"Comparisons are odorous."
I prithee let me bring thee where crabs grow;
And I with my long nails will dig thee pig nuts;
Show thee a jay's nest, and instruct thee how
To snare the nimble marmozet; I'll bring thee
To clustering filberds, and sometimes I'll get thee
Young staniels from the rocks. Wilt thou go with me?
THE TEMPEST.
In the lamb roasted whole we have one of the earliest dishes on record
in the history of cookery. Stuffed with pistachio nuts, and served
with pilaf, it illustrates the antiquity of the art, and at the same
time gives an example of the food upon which millions of our fellow
creatures are sustained.
At a dinner of the Acclimatization Society in London, all manner of
strange and new dishes were offered, even the meat of the horse. A
roast monkey filled with chestnuts was declared to be delicious; the
fawn of fallow deer was described as good; buffalo meat was not so
highly commended; a red-deer ham was considered very succulent; a
sirloin of bear was "tough, glutinous, and had, besides, a dreadful,
half-aromatic, half-putrescent flavour, as though it had been rubbed
with assafoetida and then hung for a month in a musk shop."
We will not try bear unless we are put to it. However, at this same
dinner--we read on--haunch of venison, saddle of mutton, roast beef of
old England, which is really the roast beef which is of old Normandy
now, all gave way to a Chinese lamb roasted whole, stuffed with
pistachio nuts, and served with _consousson_, a preparation of wheat
used among the Moors, Africans, and other natives of the north of
Africa littoral, in place of rice. The Moorish young ladies are, it is
said, fattened into beauty by an enforced meal of this strengthening
compound. The _consousson_ is made into balls and stuffed into the
mouths of the marriageable young lady, until she grows as tired of
balls as a young belle of three seasons.
In Spain, in those damp swamps near Valencia, where the poor are old
before forty and die before forty-five, the best rice sells at eleven
farthings, the poorest at eight farthings per pound. This, cooked with
the ground dust of _pimientos_, or capsicums, is the foundation of
every stew in the south of Spain. It is of a rich brick-dust hue, and
is full of fire and flavour. Into this stew the cook puts the
"reptiles of the sea" known as "spotted cats," "toads" and other oily
fish, sold at two pence a pound, or the _vogar_, a silvery fish, or
the _gallina_, a coarse fish, chick peas, garlic, pork, and sausages.
If rich she will make an _olla podrida_ with bacon, fresh meat,
potatoes, cabbages, and she will pour off the soup, calling it
_caldo_, then the lumps of meat and bacon, called _cocida_, will be
served next. Then the cigarette is smoked. If you are a king she will
add a quince and an apple to the stew.
Of puddings and pies they know nothing; but what fruit they
have!--watermelons weighing fifteen pounds apiece; lemon pippins
called _perillons_; crimson, yellow, and purple plums; purple and
green figs; tomatoes by the million; carob beans, on which half the
nation lives; small cucumbers and gourds; large black grapes, very
sweet; white grapes and quinces; peaches in abundance; and all the
chestnuts and filberts in the world. In the summer they eat goat's
flesh; and on All Saints' Day they eat pork and chestnuts and sweet
_babatas_ of Malaga. In exile, in Mexico and Florida, the Spaniard
eats alligator, which could scarcely be called a game bird; but the
flesh of young alligators' tails is very fair, and tastes like chicken
if the tail is cut off immediately after death, and stewed.
The frost fish of the Adirondacks is seldom tasted, except by those
who have spent a winter in the North Woods. They are delicious when
fried. There is a European fish as little known as this, the _Marena_,
caught in Lake Moris in the province of Pomerania, also in one lake in
southern Italy, which is very good.
There are two birds known in Prussia, the bustard, and the kammel, the
former a species of small ostrich, once considered very fine eating,
the latter very tough, except under unusual conditions.
The Chinese enjoy themselves by night. All their feasts and festivals
are kept then, generally by moonlight. When a Chinaman is poor he can
live on a farthing's worth of rice a day; when he gets rich he becomes
the most luxurious of sybarites, indulges freely in the most
_recherché_ delicacies of the table, and becomes, like any Roman
voluptuary, corpulent and phlegmatic. A lady thus describes a Chinese
dinner:--
"The hour was eleven A. M., the _locale_ a boat. Having heard much of
the obnoxious stuff I was to eat, I adopted the prescription of a
friend. 'Eat very little of any dish, and be a long time about it.'
"We commenced with tea, and finished with soup. Some of the
intermediate dishes were shark's-fin; birds' nests brought from
Borneo, costing nearly a guinea a mouthful, fricassee of poodle, a
little dog almost a pig; the fish of the conch-shell, a substance like
wax or india rubber, which you might masticate but never mash;
peacock's liver, very fine and _recherché_; putrid eggs, nevertheless
very good; rice, of course, salted shrimps, baked almonds, cabbage in
a variety of forms, green ginger, stewed fungi, fresh fish of a dozen
kinds, onions _ad libitum_, salt duck cured like ham, and pig in every
form, roast, boiled, and fried, Foo-Chow ham which seemed to me equal
to Wiltshire. In fact, the Chinese excel in pork, though the English
there never touch it, under the supposition that the pigs are fed on
little babies.
"But this is a libel. Of course a pig would eat a baby, as it would a
rattlesnake if it came across one; but the Chinese are very particular
about their swine and keep them penned up, rivalling the Dutch in
their scrubbing and washing. They grow whole fields of taro and herbs
for their pigs. And I do not believe that one porker in a million ever
tastes a baby."
This traveller's sympathies appear to be with the pig.
"About two o'clock we arose from the table, walked about, looked out
of the window. Large brass bowls were brought with water and towels.
Each one proceeded to perform ablutions, the Chinese washing their
heads; after which refreshing operation we resumed our seats and
re-commenced with another description of tea.
"Seven different sorts of Samchou we partook of, made from rice, from
peas, from mangoes, cocoa-nut, all fermented liquors, and the mystery
remained,--I was not inebriated. The Samchou was drunk warm in tiny
cups, during the whole course of the dinner.
"The whole was cooked without salt and tasted very insipid to me. The
bird's-nest seemed like glue or isinglass, but the coxcombs were
palatable. The dog-meat was like some very delicate gizzards
well-stewed, and of a short, close fibre. The dish which I most
fancied turned out to be rat. Upon taking a second help, after the
first taste I got the head, which made me rather sick; but I consoled
myself that when in California we ate ground squirrels which are first
cousins to the flat-tailed rats; and travellers who would know the
world must go in for manners and customs. We had tortoise and
frogs,--a curry of the latter was superior to chicken; we had fowls'
hearts, and the brains of some birds, snipe, I think. We had a
chow-chow of mangoes, rambustan preserved, salted cucumber, sweet
potatoes, yams, taro, all sorts of sweets made of rice sugar, and
cocoa-nuts; and the soup which terminated the entertainment was
certainly boiled tripe or some other internal arrangement; and I
wished I had halted some little time before. The whole was eaten with
chop-sticks or a spoon like a small spade or shovel. The sticks are
made into a kind of fork, being held crosswise between the fingers. It
is not the custom for the sexes to meet at meals; I dined with the
ladies."
This dinner has one suggestion for our hostesses,--it was in a boat,
on a river, by torchlight. We can, however, give a better one on a
yacht at Newport, or at New London, or down on the Florida coast; but
it would be a pretty fancy to give it on our river. It is curious to
see what varieties there are in the art of entertaining; and it is
useful to remember, when in Florida, "that alligators' tails are as
good, when stewed, as chicken."
The eating of the past included, under the Romans, the ass, the dog,
the snail, hedge-hogs, oysters, asparagus, venison, wild-boar,
sea-nettles. In England, in 1272, the hostess offered strange dishes:
mallards, herons, swans, crane, and peacock. The peacock was, of old,
a right royal bird which figured splendidly at the banquets of the
great, and this is how the mediæval cooks dished up the dainty:--
"Flay off the skin, with the feathers, tail, neck, and head thereon.
Then take the skin and all the feathers and lay it on the table,
strewing thereon ground cumin; then take the peacock and roast him,
and baste him with raw yolks of eggs, and when he is roasted take him
off and let him cool awhile. Then sew him in his skin, and gild his
comb, and so send him forth for the last course."
Our Saxon ancestors were very fond, like the Spaniards, of putting
everything into the same pot; and we read of stews that make the blood
boil. Travellers tell us of dining with the Esquimaux, on a field of
ice, when tallow candles were considered delicious, or they found
their plates loaded with liver of the walrus. They vary their dinners
by helping themselves to a lump of whale-meat, red and coarse and
rancid, but very toothsome to an Esquimau, notwithstanding.
If they should sit down to a Greenlander's table they would find it
groaning under a dish of half-putrid whale's tail, which has been
lauded as a savoury matter, not unlike cream cheese; and the liver of
a porpoise makes the mouth water. They may finish their repast with a
slice of reindeer, or roasted rat, and drink to their host in a bumper
of train oil.
In South America the tongue of a sea-lion is esteemed a great
delicacy. Fashion in Siam prescribes a curry of ants' eggs as
necessary to every well-ordered banquet. The eggs are not larger than
grains of pepper, and to an unaccustomed palate have no particular
flavour. Besides being curried, they are brought to table rolled in
green leaves mingled with shreds or very fine slices of pork.
The Mexicans make a species of bread of the eggs of insects which
frequent the fresh water of the lagoons. The natives cultivate in the
lagoon of Chalco a sort of carex called _tonte_, on which the insects
deposit their eggs very freely. This carex is made into bundles and is
soon covered. The eggs are disengaged, beaten, dried, and pounded into
flour.
Penguins' eggs, cormorants' eggs, gulls' eggs, the eggs of the
albatross, turtles' eggs are all made subservient to the table. The
mother turtle deposits her eggs, about a hundred at a time, in the dry
sand, and leaves them to be hatched by the genial sun. The Indian
tribes who live on the banks of the Orinoco procure from them a sweet
and limpid oil which is their substitute for butter. Lizards' eggs are
regarded as a _bonne bouche_ in the South Sea Islands, and the eggs of
the _guana_, a species of lizard, are much favoured by West Indians.
Alligators' eggs are eaten in the Antilles and resemble hens' eggs in
size and shape.
We have spoken of horse-flesh as introduced at the dinner of the
Acclimatization Society, but it is hardly known that the Frenchmen
have tried to make it as common as beef. Isidore St. Helain says of
it, that it has long been regarded as of a sweetish, disagreeable
taste, very tough, and not to be eaten without difficulty; but so
many different facts are opposed to this prejudice that it is
impossible not to perceive the slightness of the foundation. The free
or wild horse is hunted as game in all parts of the world where it
exists,--Asia, Africa, and America, and perhaps even now in Europe.
The domestic horse is itself made use of for alimentary purposes in
all those countries.
"Its flesh is relished by races the most diverse,--Negro, Mongol,
Malay, American, Caucasian. It was much esteemed until the eighth
century amongst the ancestors of some of the greatest nations of
Western Europe, who had it in general use and gave it up with regret.
Soldiers to whom it has been served out and people who have bought it
in markets, have taken it for beef; and many people buy it daily in
Paris for venison."
During the commune many people were glad enough to get horse-flesh for
the roast.
Locusts are eaten by many tribes of North American Indians, and there
is no reason why they should not be very good. The bushmen of Africa
rejoice in roasting spiders; maggots tickle the palates of the
Australian aborigines; and the Chinese feast on the chrysalis of a
silk-worm.
If this is what they ate, what then did they drink? No thin potations,
no half-filled cups for the early English. Wine-bibbers and
beer-bibbers, three-bottle men they were down to one hundred years
ago. Provocatives of drink were called "shoeing horses," "whetters,"
"drawers off and pullers on."