There is such a thing as nationality in dining, just as Mr. Browning has
proved, in a brilliant poem, that there is nationality in drinks.
Surveying mankind with extensive view, the essayist recognizes that the
science is not absolutely ignored in Turkey, where we cannot but think
that an archaic school retains too much wool with the mutton, and that
dining (like Egyptian Art) is rather a matter of sacred and immemorial
rules than in any worthy sense of the word a science. The Chinese and
Japanese have long been famous for their birds'-nest soup, and for making
the best, after his lamented decease, of the friend of man--the dog.
About the Australians and New Zealanders, perhaps the less said the
better. Many students will feel that our own colonists have neglected to
set a proper example to these poor heathen races, who, save kangaroos,
have no larger game than rats. The Englishman in Australia revels in
boundless mutton, in damper, in tea, and in the vintages of his adopted
soil, which he playfully, and patriotically, compares to those of the
Rhine. It is impossible, on the other hand, not to recognize the merits
of the Russian _cuisine_, where the imported civilization of France has
found various good traditional ideas still retained by the Sclavonic
people; and where the _caviare_, "with that pale green hue which denotes
the absence of salt," is not to be overlooked. In melancholy contrast to
the native genius of the Sclavs is the absolute dearth of taste and sense
in gastronomic Germany. If a map of the world could be made--and why
not?--in which lands of utter darkness in culinary matters should be
coloured black (like heathen countries in the missionary atlas, and
coalfields in the map of physical geography), the German Empire would be
one vast blot on Central Europe. Science might track Teutonic blood by
the absence of respectable cookery; and in England too obvious tokens
would be found of that incapacity of the art of dining which we brought
from the marshes of Holstein. In America, nature herself has put the
colonists on many schemes for the improvement of dinner, and terrapin
soup is gratefully associated with memoirs of Virginia--in the minds of
those who like terrapin soup. The canvas-backed duck has been praised as
highly as the "swopping, swopping mallard" of a comfortable college in
Oxford. As to the wild turkey, the poet has not yet risen in America who
can do justice to the charms of that admirable bird. Mr. Whitman, who
has much to say about "bob-a-links" and "whip-poor-wills," and some other
fowl which sing "when lilacs bloom in the garden yard," has neglected, we
fear, the wild turkey, simply because the Muse has not given this bird
melody, and made it, like the robin-redbreast, which goes so well with
bread-crumbs, "an amiable songster." American genius neglects the
turkey, and positively takes more interest in the migrations of the
transatlantic sparrow. If the nobler fowl can cross the water as safely
as the beef and mutton of everyday life, he will receive the honour he
deserves in this country. Some students with the deathless thirst of
scientific men for acclimatization, speak well of the Bohemian pheasant,
which, unlike some other denizens of Bohemia, is fat. But there are
probably less familiar birds in America that rival the duck and the wild
turkey, and excel the Bohemian pheasant. The existence of maize,
however, on the Western Continent has been a snare to American cooks, who
have yielded to an absorbing passion for hot corn-cakes.
France is, of course, the land in which the Muse of cooking is native.
"If we turn north towards Belgium," says a modern author, "we shall find
much that is good in cooking and eating known, if not universally
practised." He has also made the discovery that the Belgian air and
climate are admirably suited to develop the best qualities of Burgundy.
It is from these favoured and ingenious people that England ought to
learn a lesson, or rather a good many lessons. To begin at the
beginning, with soup, does not every one know that all domestic soups in
England, which bear French names, are really the same soup, just as
almost all puddings are, or may be, called cabinet pudding? The one word
"Julienne" covers all the watery, chill and tasteless, or terribly salt,
decoctions, in which a few shreds of vegetables appear drifting through
the illimitable inane. Other names are given at will by the help of a
cookery-book and a French dictionary; but all these soups, at bottom, are
attempts to be Julienne soup. The idea of looking on soup "as a vehicle
for applying to the palate certain herbal flavours," is remote indeed
from the Plain Cook's mind. There is a deeply rooted conviction in her
inmost soul that all vegetables, which are not potatoes or cabbages,
partake of the nature of evil. As to eating vegetables apart from meat,
it was once as hard to get English domestics to let you do that, as to
get a Cretan cook to serve woodcock with the trail. "_Kopros_ is not a
thing to be eaten," says the Cretan, according to a traveller; and the
natural heart of the English race regards vegetables, when eaten as a
_plat_ apart, with equal disfavour. Probably the market gardener's
ignorance and conservatism are partly in fault. Cabbage he knows, and
potatoes he knows, but what are pennyroyal and chervil? He has
cauliflower for you, but never says, "Here is rue for you, and rosemary
for you." Cooks do not give him botany lessons, and a Scottish cook,
deprived of bay-leaf, has been known to make an experiment in the use of
what she called "Roderick Randoms," members of the vegetable kingdom
which proved to be rhododendron. As for pennyroyal, most people have
only heard of it through Mr. Bonn's crib to Aristophanes.
When it comes to fish, it is allowed that we are not an insular people
for nothing. There are other forms of good living that Paris knows not
of, so to speak, at first hand, native to England. Turtle soup, turbot
and lobster sauce, a haunch of venison, and a grouse, are, we may say
without chauvinism, a "truly royal repast." But we incur the contempt of
foreigners once more in the matter of wines. To like sherry, the coarse
and fiery, is a matter of habit, which would teach us to love betel-root,
and rejoice in the very peculiar drink of the South Sea islanders. Some
purists include champagne in the same condemnation--the champagne, that
is, of this degenerate day. When the Russians drank up the contents of
the widow Clicquot's cellars, they found a sweet natural wine, to which
they have constantly adhered. But Western Europe, all the Europe which,
as M. Comte puts it, "synergizes" after light and positivism, has tended
towards champagnes more or less dry. The English serve this "grog
mousseux" as a necessity for social liveliness, and have not come back to
the sweet wine which was only meant to be drunk with sweets. A
_Quarterly_ reviewer is very severe in his condemnation of a practice
which will only yield to the stress of some European convulsion in
politics and society. These matters are like certain large reforms, they
either come to pass without observation in the slow changes of things, or
great movements in the world are accompanied by small ones in everyday
life. Dry champagne came in after the Revolution; it may go out after a
European war, which will make wine either expensive, or, if cheap, a
palpably spurious article. "Monotony and base servile imitation" may be
the bane of eating and drinking in England; but the existence of monotony
shows that the English really do not care very much about dining
considered as a fine art. When they do care, they cover their interest
in the matter decently, with the veil of humorous affectation. They
cannot spontaneously and sincerely make a business of it, as the French
do in all good faith. Even if they had a genius for dining, we doubt if
a critic is right in thinking they should dine at six o'clock or seven at
latest. Whether in the country or in town, the business or amusement of
the day claims more time. Sportsmen, for example, in early autumn could
not possibly return home by six very frequently, and in summer six
o'clock may be so sultry an hour that the thought of food is intolerable.
Still, it must be admitted that the unawakened state of the
market-gardener and the condition of English soups are matters deserving
serious consideration.