It is chiefly men of intellect who hold good eating in honour.
The head is not capable of a mental operation which consists in
a long sequence of appreciations, and many severe decisions of
the judgment, which has not a well-fed brain.
BRILLAT SAVARIN.
A good dinner and a pretty hostess,--for there are terms on which
beauty and beef can meet much to the benefit of both,--one wit,
several good talkers, and as many good listeners, or more of the
latter, are said to make a combination which even our greatest
statesmen do not despise. Man wants good dinners. It is woman's
province to provide them; but nature and education must make the
conscientious diner.
It is to be feared that we are too much in a hurry to be truly
conscientious diners. Our men have too many school-tasks
yet,--politics, money-making, science, mental improvement, charities,
psychical research, building railroads, steam monitors, colleges, and
such like gauds,--too many such distractions to devote themselves as
they ought to the question of _entrées_ and _entremets_. They should
endeavour to give the dinner a fitting place. Just see how the noble
language of France, which Racine dignified and Molière amplified,
respectfully puts on its robes of state which are lined with ermine
when it approaches the great subject of dinner!
It is to be feared that we are far off from the fine art of dining,
although many visits to Paris and much patronage of Le Doyon's, the
Café Anglais, and the Café des Ambassadeurs, may have prepared us for
the _entremet_ and the _pièce de résistance_. We are improving in this
respect and no longer bolt our dinners. The improvement is already
manifest in the better tempers and complexions of our people.
But are we as conscientious as the gentleman in "Punch" who rebuked
the giddy girl who would talk to him at dinner? "Do you remember, my
dear, that you are in the house of the best _entrées_ in London? I
wish to eat my dinner."
That was a man to cook for! He had his appropriate calm reserve of
appreciation, for the _suprême de volaille_. He knew how to watch and
wait for the sweetbreads, and green peas. Not thrown away upon him was
that last turn which makes the breast of the partridge become of a
delicate Vandyck brown. How respectful was he to that immortal art for
which the great French cook died, a suicide for a belated turbot.
"Ah," said Parke Godwin once, when in one of his most brilliant
Brillat Savarin moods, "how it ennobles a supper to think that all
these oysters will become ideas!"
But if a dinner is not a cookery book, neither is it a matter of
expense alone, nor a payment of social debts. It is a question of
temperature, of the selection of guests, of the fitness of things, of
a proper variety, and of time. The French make their exquisite dinners
light and short. The English make theirs a trifle long and heavy.
The young hostess, to strike the _juste milieu_, must travel, reflect,
and go to a cooking-school. She must buy and read a library of
cooking-books. And when all is done and said, she must realize that a
cookery-book is not a dinner. There are some natures which can absorb
nothing from a cookery-book. As Lady Galway said that she had put all
her wits into Bradshaw's "Railway Guide" and had never got them out
again, so some amateur cook remarked that she had tested her recipes
with the "cook-book in one hand and the cooking-stove in the other,"
yet the wit had stayed away. All young housekeepers must go through
the discipline--in a land where cooks are as yet scarce--of trying and
failing, of trying and at length succeeding. They must go to _La Belle
France_ to learn how to make a soup, for instance. That is to say,
they must study the best French authorities.
The mere question of sustenance is easy of solution. We can stand by a
cow and drink her milk, or we can put some bread in our pockets and
nibble it as we go along; but dinner as represented by our complicated
civilization is a matter of interest which must always stand high
amongst the questions which belong to social life. It is a very
strange attendant circumstance that having been a matter of profound
concern to mankind for so many years, it is now almost as easy to find
a bad dinner as a good one, even in Paris, that headquarters of
cookery.
There would be no sense in telling a young American housekeeper to
learn to make sauces and to cook like a French _chef_, for it is a
profession requiring years of study and great natural taste and
aptitude. A French _chef_ commands a higher salary than a secretary of
state or than a civil engineer. As well tell a young lady that she
could suddenly be inspired with a knowledge of the art of war or of
navigation. She would only perhaps learn to do very badly what they in
ten years learn to do so well. She would say in her heart, "For my
part I am surfeited with cookery. I cry, something _raw_ if you please
for me,--something that has never been touched by hand except the one
that pulled it off the blooming tree or uprooted it from the honest
ground. Let me be a Timon if you will, and eat green radishes and
cabbages, or a Beau Brummel, asphyxiated in the consumption of a green
pea; but no _ragoût_, _côtelette_, _compote_, _crème_, or any hint or
cooking till the remembrance of all that I have seen has faded and the
smell of it has passed away!"
Thus said one who attended a cooking-school, had gone through the
mysteries of soup-making, had learned what _sauté_ means; had mastered
_entremets_, and _entrées_, and _plats_, and _hors d'oeuvres_; had
learned that _boudins de veau_ are simply veal puddings, something a
little better than a veal croquette made into a little pie; and had
found that all meats if badly cooked are much alike. There is a great
deal of nonsense talked about making good dishes out of nothing. A
French cook is very economical, he uses up odds and ends, but he must
have something to cook with.
Stone broth does not go down with a hungry man, nor bad food, however
disguised with learned sauces. A little learning is a dangerous thing,
and one who attempts too much will fail. But one can read, and
reflect, and get the general outlines of cultivated cookery. As to
cultivated cookery being necessarily extravagant, that is a mistake. A
great, heavy, ill-considered dinner is no doubt costly. Almost all
American housekeeping is wasteful in the extreme, but the modern
vanities which depend on the skill of the cook and the arranging mind
of the housekeeper, all these are the triumphs of the present age, and
worthy of deep thought and consideration. Let the young housekeeper
remember that the pretty _entrées_ made out of yesterday's roast
chicken or turkey will be a great saving as well as a great luxury,
and she will learn to make them.
Amongst a busy people like ourselves, from poorest to the richest,
dinners are intended to be recreations, and recreations of inestimable
value. The delightful contrast which they offer to the labours of the
day, the pleasant, innocent triumph they afford to the hostess, in
which all may partake without jealousy, the holiday air of guests and
of the dining-room, which should be fresh, well aired, filled with
flowers, made bright with glass and silver,--all this refreshes the
tired man of affairs and invigorates every creature. As far as
possible, the discussion of all disagreeable subjects should be kept
from the dinner-table. All that is unpleasant lowers the pulse and
retards digestion. All that is cheerful invigorates the pulse and
helps the human being to live a more brave and useful life. No one
should bring an unbecoming grumpiness to the dinner-table. Be grumpy
next day if you choose, when the terrapin may have disagreed with you,
but not at the feast. Bring the best bit of news and gossip, not
scandal, the choicest critique of the last novel, the cream of your
correspondence. Be sympathetic, amiable, and agreeable at a feast,
else it were better you had stayed away. The last lesson of luxury is
the advice to contribute of our very best to the dinners of our
friends, while we form our own dinners on the plane of the highest
luxury which we can afford, and avoid the great _too much_. Remember
that in all countries the American lavish prodigality of feasting,
and the expensive garniture of hothouse flowers, are always spoken of
as vulgar. How well it will be for us when our splendid array of fish,
flesh, and fowl shall have reached the benediction of good cookery;
when we know how to serve it, not with barbaric magnificence and
repletion, but with a delicate sense of fitness.
Mr. Webster, himself an admirable dinner giver, said of a codfish
salad that it was "fit to eat." He afterwards remarked, more
gravely,--and it made him unpopular,--that a certain nomination was
"not fit to be made."
That led to a discussion of the word "fit." The fitness of things, the
right amount, the thing in the right place, whether it be the
condiment of a salad or the nomination to the presidency,--this is the
thing to consult, to think of in a dinner; let it be "fit to be made."