BONBONS.

Do, child, go to it' grandam, child;

Give grandam kingdom! and it' grandam will

Give it plumb, a cherry, and a fig.

KING JOHN.

They used to call a sugar-plum a plumb in Shakspeare's time. Was it on

account of its weight? Few ladies, on receiving a box of bonbons from

Maillards, go into the great question of their antiquity and their

manufacture. Few, even now, who at a fashionable hotel, receive on

Sundays after dinner a pretty little paper box filled with candied

rose-leaves and violets, remember that they are only following the

fashion of Lucretia Borgia in putting them in their pocket to eat in

their rooms, or at the theatre. There is nothing new under the sun.

In France, in entertaining a lady, or a party of ladies, at theatre or

opera, the gentleman host always carries a box of bonbons, within

which is a little imitation-silver sugar-tongs by which she can help

herself to a chocolate or a _marron déguisé_, without soiling her

fingers. This pampered dame does not consider that France makes

annually sixty million of francs' worth of bonbons; that it exports

only about one fourth of this, leaving an enormous amount for home

consumption.

They send over to England alone, cheap sweets manufactured by steam,

to the amount of three hundred thousand English pounds a year.

The sugar-plum came from Italy, and dates no further back than the

sixteenth century as an article of commerce. But the skilful

confectioners in private houses knew how to manufacture not only those

which were healthful, but those which were very useful in getting rid

of dreaded rivals, unfaithful lovers, and troublesome friends.

The manufacture of the antique sugar-plum, the antediluvian baked

almond, and the nauseous coloured abominations whose paint-poisoned

surface has long been discarded in France, received, as I read in an

old chronicle, its death-blow from the Aboukir almonds, during the

period of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt, which killed more people than

the bullets. Next went down the cracker bonbons, called Cossacks, on

account of the terror with which they inspired the _grandes dames_ on

their first advent in 1814.

These latter, however, have come back, in the harmless detonating

powder-charged bonbons which every one hears at a dinner-party, as the

fringed papers are pulled. Then come the _primaveras_, a variety of

sugared bomb. Then the _marquises_, _orangines_, _marron glacé_, or

sugared chestnut, _cerises pralinée_, burnt cherries, _bowles_,

_ananas_, _dattes au café_, dates delightfully stuffed and covered

with sugar, _diables noirs_, _ganaches_, and an ephemeral but

delicious candy, _bonbons fondants_, with an inscription on the box

that "these must be eaten within twenty-four hours." They are

sometimes fruits with a creamy sugar, raspberries, currants,

strawberries, and are delicious, but quite untransportable, although

transporting merchandise. Their invention made the fortune of the

inventor.

Formerly the preparation of bonbons was a tedious affair. Now it is

almost the work of a day, but they are perishable. If you leave a box

open they will devour themselves. Kept cool and air-tight, they will

last for years. About the first of December the great manufacturers in

the Rue de la Paix, commence their operations for New Year's, when

everybody, from President Carnot down, sends his friend a box of

bonbons. They tell of one confectioner who abandoned his sugar-pots to

turn playwright, about the time that Alphonse Karr forsook literature

to sell bouquets. The principle remains the same. He wished to sweeten

the existence of _les Parisiennes_.

In visiting one of these immense establishments one descends a stone

staircase, and finds one's self in a stifling atmosphere, heavily

laden with the aroma of vanilla and other essences. Around are scores

of workmen, in white-paper caps and aprons, their faces red with heat,

as they plunge particular fruits into large cauldrons, filled with

boiling syrups. More in the shade are other stalwart men, their faces

pale with the heated atmosphere, piling up almonds on huge copper

vessels; and so constant is the sound of metal clashing against metal

that the visitor might imagine himself in an armour smithy, instead of

a sugar factory; rather with Vulcan working for the gods, or some

village blacksmith pounding out horseshoes, than with a party of

French _ouvriers_ making sugar-plums for children to crunch. On all

sides one sees sugar, gallons of liqueurs, syrups, and essences, rum,

aniseed, noyau, maraschino, pineapple, apricot, strawberry, cherry,

vanilla, chocolate, coffee, and tea, with sacks of almonds, and

baskets of chestnuts, pistachio nuts, and filberts being emptied into

machines which bruise their husks, flay them, and blanch them, all

ready to receive their saccharine coating.

Those bonbons which have liqueur in them are much appreciated by

gourmets who find other bonbons disagree with them! A sugar-coated

brandy cherry is relished by the wisest man. Most bonbons are made by

hand; those only which are flat at the bottom are cast in moulds. In

the hand-made bonbons, the sugar paste is rolled into shapes by the

aid of an instrument formed of a stout piece of wire, one end of which

is twisted, and the other fixed into a wooden handle. With this the

paste is taken out of the cauldron, and worked into the desired form

by a rapid _coup de main_. For bonbons of a particular form, such as

those in imitation of various fruits, models are carved in wood.

Liqueur bonbons are formed of a mixture of some given liqueur and

liquid sugar, which is poured into moulds, and then placed in a slow

oven for the day. Long before they are removed a hard crust has formed

on the outside, while the inside remains in its original liquid state.

Bonbons are crystallized by being plunged into a syrup heated to

thirty degrees Reamur; by the time they are dry the crystallization is

complete and acts as a protection against the atmosphere. The bonbons

can then be kept a certain time, although their flavour deteriorates.

I think sugar one of the most remarkable of all the gifts of nature.

It submits itself to all sorts of plastic arts, and to see a

confectioner pouring it through little funnels, to see him make a

flower, even to its stamens, of this excellent juice of the cane or of

the beet,--they use beet sugar almost entirely in France,--is to

comprehend anew how many of the greatest of all curiosities are hidden

in the kitchen.

One must go to Chambéry, in Savoy, to taste some of the most

exquisite _pâtisserie_, to find the most delicious candied fruits; and

at Montpellier, in the south of France, is another most celebrated

manufactory of bonbons.

I received once from Montpellier a box holding six pounds of these

marvellous sweets, which were arranged in layers. Beginning with

chocolates in every form, they passed upward by strata, until they

reached the candied fruit, which was to be eaten at once. I think

there were fifty-five varieties of delicious sweets in that box. Such

lovely colours, such ineffable flavours, such beauties as they were!

The only remarkable part of this anecdote is that I survived to tell

it. I can only account for it by the fact that it was sent me by a

famous physician, who must have hidden his power of healing in the

box. Unlike Pandora's box which sent the troop of evils out into the

world, this famous _cachet_ sent nothing but good-will and pleasure,

barring perhaps a possible danger.

If, however, we speak of the bonbons themselves, what can we say of

the _bonbonnières_! Everything that is beautiful, everything that is

curious, everything that is quaint, everything that is ludicrous,

everything that is timely, is utilized. I received an immense green

satin grasshopper--the last _jour de l'an_, in Paris--filled to his

uttermost _antennæ_ with bonbons. It could be for once said that the

"grasshopper had not become a burden." The _panier Watteau_, formed of

satin, pearls, straw, and flowers, may be made to conceal a

handkerchief worth a thousand francs under the rose-satin lining. The

boxes are painted by artists, and remain a lovely belonging for a

toilet table.

Beautiful metal reproductions of some antique _chef d'oeuvre_ are

made into _bonbonnières_. Some bonbon-boxes have themselves concealed

in huge bouquets of violets, fringed with lace, or hidden under roses,

which are skilfully growing out of white satin; beautiful reticules,

all embroidered, hold the carefully bound up packages, where tinfoil

preserves the silk and satin from contact with the sugar. If France

did nothing else but make _bonbonnières_, she would prove her claim to

being the most ingenious purveyor for the luxury of entertaining in

all the world. If luxury means, "to freight the passing hour with

flying happiness," France does her "possible" as she would say

herself, to help along this fairy packing.

At Easter, when sweetmeats are almost as much in request as at the New

Year,--the French make very little of Christmas,--these bonbon

establishments are filled with Easter eggs of the gayest colours.

There are nests of eggs, baskets of eggs, cradles full of eggs, and

pretty peasants carrying eggs to market; nests of eggs, with birds of

brilliant plumage sitting on the nests or hovering over them, while

their freight of bonbons repose on softest swan's-down, lace, and

satin; or again, the egg itself of satin, with its yolk of orange

creams and its white of marshmallow paste. There is no end to this

felicitous and dulcet strain.

The best candied fruit I have ever eaten, I bought in a railway depot

at Venice. The Italians understand this art to perfection. They hang

the fruit by its natural stem on a long straw; and no better

accompaniment for a long railway journey can be imagined.

The French do not consider bonbons unhealthful. Instead of giving her

boy a piece of bread and butter as he departs for the _Lycée_ the

French mamma gives him two or three chocolate bonbons. The hunter

takes these to the top of the Matterhorn; ladies take them in their

pockets instead of a lunch-basket; and one assured me that two slabs

of chocolate sufficed her for breakfast and supper on the road from

Paris to Rome.

I do not know what Baron Liebig would say to this in his learned

articles on the "Nutritive Value of Certain Kinds of Food," but the

French children seem to be the healthiest in the world,--a tribute to

chocolate of the highest. "By their fruits shall ye know them."

In the times of the Medici, and the St. Bartholomew Massacre, the

French and Italian nobles had a curious custom of always carrying

about with them, in the pockets of their silk doublets, costly little

boxes full of bonbons. Henry IV., Marie de Medici, and all their

friends and foes, carried about with them little gold and Limoges

enamelled boxes, very pretty and desirable articles of _vertu_ now;

and doubtless there was one full of red and white comfits in the

pocket of Mary Queen of Scots, when she fell dead, poor, ill-used,

beautiful woman, at the foot of the block, at Fotheringay. Doubtless

there was one in the pouch of the grisly Duc de Guise, with his

close-cropped bullet head, and long, spidery legs, when he fell, done

to death by treacherous Catherine de Medici, dead and bleeding on the

polished floor of Blois! It was a childish custom, and proved that the

age had a sweet tooth; but it might have been useful for diplomatic

purposes, and highly conducive to flirting. As a Lord Chief Justice

once said that "snuff and snuff-boxes help to develop character," so

the _bonbonnière_ helps to emphasize manners; and I am always pleased

when an old or new friend opens for me a little silver box and offers

me a sugared violet, or a rose leaf conserved in sugar, although I can

eat neither of them.

A witty writer says that dessert should be "the girandole, or cunning

tableau of the dinner." It should "surprise, astonish, dazzle, and

enchant." We may almost decide upon the taste of an age as we read of

its desserts. The tasteless luxury and coarse pleasures of the reign

of Charles II.,--that society where Rochester fluttered and Buckingham

flaunted,--how it is all described in one dessert! At a dinner given

the father (of a great many) of his subjects by Lady Dormer, was built

a large gilded ship of confectionery. Its masts, cabins, portholes,

and lofty poop all smart and glittering, its rigging all taut, its

bunting flying, its figure-head bright as gold leaf could make it. Its

guns were charged with actual powder. Its cargo was two turreted pies,

one full of birds and the other of frogs. When borne in by the gay

pages, to the sound of music, the guns were discharged, the ladies

screamed and fainted, so as to "require to be held up and consoled by

the gallants, who offered them sips of Tokay." Poor little things!

Such was the Court of Charles.

Then, to sweeten the smell of powder, the ladies threw at each other

egg-shells filled with fragrant waters; and "all danger being over,"

they opened the pies. Out of one skipped live frogs; out of the other

flew live birds who put out the lights; so, what with the screams, the

darkness, the frogs, and the smell of powder, we get an idea of sports

at Whitehall, where blackbrowed, swarthy-visaged Charles presided, on

which grave Clarendon condescended to smile, and which the gentle

Evelyn and Waller were condemned to approve.

We have not entirely refrained from such sugar emblems at our own

great feasts; but fortunately, they have rather gone out, excepting

for some emblem-haunted dinners where we do have sugared Monitors,

and chocolate torpedos. I have seen the lovely Venus of Milo in frozen

cream, which gave a wit the opportunity of saying that the home for

such a goddess should be the temple of Isis; and Bartholdi's immortal

Liberty lends herself to chocolate and nougat now and then, but very

rarely at private dinners.

The fashion of our day, with its low dishes for the sweets, is so much

better, that we cannot help congratulating ourselves that we do not

live even in the days of the first George, when, as one witty author

again says, "the House of Brunswick brought over sound protestantism,

but German taste." Horace Walpole, great about trifles, incomparable

decider of the width of a shoe-buckle, keen despiser of all meannesses

but his own, neat and fastidious tripper along a flowery path over

this vulgar planet, derided the new fashion in desserts. The ambitious

confectioners, he says, "aspired to positive statuary, spindle-legged

Venus, dummy Mars, all made of sugar;" and he mentions a confectioner

of Lord Albemarle's who loudly complained that his lordship would not

break up the ceiling of his dining-room to admit the heads,

spear-points and upraised thunderbolts of a middle dish of Olympian

deities eighteen feet high, all made of sugar.

The dishes known in France as _Les Quatres Mendiants_, one of nuts,

one of figs or dried fruit, one of raisins, and another of oranges,

still to be seen on old-fashioned dinner-tables, was, I supposed, so

called because it is seldom touched,--in fact, goes a-begging.

But I have found this pretty little legend, which proves that it was

far more poetical in origin. The name in French for aromatic vinegar

is also connected with it. It is called "The Vinegar of the Four

Thieves." So runs the legend: "Once four thieves of Marseilles,

rubbing themselves with this vinegar during the plague, defied

infection and robbed the dead." Who were these wretches? All that we

know of them is that they dined beneath a tree on stolen walnuts and

grapes, and imagined the repast a feast. We can picture them, Holbein

men with slashed sleeves, as old soldiers of Francis I. who had

wrestled with the Swiss. We can imagine them as beaten about by

Burgundian peasants; and we know that they were grim, brown, scarred

rascals, cutting purses, snatching silken cloaks,--sturdy, resolute,

heartless, merry, desperate, God-forsaken scoundrels, living only for

the moment. We can imagine Callot etching their rags, or Rembrandt

putting in their dark shadows and high lights. We can see Salvator

Rosa admiring them as they sleep under the green oak-tree, their heads

on a dead deer, and the high rock above. Or we may get old Teniers to

draw them for us, gambling with torn and greasy cards for a gold

crucifix or a brass pot, or revelling at the village inn, swaggering,

swearing, drunk, or tipsy, playing at shuffle-board. The only point in

their history worth recording is that they were destined to be asked

to every dinner party for four hundred years!--simply preceding the

bonbons, as we see by the following verses:--

"Once on a time, in the brave Henry's age,

Four beggars dining underneath a tree

Combined their stores; each from his wallet drew

Handfuls of stolen fruit, and sang for glee.

"So runs the story,--'_Garçon_, bring the _carte_,

Soup, cutlets--stay--and mind, a _matelotte_.'

And 'Charles,--a pint of Burgundy's best Beanne;

In our deep glasses every joy shall float!'

"And '_Garçon_, bring me from the woven frail

That turbaned merchants from fair Smyrna sent,

The figs with golden seeds, the honeyed fruit,

That feast the stranger in the Syrian tent.

"'Go fetch us grapes from all the vintage rows

Where the brave Spaniards gaily quaff the wine,

What time the azure ripple of the waves

Laughs bright beneath the green leaves of the vine!

"'Nor yet, unmindful of the fabled scrip,

Forget the nuts from Barcelona's shore,

Soaked in Iberian oil from olives pressed,

To the crisp kernels adding one charm more.

"'The almonds last, plucked from a sunny tree,

Half way up Lybanus, blanched as snowy white

As Leila's teeth, and they will fitly crown

The beggars' four-fold dish for us to-night.

"'Beggars are happy! then let us be so;

We've buried care in wine's red-glowing sea.

There let him soaking lie--he was our foe;

Joy laughs above his grave--and so will we!'"

It was from that love of contrast, then, was it, which is a part of

all luxury, that the fable of the _Quatre Mendiants_ was made to serve

like the olives at dessert. Perhaps the fillip which walnuts give to

wine suggested it. It was a modern French rendering of the skull made

to do duty as a drinking-cup. It is a part of the five kernels of corn

at a Pilgrim dinner, without that high conscientiousness of New

England. It is a part, perhaps, of the more melancholy refrain, "Be

merry, be merry, for to-morrow ye die!" It is that warmth is warmer

when we remember cold; it is that food is good when we remember the

starving; it is that _bringing in_ of the pleasant vision of the four

beggars under the tree, as a picture perhaps; at any rate there it

is, moral at your pleasure.

The desserts of the middle ages were heavy and cumbrous affairs, and

had no special character. There would be a good deal of Cellini cup

and Limoges plate, and Palissy dish, and golden chased goblet about

it, no doubt. How glad the collectors of to-day would be to get them!

And we picture the heavy indigestible cakes, and poisonous bonbons.

The taste must have been questionable if we can believe Ben Jonson,

who tells of the beribboned dwarf jester who, at a Lord Mayor's

dinner, took a flying header into a dish of custard, to the infinite

sorrow of ladies' dresses; he followed, probably, that dish in which

the dwarf Sir Geoffrey Hudson was concealed, and they both are after

Tom Thumb, who was fishing about in a cup of posset a thousand years

ago.

The dessert is allowed by all French writers to be of Italian origin;

and we read of the _maîtres d'hotel_, before the Italian dessert

arrived, probably introduced by Catherine de Medici and the Guises,

that they gloried in mountains of fruit, and sticky hills of

sweetmeats. The elegance was clumsy and ostentatious; there was no

poetry in it. Paul Veronese's picture of the "Marriage of Cana" will

give some idea of the primeval French dessert. The later fashion was

of those trees and gardens and puppets abused by Horace Walpole; but

Frenchmen delighted in seas of glass, flower-beds formed of coloured

sand, and little sugar men and women promenading in enamelled

bowling-greens. We get some idea of the magnificent fêtes of Louis

XIV. at Versailles from the glowing descriptions of Molière.

Dufoy in 1805 introduced "frizzled muslin into a slice of fairyland;"

that is, he made extraordinary pictures of temples and trees, for the

centre of his dessert. And these palaces and temples were said to have

been of perfect proportions; his trees of frizzled muslin were

admirable. It sounds very much like children's toys just now.

He went further, Dufoy; having ransacked heaven and earth, air and

water, he thrust his hand into the fire, and made harmless rockets

shoot from his sugar temples. Sugar rocks were strewn about with

precipices of nougat, glaciers of vanilla candy, and waterfalls of

spun sugar. A confectioner in 1805 had to keep his wits about him, for

after every victory of Napoleon he was expected to do the whole thing

in sugar. He was decorator, painter, architect, sculptor, and

florist--icer, yes, until after the Russian campaign, and then--they

had had enough of ice. Thus we see that the dessert has always been

more for the eye than for the stomach.

The good things which have been said over the walnuts and the wine!

The pretty books written about claret and olives! One author says that

if all the good things which have been said about the gay and smiling

dessert could be printed, it would make a pleasant anecdotic little

pamphlet of four thousand odd pages!

We must not forget all the absurdities of the dessert. The Prince

Regent, whose tastes inclined to a vulgar and spurious Orientalism, at

one of his costly feasts at Carleton House had a channel of real water

running around the table, and in this swam gold and silver fish. The

water was only let on at dessert.

These fancies may be sometimes parodied in our own time, as the bonbon

makers of Paris now devote their talents to the paper absurdities of

harlequins, Turks, Chinamen, and all the vagaries of a fancy-dress

ball with which the passengers of steamships amuse themselves after

the Captain's dinner. This is not that legitimate dessert at which we

now find ices disguised as natural fruits, or copying a rose. All the

most beautiful forms in the world are now reproduced in the frozen

water or cream, as healthful as it is delicious, in the famous jelly

with maraschino, or the delicate bonbon with the priceless liqueur,

or, better still, that _eau de menthe_ cordial, our own green

peppermint, which, after all, saves as by one mouthful from the

horrors of indigestion and adds that "thing more exquisite still" to

the perfect dessert,--a good night's sleep.