French Ministers of a surfeit of truffles, which were also alleged to
have mainly contributed to the demise of the famous gourmand Béquet,
who was the predecessor of Jules Janin on the _Débats_, and on whom
Roger de Beauvoir wrote this epitaph:
“Cy-gît Béquet, le franc glouton
Qui but tout ce qu’il eut de rente;
Son gilet n’avait qu’un bouton,
Son nez en avait plus de trente!”
An ex-chef to whom I told this story of Béquet was profoundly moved,
and said simply: “It must have been a beautiful death!”
[Illustration]
[Illustration: CHAPTER · IX · SWEETS · AND · ODDMENTS ·]
“And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.”
SHAKESPEARE (Sonnet cii.).
The warm glow of virtuous satisfaction induced by the knowledge that
one has done what was expected of one is my sole excuse for the
contents of this chapter. I have no sweet tooth, and my experience in
the cooking of sweets has been limited to the few recipes which come
later on. Even these I would rather have omitted, because it is so
easy to buy _éclairs_, _petits fours_, and other “dulceties” wherewith
to finish off a Chafing-Dish meal, but it is just on the confines of
possibility that this book may be read by a lady--or, if I am lucky, by
two or even three--and I should be indeed accounted a poor instructor
if I omitted sweets from my curriculum. “I humbly beg pardon of
heaven, and the lady,” as Mr. Pepys said when he kissed the cook.
“Give the bairns pudding in plenty, again say I”--so wrote Sir Walter
Scott, and I am heartily at one with him, but Chaffinda does not
accommodate herself to the fabrication of pudding--and, besides,
children ought to be in bed when supper-time brings the Chafing
Dish on the table. Baking is of course impossible, and boiling in
a cloth equally so. I have already said that Chaffinda--being so
nearly human--has her limitations, and these are two of them, which
I, for one, in no wise regret. Nevertheless, pudding is a great
institution--in its proper place--which is childhood.
Our national Jack Pudding was a common object of whilom country fairs,
a sort of typical buffoon who performed pudding tricks on a stage;
one of them being to swallow a number of yards of black puddings
amidst yokel plaudits. Curiously enough, and this is an etymological
puzzle well worth following up, the typical buffoon of most European
countries is christened after the commonest article of the daily
food of the people. France has her Jean Potage; Germany, Hanswurst;
Italy, Macaroni; and Holland, Pickel Herringe. This can hardly be a
coincidence.
The learned Dr. Thudichum wisely says: “The state of culture of every
nation can be estimated comparatively by its confectionery, even when
we know little of its cookery, for confectionery is the most advanced
and refined part of cookery, and thus enables an expert to draw a
conclusion backwards regarding the kind of cookery out of which it
originated.”
This is certainly true to a limited extent, but to attempt a rough and
ready analysis on these lines is like dissecting a hummingbird with a
hatchet. Generalisations are as dangerous as July oysters.
Apple Fritters.
Now for my sweets. The first one on the list is the familiar Apple
Fritter, or _Beignet de Pommes_. It is quite easily cooked, especially
if a little care be taken over the concoction of the all-important
matter of batter.
Begin by carefully peeling four apples, fairly large ones for choice,
then cut them into slices, about one-eighth of an inch thick, and take
out the cores. Now make the batter. Put four tablespoons of flour in a
basin with half a teaspoon of salt. Pour one tablespoon of oil on to
half a tumbler of tepid water. They will not mix of course. Add this
gradually to the flour, stirring it well. Next beat up two whites of
egg to a very stiff froth, and stir it lightly into the flour. The
batter is then ready for use. The eggs should not be added until you
are quite ready to make the fritters. Now with a skewer or fork take
up the apple rings, one by one, dip them in the batter, see that they
are well covered, and then drop them into the Chafing Dish in which
you have heated two tablespoons of butter to boiling-point. Fry the
apples until they are soft, and of a golden brown colour. Drain them on
kitchen paper, and sprinkle them with a little castor sugar.
Stewed Apples.
Apples, plainly stewed in slices, in milk and sugar, and then served on
a bed of rice, are very satisfactory. The experimenting Chafist will
find that sweets can very often be adapted so as to be suitable for the
Chafing Dish. But always rehearse your impromptus before trying them in
public.
Stewed Rhubarb.
Cut a pound of fresh sweet rhubarb into two-inch lengths, put it in
the Chafing Dish with a tumbler of water, the peel of one lemon, and
a tablespoon of soft white sugar. Let it boil up until the rhubarb is
quite soft, and then either serve hot, or--preferably--let it get quite
cold and serve with clotted cream.
Almost any stoneless fruit can be cooked in the same way. Gooseberries,
currants, strawberries, and raspberries all make excellent compote,
but care must be taken that the fruit does not get pulpy: it should be
quite soft, but retain its proper shape. Quite ripe fruit is not so
desirable as fruit that is just going to be ripe.
Fried Pineapple.
Cut a smallish pine into half-inch slices, paring the skin, of course,
and split in half three or four ordinary penny sponge cakes. Fry these
latter in the Chafing Dish in a tablespoon of butter till they are
light brown on both sides. Take them out and keep them hot. Fry the
pine slices in a like amount of butter and their own juice. Pour over
them a wine-glassful of brandy and serve on the browned sponge cake.
Cream may be added, but it is not at all necessary.
Coffee Chestnuts.
Shell a dozen chestnuts, and boil them for five minutes, then remove
the skins. Put them back in the Chafing Dish with enough fresh water
to cover them, and a tablespoon of soft white sugar, boil them until
they are soft. Take them out and drain them, but do not break them up.
Now put in the Chafing Dish the yolk of one egg, another tablespoon of
soft white sugar, half a teacup of strong black coffee, a liqueur of
brandy and a tablespoon of milk or cream. Keep on stirring till just
upon boiling, then pour over the chestnuts, and serve hot.
It is not requisite to add brandy or other spirits to the foregoing
dishes. It certainly tends to completeness of flavour, and, especially
with cooked fruits, seems to bring out a subtle aroma or bouquet, but
many most estimable gourmets dispense with all spirits in cookery, and
are none the less well fed. Spirits should never be given in food for
the young.
A Surrey curate opened the Sunday School one day with the well-known
hymn, “Little drops of water, little grains of sand.” In the middle of
the first verse he stopped the singing, and complained strongly of the
half-hearted manner in which it was sung. He made a fresh start. “Now
then,” he shouted, “little drops of water, and for goodness sake put
some spirit into it!” And he wore a blue ribbon in his buttonhole too!
I should have liked to give the full recipe for a seventeenth-century
“Quelque-Shose,” according to Master Robert May’s cook-book. The
ingredients read temptingly--if somewhat lavish in quantity. Forty
eggs are required, which are to be made in the form of omelets, which
are to be “rolled up like a wafer” and served with “white wine, sugar,
and juyce of lemon.” Another recipe of the same artist was for “Pie
Extraordinary, or Bride Pie, which was made of ”severall compounds,
being of severall distinct pies on one bottom.” At a rough guess this
may have been the forerunner of our latter-day Bride-cakes, with their
superimposed layers of almond paste, and consolidated indigestion.
It is always marvellous to me that there are so few sudden deaths
after a wedding, particularly if the cut cake has been handed about
promiscuously.
Bananas contain three times as much nourishment as meat or potatoes,
and as a food are declared to be superior to bread. They are as good
raw as cooked, and my only advice is to take care to buy the smaller,
more delicate kinds, and to avoid the grosser plantains, which are
musty and flavourless. The kind known as “Lady’s Fingers” are the best
of all.
Banana Cream.
Tear off a strip of skin from each of half a dozen bananas. Put them in
the Dish with a tablespoon of milk, and a sprinkle of soft sugar. Heat
them up until the skins are quite brown and the fruit soft and pulpy.
Then strip the skins, add some more sugar, and serve with sponge-cake
fingers.
Rice Milk.
Put in the Chafing Dish a teacupful of clean boiled rice, rather more
than a pint of milk, a small stick of cinnamon, and a bay leaf. Add a
heaped tablespoon of soft white sugar, and a suspicion of vanilla. Boil
up very slowly, and remove spices before serving.
Skansk Gröt.
There is a very good Swedish pudding, known as Skansk Gröt, which is
made in the following wise: Boil in the Chafing Dish half a pound of
clean rice, with the peel of a lemon, and half a stick of cinnamon, and
a cup of milk. Just before it comes to the boil add four apples, sliced
and cored but not peeled, and a handful of stoned raisins, a tablespoon
of sifted sugar, and a wine-glass of sherry. Boil all this for eight
minutes, then take out the lemon peel and the cinnamon before serving.
This Skansk Gröt can be eaten hot or cold, with or without cream or
milk. It is good anyway.
Stuffed Figs.
Stuff a quarter of a pound of good pulled figs with blanched almonds,
split in half. Put in the Chafing Dish a tablespoon of soft white
sugar, a teaspoon of lemon juice, and a wine-glass of claret. Heat
this up, but do not boil. Add the figs, cover up, and cook for eight
minutes, when they ought to be quite tender and ready to serve.
Whisky Apples.
Peel and core, but do not cut up, four largeish apples, not necessarily
cooking ones; in fact sweet eating apples are better. Put them in the
Chafing Dish with six tablespoons of soft white sugar, the rind and
juice of half a lemon, and an inch stick of cinnamon, a tiny bit of
vanilla, and half a tumbler of whisky. Let this simmer over a low flame
for a good half-hour, till the apples are soft. When quite done put
them on a hot dish and pour the sauce over them.
There is an old tradition among whist players to the effect that
there are at the present moment seven hundred and fourteen Englishmen
wandering in destitution upon the continent of Europe, because they
would not lead trumps when they held five. I do not desire to find
myself in a like case, so I have played my trumps, and must abide by
the consequences. I do not propose to invent impossible sweets which I
have not tested in the Chafing Dish, give them high-falutin’ titles,
and palm them off on unsuspecting and all-confiding Chafing students.
Let them turn inventors themselves, and my blessing go with them!
I have purposely said little or nothing on the subject of appropriate
drinks to accompany Chaffinda’s efforts, because that is, to a certain
extent, a personal matter. At the same time it may be useful to know
that it is very easy to mature cheap claret. The trick is French, and
fairly reliable. It happens sometimes that the ordinary dinner claret
of commerce leaves something to be desired in the way of flavour and
palatability. It may be sour, acrid, harsh, biting, vinegary, and half
a dozen other things, all unpleasant. Add to a glass of such ordinary
wine a teaspoonful of very hot water. The effect is usually magical.
The wine seems ten years older. It becomes softer, mellower, suaver,
and really almost drinkable. _Le petit vin bleu du pays_ becomes almost
a _cru_.
Some people drink coffee after dinner, and eke after lunch, if they
have time--and lunch. Others use it as a barometer. You can do both,
if you know how. It is very simple. The coffee must be very hot. Drop
a lump of sugar into the cup, and before stirring it observe how the
bubbles rise. If they rush towards the middle of the cup and meet, then
it is going to be fine weather. If they remain close to the edge of the
cup it will rain or snow. If they separate but wander about vaguely,
then the weather will be changeable. This barometer is not infallible,
but it has been known to be accurate. Try it. Café frequenters on the
boulevards spend hours in checking the prognostications of their coffee
by the weather reports in the papers.
I should like to give a few final hints on Chafing-Dish party-giving,
the result of my own experience, which has been both bitter and sweet.
Imprimis: “Don’t ask too many people,” as H. J. Byron said on his
deathbed, when his coachman told him that one of his horses was ailing
and he thought he had better give him a ball. “You should always be
two,” quoth the Abbé Morellet, “to eat a truffled turkey. It is my
invariable practice. I am going to dine off one to-day. We shall be
two--the turkey and myself.”
A fellow feeding makes us wondrous kind, and I do not for a moment
suggest that Chafing-Dish meals should always be soli, far from
it; a duet is delightful, a trio tactful, and a quartet quieting. I
cannot advise going beyond that number. Chaffinda is always present,
of course, but she does not count as company, she is merely the
hand-maiden, the _geisha_, the tutelary genius hovering over the meal.
I have already enjoined the absolute necessity of rehearsal; leave
nothing to chance. If you want to make your little effect, see that
it is properly stage-managed: your properties ready, your limes in
working order, and your band parts ready and complete. “In the green
salad days of my youth, when I rarely spoke aught but the truth,” I
tried more than once to dazzle my guests with unrehearsed effects, but
in every case the result was dire failure. All that sort of thing is
magnificent, but it is not cookery.
Again, do not attempt too elaborate a bill of fare. Be pre-Raphaelite
in your attention to detail rather than Academic in your mass of lavish
decoration. Of two evils choose the prettier, and prefer a discreet
little meal of soup, meat, vegetable and savoury, to an elaborate
programme which defeats its own ends, and clogs the appetite.
It is such much better form to be simple, poor and proud--besides,
it costs less. About forty years ago the late Lord Sidney Godolphin
Osborn wrote a letter on the growing love of luxury to the _Times_, in
the course of which he said: “The wealthy per force of their positions
must have large expensive establishments; they are doomed to live
in show houses; they are the proper consumers of the produce of the
decorative arts; but they yet have to eat, and here comes the question.
How can they eat in character? How can they dine up to their pictures,
sculpture, plate, and music?”
The answer is easy enough. They can never dine up to their pictures,
because they are usually dyspeptic.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: CHAPTER · X · AMENITIES OF THE · TABLE]
“I had some hopes of the cook at first, but when I talked to her
tightly and closely, I could make nothing of her: she was all
wiggle-waggle, and I could never persuade her to be categorical.”
DR. JOHNSON (“D’Arblay’s Memoirs”).
Some of us have been to school. It was usually a long time ago. Still,
here and there a man with a memory may recollect that when Achilles, in
the “Iliad,” has granted the request of the unhappy Priam in reference
to the dead body of his son, his next remark to the old man is an
eminently practical and sensible one: “Let us now go to dinner!” It has
struck me that this classical allusion may have been one of the reasons
for the erection of the Achilles statue at Hyde Park Corner; just to
remind late dawdlers in the Park that dinner-time and dressing-tide
wait for no man or woman.
I have already had the presumption to suggest that we eat too often
and too much and too late and too elaborately; this has emboldened me
to further frankness. A French friend who “knew himself” in dining
matters said to me once: “En Angleterre on se nourrit bien, mais on
ne dine pas.” He was both right and wrong. Right as regards the very
pseudo-French cookery of the affluent middle-class, wrong as regards
the best restaurants and hotels.
Buckle, in his “History of Civilisation,” following Cabanis, considers
food as one of the four physical agents most powerfully influencing the
human race. Men’s manners and morality, their customs and condition,
depend mainly on what they eat. The boldness of the Norseman and the
timidity of the Bengalee are justly due to their respective preference
for meat or vegetables, for carbonaceous or nitrogenous diet. Slavery
in India is the direct result of rice, in Egypt of dates, of maize in
Mexico and Peru.
We must, therefore, adapt ourselves to circumstances in so far as the
circumstances adapt themselves to us. It is no longer fashionable to
get drunk, and in a generation or two it will be the worst kind of form
to eat more than three courses at dinner.
“Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are,” said
Brillat-Savarin, Judge of the French Court of Cassation in 1826, and
_not_ a professed cook, as so many folk seem to imagine. He goes on
to say: “The gourmets by predestination can be easily told. They have
broad faces, bright eyes, small foreheads, short noses, full lips, and
rounded chins. The females are plump and pretty rather than handsome,
with a tendency to _embonpoint_.”
This is not complimentary, and does not seem to be borne out by
experience. Women gourmets are fewer than men, but they make up in
knowledge what they lack in number. Both Goethe and Byron have left it
on record that they objected to seeing women eat, but nowadays, with
better table manners, it is not a disagreeable sight, except perhaps at
a Swiss _table d’hôte_.
An English dinner-party, in the present year of grace, is not at
all ugly. It may be--and sometimes is--almost a thing of beauty.
The modern dinner-table approaches as nearly to the old Greek type
as is compatible with the widely divergent character of the two
civilisations. It certainly follows the classic pattern in two valuable
particulars--beauty and repose. True, we do not wreathe our heads
in roses, nor carry doves nestling in the folds of our robes, nor
pour libations of wine over one another (such a messy habit!), but
we have done away, for good and all, let us hope, with the dreadful
mid-Victorian table decorations. Instead of hideous dish-covers,
branching candelabra, hideous _épergnes_, and appalling “set pieces,”
we have Hawthorn bowls of roses, delicate Venetian glass, beaten copper
finger-bowls, perfectly plain silver, and the simplest of white china.
Everything perfect of its kind, and its kind the non-ostentatious.
We have also become franker in the honest avowal of our appetites.
Even in our grandmothers’ time it was considered somewhat immodest to
take a second helping without being pressed. Pressure was expected
as a politeness from the host. An old manual of table etiquette says:
“Offer every dish at least thrice to each guest. Timid appetites must
be tempted, for they exist still, especially among literary folk!”
Altogether we are much politer, outwardly at any rate, than we used
to be. Even a Royal Duke has manners. So he had formerly--but they
were mostly bad. It is told of one of the Royal Family, of a couple of
generations ago, that he was dining at Belvoir, and his host, noticing
His Royal Highness studying the menu at dinner, asked him if he would
like anything that did not appear on the bill of fare. “Yes; roast pig
and apple dumpling,” was the gracious reply.
The daring simplicity of the royal appetite is splendid, but the pity
is that it was not more pleasantly put.
Another reform in our dining arrangements is the greater love which
folks now bear to fresh air. Formerly dining-rooms were heated up as
though the guests were early cucumbers, and wanted forcing. This, I am
sure, contributed greatly to the dulness of the average dinner-party.
As the result of careful observation, I have found, by experimenting
with a thermometer, that at a temperature of 62° Fahrenheit
conversation flows easily and every one’s wits are at their best and
sharpest. At 75° or higher the most elastic spirits become subdued. If
any one says to me: “So-and-so was not himself last night at dinner,” I
am always tempted to ask: “What was the temperature?”
Why will people, when they dine out in public places, insist on having
music? It seems to me a confusion of the arts, and with little ear for
music I cannot bring myself to take my soup in polka time, or masticate
my whitebait to the _Intermezzo_ from “Cavalleria Rusticana.” It is
quite a modern fad, for in 1874 G. A. Sala discusses music at dinner in
a magazine, and only refers to it in royal palaces. With all deference
to those who know better, it seems to me to be rather rude to good
music, and to a good dinner.
All the foregoing is in direct relation to the art of the Chafing Dish,
because the refinement of modern cookery is nowhere more evident than
in dealing with Chaffinda. I have been to a dinner-party where two
Chafing Dishes were brought on to the table after the sweets, one being
placed before the host and the other before the hostess. Deft servants
handed the necessary ingredients, and in five minutes, the guests (we
were eight, I think) were enjoying a little egg savoury, piping hot,
and cooked before their eyes. This sort of thing may become quite
common. Who knows?
The table for an ordinary Chafing-Dish meal, whether luncheon, dinner
or supper, such as might be cooked after a diligent study of the
foregoing chapters, should be arranged as simply as possible. One end
bears the Chafing Dish on its own little tray and cloth. The remaining
three-quarters of the table may be laid for a smallish party, and, by
all the canons of good taste, avoid decorating it with tulle or nun’s
veiling, or chiffon, or whatever the silly, flimsy, puffy stuff is
called. You might as well put ostrich feathers and bombazine in the
middle of the table. Good simple glass and china, the older the better,
as a rule, because the forms are more beautiful; and I see no need for
uniformity in either service, so long as each individual piece is
beautiful in itself. Pewter plates retain the heat splendidly, and some
of the old ones are excellent in design. Wooden platters are affected
by some people for meats, and I confess that the red juice of the meat
on the well-scrubbed surface is very pleasing. Keep the centre ornament
very low, so that one can see and talk across it. A big dish of almost
any old blue and white ware, with a very few flowers, but each bloom
perfect in itself, is my own ideal. Nothing is more trying than to talk
to your opposite neighbour across a small table, through a mass of
tightly packed towering flowers, or a jungle of dense fern. It is not
beautiful, but just annoying.
Chafing-Dish cookery, I am delighted to be able to add, seems to
engender the love of beautiful things. It is so easy to pick up and
use, in parlour cookery, all sorts of quaint and delightful pieces of
china of curious and old-fashioned design. They may not all be genuine;
in fact, most of them are pretty certain not to be. But if the shape
is good, the colouring pleasing, and the form well adapted for holding
sauce, sweetmeats, condiments, or anything else, then, so far as
Chaffinda is concerned, their genuineness and intrinsic value is a
secondary matter.
One is occasionally tempted by the offer of a real old silver Chafing
Dish with or without an ivory handle. Cooking in such an implement
would be an ultra refinement of the art. But the temptation must be
resisted, such things are not for daily use, although at one time and
in some houses a silver dish no doubt was always put before the master,
wherein to make his Welsh Rabbit.
There is a sort of huge silver Chafing Dish in the Cluny Museum, which
rather suggests a cauldron, so vast are its dimensions. It is evidently
fairly old and has seen much use, though it is not quite evident what
could have been cooked in it, unless it were the original _marmite_ of
Monsieur Deharme, which never left off cooking.