“The kingly-crowned head, the vigilant eye,
The counsellor heart, the arm our soldier,
Our steed the leg, the tongue our trumpeter,”
are conjunctly and severally cuffed or bunged up, or broken, or stifled,
unless they are perpetually ministering to the service of the great
cormorant corporation. It is mighty well to talk of the dissolution of
the League. The testament of Cæsar, commented on by Mark Antony, was
eventually more fatal to the liberties of Rome, than the irrepressible
ambition which originally urged the arch-traitor across the Rubicon.
‘The Gastronomic Regenerator,’ in the hands of every housewife in the
country, is merely to convert the most invincible portion of the
community into a perpetual militia of free-traders. All cooks
proverbially encourage an enormous consumption of victuals. The study of
Soyer will infallibly transform three fourths of the empire into cooks.
Consequently, the demand for every variety of sustenance, by an immense
majority of the nation, will be exorbitant and perennial. No syllogism
can be more unassailable. We venture also to affirm that the judgment of
posterity will be rigidly true in apportioning the endurance of fame
which the conflicting merits of our great benefactors may deserve. It is
far from unlikely that the glories of a Peel may be disregarded,
forgotten, and unsung, when the trophies of a Soyer, still odorous, and
unctuous, and fresh, shall be in everybody’s mouth.
The ‘Gastronomic Regenerator’ has not assumed his imposing title without
a full appreciation of the dignity of his office, and the elevation of
his mission. The brief and graceful “dialogue culinaire” between Lord M.
H. and himself, illustrates the grand doctrines that man is a cooking
animal, and that the progress of cooking is the progress of
civilization. There is something prodigiously sublime in the words of
the noble interlocutor, when he declares, “Read history, and you see
that in every age, and among all nations, the good which has been done,
and sometimes the evil, has been always preceded or followed by a
copious dinner.” This language, we presume, must be considered, on the
great scale, as applicable to the most solemn and momentous occurrences
in the history of governments and countries. Not that we can exclude it
from individual biography. Benevolence we have always regarded as a
good sauce, and have often observed it to be an excellent dessert. The
man who tucks his napkin under his chin immediately after conferring a
benefit on a fellow-creature, invariably manifests marvellous
capabilities for digestion; and, on the other hand, the man who has
dined to his own entire satisfaction, if solicited in the nick of time,
will frequently evince an open-handed generosity, to which his more
matutine emotions would have been strangers. But--to reverse the
picture--any interruption to the near prospect of a “copious dinner” is
at all times inimical to charity; while repletion, we know, occasionally
reveals such unamiable dispositions as could not have been detected by
the most jealous scrutiny at an earlier period of the day. Nations are
but hives of individuals. We understand, therefore, the noble lord to
mean, that all the history of all the thousand races of the globe
concurrently teaches us that every great event, social or political,
domestic or foreign, involving their national weal or woe, has been
harbingered or commemorated by a “copious dinner.” Many familiar
instances of this profound truth--some of very recent date--crowd into
our recollection. But we cannot help suspecting a deeper meaning to be
inherent in the enunciation of this “great fact.” Copious dinners are,
as it strikes us, here covertly represented as the means of effecting
the most extensive ameliorations. To dine is insinuated to be the first
step on the highway to improvement. In the consequences which flow from
dining copiously, what is beneficial is evidently stated to preponderate
over what is hurtful, the qualifying “sometimes” being only attached to
the latter. In this respect, dinners seem to differ from men, that the
evil is more frequently “interred with their bones,” while the “good
they do lives after them.” This is, assuredly ringing a dinner-bell
incessantly to the whole universe. We have ourselves, not half an hour
ago, paid our quota for participating within the last week in
congratulatory festivities to two eminent public characters. The
overwhelming recurrence, in truth, of these entertainments, drains us
annually of a handsome income; and, reading as we do daily in the
newspapers, how every grocer, on changing his shop round the corner, and
every professor of dancing, on being driven by the surges of the
Utilitarian system up another flight of stairs, must, to felicitate or
soothe him, receive the tribute or consolation of a banquet and
demonstration, we hold up our hands in amazement at the opulence and
deglutition of Scotland.
What shall become of us, driven further onwards still, by the impetus of
the ‘Gastronomic Regenerator,’ we dare not fortell. The whole year may
be a circle of public feasts; and our institutions gradually, although
with no small velocity, relapse into the common table of Sparta. But
never, whispers Soyer, into the black broth of Lycurgus. And so he
ensnares us into the recognition of another fundamental principle, that
the simplicity of Laconian fare might be admirably appropriate for
infant republics and penniless helots, but can afford no subsistence to
an overgrown empire, and the possessors of the wealth of the world! Thus
cookery marks, dates, and authenticates the refinement of mankind. The
savage cuts his warm slice from the haunches of the living animal, and
swallows it reeking from the kitchen of nature. The civilized European,
revolting from the dreadful repast, burns, and boils, and stews, and
roasts his food into an external configuration, colour, and substance,
as different from its original condition as the mummy of Cheops differs
from the Cheops who watched, with an imperial dilatation of his brow,
the aspiring immortality of the pyramids. Both, in acting so
differently, are the slaves and the types of the circumstances of their
position. The functions in the frames of both are the same; but these
functions curiously follow the discipline of the social situation which
directs and regulates their development. The economy of the kitchen is
only a counterpart, in its simplicity or complication, its rudeness or
luxury, of the economy of the state. The subjects of patriarchs and
despots may eat uncooked horses with relish and nourishment. The
denizens of a political system whose every motion is regulated by an
intricate machinery, in which the teeth of all the myriad wheels in
motion are indented with inextricable multiplicity of confusion into
each other, perish under any nurture which is not as intricate, complex,
artificial, and confused. What a noble and comprehensive science is this
Gastronomy!
“Are you not also,” says the philosophic Soyer, in the same interesting
dialogue, “of opinion with me, my lord, that nothing better disposes the
mind of man to amity in thought and deed, than a dinner which has been
knowingly selected, and artistically served?” The answer is most
pregnant. “It is my thinking so,” replies Lord M. H., “which has always
made me say that a good cook is as useful as a wise minister.” Behold to
what an altitude we are carried! The loaves and fishes in the hands of
the Whigs, and Soyer at the Reform Club to dress them! Let us banish
melancholy, and drive away dull care. The bellicose propensities of a
foreign secretary are happily innocuous. The rumours of war pass by us
like the idle wind which we regard not. Protocols and treaties, notes
and representations, are henceforth disowned by diplomacy. The figure of
Britannia, with a stewpan for her helmet, and a spit for a spear,
leaning in statuesque repose on a folio copy of ‘The Gastronomic
Regenerator,’
“Surveys mankind from China to Peru;”
and with an unruffled ocean at her feet, and a cloudless sky overhead,
smiles on the countless millions of the children of earth, chatting
fraternally together at the round table of universal peace. Bright will
be the morning of the day which sees the impress of such an image on our
currency. Of course, it will be understood that we are entirely of the
same mind, abstractly, as M. Soyer and Lord M. H. The _maître de
cuisine_ appears to us unquestionably to be one of the most important
functionaries belonging to an embassy. Peace or war, which it is
scarcely necessary to interpret as the happiness or the misery of two
great countries, may depend upon a headache. Now, if it were possible,
in any case, to trace the bilious uneasiness which may have perverted
pacific intentions into hostile designs, to the unskilful or careless
performance of his momentous duties by the cook-legate, no punishment
could too cruelly expiate such a blunder. We should be inclined to
propose that the brother artist who most adroitly put the delinquent to
torture, should be his successor, holding office under a similar tenure.
It may be matter of controversy, however, at once whether such a system
would work well, and whether it is agreeable to the prevalence of those
kindly feelings which it is the object of M. Soyer, and every other good
cook or wise statesman, to promulgate throughout the human family. The
publication of ‘The Gastronomic Regenerator’ inspires us with better
hopes. The tyro of the dripping-pan will be no more entitled to screen
himself behind his imperfect science or neglected education, than the
unlettered criminal to plead his ignorance of the alphabet as a
justification of his ignorance of the statute law whose enactments send
him to Botany Bay. The rudiments and the mysteries--the elementary
axioms and most recondite problems--of his lofty vocation are unrolled
before him in legible and intelligible characters. The skill which is
the offspring of practice, must be attained by his opportunities and his
industry. And if
“Fame is the spur which the clear spirit doth raise,”
it might, we trust, satiate the most ravenous appetite which ever gnawed
the bowels even of a cook, not merely to secure the tranquillity of the
universe, but to save his native land the expense of armies and fleets,
and turn the currents of gold, absorbed by taxation, into the more
congenial channel of gastronomical enterprise. The majestic and
far-spreading oak springs out of the humble acorn. In future ages the
acute historian will demonstrate how the “copious dinner” which cemented
the bonds of eternal alliance between vast and consolidated empires,
whose people were clothed in purple and fine linen, lived in habitations
decorated with every tasteful and gorgeous variety which caprice could
suggest and affluence procure, and mingled the physical indolence of
Sybaris with the intellectual activity of Athens, was but the ripe fruit
legitimately matured from the simple bud of the calumet of peace, which
sealed a hollow truce among the roving and puny bands of the naked,
cityless, and untutored Indian. So, once more, the perfectibility of
cookery indicates the perfectibility of society.
The gallantry of Soyer is as conspicuous as his historical and political
philosophy. He would not profusely “scatter plenty o’er a smiling land”
solely for the gratification of his own sex. The sun shines on woman as
on man; and when the sun will not shine, a woman’s eye supplies all the
light we need. The sagacious Regenerator refuses to restrict to the
lordly moiety of mankind a monopoly of his beams, feeling that, when the
pressure of mortal necessity sinks his head, fairer hands than those of
the statesman or the warrior, the ecclesiastic or the lawyer, are likely
to be the conservators of his reputation. “Allow me,” he remarks, “to
suggest to your lordship, that a meeting for practical gastronomical
purposes, _where there are no ladies_, is in my eyes a garden without
flowers, a sea without waves, an experimental squadron without sails.”
“Without the smile from partial beauty won,
Say what were man?--a world without a sun!”
The harrowing picture of desolation, from the pen of M. Soyer, may be
equalled, but cannot be surpassed, by a line here and there in Byron’s
‘Darkness.’ The sentiment, at the same time, sounds oddly, as it issues
from the penetralia of a multitudinous club. Our notion has hitherto
been, that a club was an invention of which a principal object was to
prove that female society was far from being indispensable to man, and
that all the joys of domesticity might be tasted in a state of
single-blessedness beyond the precincts of home for a small annual
payment. A thorough-going club-man would very soon drive a coach and
four through the Regenerator’s polite eloquence. For instance, a garden
without flowers has so much the more room for the growth of celery,
asparagus, artichokes, and the like. There could not possibly be a
greater convenience than the evaporation or disappearance of the waters
of the ocean; because we should then have railways everywhere, and no
nausea. Sails, likewise, are not requisite now-a-days for ships; on the
contrary, steam-vessels are so evidently superior, that the sail-maker
may as well shut up his shop. The flowers of a garden are an
incumbrance--the waves of the sea are an impediment--the sails of a ship
are a superfluity. Garden, sea, and ship would be better wanting
flowers, waves, and sails. On the same principles a club is preferable
to a family fireside, and the lot of a bachelor to the fate of a
Benedict. M. Soyer, speaking _ex cathedrâ_ from the kitchen of the
Reform Club, would find it no easy matter to parry the cogency of this
reasoning. He forgets, apparently, that he bares his breast to a most
formidable attack. What right have MEN to be cooks? What hypocrisy it is
to regret that women cannot eat those dinners which women alone are
entitled, according to the laws of nature and the usages of Britain, to
dress! Be just before you affect to be generous! Surrender the place,
and the privileges, and the immunities, which are the heritage and
birthright of the petticoat! Hercules with a distaff was bad enough; but
where, in the vagaries and metamorphoses of heathen mythology, do you
read of Hercules with a dishclout? What would the moon say, should the
sun insist on blazing away all night as well as all day? Your
comparisons are full of poetry and humbug. A kitchen without a female
cook--it is like a flowerless garden, a waveless sea, a sailless ship. A
kitchen with a male cook--is a monster which natural history rejects,
and good feeling abhors. The rights of women are scarcely best
vindicated by him who usurps the most precious of them. There will be
time to complain of their absence from the scene, when, by a proper
self-ostracism, you leave free for them the stage which it becomes them
to occupy. These are knotty matters, M. Soyer, for digestion. With so
pretty a quarrel we shall not interfere, having a wholesome respect for
an Amazonian enemy who can stand fire like salamanders. To be candid, we
are puzzled by the sprightliness of our own fancy, and do not very
distinctly comprehend how we have managed to involve the Regenerator,
whose thoughts were bent on the pale and slim sylphs of the boudoir, in
a squabble with the rubicund and rotund vestals who watch the
inextinguishable flames of THE GREAT HEARTH.
This marvellous dialogue, from which we have taken with our finger and
thumb a tit-bit here and there, might be the text for inexhaustible
annotation. It occupied no more than two pages; but, as Gibbon has said
of Tacitus, “they are the pages of Soyer.” Every topic within the range
of human knowledge is touched, by direct exposition or collateral
allusion. The metaphysician and the theologian, the physiologist and the
moralist, are all challenged to investigate its dogmas, which, let us
forewarn them, are so curtly, positively, and oracularly propounded, as,
if orthodox, to need no commentary; and if heterodox, to demand
accumulated mountains of controversy to overwhelm them. For he, we
believe, can hardly be deemed a mean opponent, unworthy of a foeman’s
steel-pen, who has at his fingers’ ends “Mullets à la Montesquieu,”
“Fillets of Haddock à la St. Paul,” “Saddle of Mutton à la Mirabeau,”
“Ribs of Beef à la Bolingbroke,” “Pouding Soufflé à la Mephistophéles,”
“Woodcock à la Staël,” and “Filets de Bœuf farcis à la Dr. Johnson.”
The constitution of English cookery is precisely similar to the
constitution of the English language. Both were prophetically sketched
by Herodotus in his description of the army of Xerxes, which gathered
its numbers, and strength, and beauty from “all the quarters in the
shipman’s card.” That imperishable mass of noble words--that glorious
tongue in which Soyer has prudently written ‘The Gastronomic
Regenerator,’ is in itself an unequalled specimen of felicitous cookery.
The dishes which furnished the most recherché dinner Soyer ever dressed,
the “Dîner Lucullusian à la Sampayo,” being resolved into the chaos
whence they arose in faultless proportions and resistless grace, would
not disclose elements and ingredients more heterogeneous, remote, and
altered from their primal nature, than those which go to the composition
of the few sentences in which he tells us of this resuscitation of the
cœna of Petronius. A thousand years and a thousand accidents, the
deepest erudition and the keenest ingenuity, the most delicate wit and
most outrageous folly, have been co-operating in the manufacture of the
extraordinary vocabulary which has enabled the Regenerator himself to
concoct the following unparalleled receipt for “The Celestial and
Terrestrial Cream of Great Britain.” (See p. 719.)
Half a century hence, when the simmering over the roseate fire is
silent, may we, with M. Soyer, be present to gaze on the happy
consummation of the conceptions of his transcendent imagination!
The Regenerator is too conversant with universal history not to know
that his book, in crossing the Tweed northwards, approaches a people
more familiar with its fundamental principles than any other inhabitants
of these Fortunate Isles. England, for anything we care, may deserve the
opprobrious title of perfidious Albion. Scotland--(“Stands Scotland
where it did?”)--was ever the firm friend of France. Ages ago, when our
southern cousins were incessantly fighting, we were constantly dining,
with the French. Our royal and noblest families were mingled by the
dearest ties with the purest and proudest blood of the adopted land of
Mary. For centuries uninterruptedly was maintained an interchange of
every gentle courtesy, and every friendly succour; and when the
broadsword was not needed to gleam in the front ranks of Gallic
chivalry, the dirk never failed to emit the first flash in the
onslaughts of Gallic hospitality. The Soyers of those times--dim
precursors of the Regenerator--did not disdain to alight on our hungry
shores, and leave monuments of their beneficence, which are grateful to
this hour in the nostrils and to the palate of prince and peasant. Nay,
we shrewdly conjecture that some time-honoured secrets still dwell with
us, of which the memory has long since perished in their birthplace.
Boastful we may not suffer ourselves to be. But if M. Soyer ever heard
of, or dressed, or tasted precisely as we have dressed and tasted, what
is known to us and a very limited circle of acquaintances as
“Lamb-toasty,” we shall start instantly from the penultimate habitation
of Ultima Thule, commonly known as John O’Groat’s House, expressly to
test his veracity, and gratify our voracity. Perhaps he may think it
would not be too polite in us to transmit him the receipt. Not for a
wilderness of Regenerators! Could we unfold to him the awful legend in
connexion with it, of which we are almost the exclusive depositaries,
the cap so lightly lying on his brow would be projected upwards to the
roof by the instantaneous starting of his hair. The Last Minstrel
himself, to whom it was narrated, shook his head when he heard it, and
was never known to allude to it again; in reference to which
circumstance, all that the bitterest malice could insinuate was, that if
the story had been worth remembering, he was not likely to have
forgotten it. “One December midnight, a shriek”--is probably as far as
we can now venture to proceed. There are some descendants of the
parties, whose feelings, even after the lapse of five hundred years,
which is but as yesterday in a Highlander’s genealogy, we are bound to
respect. In other five hundred years, we shall, with more safety to
ourselves, let them “sup full of horrors.”
‘The Gastronomic Regenerator’ reminds us of no book so much as the
Despatches of Arthur Duke of Wellington. The orders of Soyer emanate
from a man with a clear, cool, determined mind--possessing a complete
mastery of his weapons and materials, and prompt to make them available
for meeting every contingency--singularly fertile in conceiving, and
fortunate without a check in executing, sudden, rapid, and difficult
combinations--overlooking nothing with his eagle eye, and, by the
powerful felicity of his resources, making the most of everything--matchless
in his “Hors-d’œuvres”--unassailable in his “Removes”--impregnable in
his “Pièces de résistance”--and unconquerable with his “Flanks.” His
directions are lucid, precise, brief, and unmistakable. There is not a
word in them superfluous--or off the matter immediately on hand--or not
directly to the point. They are not the dreams of a visionary theorist
and enthusiast, but the hard, solid, real results of the vast experience
of a tried veteran, who has personally superintended or executed all the
operations of which he writes. It may be matter of dispute whether
Wellington or Soyer acquired their knowledge in the face of the hotter
fire. They are both great Chiefs--whose mental and intellectual
faculties have a wonderful similarity--and whose sayings and doings are
characterized by an astonishing resemblance in nerve, perspicuity,
vigour, and success. In one respect M. Soyer has an advantage over his
illustrious contemporary. His Despatches are addressed to an army which
as far outnumbers any force ever commanded or handled by the Hero of
Waterloo, as the stars in the blue empyrean exceed the gas-lamps of
London--an army which, instead of diminishing under any circumstances,
evinces a tendency, we fear, of steadily swelling its ranks year by
year, and day by day--a standing army, which the strong band of the most
jealous republicanism cannot suppress, and which the realization of the
bright chimera of universal peace will fail to disband. Before many
months are gone, thousands and tens of thousands will be marching and
countermarching, cutting and skewering, broiling and freezing, in blind
obedience to the commands of the Regenerator. “Peace hath her victories
no less than those of war.” But it is not to be forgotten that if the
sword of Wellington had not restored and confirmed the tranquillity of
the world, the carving-knife of Soyer might not have been so bright.
The confidence of Soyer in his own handiwork is not the arrogant
presumption of vanity, but the calm self-reliance of genius. There is a
deal of good sense in the paragraph which we now quote. (See p. xl.)
It seems a childish remark to make, that all salts do not coincide in
their saltness, nor sugars in their sweetness. The principle, however,
which the observation contains within it, is anything but childish. It
implies that, supposing the accuracy of a Soyer to be nearly infallible,
the faith in his instructions must never be so implicit as to supersede
the testimony of one’s own senses, and the admonitions of one’s own
judgment. It is with the most poignant recollections that we acknowledge
the justice of the Regenerator’s caution on this head. We once, with a
friend who shared our martyrdom, tried to make onion soup in exact
conformity with what was set down in an Oracle of Cookery, which a foul
mischance had placed across our path. With unerring but unreflecting
fidelity, we filled, and mixed, and stirred, and watched the fatal
caldron. The result was to the eye inexpressibly alarming. A thick oily
fluid, repulsive in colour, but infinitely more so in smell, fell with a
flabby, heavy, lazy stream into the soup-plate. Having swallowed, with a
Laocoonic contortion of countenance, two or three mouthfuls, our
individual eyes wandered stealthily towards our neighbour. Evidently we
were fellow-sufferers; but pride, which has occasioned so many
lamentable catastrophes, made us both dumb and obdurate in our agony.
Slowly and sadly, at lengthened intervals, the spoon, with its
abominable freight, continued to make silent voyages from the platters
to our lips. How long we made fools of ourselves it is not necessary to
calculate. Suddenly, by a simultaneous impulse, the two windows of the
room favoured the headlong exit of two wretches whose accumulated
grievances were heavier than they could endure. Hours rolled away, while
the beautiful face of Winander mere looked as ugly as Styx, as we
writhed along its banks, more miserably moaning than the hopeless beggar
who sighed for the propitiatory obolus to Charon. And from that
irrevocable hour we have abandoned onions to the heroines of tragedy.
Fools, in spite of all warning, are taught by such a process as that to
which we submitted. Wise men take a hint.
“Nature, says I to myself”--Soyer is speaking--“compels us to dine more
or less once a-day.” The average which oscillates between the “more” and
the “less,” it requires considerable dexterity to catch. Having read six
hundred pages and fourteen hundred receipts, the question is, where are
we to begin? Our helplessness is confessed. Is it possible the
Regenerator is, after all, more tantalizing than the Barmecide? No--here
is the very aid we desiderate. Our readers shall judge of a “Dinner
Party at Home.” (See p. 636.)
We shall be exceedingly curions to hear how many hundred parties of
eight persons, upon reading this bill of fare in our pages, will,
without loss of time, congregate in order to do it substantial honour.
Such a clattering of brass and brandishing of steel may strike a new
government as symptomatical or preparatory of a popular rising. We may
therefore reassure them with the information, that those who sit down
with M. Soyer, will have little thought of rising for a long time
afterwards.
We have introduced ‘The Gastronomic Regenerator’ to public notice in
that strain which its external appearance, its title, its scheme, and
its contents, demand and justify. But we must not, even good-humouredly,
mislead those for whose use its publication is principally intended. To
all intents and purposes M. Soyer’s work is strictly and most
intelligibly practical. It is as full of matter as an egg is full of
meat; and the household which would travel through its multitudinous
lessons must be as full of meat as the Regenerator is full of matter.
The humblest, as well as the wealthiest kitchen economy, is considered
and instructed; nor will the three hundred receipts at the conclusion of
the volume, which are more peculiarly applicable to the “Kitchen at
Home,” be, probably, the portion of the book least agreeable and
valuable to the general community. For example, just before shaking
hands with him, let us listen to M. Soyer, beginning admirably to
discourse of the “Choosing and Roasting of plain Joints.” (See p. 637.)
How full of milky kindness is his language, still breathing the spirit
of that predominant idea--the tranquillization of the universe by
“copious dinners!” He has given up “basting” with success. Men may as
well give up basting one another. Nobody will envy the Regenerator the
bloodless fillets worthily encircling his forehead, should the
aspirations of his benevolent soul in his lifetime assume any tangible
shape. But if a more distant futurity is destined to witness the lofty
triumph, he may yet depart in the confidence of its occurrence. The most
precious fruits ripen the most slowly. The sun itself does not burst at
once into meridian splendour. Gradually breaks the morning; and the
mellow light glides noiselessly along, tinging mountain, forest, and the
city spire, till a stealthy possession seems to be taken of the whole
upper surface of creation, and the mighty monarch at last uprises on a
world prepared to expect, to hail, and to reverence his perfect and
unclouded majesty.