“We copy the following, by the Vicountess de Malleville, from the last
number of the _Courrier de l’Europe_. Without subscribing to the justice
of all the writer’s remarks, we think, as the opinion of an intelligent
foreigner, that the article will be read with some interest.
“‘We now quit the upper regions and follow the secretary of the club,
and the politest and most obliging cicerone in the world. Theatrically
speaking, we have as yet only seen the stage and its sumptuous
decorations from the boxes and pit; we now go behind the scenes, among
the scene-shifters and the machinists. But unlike in a theatre, we see
no naked walls behind the scenes--no tattered draperies--no floors
strewed with sawdust. This fine apartment is the kitchen--spacious as a
ball-room, kept in the finest order, and white as a young bride.
All-powerful steam, the noise of which salutes your ear as you enter,
here performs a variety of offices: it diffuses a uniform heat to large
rows of dishes, warms the metal plates, upon which are disposed the
dishes that have been called for, and that are in waiting to be sent
above; it turns the spits, draws the water, carries up the coal, and
moves the plate like an intelligent and indefatigable servant. Stay
awhile before this octagonal apparatus, which occupies the centre of the
place. Around you the water boils and the stewpans bubble, and a little
further on is a moveable furnace, before which pieces of meat are
converted into savoury _rôtis_--here are sauces and gravies, stews,
broths, soups, &c.; in the distance are Dutch ovens, marble mortars,
lighted stoves, iced plates of metal for fish, and various compartments
for vegetables, fruits, roots, and spices. After this inadequate, though
prodigious nomenclature, the reader may perhaps picture to himself a
state of general confusion, a disordered assemblage, resembling that of
a heap of oyster-shells. If so, he is mistaken. For, in fact, you see
very little, or scarcely anything, of all the objects above described;
the order of their arrangement is so perfect, their distribution as a
whole, and in their relative bearings to one another, all are so
intelligently considered, that you require the aid of a guide to direct
you in exploring them, and a good deal of time to classify in your mind
all your discoveries.
“‘The man who devised the plan of this magnificent kitchen, over which
he rules and governs without question or dispute, the _artiste_ who
directs by his gestures his subalterns tricked out in white, and whose
eye takes in at a glance the most difficult combinations in the culinary
art--in a word, the _chef_ by whom every _gourmet_ admitted within the
precincts of the Reform Club swears, is M. Soyer, of whom it may justly
be said that he is not more distinguished as a professor of the science
of the Vatels and Caremes, than as a well-behaved and modest man. Allow
him, therefore, to give you the history of his discoveries and
improvements; let him conduct you into the smallest recesses of his
establishment, the cleanliness of which would shame many a drawing-room;
and listen to him, also, as he informs you that those precious pictures
which crowd his own parlour are from the pencil of a wife who has
recently been taken from him by a premature death. Of this you might
almost doubt till he again affirms it, for, judging from the poetry of
the composition, and the vigour of the colouring and the design, you
might swear that these pictures were the work of Murillo when he was
young.
“‘Let all strangers who come to London for business, or pleasure, or
curiosity, or for whatever cause, not fail to visit the Reform Club. In
an age of utilitarianism, and of the search for the comfortable, like
ours, there is more to be learned here than in the ruins of the
Coliseum, of the Parthenon, or of Memphis.’”--_Chambers’s Journal._
“_Workhouse Cookery._--The disclosures in the Andover Union have thrown
quite a new light on the science of cookery, which not even the
inspiration of a Soyer could have hit upon. That ingenious _chef de
cuisine_ has blended together pastry and politics; with considerable
skill he has invented a Crême d’Angleterre, consisting of charms
borrowed from the female aristocracy; but those ingredients, imaginary
and unsubstantial as they are, must be considered as solids when
compared with the materials used for constituting the dishes served up
to the paupers in the Andover Union. Butter, according to the new poor
law cookery, is made from the skimmings of grease pots, and parochial
tea is made from boiling old leaves which have already had their
strength drawn out of them.
“A new cookery book, edited by M’Dougal, the master of the Andover
Union, is evidently a desideratum in culinary literature, which even
Soyer’s universal genius has hitherto left unsupplied.”--_Punch._
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