Aufidius for his morning beverage used
Honey in strong Falernian wine infused;
But here methinks he showed his want of brains:
Drink less austere best suits the empty veins.
* * * * *
Shell fish afford a lubricating slime!
But then you must observe both place and time.
They're caught the finest when the moon is new;
The Lucrine far excel the Baian too.
Misenum shines in cray fish; Circe most
In oysters; scollops let Tarentum boast.
The culinary critic first should learn
Each nicer shade of flavour to discern:
To sweep the fish stalls is mere show at best
* * * * *
Unless you know how each thing should be drest.
Let boars of Umbrian game replete with mast,
If game delights you, crown the rich repast.
SATIRES OF HORACE.
Italian cookery is excellent at its best. The same drift of talent,
the same due sense of proportion which showed itself in all their art,
which built St. Mark's and the Duomo, the Ducal Palace, the Rialto,
and the churches of Palladio, comes out in their cookery. Their cooks
are Michel Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci in a humbler sphere.
They mingle cheese in cookery, with great effect; nothing can be
better than their cauliflower covered with Parmesan cheese, and
baked. Macaroni in all its forms is of course admirable. They have
mastered the use of sweet oil, which in their cookery never tastes
oily; it is simply a lambent richness.
The great dish, wild boar, treated with a sweet and a sour sauce, with
pine cones, is an excellent dish. Wild boar is a lean pork with a game
flavour. All sorts of birds, especially _becafico_, are well cooked,
they lose no juice or flavour over the fire.
They make a dozen preparations of Indian meal, which are very good for
breakfast. One little round cake, like a muffin, tastes almost of
cocoanut; this is fried in oil, and is most delicious.
The _frittala_ is another well-known dish, and is composed of liver,
bacon, and birds, all pinned on a long stick, or iron pin.
In an Italian palace, if you have the good luck to be asked, the
dinner is handsome. It is served in twelve courses in the Russian
manner, and if national dishes are offered they are disguised as
inelegant. But at an ordinary farmhouse in the hills near Florence, or
at the ordinary hotels, there will be a good soup, trout fresh from
the brooks, fresh butter, macaroni with cheese, a fat capon, and a
delicious omelette, enriched with morsels of kidney or fat bacon, a
_frittala_, a bunch of grapes, a bottle of Pogio secco, or the sweet
Italian straw wine.
The Italians are very frugal, and would consider the luxurious
overflow of American munificent hospitality as vulgar. At parties in
Rome, Naples, and Florence it is not considered proper to offer much
refreshment. At Mr. Story's delightful receptions American hospitality
reigned at afternoon tea, as it did in all houses where the hostess
was American, but at the houses of the Princes nothing was offered but
weak wine and water and little cakes.
Many travellers have urged that the cookery of the common Italian
dinner is too much flavoured with garlic, but in a winter spent in
travelling through Italy I did not find it so. I remember a certain
leg of lamb with beans which had a slight taste of onions, but that is
all. They have learned, as the French have, that the onion is to
cookery what accent is to speech. It should not be _trop prononcée_.
The lamb and pistachio nuts of the Arabian Nights is often served and
is delicious.
They give you in an Italian country house for breakfast, at twelve
o'clock, a sort of thick soup, very savoury, probably made of chicken
with an herb like okra, one dish of meat smothered in beans or
tomatoes, followed by a huge dish of macaroni with cheese, or with
morsels of ham through it. Then a white curd with powdered cinnamon,
sugar, and wine, a bottle of _vino santo_, a cup of coffee or
chocolate, and bread of phenomenal whiteness and lightness.
Alas, for the poor people! They live on the chestnuts, the frogs, or
nothing. The porter at the door of some great house is seen eating a
dish of frogs, which are, however, so well cooked that they send up an
appetizing fragrance more like a stew of crabs than anything else. One
sees sometimes a massive ancient house, towering up in mediæval
grandeur, with shafts of marble, and columns of porphyry, lonely,
desolate, and beautiful, infinitely impressive, infinitely grand. Some
member of a once illustrious family lives within these ruined walls,
on almost nothing. He would have to kill his pet falcon to give you a
dinner, while around his time-honoured house cluster his tenants
shaking with malaria,--pale, unhappy, starved people. It is not a
cheerful sight, but it can be seen in southern Italy.
The prosperous Italians will give you a well-cooked meal, an immense
quantity of bonbons, and the most exquisite candied fruits. Their
_confetti_ are wonderful, their cakes and ices, their candied fruit,
their _tutti frutti_, are beyond all others. They crown every feast
with a Paradise in spun sugar.
But they despise and fear a fire, and foreigners are apt to find the
old Italian palaces dreary, and very cold. A recent traveller writes
from Florence: "I have been within the walls of five Italian houses at
evening parties, at three of them, music and no conversation; all
except one held in cold rooms, the floors black, imperfectly covered
with drugget, and no fire; conversation, to me at least, very dull;
the topics, music, personal slander,--for religion, government, and
literature, were generally excluded from polite society. In only one
house, of which the mistress was a German, was tea handed around;
sometimes not even a cup of water was passed." We learn from the
novels of Marion Crawford that the Italians do not often eat in each
others' houses.
Victor Emmanuel, the mighty hunter, had a mighty appetite. He used to
dine alone, before the hour for the State dinner. Then with sword in
hand, leaning on its jewelled hilt, in full uniform, his breast
covered with orders, the King sat at the head of his table, and talked
with his guests while the really splendid dinner was served.
Royal banquets are said to be dull. The presence of a man so much
above the others in rank has a depressing effect. The guest must
console himself with the glorious past of Italy, and fix his eyes on
the magnificent furniture of the table, the cups of Benvenuto Cellini,
the vases of Capo di Monti, the superb porcelain, and the Venetian
glass, or he must devote himself to the lamb and pistachio nuts, the
_choux fleurs aux Parmesan_, or the truffles, which are nowhere so
large or so fine as at an Italian dinner. Near Rome they are rooted
out of the oak forests by the king's dogs, and are large and full of
flavour.
King Humbert has inherited his father's taste for hunting, and sends
presents of the game he has shot to his courtiers.
The housekeeping at the Quirinal is excellent; a royal supper at a
royal ball is something to remember. And what wines to wash them down
with!--the delicious Lacryma Christi, the Falerno or Capri, the
Chianti, the Sestio Levante or Asti. Asti is a green wine, rich,
strong, and sweet. It makes people ill if they drink it before it is
quite old enough--but perhaps it is not often served at royal
banquets.
Verdeaux was a favourite wine of Frederic the Great, but Victor
Emmanuel's wine was the luscious _Monte Pulciano_.
"Monte Pulciano d'ogni vino e il Re."
The brilliant purple colour, like an amethyst, of this noble wine is
unlike any other. The aromatic odour is delicious; its sweetness is
tempered by an agreeable sharpness and astringency; it leaves a
flattering flavour on the tongue.
These best Italian wines have a deliciousness which eludes analysis,
like the famous Monte Beni, which old Tommaso produced in a small
straw-covered flask at the visit of Kenyon to Donatello. This
invaluable wine was of a pale golden hue, like other of the rarest
Italian wines, and if carelessly and irreligiously quaffed, might have
been mistaken for a sort of champagne. It was not, however, an
effervescing wine, although its delicate piquancy produced a somewhat
similar effect upon the palate. Sipping, the guest longed to sip
again, but the wine demanded so deliberate a pause in order to detect
the hidden peculiarities, and subtile exquisiteness of its flavour,
that to drink it was more a moral than a physical delight. There was a
deliciousness in it which eluded description, and like whatever else
that is superlatively good was perhaps better appreciated by the
memory than by present consciousness. One of its most ethereal charms
lay in the transitory life of the wine's richest qualities; for while
it required a certain leisure and delay, yet if you lingered too long
in the draught, it became disenchanted both of its fragrance and
flavour. The lustre and colour should not be forgotten among the other
good qualities of the Monte Beni wine, for "as it stood in Kenyon's
glass, a little circle of light glowed on the table around about it as
if it were really so much golden sunshine."
There are few wines worthy of this beautiful eloquence of Hawthorne.
The description bears transportation; the wine did not. The
transportation of even a few miles turned it sour. That is the trouble
with Italian wines. Monte Pulciano and Chianti do bear transportation.
Italy sends much of the latter wine to New York. Italy has, however,
never produced a really good dry wine, with all its vineyards.
The dark Grignolino wine grown in the vineyards of Asterau and
Monferrato possesses the remarkable quality of keeping better if
diluted with fresh water.
The Falernian from the Bay of Naples, is the wine of the poets, nor
need we remind the classical scholar that the hills around Rome were
formerly supposed to produce it.
The loose, volcanic soil about Mount Vesuvius grows the grapes from
which Lacryma Christi is produced. It is sometimes of a rich red
colour, though white and sparkling varieties are produced.
The Italians are supremely fond of _al fresco_ entertainments,--their
fine climate making out-of-door eating very agreeable. How many a
traveller remembers the breakfast or dinner in a vine-covered _loggia_
overhanging some splendid scene! It forms the subject of many a
picture, from those which illustrate the stories of Boccaccio up to
the beautiful sketch of Tasso, at the court of the Duc d'Este. The
dangers of these feasts have been immortalized in verse and prose from
Dante down, and Shakspeare has touched upon them twice. George Eliot
describes one in a "_loggia_ joining on a garden, with all one side of
the room open, and with numerous groups of trees and statues and
avenues of box, high enough to hide an assassin," in her wonderful
novel of Romola. In modern days, since the Borgias are all killed, no
one need fear to eat out-of-doors in Italy.
Not much can be said of the cookery of Spain. In the principal hotels
of Spain one gets all the evils of both Spanish and Gascon cookery.
Garlic is the favourite flavour, and the bad oil expressed from the
olive, skin, seed and all, allowed to stand until it is rancid, is
beloved of the Spanish, but hated by all other nations. I believe,
however, that an _olla podrida_ made in a Spanish house is very good.
It may not be inappropriate here to give two recipes for macaroni. The
first, _macaroni au gratin_ is very rarely found good in an
American house:--
Break two ounces of best Italian macaroni into a pint of
highly seasoned stock, let it simmer until very tender. When
done, toss it up with a small piece of butter, and add pepper
and salt to taste; put in a large meat dish, sift over it some
fried bread-crumbs, and serve. It will take about an hour to
cook, and should be covered with the stock all the time.
* * * * *
_Macaroni with Parmesan cheese_: Boil two ounces of macaroni
in half a pint of water, with an ounce of butter, until
perfectly tender. If the water evaporates add a little more,
taking care that the macaroni does not stick to the stewpan,
or become broken. When it is done, drain away the water and
stir in two ounces of good cheese grated, cayenne pepper and
salt to taste. Keep stirring until the cheese is dissolved.
Pour on to a hot dish and serve. A little butter may be
stirred into the macaroni before the cheese, and is an
improvement.
Through the Riviera, and indeed in the south of France, one meets with
many peculiar dishes. No one who has read Thackeray need be reminded
of _bouillabaise_, that famous fish chowder of Marseilles. It is,
however, only our chowder with much red pepper. A cook can try it if
she chooses, and perhaps achieve it after many failures.
There are so many very good dishes awaiting the efforts of a young
American housewife, that she need not go out of her way to extemporize
or explore. The best cook-book for foreign dishes is still the old
Francatelli.
The presence in our midst of Italian warehouses, adds an infinite
resource to the housewife. Those stimulants to the appetite called
_hors d'oeuvres_, we call them relishes, are much increased by
studying the list of Italian delicacies. Anchovy or caviar, potted
meat, grated tongue, potted cheese, herring salad, the inevitable
olive, and many other delicacies could be mentioned which aid
digestion, and make the plainest table inexpensively luxurious. The
Italians have all sorts of delicate vegetables preserved in bottles,
mixed and ready for use in a _jardinière_ dressing; also the best of
cheeses, _gargonzala_, and of course the truffle, which they know how
to cook so well.
The Italians have conquered the art of cooking in oil, so that you do
not taste the oil. It is something to live for, to eat their fried
things.
Speaking of the south of Europe reminds us of that wonderful bit of
orientalism out of place, which is called Algiers, and which France
has enamelled on her fabulous and many-coloured shield. Algiers has
become not only a winter watering-place, high in favour with the
traveller, but it is a great wine-growing country. The official
statement of Lieut. Col. Sir R. L. Playfair, her Majesty's
consul-general, may be read with interest, dated 1889:
"Viticulture in Algeria, was in 1778 in its infancy; now nearly one
hundred and twenty-five thousand acres are under cultivation with
vines, and during the last year about nine hundred thousand
hectolitres of wine were produced. In 1873 Mr. Eyre Ledyard, an
English cultivator of the vine in Algeria, bought the property of
Chateau Hydra near Algiers. He found on it five acres of old and badly
planted vineyards, which produced about seven hogsheads of wine. He
has extended this vineyard and carried on his work with great
intelligence and industry. He cultivates the following varieties: the
Mourvedie, of a red colour resembling Burgundy, Cariguan, giving a
wine good, dark, and rough, Alicante or Grenache, Petit Bouschet,
Cabernot and Côt, a Burgundy, Perian Lyra, Aramen, and St. Saux.
Chasselas succeeds well; the grapes are exported to France for the
table.
Clairette produces abundantly and makes a good dry wine. Ainin Kelb,
more correctly Ain Kelb, dog's-eye, is an Arab grape which makes a
good strong wine, but which requires keeping. Muscat is a capricious
bearer. From the two last-named varieties, sweet as well as dry wines
are produced by adding large quantities of alcohol to the juice of the
grape, and thus preventing fermentation. The crops yield quantities
varying from seven hundred gallons per acre in rich land to four
hundred on the hillside, except Cariguan which yields more. Aramen
yields as much, but the quality is inferior.
The red wines are sent to Bordeaux and Burgundy, to give strength and
quality to the French clarets, as they are very useful for blending.
The dry, white wine is rather stronger and fuller than that of France
or Germany, and is much used to give additional value to the thinner
qualities of Rhine wine.
The cellars of Château Hydra, are now probably the best in the colony.
They are excavated in the soft rock here incorrectly called tufa, in
reality an aggregation of minutely pulverized shells; it is soft and
sandy, and easily excavated. The surface becomes harder by exposure to
the atmosphere, and it is not subject to crumbling.
Mr. Ledyard has excavated extensive cells in this rock, in which
extreme evenness of temperature is ensured,--a condition most
necessary for the proper manufacture of wine.
Mr. Eyre Ledyard's vineyards and cellars of the Chateau Hydra estate
are now farmed by the _Société Anonyme Viticole et Vinicole d'Hydra_,
of which Mr. Ledyard is chairman. These wines have been so
successfully shipped to England and other countries that the company
now buys grapes largely from the best vineyards, in order to make
sufficient wines to meet the demand. The Hydra Company supplies wine
to all vessels of the Ocean Company going to India and China. A very
carefully prepared quinine white wine is made for invalids, and for
use in countries where there is fever. I especially recommend a trial
of this last excellent wine to Americans, as it is most agreeable as
well as healthful. The postal address is M. Le Gerant, Hydra Caves,
Birmandreis, Algiers.
All the stories of Algiers read like tales of the Arabian Nights, and
none is more poetic than the names and the story of these delicious
wines.
The Greek wines are well spoken of in Europe: Santorin, and Zante, and
St. Elié, and Corinth, and Mount Hymettus, Vino Santo, and Cyprus,
while from Magyar vineyards come Visontaè, Badescony, Dioszeg,
Bakator, Rust, Szamorodni, Oedenburger, Ofner, and Tokay.
The Hungarian wines are very heady. He must be a swashbuckler who
drinks them. They are said to make the drinker grow fat. To this
unhappy class Brillat Savarin gives the following precepts:--
"Drink every summer thirty bottles of seltzer water, a large tumbler
the first thing in the morning, another before lunch, and the same at
bedtime.
"Drink white wines, especially those which are light and acid, and
avoid beer as you would the plague. Ask frequently for radishes,
artichokes with hot sauce, asparagus, celery; choose veal and fowl
rather than beef and mutton, and eat as little of the crumb of bread
as possible.
"Avoid macaroni and pea soup, avoid farinaceous food under whatever
form it assumes, and dispense with all sweets. At breakfast take brown
bread, and chocolate rather than coffee."