forgetting that surroundings often add much to flavour, Véron, on
his part, felt inclined to think that Dumas had a clever chef in
the background, upon whose victories he plumed himself. A few days
afterwards, meeting Véron at the Café de Paris, Dumas inquired after
the result of Sophie's efforts. The doctor was reticent at first, not
caring to acknowledge Sophie's failure. When one of the company at last
mentioned the suspicions attached to the carp, Dumas became furious.
Then, after a pause, he said, "There is but one reply to such a charge:
you will all dine with me to-morrow, and you will choose a delegate who
will come to my house at three to see me prepare the dinner."
"I was the youngest," says the author of "An Englishman in Paris,"
who relates the story, "and the choice fell upon me. That is how my
lifelong friendship with Dumas began. At three o'clock next day I was
at the Chaussée d'Antin, and was taken by the servant into the kitchen,
where the great novelist stood surrounded by his utensils, some of
silver, and all of them glistening like silver. With the exception of
a _soupe aux choux_, at which, by his own confession, he had been at
work since the morning, all the ingredients for the dinner were in
their natural state--of course, washed and peeled, but nothing more. He
was assisted by his own cook and a kitchen-maid, but he himself, with
his sleeves rolled up to the elbows, a large apron round his waist,
and bare chest, conducted the operations. I do not think I have ever
seen anything more entertaining, and I came to the conclusion that when
writers insisted upon the culinary challenges of Carême, Dugléré, and
Casimir they were not indulging in mere metaphor.
"At half-past six the guests began to arrive; at a quarter to seven
Dumas retired to his dressing-room; at seven punctually the servant
announced that 'monsieur était servi.' The dinner consisted of the
aforenamed _soupe aux choux_, the carp that had led to the invitation,
a _ragoût de mouton à la Hongroise_, _rôti de faisans_, and a _salade
Japonaise_. The sweets and ices had been sent by the _pâtissier_. I
never dined like that before or after--not even a week later, when Dr.
Véron and Sophie made the _amende honorable_ in the Rue Taitbout."
As a sample of Dumas' abilities in the _petite cuisine_, his _potage
aux choux_ may be cited,--his mode of preparing Sauerkraut, like that
of all French cooks, is not to be commended:
"Take a sound fresh cabbage, hash up all the remains of fowl
and game that may be on hand, and have a good yesterday's
bouillon, which pour in place of ordinary water on the beef
intended for the day's bouillon. Then cover the bottom of the
stewpan with a slice of fine ham, remove the leaves of the
cabbage, and introduce the forcemeat, tying up the leaves
afterwards so it will not be perceptible. Boil two hours,
filling with the bouillon of the pot-au-feu as the bouillon
of the boiling diminishes. After removing the bouillon from
the fire, let the bouillon, cabbage, forcemeat, and ham
simmer together for three quarters of an hour in the stewpan,
give a last turn to the bouillon, serve your cabbage in the
soup-tureen, allow it to cool a minute, and serve. Then you
may have the choice of eating your cabbage in the soup, or of
soaking some bread in the bouillon and making of your cabbage
a relevé of the soup. Cooked in this manner, the cabbage, the
bouillon, and the meat, each lending a part of its properties
to the other, attain the greatest sapidity it is possible for
them to attain."
This is the _potage aux choux_. The _soupe aux choux_ is another matter
that sounds equally appetising and has the advantage to the eye of
puffing up the cabbage to far larger dimensions.
The extended remarks on the pot-au-feu itself are well worth the
careful attention of the housewife; the author declaring that the
French cuisine owes its superiority to that of other nations to the
excellence of its bouillon. Seven hours of slow and continuous boiling,
he maintains, are necessary for it to acquire all the requisite
qualities, _i. e._, to _faire sourire_ the soup. The term, "smile," is
happily chosen. Every piece of bread in a good _croûte-au-pot_ wears a
smile, and every dancing globule that remains after the skimmer has
performed its office is a dimple on its face.
Of the basting of meats--and herein the average cook stands in need of
constant advice and still more constant watching--he has this to say
(he is speaking of a truffled turkey after the recipe of the Marquis de
Cussy, which he suggests might be called _Dinde des Artistes_): "Above
all, never moisten your roasts, of whatever nature they may be, except
with butter mixed with salt and pepper. A cook who allows a single drop
of bouillon in the dripping-pan should be instantly discharged and
banished from France."
One of the brightest chapters of the volume is an essay which appears
in the appendix--a eulogium of a certain mustard, in which Dumas
out-Reynières Reynière. But one may overlook the subtle puffery that
sheds a halo over the product of "M. Bornibus," in view of the vast
erudition the writer displays and the grace with which the topic is
invested. The essay first appeared in Monselet's entertaining "Almanach
Gourmand" of 1869, the etymology of the word having been the subject of
a wager between the writer and some of his friends. Of Dumas it may be
said, as it has been said of the truffle, he "embellishes everything
he touches"; or, to paraphrase Savarin's definition, "_Qui dit Dumas,
prononce un grand mot._"
Among the most distinguished of modern professional cooks was Jules
Gouffé, former _officier de bouche_ of the Jockey Club of Paris, whose
"Livre de Cuisine" and "Livre de Pâtisserie" are unexcelled as guides
to the greatest triumphs of the art of which they treat. The "Livre
de Cuisine," which first appeared in 1865, is not a manual that can
be utilised in the ordinary establishment, however; but a volume on a
grand scale, written by a great chef for chefs. Francatelli, though
very elaborate, is much more simple. At any rate, it is possible to
simplify his recipes, or to derive many new ideas from them, even
where his formulas may not be executed in the average household. But
to follow Gouffé calls for the very highest professional skill and the
most lavish expenditure,--the hand of a master, a larder of cockscombs,
crawfish, truffles, plover and pheasants' eggs, not to mention a cellar
of Château Margaux, champagne, and Chablis Moutonne. His recipe for
quails _à la financière_, one of his nine elaborate ways of preparing
the bird, will serve as well as any for illustration:
"Truss eight quails as for braising, put them in a stewpan,
cover them with thin slices of fat bacon, pour in one gill
of Madeira and one half pint of _mirepoix_, and let simmer
until the quails are cooked. Fill a plain border-mould one and
a quarter inches high with chicken forcemeat, poach it _au
bain-marie_, and turn the border out of the mould into a dish
and fill the centre with a _financière ragoût_ made of _foies
gras_, truffles, cockscombs, cocks'-kernels, and chicken
forcemeat quenelles mixed in _financière_ sauce. Drain the
quails, untie them, and place them half on the border, half
on the _ragoût_, the leg towards the centre, put a cockscomb
between each quail, and a large truffle in the centre; glaze
the border, the quails, and truffle with a brush dipped in
glaze, and serve with _financière_ sauce."
With Jules Gouffé, Urbain-Dubois, a chef of the highest order, and
author of six important works on cookery, will be known to posterity
as one of the greatest masters of the range of the second half of the
nineteenth century.
In marked contrast to those of Gouffé and Dubois are the numerous
culinary works of Ildefonse-Léon Brisse, more familiarly known as
Baron Brisse, and who was sometimes termed the Baron Falstaff. Two
of his manuals, moulded on somewhat similar lines, are excellent
mentors for the modest household--"The 366 Menus" (1868) and "La
Petite Cuisine" (1870), of which many editions have appeared. In these
a large number of good, uncommon, and simple dishes are presented,
and both works may be comprehended by all who have a fair practical
knowledge of cookery at command. According to Théodore de Banville,
Baron Brisse was "at once an accomplished cook, a fine and delicate
gourmet, and a gourmand always tormented with an insatiable hunger."
It may therefore be assumed that all his recipes have been personally
tested, and that those he particularly recommends are well worthy
of trial, bearing out the sentiment he expresses in the preface to
"La Petite Cuisine,"--"This book is a good action for which I will
be duly credited in this world or the other." Besides his numerous
volumes on cookery, he founded and contributed to several culinary
journals. He laughed and ate. He was of enormous stature, and always
was obliged to secure two places in the diligence between Paris and
his home at Fontenay-aux-Roses, where he resided previous to his death
in 1876. With Jules Gouffé he instituted a series of dinners where
the guests were expected to dine in white frocks and round white
caps, like the fat old cooks that Roland has painted--dinners presided
over by the baron, whose _bonhomie_ was proverbial, and executed
under the directions of Gouffé himself. But apart from his excellent
cookery-books, Baron Brisse should be held in abiding reverence by all
entertainers that are worthy of the name, if only for his splendid
axiom,--"The host whose guest has been obliged to ask him for anything
is a dishonoured man!"
[Illustration]
[Illustration: DAY'S CLOSING HOUR
From the etching by Charles Jacque]
[Illustration]
THE COOK'S CONFRÈRE
"Les vûës courtes, je veux dire les esprits bornez et
resserrez dans leur petite sphère, ne peuvent comprendre cette
universalité de talens que l'on remarque quelquefois dans un
même sujet."--LA BRUYERE: Du Mérite Personnel.
It were ungracious to trace the development of gastronomy further, or
to peruse its literature at greater length, without rendering justice
to the chief cause of its progress, deprived of which a Carême and a
Gouffé were impossible, and cookery, from a fine art, would resolve
itself into a perfunctory obligation. The reader who has followed the
writer thus far will surely not require to be told that the great
evolutionist of the table is neither the cook nor yet the range or the
pot-au-feu so much as the quadruped that Rome once selected for its
badge and cognisance. _A tout seigneur, tout honneur!_--let us not
be unmindful of the inestimable benefits the hog has conferred upon
mankind. Where, indeed, may one find that universality of talents
referred to by La Bruyère so combined in a single individual as in the
animal which the "short-sighted and narrow-minded" has so unjustly
maligned? To what utilities does he not lend and blend himself, and
where among _Ungulata_ or ruminators terrene were his substitute--a
_pièce de résistance_ for the poor, a _jouissance_ and benison for all.
If we accept the testimony of various pagan writers, pork, of which
the ancients were so fond, originally came into use about a thousand
years after the deluge, when Ceres, having sown a field of wheat,
found it invaded one day by a pig. This so incensed the goddess that
she forthwith punished the offender with death, and afterwards, having
him cooked, discovered his superior virtues--to set the example of
utilising him as food. The usual corn-cob placed in the mouth of a
freshly killed porker, therefore, not only reflects the delicacy of
his tastes, but is also classic in a measure--a symbol of his intimate
relationship with mythology and his place amid the Graces.
By the ancient Egyptians the flesh of the swine was held to be impure.
So was that of the camel, the cony, and the hare; so also the fat of
the ox or of sheep or of goat. "Every beast of the wood or the hedge
or the burrow, over and above the beasts of the chase and the warren,
according to the ancient writers, is to be called 'rascal.'" The hog
is likewise placed under ban by the Hindus and strict Buddhists, and
is still generally regarded as unclean by the Mohammedans. But the
Mohammedans and Hindus have no cuisine worthy of the name, and what
were a cuisine without the resources supplied by his inexhaustible
larder! The religious tenet of the Israelites by which the swine is
proscribed as an article of diet is honoured more in the breach than
in the observance. The Chinese have ever been fond of his savoury
flesh, and it may be said that with nearly all nations he forms one of
the leading staples of consumption. With the onion and that priceless
herb parsley, which stimulates appetite, facilitates digestion, and
renders nearly all sauces more attractive, he forms one of the most
indispensable adjuncts of alimentation. Deprived of his lardship, the
onion tribe, and parsley, cookery would soon decline, if indeed the
skilled practitioner would not find it well-nigh impossible to exercise
his art.
Despite what slanderous tongues of the East may utter to his
discredit, therefore, the weight of evidence as to his utility remains
overwhelmingly in his favour. We do not necessarily require him in our
parlours; his true place is the kitchen and the dining-room. Think how
unendurable life would be without him! Of all beasts he is the one
whose empire is most universal, and whose worth is least attested. It
is true that a eulogistic but now unprocurable work of forty-eight
pages was written in Modena in 1761 by D. Giuseppe Ferrari, with the
title "Gli Elogi del Porco." A treatise entitled "Dissertation sur
le Cochon," by M. Buc'hoz, published in 1789, is also cited. But as
this appeared in a series of monographs relating to coffee, cacao, and
various fruits, and has been passed by without comment, it probably
treats the quadruped merely from a sordid point of view, and possesses
no interest unless to the husbandman and stock-raiser.
Few have sung his praises, and, with the exception of Southey's
colloquial poem, no genethliac has been addressed to him in English
rhyme. Monselet has apostrophised him in a poem wherein he terms him
"cher ange," and M. Pouvoisin, in "La Mort du Goret," has tenderly
referred to him as "mon frère." His _oraison funèbre_ is worthy of
Bossuet:
"Fameux par sa naissance et par son éleveur,
Il est mort, le goret, célèbre à tant de titres:
C'est un deuil, mais un deuil qui n'est pas sans saveur;
Versons des pleurs, amis, surtout versons des litres!
Il était si mignon, si lardé, si soyeux:
Nous l'aimions! Maintenant qu'il a subi la flamme,
Qu'il est accommodé, qu'il est délicieux;
Nous lui servons de tombe, et nous en mangeons l'âme.
Dans la profonde paix des estomacs gourmands,
Son échine avec sa fressure vont descendre;
Il n'avait pas rêvé, dans ses gras ronflements,
D'un semblable caveau pour contenir sa cendre.
C'est un honneur bien dû. Quel que soit ton regret
Des repas plantureux, du son, de l'auge pleine,
Tu peux t'enorgueillir, ô mon frère, ô goret.
Nous allons te changer, nous, en substance humaine!"
(Of birth renowned, entitled well to boast,
And reared with care, the little pig is dead:
We sorrow, but we scent the savoury roast,
And mix a bumper while our tears we shed.
We loved him, silky-soft, and plump, and fine,
And now that he has felt the crisping fire
We wait his soul and body to enshrine,
A morsel for an epicure's desire.
He little thought, when grunting in his pen,
That, seasoned thus to tickle gourmand taste,
His chine would glide down throats of feasting men,
And to a noble tomb within us haste.
Regret not, little pig, thine early fate:
Honours are thine beyond the fattening sty,--
We eat thee, brother, and incorporate
Thy substance, thus, in our humanity.)[30]
Another poet, in a "Hymn to the Truffle," has accorded him a
semi-complimentary stanza, referring to him as "a useful animal." A
mediocre sonnet has also been addressed to him by Ernest d'Hervilly in
a series of seven tributes to the oyster, the pig, the gudgeon, the
rabbit, the roebuck, the herring, and the lobster.
"Man's ingratitude toward him," as Grimod de la Reynière remarks in
the "Almanach," "has basely reviled the name of the animal that is the
most useful to the human race when he is no more. He is treated as the
Abbé Geoffroy treats Voltaire; his memory is defamed whilst his flesh
is being savoured, and he is repaid with ironical contempt for the
ineffable pleasures he procures for us."
His classic Porcosity! sacred to Thor, patron of St. Anthony, the
device of Richard III, the favourite animal of Morland and Jacque, how
ungenerously he has been treated!
"All his habits are gross, all his appetites are impure; his stomach
is unbounded and his gluttony unparalleled," say his calumniators.
Yet, in fact, he is no more unclean than most domestic beasts, any
lapses in this respect being due to man and to the evil communications
to which he has been subjected under domestication. The wild hog is
proverbially cleanly, and is almost exclusively a vegetarian. In his
natural state his courage is undaunted. The peccary will challenge
the jaguar, while the wild boar is not unfrequently victorious in his
combats with the tiger himself.
"In this animal," says Beauvilliers, "there is almost nothing to cast
aside." Without him there were, in truth, an aching void and an empty
cuisine,--no lard, no hams, no bacon; no sausages, no spare-rib, no
larded _filets_ and game; no truffles and scientifically blended
_pâtés_; no souse or headcheese; no "Dissertation on Roast Pig";
no chine "with rising bristles roughly spread." His ways are ways
of fatness, and all his paths are progressive. He not only seeks
to instruct, like Virgil; but seeks to please, like Theocritus.
Civilisation radiates from him as light from a prism. With his increase
culture advances, wealth accumulates, and cookery improves. And think
of the services of his ploughshare to the farmer, whose orchards in
many cases would otherwise remain untilled!
His unctuous Lardship! the very fat and marrow of the stock-exchange,
the grease of the commercial wheel. Did he not directly furnish the
inspiration to Dubufe for one of the grandest paintings the world has
produced--the "Return of the Prodigal Son" who shared his husks--to say
nothing of Hogarth and the Scottish poet Hogg, whose ode "To a Skylark"
is scarcely excelled by Shelley's, and whose "Kilmeny" is enduring
among poetic strains? And what were the spirited hunting scenes of
Weenix, Sneyders, and Oudry without the great wild boar?
In the fourth canto of "The Faerie Queene" he is pictured as the symbol
of gluttony:
"And by his side rode loathsome Gluttony,
Deformèd creature on a filthy swine.
His belly was upblown with luxury,
And eke with fatness swollen was his eyne.
Full of diseases was his carcass blew,
And a dry Dropsie through his flesh did flow,
Which by misdiet daily greater grew;
Such one was Gluttony, the second of that crew."
But is he a glutton? and has he not been outrageously reviled by
Spenser as well as by the poets in general? Is it fair to accept the
dogmas and predications concerning his status, his vulgarity, and his
voracity that have been bequeathed him from time immemorial? Is he not
a _gourmet_ rather than a _gourmand_? Does he not infinitely prefer the
smallest truffle of Périgord to the hugest pumpkin of the fat prairies
of the West? Not only inordinately fond of the truffle, without which a
pâté de foie gras were a flower without perfume, he is the great hunter
of this highly prized esculent, recognising with Autolycus that a good
nose is requisite to smell out work for the other senses. Yet even then
he is thanklessly treated by man, who, instead of remunerating him with
an occasional tuber, grudgingly tosses him a few kernels of corn. The
despised razorback of the South, in like manner, steadfastly performs
his mission of waging war upon the rattlesnake without ever having been
chosen as the emblem of a State.
To the epicure he must ever bring to mind the perfumed product of
the sunny provinces of Guienne and Dauphiné, the artists of Alsace,
and the _Wurstmachereis_ of Germany. His fondness for the truffle, as
instanced in the wild boar, far exceeds that of the hare, the squirrel,
and the deer; and although the basset-hound and sheep-dog are also of
service in locating the tuber, the pig not only points it, but deftly
uproots it for the greedy hand of man. The pig seeks it by instinct;
the dog, through long and patient training. The pig's education is
accomplished in a few lessons by obtaining his confidence and appealing
to his epicurean taste. A boiled potato accompanied with a few truffle
peelings is placed in a mound of sand, after finding which the animal
is rewarded by a few chestnuts, acorns, or kernels of maize--and the
rest is left to his infallible memory. In fact, the discovery of the
truffle is due to the animal under consideration. "His long snout,"
says La Reynière, "perceived the odour of this treasure at a depth of
several metres. Up to this time, without a doubt, it had been reserved
for the table of some evil genius jealous of the happiness of man; by
his cunning he concealed it from the researches of the scientist, and
some fairy, a friend of the human race, charged the pig, whose keen
scent the goblin had forgotten to forefend, to mine the buried marvel
and bring it to the light of day. However this may be, the first pig
that discovered the truffle had excellent taste; there is no _bel
esprit_ to-day who is not eager to imitate him."[31]
The boar's head, likewise, how suggestive of good cheer! It at once
takes one back to the great baronial dining-halls, the Knights of
the Round Table, and the feasts and wassails of eld. It suggests the
joyous festivals of harvest-home and Yule, with the chief table on the
dais and the tables for retainers and servants, when the family and
attendants assembled amid the blaze of the great hearth-fire and the
music of the harpers and minstrels.
Again, consider his lovely appetite, exquisite digestion, and
imperturbable slumbers that many a millionaire would gladly part with
half his riches to obtain. The papillæ of his tongue are never furred
by dyspepsia, flatulence, gout, or the spleen. Proverbially on the
best of terms with his stomach, he needs no podophyllin, bicarbonates,
or Hunyadi. Sudden variations of temperature affect him not, while
all latitudes are equally conducive to his longevity. Ennui is to him
unknown, and life is never a burden, unless it be the trifling burden
of the weight he carries. He sleeps and eats and digests, and in his
own way solves the problem of content that is still unsolved by man.
His blithesome Porkship! his graces steal into the heart insensibly
if one be a minute philosopher. No cock-crowing or turkey-gobbling,
no lowing of kine or bleating of flocks, no screaming of hawks or
cawing of crows may vie as an expression of the rural landscape with
his complacent grunt of satisfaction and "high-piping _Pehlevi_" of
triumph. A vibrant chord of melody when snouted and bristled disputants
crowd and jostle around the trough or squeal and scramble within the
pen, it yet requires a more potent mediumship to draw forth in its
fullest measure the piercing treble of the porcine lyre. Rather let us
hear it, _arrectis auribus_, rising sonorously along the highway or
drifting adown some reverberant lane, with the dog as the plectrum of
the ham-strings. Thomson, less gracious but more observant than Lamb,
recognised his accomplishments as a lyrist, and in a stanza in "The
Castle of Indolence," a complement to the stanza cited from "The Faerie
Queene," thus apostrophises his power of song:
"Ev'n so through Brentford town, a town of mud,
An herd of bristly swine is pricked along;
The filthy beasts that never chew the cud
Still grunt and squeak, and sing their troublous song,
And oft they plunge themselves the mire among:
But aye the ruthless driver goads them on,
And aye of barking dogs the bitter throng
Make them renew their unmelodious moan;
Ne ever find they rest from their unresting fone."