DINNER
"Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it;
But we can eat and we hae meat,
And sae the Lord be thankit."
Origin--Early dinners--The noble Romans--"Vitellius
the Glutton"--Origin of haggis--The Saxons--Highland
hospitality--The French invasion--Waterloo avenged--The bad
fairy "_Ala_"--Comparisons--The English cook or the foreign
food torturer?--Plain or flowery--Fresh fish and the flavour
wrapped up--George Augustus Sala--Doctor Johnson again.
It is somewhat humiliating to reflect that we Britons owe the art
of dining to our first conquerors the Romans--a smooth-faced race
of voluptuaries whose idea of a _bonne bouche_ took the form of a
dormouse stewed in honey and sprinkled with poppy-seed. But it was
not until the Normans had fairly established themselves and their
cookery, that the sturdy Saxon submitted himself to be educated by the
foreign food-spoiler; and at a later period the frequent invasions of
France by Britain--when money was "tight" in the little island--were
undoubtedly responsible for the commencement of the system of
"decorating" food which so largely obtains to-day.
The name "dinner" is said--although it seems incredible that words
should have become so corrupted--to be a corruption of _dix heures_,
the time at which (A.M.), in the old Norman days, the meal was usually
partaken of; and the time at which (P.M.), in later years, when none
of the guests ever knew the hour, in that loose-and-careless period,
the meal was occasionally partaken of at Limmer's and at Lane's, in
London town. Froissart, in one of his works, mentions having waited
upon the Duke of Lancaster at 5 P.M., "after his Grace had supped";
and it is certain that during the reigns of Francis I. and Louis XII.
of France, the world of fashion was accustomed to dine long before
the sun had arrived at the meridian, and to sup at what we now call
"afternoon tea time." Louis XIV. did not dine till twelve; and his
contemporaries, Oliver Cromwell and the Merry Monarch, sat down to the
principal meal at one. In 1700, two was the fashionable time; and in
1751 we read that the Duchess of Somerset's hour for dinner was three.
The hour for putting the soup on the table kept on advancing, until,
after Waterloo, it became almost a penal offence to dine before six;
and so to the end of the century, when we sit down to a sumptuous
repast at a time when farm-labourers and artisans are either snug
between the blankets, or engaged in their final wrangle at the "Blue
Pig."
The Romans in the time of Cicero had a light breakfast at 3.30 A.M.,
lunched at noon, and attacked the _coena_ at periods varying between 3
and 7 P.M.--according to the season of the year. They commenced the
first course with eggs, and each noble Roman was supposed to clear his
palate with an apple at the conclusion of the third course. "A banquet
with Vitellius," we read, "was no light and simple repast. Leagues of
sea and miles of forest had been swept to furnish the mere groundwork
of the entertainment. Hardy fishermen had spent their nights on the
heaving wave, that the giant turbot might flap its snowy flakes on
the Emperor's table, broader than its broad dish of gold. Many a
swelling hill, clad in the dark oak coppice, had echoed to ringing
shout of hunter and deep-mouthed bay of hound, ere the wild boar
yielded his grim life, by the morass, and the dark grisly carcase was
drawn off to provide a standing dish that was only meant to gratify
the eye. Even the peacock roasted in its feathers was too gross a
dainty"--especially the feather part, we should think--"for epicures
who studied the art of gastronomy under Caesar; and that taste would
have been considered rustic in the extreme which could partake of more
than the mere fumes and savour of so substantial a dish. A thousand
nightingales had been trapped and killed, indeed, for this one supper,
but brains and tongues were all they contributed to the banquet;
while even the wing of a roasted hare would have been considered far
too coarse and common food for the imperial table." Talk about a
bean-feast!
According to Suetonius (whose name suggests "duff") the villain
Nero was accustomed to dine in a superb apartment, surrounded with
mechanical scenery, which could be "shifted" with every course. The
suppers of "Vitellius the Glutton" cost, on the average, more than
£4000 a-piece--which reads like a "Kaffir Circus" dinner at the
Savoy--and the celebrated feast to which he invited his brother was
down in the bill for £40,350. Now a-nights we don't spend as much on
a dinner, even when we invite other people's wives. "It consisted"--I
always think of Little Dombey and the dinner at Doctor Blimber's, on
reading these facts--"of two thousand different dishes of fish, and
seven thousand of fowls, with other equally numerous meats."
"Sharp-biting salads," salted herrings, and pickled anchovies, were
served, as _hors d'oeuvres_ during the first course of a Roman banquet,
to stimulate the hunger which the rest of the meal would satisfy; but
although Vitellius was, according to history, "a whale on" oysters,
they do not appear to have been eaten as a whet to appetite. And it
was the duty of one, or more, of the Emperor's "freedmen" to taste
every dish before his imperial master, in case poison might lurk
therein. A garland of flowers around the brows was the regular wear
for a guest at a "swagger" dinner party in ancient Rome, and, the
eating part over, said garland was usually tilted back on the head,
the while he who had dined disposed himself in an easy attitude on
his ivory couch, and proffered his cup to be filled by the solicitous
slave. Then commenced the "big drink." But it must be remembered that
although the subsequent display of fireworks was provided from lively
Early Christians, in tar overcoats, these Romans drank the pure,
unadulterated juice of the grape, freely mixed with water; so that
headaches i' th' morn were not _de rigueur_, nor did the subsequent
massacres and other diversions in the Amphitheatre cause any feelings
of "jumpiness."
The Roman bill-of-fare, however, does not commend itself to all
British epicures, one of whom wrote, in a convivial song--
"Old Lucullus, they say,
Forty cooks had each day,
And Vitellius's meals cost a million;
But I like what is good,
When or where be my food,
In a chop-house or royal pavilion.
At all feasts (if enough)
I most heartily stuff,
And a song at my heart alike rushes,
Though I've not fed my lungs
Upon nightingales' tongues,
Nor the brains of goldfinches and thrushes."
My pen loves to linger long over the gastronomies of those shaven
voluptuaries, the ancient Italians; and my Caledonian readers will
forgive the old tales when it is further set forth that the Romans
introduced, amongst other things,
_Haggis_
into Bonnie Scotland. Yes, the poet's "great chieftain o' the puddin'
race" is but an Italian dish after all. The Apician pork haggis[3]
was a boiled pig's stomach filled with fry and brains, raw eggs,
and pine-apples beaten to a pulp, and seasoned with _liquamen_. For
although some of the Romans' tastes savoured of refinement, many of
them were "absolutely beastly." The idea of pig's fry and pine-apples
mixed is horrible enough; but take a look into the constitution of
this _liquamen_, and wonder no longer that Gibbons wrote his _Decline
and Fall_ with so much feeling and _gusto_. This sauce was obtained
from the intestines, gills, and blood of fishes, great and small,
stirred together with salt, and exposed in an open vat in the sun,
until the compound became putrid. When putrefaction had done its work,
wine and spices were added to the hell-broth, which was subsequently
strained and sent into the Roman market. This _liquamen_ was
manufactured in Greece, and not one of all the poets of sunny Italy
seems to have satirised the "made-in-Greece" custom, which in those
days must have been almost as obnoxious as the "made-in-Germany" or
the "made-in-Whitechapel" scare of to-day.
The usual farinaceous ingredient of the Roman haggis was frumenty, but
frequently no grain whatever was applied; and instead of mincing the
ingredients, as do the Scots, the ancients pounded them in a mortar,
well moistened with _liquamen_, until reduced to pulp. We are further
told in history that a Roman gladiator was capable, after playing with
eggs, fish, nightingales' tongues, dormice, and haggis, of finishing
a wild boar at a sitting. But as the old lady remarked of the great
tragedy, this happened a long time ago, so let's hope it isn't true.
The Saxon dining-table was oblong, and rounded at the ends. The
cloth was crimson, with broad gilt edgings hanging low beneath the
table, and, it is to be feared, often soiled by the dirty boots of
the guests, who sat on chairs with covered backs, the counterfeit
presentments of which are still to be seen in the Tottenham Court
Road. The food consisted of fish, fowls, beef, mutton, venison, and
pork--wild and domestic--either boiled, baked, or broiled, and handed
to the company by the attendants on small _sples_. A favourite "fish
joint" of the old Saxon was a cut out of the middle of a porpoise; and
bread of the finest wheaten flour reposed in two silver baskets at
each end of the table, above the salt, the retainers having to content
themselves with coarser "household" out of a wooden cradle. Almost
the only vegetable in use amongst the Saxons was colewort, although
the Romans had brought over many others, years before; but hatred of
anything foreign was more rampant in early Saxon days than at present.
Forks were not introduced into England until during the reign of
King "Jamie": so that our ancestors had perforce to "thumb" their
victuals. The fair Queen Elizabeth (like much more modern monarchs)
was accustomed to raise to her mouth with her virgin fingers a turkey
leg and gnaw it. But even in the earliest days of the thirteenth
century, each person was provided with a small silver basin and two
flowered napkins of the finest linen, for finger-washing and wiping
purposes. Grapes, figs, nuts, apples, pears, and almonds, constituted
a Saxon dessert; and in the reign of Edward III. an Act of Parliament
was passed, forbidding any man or woman to be served with more than
two courses, unless on high days and holidays, when each was entitled
to three.
Here is the bill for the ingredients of a big dinner provided by a
City Company in the fifteenth century: "Two loins of veal and two
loins of mutton, 1s. 4d.; one loin of beef, 4d.; one dozen pigeons
and 12 rabbits, 9d.; one pig and one capon, 1s.; one goose and 100
eggs, 1s. 0½d.; one leg of mutton, 2½d.; two gallons of sack, 1s. 4d.;
eight gallons of strong ale, 1s. 6d.; total, 7s. 6d." Alas! In these
advanced days the goose alone would cost more than the "demmed total."
Cedric the Saxon's dining table, described in _Ivanhoe_, was of a much
simpler description than the one noted above; and the fare also. But
there was no lack of assorted liquors--old wine and ale, good mead and
cider, rich morat (a mixture of honey and mulberry juice, a somewhat
gouty beverage, probably), and odoriferous pigment--which was composed
of highly-spiced wine, sweetened with honey. The Virgin Queen, at a
later epoch, was catered for more delicately; and we read that she
detested all coarse meats, evil smells, and strong wines. During the
Georgian era coarse meats and strong wines were by no means out of
favour; and Highland banquets especially were Gargantuan feasts, to
be read of with awe. The dinner given by Fergus MacIvor, in honour
of Captain Waverley, consisted of dishes of fish and game, carefully
dressed, at the upper end of the table, immediately under the eye
of the English stranger. "Lower down stood immense clumsy joints of
beef," says the gifted author, "which, but for the absence of pork,
abhorred in the Highlands, resembled the rude festivity of the banquet
of Penelope's suitors. But the central dish was a yearling lamb,
called a "hog in har'st," roasted whole. It was set upon its legs,
with a bunch of parsley in its mouth, and was probably exhibited in
that form to gratify the pride of the cook, who piqued himself more
on the plenty than the elegance of his master's table. The sides of
this poor animal"--the lamb, not the cook, we suppose is meant--"were
fiercely attacked by the clansmen, some with dirks, others with the
knives worn in the same sheath as the dagger, so that it was soon
rendered a mangled and rueful spectacle."
A spectacle which reminds the writer of a dinner table at the Royal
Military College, Sandhurst, in the early sixties.
"Lower down," continues Sir Walter, "the victuals seemed of yet
coarser quality, though sufficiently abundant. Broth, onions, cheese,
and the fragments of the feast, regaled the sons of Ivor, who feasted
in the open air."
The funeral baked meats used after the interment of the chief of the
Clan Quhele (described in _The Fair Maid of Perth_) were also on a
very extensive scale, and were, like the other meal, "digested" with
pailfuls of usquebaugh, for which no Highland head that supported a
bonnet was ever "the waur i' th' morn." And the custom of placing
bagpipers behind the chairs of the guests, after they have well drunk,
which is still observed in Highland regiments, was probably introduced
by the aforesaid Fergus MacIvor, who really ought to have known better.
And so the years rolled on; and at the commencement of the nineteenth
century, old England, instead of enjoying the blessings of universal
peace, such as the spread of the Gospel of Christianity might have
taught us to expect, found herself involved in rather more warfare
than was good for trade, or anything else. The first "innings" of the
Corsican usurper was a short but merry one; the second saw him finally
"stumped." And from that period dates the "avenging of Waterloo" which
we have suffered in silence for so long. The immigration of aliens
commenced, and in the tight little island were deposited a large
assortment of the poisonous seeds of alien cookery which had never
exactly flourished before. The combat between the Roast Beef of old
England and the bad fairy "_Ala_," with her attendant sprites Grease,
Vinegar, and Garlic, commenced; a combat which at the end of the
nineteenth century looked excessively like terminating in favour of
the fairy.
It has been repeatedly urged against my former gastronomic writings
that they are unjustly severe on French cookery; that far greater
minds than mine own have expressed unqualified approval thereof;
that I know absolutely nothing about the subject; and that my avowed
hatred of our lively neighbours and their works is so ferocious as
to become ridiculous. These statements are not altogether fair to
myself. I have no "avowed hatred" of our lively neighbours; in fact,
upon one occasion on returning from the celebration of the Grand
Prix, I saw a vision of----but that is a different anecdote. My lash
has never embraced the entire _batterie de cuisine_ of the _chef_,
and there be many French _plats_ which are agreeable to the palate,
as long as we are satisfied that the _matériel_ of which they are
composed is sound, wholesome, and of the best quality. It is the cheap
_restaurateur_ who should be improved out of England. I was years ago
inveigled into visiting the kitchen of one of these grease-and-garlic
shops, and----but the memory is too terrible for language. And will
anybody advance the statement that a basin of the _tortue claire_ of
the average _chef_ deserves to be mentioned in the same breath with a
plate of clear turtle at Birch's or Painter's? or that good genuine
English soup, whether ox-tail, mock-turtle, pea, oyster, or Palestine,
is not to be preferred to the French _purée_, or to their teakettle
broth flavoured with carrots, cabbages, and onions, and dignified by
the name of _consommé_?
Then let us tackle the subject of fish. Would you treat a salmon in
the British way, or smother him with thick brown gravy, fried onions,
garlic, mushrooms, inferior claret, oysters, sugar, pepper, salt,
and nutmeg, _en Matelote_, or mince him fine to make a ridiculous
_mousse_? Similarly with the honest, manly sole; would you fry or
grill him plain, or bake him in a coat of rich white sauce, onion
juice, mussel ditto, and white wine, or cider, _à la Normande_; or
cover him with toasted cheese _à la Cardinal_?
The fairy "_Ala_" is likewise responsible for the clothing of purely
English food in French disguises. Thus a leg of mutton becomes a
_gigot_, a pheasant (for its transgressions in eating the poor
farmer's barley) a _faisan_, and is charged for at special rates in
the bill; whilst the nearest to a beef-steak our lively neighbours
can get is a portion of beef with the fibre smashed by a wooden
mallet, surmounted by an exceedingly bilious-looking compound like
axle-grease, and called a _Châteaubriand_; and curry becomes under the
new _régime_, _kari_.
Undoubtedly, the principal reason for serving food smothered in
made-gravies lies in the inferiority of the food. Few judges will
credit France with the possession of better butcher's-meat--with the
exception of veal--than the perfidious island, which is so near in the
matter of distance, and yet so far in the matter of custom. And it is
an established fact that the fish of Paris is not as fresh as the fish
of London. Hence the _sole Normande_, the _sole au gratin_, and the
sole smothered in toasted cheese. But when we islanders are charged
at least four times as much for the inferior article, in its foreign
cloak, as for the home article in its native majesty, I think the
time has come to protest. It is possible to get an excellent dinner
at any of the "Gordon" hotels, at the "Savoy," the "Cecil," and at
some other noted food-houses--more especially at Romano's--by paying
a stiff price for it; but it is due to a shameful lack of enterprise
on the part of English caterers that a well-cooked English dinner is
becoming more difficult to procure, year after year. There be three
purely British dishes which are always "hoff" before all others on
the programme of club, hotel, or eating-house; and these are, Irish
stew, liver-and-bacon, and tripe-and-onions. Yet hardly a week
passes without a new _dîner Parisien_ making its appearance in the
advertisement columns of the newspapers; whilst the cheap-and-nasty
_table d'hôte_, with its six or seven courses and its Spanish claret,
has simply throttled the Roast Beef of Old England.
"Sir," said Dr. Johnson, after examining a French _menu_, "my brain
is obfuscated after the perusal of this heterogeneous conglomeration
of bastard English ill-spelt, and a foreign tongue. I prithee bid thy
knaves bring me a dish of hog's puddings, a slice or two from the
upper cut of a well-roasted sirloin, and two apple-dumplings."
"William," said George Augustus Sala to the old waiter at the
"Cheshire Cheese," "I've had nothing fit to eat for three months; get
me a point steak, for God's sake!"
The great lauder of foreign cookery had only that day returned from
a special mission to France, to "write up" the works of the _cordon
bleu_ for the benefit of us benighted Englishmen. No man in the wide
wide world knew so much, or could write so much, on the subject of and
in praise of the fairy "_Ala_," as George Sala; and probably no man in
the wide wide world so little appreciated her efforts.
But how has it come about that the fairy "_Ala_" has gained such
headway in this island of ours? The answer must commence another
chapter.