": "Nothing short of a prolonged heat wave
induces people to eat liberally of this health-giving vegetable. It
was pitiful, yesterday, to see stacks of first-rate lettuce utterly
neglected. The very best samples, carefully selected and packed in
boxes, realized no more than 6d. per score--a score, by the way, being
twenty-two heads. Any amount remained unsold."
Tomatoes are getting to be almost as popular as in America. In England,
as elsewhere, there are those who maintain that "no salad is perfect
without the inclusion of a little tomato"; and of course the delicious
"love-apples," as they used to be called, are eaten in many other ways,
raw or cooked, grilled tomatoes being an English specialty.
That England is a great fruit country no American can admit, however
much he may enjoy the luscious hot-house and wall-grown peaches,
nectarines, melons, pears, and grapes. Fruit needs, above all
things, sunshine, and of sunshine we have a great deal more at home,
especially in California. At Covent Garden and in the fruit shops of
the metropolis there are indeed some tempting displays, but the prices
are apt to stagger the visitor from across the Atlantic, who seldom
pays more than a nickel for a peach or two--say two shillings a dozen
at most--whereas in England peaches grown in orchards sell at retail
for six to ten shillings a dozen, while those grown in hot-houses bring
from fifteen shillings ($3.65) to a guinea ($5.11) per dozen. If you
told the average Londoner that in New York one can often buy five or
six good cantaloupes for a shilling, he would not believe you without
an affidavit signed by the Consul General.
It may be said that owing to their cooler climate the inhabitants of
the British Isles do not need fruit as much as we do, and that is true.
Yet in all climates, seasons, and conditions of the weather fruit is
healthful, and its Flavor is a great appetizer and aid to digestion.
It is therefore encouraging to notice that strenuous efforts are being
made not only to remove the old reproach that English grapes and other
hot-house products have more beauty than Flavor, but also to raise and
import orchard fruits in such abundance as to bring them within the
reach of the purchaser of moderate means.
The growth of the banana trade strikingly illustrates this point.
In the first years of this century this sweet and nutritious fruit
was seldom seen in English markets. To-day there is a whole fleet of
steamers occupied exclusively in bringing bananas from the West Indies
and elsewhere to British ports. The change was greatly accelerated by
the shrewdness of the importers, who freely advertised the merits of
their goods in the newspapers, citing sample recipes for cooking them
from a little book which is offered free.
This method of educating the public to try new foods and dainties
doubtless has a great future. The Germans have a saying: _Was der Esel
nicht kennt das frisst er nicht_, which politely translated means "the
public must be taught to eat things it does not know."
A decade ago one seldom saw any grapefruit in England. It was Mrs. John
Lane who taught Londoners the art of enjoying this most wholesome and
palatable fruit--the queen of the citrus tribe. Its juice is the most
marvelous combination of sour, bitter, and sweet in existence, and its
charm grows on you from day to day. Mrs. Lane induced her greengrocer
to keep some in stock, but ere long he confided to her that they were
"bloomin' sour" and mostly a dead loss, for customers never bought them
more than once. "They're forever asking me how to eat 'em," he said,
"and how should I know!"--here he wiped his hands hesitatingly on his
apron--"but if I could tell 'em how, why the trade would be grateful;
anyhow, I'd be."
So Mrs. Lane wrote a little pamphlet in which she explained the secret
of serving grapefruit sweetened in such ways that all may enjoy it. It
is entitled "The Forbidden-Fruit or Shaddock; or Grapefruit, How to
Serve and How to Eat It." (John Lane, Vigo Street, London.)
Doubtless this pamphlet had much to do with increasing the number of
grapefruit eaters in Britain, now said to be very large. It is well to
know that there are many varieties, and that some are far inferior to
others; so if you eat one and it does not please you, don't be rash
and say you do not like grapefruit. Try the other kinds. The best are
neither too sour nor too bitter, and they have a "wild" fragrance as
exquisite in its way as the marine tang of live oysters. When you get
one of these you need none of the sugar, or the liqueur, or maraschino
cherries nearly always served with grapefruit. Just peel off the
yellow skin, cut the fruit lengthwise, separate the sections with your
fingers, remove the membranes, and you have a pile of pulp resembling
so many crab tails, which dissolve in the mouth and flood the palate
with ambrosial Flavor.
Oranges are good, but grapefruit is as superior to them as sour
cherries are to sweet.
One of England's chief claims to gastronomic distinction is that her
orchards include plenty of sour-cherry trees. A common French name for
tart cherries is _cerises anglaises_, which seems to indicate that they
are an importation from England.
Epicures, from the ancient Lucullus, who introduced the sour cherry
into Europe, to Paderewski, who eats no others, agree that, _thoroughly
ripened_, it is far superior in Flavor to the sweet cherry, besides
being more delicate, melting, digestible and wholesome. On a warm day
nothing--not even a glass of lemonade or limeade--is so agreeably
refreshing as a handful of Early Richmonds, Morellos, Montmorencys, or
Baldwins.
A British expert claims that "despite the sunshine and climate of
France, the quality and flavor of cherries grown in England are much
superior to those of the foreign fruit."
Of no product of his island is the Englishman more boastful than of
his strawberries. Big they certainly are, and beautiful; also fragrant
after a few days of sunshine. Freshness, which is of such great
importance in the case of these berries, is secured by growing them in
enormous quantities within a twenty-mile radius of London. They are
picked early--often by the light of lanterns--brought to the city, and
delivered to families for breakfast a few hours later. Usually they
are carefully graded, and you get what you order and pay for, be it
"specials," "firsts," or "seconds."
After all, the big strawberries, however luscious, are seldom so
fragrant as the little French _fraises des bois_, or strawberry of
the woods. These are imported to some extent; yet a writer in the
London "Telegraph" remarks that "if home-growers were to market tiny
specimens with ambrosial flavor there would be no sale for the fruit,
nor would the wild strawberry of our hedgerows be appreciated by the
pampered gourmets of London." If this is true, something must be wrong
with these same pampered gourmets. Perhaps the wild berries are less
fragrant than in France. In Oregon, as you drive along wood roads and
fields, the air is heavy with the fragrance of wild strawberries. But
the richest perfume of the kind I ever inhaled was, strange to say,
in the far north--the Norwegian city of Molde, where two bowls of
strawberries on the table made the hotel dining-room smell like an
Oriental rose garden. It was in Norway, too, that I ate the best sour
cherries I ever tasted.
The fame of the British gooseberry has crossed the Atlantic, the
jam made from it being purchasable in all the larger grocery stores
throughout the United States and Canada. The gooseberry is indigenous
to Great Britain, where it flourishes particularly well because it
does not need or desire much sunshine. This is doubtless the reason why
the British berry is superior to the American. I have read in a London
journal that "American visitors are highly appreciative of the flavor
of English gooseberries, as those of their own country are not nearly
so good. In hotels largely frequented by Transatlantic guests there
is quite a brisk demand for the fruit, especially the large yellow
'sulphur' berry and the 'white lion.' As judges of fruit Americans are
proverbially keen, and their selections are usually worth following."