DINNER (_continued_)
"It is the cause!"
Imitation--Dear Lady Thistlebrain--Try it on the
dog--Criminality of the English Caterer--The stove, the stink,
the steamer--Roasting _v._ Baking--False Economy--Dirty
ovens--Frills and fingers--Time over Dinner--A long-winded
Bishop--Corned beef.
Now for the cause, alluded to at the end of the last chapter.
_Imprimis_, the French invasion is due to the universal craze for
imitation, which may be the sincerest form of flattery, but which
frequently leads to bad results. For years past the fair sex of Great
Britain have been looking to Paris for fashion in dress, as well as
in cookery; whilst the other sex have long held the mistaken notion
that "they manage things better in France." The idea that France is
the only country capable of clothing the outer and the inner man,
artistically, has taken deep root. Thus, if the Duchess of Dulverton
import, regardless of expense, a divine creation in bonnets from
the Rue de Castiglione, and air the same in church, it is good odds
that little Mrs. Stokes, of the Talbot Road, Bayswater, will have
had the _chapeau_ copied, at about one-twentieth of the original
cost, by the next Sabbath day. Dear Lady Thistlebrain, who has _such_
taste (since she quitted the family mangle in Little Toke Street,
Lambeth, for two mansions, a castle, and a deer park), and with whom
money is no object, pays her _chef_ the wages of an ambassador, and
everybody raves over her dinners. Mrs. Potter of Maida Vale sets her
"gal" (who studied higher gastronomy, together with the piano, and
flower-painting on satin, at the Board School) to work on similar
_menus_--with, on the whole, disastrous results. The London society
and fashion journals encourage this snobbish idea by quoting _menus_,
most of them ridiculous. Amongst the middle classes the custom of
giving dinner parties at hotels has for some time past been spreading,
partly to save trouble, and partly to save the brain of the domestic
cook; so that instead of sitting down to a plain dinner, with, maybe,
an _entrée_ or two sent in by the local confectioner--around the
family mahogany tree, all may be fanciful decoration, and not half
enough to eat, electric light, and _à la_ with attendance charged in
the bill.
The only way to stop this sort of thing is to bring the system into
ridicule, to try it on the groundlings. A fair leader of _ton_, late
in the sixties, appeared one morning in the haunts of fashion, her
shapely shoulders covered with a cape of finest Russian sables, to the
general admiration and envy of all her compeers. Thereupon, what did
her dearest friend and (of course) most deadly rival do? Get a similar
cape, or one of finer quality? Not a bit of it. She drove off, then
and there, to her furriers, and had her coachman and footman fitted
with similar capes, in (of course) cheaper material; and, when next
afternoon she took the air in the park, in her perfectly appointed
landau, her fur-clad menials created something like a panic in the
camp of her enemy, whilst fur capes for fair leaders of "_ton_," were,
like hashed venison at a City luncheon, very soon "hoff."
It is extremely probable that, could it be arranged to feed our
starving poor, beneath the public gaze, on _sôles Normandes_,
_côtelettes à la Reform_, and _salmi de gibier truffé_; to feast our
workhouse children on _bisque d'écrévisses_ and _Ananas à la
Créole_, the upper classes of Great Britain would soon revert to plain
roast and boiled.
But after all it is the English caterer who is chiefly to blame for
his own undoing. How is it that in what may be called the "food
streets" of the metropolis the foreign food-supplier should outnumber
the purveyor of the Roast Beef of Old England in the proportion of
fifty to one? Simply because the Roast Beef of Old England has become
almost as extinct as the Dodo. There are but few English kitchens, at
this end of the nineteenth century, in the which meat is roasted in
front of the fire.
In order to save the cost of fuel, most English (save the mark!)
cooking is now performed by gas or steam; and at many large
establishments the food, whether fish, flesh, fowl, vegetables or
pastry, all goes, in a raw state, into a species of chest of drawers
made of block-tin, in which receptacle the daily luncheons, dinners,
and suppers are steamed and robbed of all flavour, save that of hot
tin. The pity of it! Better, far better for mankind the _à la_ system
than to be gradually "steamed" into the tomb!
It is alleged that as good results in the way of roasting can be got
from an oven as from the spit. But that oven must be ventilated--with
both an inlet and an outlet ventilator, for one will not act without
the other. It is also advisable that said oven should be cleaned out
occasionally; for a hot oven with no joint therein will emit odours
anything but agreeable, if not attended to; and it is not too sweeping
a statement to say that the majority of ovens in busy kitchens
are foul. The system of steaming food (the alleged "roasts" being
subsequently browned in an oven) is of comparatively recent date;
but the oven as a roaster was the invention of one Count Rumford, at
the beginning of the nineteenth century. In one of his lectures on
oven-roasting, this nobleman remarked that he despaired of getting any
Englishman to believe his words; so that he was evidently confronted
with plenty of prejudice, which it is devoutly to be prayed still
exists in English homes. For I do vow and protest that the oven odours
which pervade the neighbourhood of the Strand, London, at midday, are
by no means calculated to whet the appetite of the would-be luncher or
diner. This is what such an authority as Mr. Buckmaster wrote on the
subject of the spit _versus_ the oven:
"I believe I am regarded as a sort of heretic on the
question of roasting meat. My opinion is that the essential
condition of good roasting is constant basting, and this the
meat is not likely to have when shut up in an iron box; and
what is not easily done is easily neglected."
In this connection there are more heretics than Mr. Buckmaster. But
if during my lifetime the days of burning heretics should be revived,
I shall certainly move the Court of Criminal Appeal in favour of
being roasted or grilled before, or over, the fire, instead of being
deprived of my natural juices in an iron box.
Some few "roast" houses are still in existence in London, but they be
few and far between; and since Mr. Cooper gave up the "Albion," nearly
opposite the stage-door of Drury Lane Theatre, the lover of good,
wholesome, English food has lost one old-fashioned tavern in the which
he was certain of enjoying such food.
It has been repeatedly urged in favour of French cookery that it
is so economical. But economy in the preparation of food is by no
means an unmixed blessing. I do not believe that much sole-leather
is used up in the ordinary _ragoût_, or _salmi_; but many of us who
can afford more expensive joints have a prejudice against "scrags";
whilst the tails of mutton chops frequently have a tainted flavour,
and the drumsticks and backs of fowls are only fit to grill, or boil
down into gravy. And it is not only the alien who is economical in
his preparation of the banquet. Many of the dwellers in the highways
and bye-ways of our great metropolis will boil down the outer skin
of a ham, and place a portion thereof, together with such scraps as
may also be purchased, at a penny or twopence the plateful, at the
ham and beef emporium, with maybe a "block ornament" or two from the
butcher's, in a pie dish, with a superstructure of potatoes, and have
the "scrap pie" cooked at the baker's for the Sunday dinner. Poor
wretches! Not much "waste" goes on in such households. But I have
known the "gal" who tortured the food in a cheap lodging-house throw
away the water in which a joint had just been boiled, but whether
this was from sheer ignorance, or "cussedness," or the desire to save
herself any future labour in the concoction of soup, deponent sayeth
not. By the way, it is in the matter of soup that the tastes of the
British and French peasantry differ so materially. Unless he or she
be absolutely starving, it is next to impossible to get one of the
groundlings of old England to attempt a basin of soup. And when they
do attempt the same, it has been already made for them. The Scotch,
who are born cooks, know much better than this; but do not, O reader,
if at all thin of skin, or refined of ear, listen too attentively to
the thanks which a denizen of the "disthressful counthry" will bestow
upon you for a "dhirty bowl o' bone-juice."
How many modern diners, we wonder, know the original object of
placing frills around the shank of a leg or shoulder of mutton, a
ham, the shins of a fowl, or the bone of a cutlet? Fingers were
made before--and a long time before--forks. In the seventeenth
century--prior to which epoch not much nicety was observed in
carving, or eating--we read that "English gentlewomen were instructed
by schoolmistresses and professors of etiquette as to the ways in
which it behoved them to carve joints. That she might be able to grasp
a roasted chicken without greasing her left hand, the gentle housewife
was careful to trim its foot and the lower part of its legs with cut
paper. The paper frill which may still be seen round the bony point
and small end of a leg of mutton, is a memorial of the fashion in
which joints were _dressed_ for the dainty hands of lady-carvers, in
time prior to the introduction of the carving-fork, an implement that
was not in universal use so late as the Commonwealth."
How long we should sit over the dinner-table is a matter of
controversy. At the commencement of the nineteenth century, in the
hard-drinking times, our forefathers were loth indeed to quit the
table. But the fairer portion of the guests were accustomed to adjourn
early, for tea and scandal in the withdrawing-room, the while their
lords sat and quarrelled over their port, with locked doors; and where
they fell there they frequently passed the night. The editor of the
_Almanach des Gourmands_ wrote: "Five hours at table are a reasonable
latitude to allow in the case of a large party and recondite cheer."
But the worthy Grimod de la Reymière, the editor aforesaid, lived
at a period when dinner was not served as late as 8.30 P.M. There
is a legend of an Archbishop of York "who sat three entire years at
dinner." But this is one of those tales which specially suited the
dull, brandy-sodden brains of our ancestors. The facts are simply as
follows:--the archbishop had just sat down to dinner at noon when
an Italian priest called. Hearing that the dignitary was sitting at
meat the priest whiled away an hour in looking at the minster, and
called again, but was again "repelled by the porter." Twice more that
afternoon did the surly porter repel the Italian, and at the fourth
visit "the porter, in a heate, answered never a worde, and churlishlie
did shutte the gates upon him." Then the discomfited Italian returned
to Rome; and three years later, encountering an Englishman in the
Eternal City, who declared himself right well known to His Grace of
York, the Italian, all smiles, inquired: "I pray you, good sir, hath
that archbishop finished dinner yet?" Hence the story, which was
doubtless originally told by a fly-fisher.
It is not a little singular that with increasing civilisation, a gong,
which is of barbaric, or semi-barbaric origin, should be the means
usually employed to summon us to the dinner-table. In days of yore
the horn, or cornet, was blown as the signal. Alexander Dumas tells
us that "at the period when noon was the dinner hour, the horn or
cornet (_le cor_) was used in great houses to announce dinner. Hence
came an expression which has been lost; they used to say cornet (or
trumpet) the dinner (_cornez le diner_)." And we are asked to believe
that to this practice "corned" beef owes its derivation. "In days when
inferior people ate little meat in the winter months save salted beef,
the more usual form of the order was _cornez le boeuf_, or 'corn the
beef.' Richardson errs egregiously when he insists that corned beef
derived its distinguishing epithet from the grains or corns of salt
with which it was pickled. Corned beef is trumpeted beef, or as we
should nowadays say, dinner-bell beef."
Well--"I hae ma doots," as the Scotsman said. I am not so sure that
Richardson erred egregiously. But after all, as long as the beef be
good, and can be carved without the aid of pick and spade, what does
it matter? Let us to dinner!