"Last night I weighed, quite wearied out,
The question that perplexes still;
And that sad spirit we call doubt
Made the good naught beside the ill.
"This morning, when with rested mind,
I try again the selfsame theme,
The whole is altered, and I find
The balance turned, the good supreme."
What amateur cook has not had these moments of depression and
exaltation as she has weighed the flour and sugar, stoned the raisins,
and mixed the cake, or, even worse in her young novitiate, has
attempted to make a soup and has begun with the formula which so often
turns out badly:--
"Take a shin of beef and put it in a pot with three dozen carrots, a
dozen onions, two dozen pieces of celery, twelve turnips, a fowl, and
two partridges. It must simmer six hours, etc." Yes, and last week and
the week before her husband said, "it was miserable." How willingly
would she allow the claim of that glorious old coxcomb, Louis Eustache
Ude, who had been cook to two French kings and never forgave the world
for not permitting him to call himself an artist.
"Scrapers of catgut," he says, "call themselves artists, and fellows
who jump like a kangaroo claim the title; yet the man who has under
his sole direction the great feasts given by the nobility of England
to the allied sovereigns, and who superintended the grand banquet at
Crockford's on the occasion of the coronation of Victoria, was denied
the title prodigally showered on singers, dancers, and comedians,
whose only quality, not requiring the microscope to discern, is
vanity."
Ude was the most eccentric of cooks. He was _maître d'hôtel_ to the
Duke of York, who delighted in his anecdotes and mimicry. In his book,
which he claims is the only work which gives due dignity to the great
art, he says: "The chief fault in all great peoples' cooks is that
they are too profuse in their preparations. Suppers are after all only
ridiculous proofs of the extravagance and bad taste of the givers." He
mentions great wastes which have seared his already seared conscience
thus:
"I have known balls where the next day, in spite of the pillage of a
pack of footmen, which was enormous, I have seen thirty hams, one
hundred and fifty to two hundred carved fowls, and forty or fifty
tongues given away. Jellies melt on all the tables; pastries, patties,
aspics, and lobster salads are heaped up in the kitchen and strewed
about in the passages; and all this an utter waste, for not even the
footmen would eat this; they do not consider it a legitimate repast to
dine off the remnants of a last night's feast. Footmen are like cats;
they only like what they steal, but are indifferent to what is given
them."
This was written by the cook of the bankrupt Duke of York, noted for
his extravagance; but how well it would apply to-day to the banquet of
many a _nouveau riche_, to how many a hotel, to how much of our
American housekeeping. Ude was a poet and an enthusiast. Colonel Damer
met him walking up and down at Crockford's in a great rage, and asked
what was the matter. "Matter! _Ma foi!_" answered he; "you saw that
man just gone out? Well he ordered red mullet for his dinner. I made
him a delicious little sauce with my own hand. The mullet was marked
on the carte two shillings. I added sixpence for the sauce. He refuses
to pay sixpence for the sauce. The imbecile! He seems to think red
mullets come out of the sea with my sauce in their pockets."
Carême, one of the greatest of French cooks, became eminent by
inventing a sauce for fast-days. He then devoted several years to the
science of roasting in all its branches. He studied design and
elegance under Robert Lainé. His career was one of victory after
victory. He nurtured the Emperor Alexander, kept alive Talleyrand
through "that long disease, his life," fostered Lord Londonderry, and
delighted the Princess Belgratine. A salary of a thousand pounds a
year induced him to become _chef_ to the Regent; but he left Carlton
House, he would return to France. The Regent was inconsolable, but
Carême was implacable. "No," said the true patriot, "my soul is
French, and I can only exist in France." Carême, therefore, overcome
by his feelings, accepted an unprecedented salary from Baron
Rothschild and settled in Paris.
Lady Morgan, dining at the Baron's villa in 1830, has left us a sketch
of a dinner by Carême which is so well done that, although I have
already alluded to it, I will copy _verbatim_: "It was a very sultry
evening, but the Baron's dining-room stood apart from the house and
was shaded by orange trees. In the oblong pavilion of Grecian marble
refreshed by fountains, no gold or silver heated or dazzled the eye,
but porcelain beyond the price of all precious metals. There was no
high-spiced sauce in the dinner, no dark-brown gravy, no flavour of
cayenne and allspice, no tincture of catsup and walnut pickle, no
visible agency of those vulgar elements of cooking of the good old
times, fire and water. Distillations of the most delicate viands had
been extracted in silver, with chemical precision. Every meat
presented its own aroma,"--it was not cooked in a gas stove,--"every
vegetable its own shade of verdure. The mayonnaise was fixed in ice,
like Ninon's description of Sevigné's heart, '_une citronille frité à
la neige_.' The tempered chill of the _plombière_ which held the place
of the eternal _fondus_ and _soufflets_ of our English tables,
anticipated and broke the stronger shock of the exquisite avalanche,
which, with the hue and odour of fresh-gathered nectarines, satisfied
every sense and dissipated every coarser flavour. With less genius
than went to the composition of that dinner, men have written epic
poems."
Comparing Carême with the great Beauvilliers, the greatest restaurant
cook in Paris from 1782 to 1815, a great authority in the matter says:
"There was more _aplomb_ in the touch of Beauvilliers, more curious
felicity in Carême's. Beauvilliers was great in an _entrée_, Carême
sublime in an _entremet_; we should put Beauvilliers against the world
for a _rôti_, but should wish Carême to prepare the sauce were we
under the necessity of eating an elephant or our great grandfather."
Vatel was the great Condé's cook who killed himself because the turbot
did not arrive. Madame de Sevigné relates the event with her usual
clearness. Louis XIV. had long promised a visit to the great Condé at
Chantilly, the very estate which the Duc d'Aumale has so recently
given back to France, but postponed it from time to time fearing to
cause Condé trouble by the sudden influx of a gay and numerous
retinue. The old château had become a trifle dull and a trifle mouldy,
but it got itself brushed up. Vatel was cook, and his first
mortification was that the roast was wanting at several tables. It
seemed to him that his great master the captain would be dishonoured,
but the king had brought a larger retinue than he had promised. "He
had thought of nothing but to make this visit a great success."
Gourville, one of the prince's household, finding Vatel so excited,
asked the prince to reassure him, which he did very kindly, telling
him that the king was delighted with his supper. But Vatel mournfully
answered: "Monseigneur, your kindness overpowers me, but the roast was
wanting at two tables." The next morning he arose at five to
superintend the king's dinner. The purveyor of fish was at the door
with only two baskets. "And is this all?" asked Vatel. "Yes," said the
sleepy man. Vatel waited at the gates an hour; no more fish. Two or
three hundred guests, and only two packages. He whispered to himself,
"The joke in Paris will be that Vatel tried to save the prince the
price of two red mullets a month." His hand fell on his rapier hilt,
he rushed up-stairs, fell on the blade; as he expired the cart loaded
with turbot came into the yard. Voila!
Times have changed. Cooks now prefer living on their masters to dying
for them.
The Prince de Loubise, inventor of a sauce the discovery of which has
made him more glorious than twenty victories, asked his cook to draw
him up a bill of fare, a sort of rough estimate for a supper.
Bertrand's first estimate was fifty hams. "What, Bertrand! Are you
going to feast the whole army of the Rhine? Your brains are surely
turning." Bertrand was blandly contemptuous. "My brains are surely
turning? No, Monseigneur, only one ham will appear on the table, but
the rest are indispensable for my _espagnoles_, my garnishing."
"Bertrand, you are plundering me," stormed the prince. "This article
shall not pass." The blood of the cook was up. "My lord," said he,
sternly, "you do not understand the resources of our art. Give the
word and I will so melt down these hams that they will go into a
little glass bottle no bigger than my thumb." The prince was abashed
by the genius of the spit, and the fifty hams were purchased.
The Duke of Wellington liked a good dinner, and employed an artist
named Felix. Lord Seaforth, finding Felix too expensive, allowed him
to go to the Iron Duke, but Felix came back with tears in his eyes.
"What is the matter," said Lord Seaforth; "has the Duke turned rusty?"
"No, no, my lord! but I serve him a dinner which would make
Francatelli or Ude die of envy, and he say nothing. I go to the
country and leave him to try a dinner cooked by a stupid, dirty
cook-maid, and he say nothing; that is what hurt my feelings."
Felix lived on approbation; he would have been capable of dying like
Vatel.
Going last winter to see _le Bourgeoise Gentilhomme_ at the Comédie
Française, I was struck with the novelty of the dinner served by this
hero of Molière's who is so anxious to get rid of his money. All the
dishes were brought in by little fellows dressed as cooks, who danced
to the minuet.
In a later faithful chronicle I learn that a certain marquis of the
days of Louis XVI. invented a musical spit which caused all the
snowy-garbed cooks to move in rhythmical steps. All was melody and
order. "The fish simmered in six-eight time, the ponderous roasts
circled gravely, the stews blended their essences to solemn anthems.
The ears were gratified as the nose was regaled; this was an idea
worthy of Apecius."
So Molière, true to the spirit of his time, paid this compliment to
the Marquis.
Béchamel was cook to Louis XIV., and invented a famous sauce.
Durand, who was cook to the great Napoleon, has left a curious record
of his tempestuous eating. Francatelli succeeded Ude in England, was
the _chef_ at Chesterfield House, at Lord Kinnaird's, and at the
Melton Club. He held the post of _maître d'hôtel_ for a while but was
dismissed by a cabal.
The gay writer from whose pages we have gathered these desultory facts
winds up with an advice to all who keep French cooks. "Make your
_chef_ your friend. Take care of him. Watch over the health of this
man of genius. Send for the physician when he is ill."
Imagine the descent from these poets to the good plain cook,--you can
depend upon the truth of this description,--with a six weeks'
reference from her last place. Imagine the greasy soups, the mutton
cutlets hard as a board, the few hard green peas, the soggy potatoes.
How awful the recollections of one who came in "a week on trial!"
Whose trial? Those who had to eat her food. It is bad to be without a
cook, but ten times worse to have a bad one.
But if Louis Eustache Ude, the cook _par excellence_ of all this
little study, lamented over the waste in great kitchens, how much more
should he revolt at that wholesale destruction of food which might go
to feed the hungry, nourish and sustain the sick, and perhaps save
many a child's life. What should be done with the broken meats of a
great household? The cook is too apt to toss all into a tub or basket,
to swell her own iniquitous profits. The half-tongues, ends of ham,
roast beef, chicken-legs, the real honest relics of a generous kitchen
would feed four or five poor families a week. What gifts of mercy to
hospitals would be the half of a form of jelly, the pudding, the blanc
mange, which are thrown away by the careless!
In France the Little Sisters of the Poor go about with clean dishes
and clean baskets, to collect these morsels which fall from the rich
man's table. It is a worthy custom.
While studying the names of these great men like Ude and Carême, Vatel
and Francatelli, what shades of dead _pâtissiers_, spirits of extinct
_confiseurs_, rise around us in savoury streams and revive for us the
past of gastronomic pleasure! Many a Frenchman will tell you of the
iced meringues of the Palais Royal and the _salades de fraises au
marasquin_ of the Grand Seize as if they were things of the past. The
French, gayer and lighter handed at the moulding of pastry, are apt to
exceed all nations in this delicate, delicious _entremet_. The _vol au
vent de volaille_, or chicken pie, with its delicate filling of
chicken, mushroom, truffles, and its enveloping pastry, is never
better than at the Grand Hôtel at Aix les Bains, where one finds the
perfection of good eating. "Aix les Bains," says a resident physician,
"lies half-way between Paris and Rome, with its famous curative baths
to correct the good dinners of the one, and the good wines of the
other." Aix adds a temptation of its own.
The French have ever been fond of the playthings of the kitchen,--the
tarts, custards, the frothy nothings which are fashioned out of the
evanescent union of whipped cream and spun sugar. Their politeness,
their brag, their accomplishments, their love of the external, all
lead to such dainties. It was observed even so long ago as 1815, when
the allies were in Paris, that the fifteen thousand _pâtés_ which
Madame Felix sold daily in the _Passage des Panoramas_ were beginning
to affect the foreign bayonets; and no doubt the German invasion may
have been checked by the same dulcet influence.
There is romance and history even about pastry. The _baba_, a species
of savoury biscuit coloured with saffron, was introduced into France
by Stanislaus, the first king of Poland, when that unlucky country was
alternately the scourge and the victim of Russia. The dish was perhaps
oriental in origin. It is made with _brioche_ paste, mixed with
madeira, currants, raisins, and potted cream.
French jellies are rather monotonous as to flavour, but they look very
handsome on a supper-table. A _macédoine_ is a delicious variety of
dainty, and worthy of the French nation. It is wine jelly frozen in a
mould with grapes, strawberries, green-gages, cherries, apricots, or
pineapple, or more economically with slices of pears and apples boiled
in syrup coloured with carmine, saffron, or cochineal, the flavour
aided by angelica or brandied cherries. An invention of Ude and one
which we could copy here is jelly _au miroton de pêche_:--
Get half a dozen peaches, peel them carefully and boil them,
with their kernels, a short time in a fine syrup, squeeze six
lemons into it, and pass it through a bag. Add some clarified
isinglass and put some of it into a mould in ice; then fill up
with the jelly and peaches alternately and freeze it.
Fruit cheeses are very pleasant, rich conserves for dessert. They can
be made with apricots, strawberries, pineapple, peaches, or
gooseberries. The fruit is powdered with sugar and rubbed through a
colander; then melted isinglass and thick cream is added, whipped over
ice and put into the mould.
The French prepare the most ornamental ices, both water and cream, but
they do not equal in richness or flavour those made in New York.
Pancakes and fritters, although English dishes, are very popular in
France and very good. Apple fritters with sherry wine and sugar are
very comforting things. The French name is _beignet de pomme_.
Thackeray immortalizes them thus:--
"Mid fritters and lollypops though we may roam,
On the whole there is nothing like _beignet de pomme_.
Of flour half a pound with a glass of milk share,
A half-pound of butter the mixture will bear.
_Pomme! Pomme! Beignet de pomme!_
Of _beignets_ there's none like the _beignet de pomme_!
"A _beignet de pomme_ you may work at in vain
If you stir not the mixture again and again.
Some beer just to thin it may into it fall,
Stir up that with three whites of eggs added to all.
_Pomme! Pomme! Beignet de pomme!_
Of _beignets_ there's nothing like _beignet de pomme_!
"Six apples when peeled you must carefully slice,
And cut out the cores if you'll take my advice;
Then dip them in butter and fry till they foam,
And you'll have in six minutes your _beignet de pomme_.
_Pomme! Pomme! Beignet de pomme!_
Of _beignets_ there's nothing like _beignet de pomme_!"
In the _Almanach de Gourmands_ there appeared a philosophical treatise
on pastry and pastry cooks, probably by the learned Giedeaud de la
Reynière himself. Pastry, he says, is to cooking what rhetorical
metaphors are to oratory,--life and ornament. A speech without
metaphors, a dinner without pastry, are alike insipid; but, in like
manner, as few people are eloquent, so few can make perfect pastry.
Good pastry-cooks are as rare as good orators.
This writer recommends the art of the rolling-pin to beautiful women
as being at once an occupation, a pleasure, and a sure way of
recovering embonpoint and freshness. He says: "This is an art which
will chase _ennui_ from the saddest. It offers varied amusement and
sweet and salutary exercise for the whole body; it restores appetite,
strength, and gayety; it gathers around us friends; it tends to
advance an art known from the most remote antiquity. Woman! lovely and
charming woman, leave the sofas where _ennui_ and hypochondria prey
upon the springtime of your life, unite in the varied moulds sugar,
jasmine, and roses, and form those delicacies that will be more
precious than gold when made by hands so dear to us." What woman could
refuse to make a pudding and any number of pies after that?
There seems to be nothing left to eat after all this perilous sweet
stuff but a devilled biscuit at ten o'clock.
"'A well devilled biscuit!' said Jenkins, enchanted,
'I'll have after dinner,--the thought is divine!'
The biscuit was brought and he now only wanted,
To fully enjoy it, a glass of good wine.
He flew to the pepper and sat down before it,
And at peppering the well-buttered biscuit he went;
Then some cheese in a paste mixed with mustard spread o'er it,
And down to the kitchen the devil was sent.
"'Oh, how!' said the cook, 'can I thus think of grilling?
When common the pepper, the whole will be flat;
But here's the cayenne, if my master be willing
I'll make if he pleases a devil with that.'
So the footman ran up with the cook's observation
To Jenkins, who gave him a terrible look;
'Oh, go to the devil!'--forgetting his station--
Was the answer that Jenkins sent down to the cook."
A slice of _pâté de foie gras_, olives stuffed with anchovy, broiled
bones, anchovy on toast, Welsh rarebit, devilled biscuit, devilled
turkey-legs, devilled kidneys, _caviare_, devilled crabs, soft-shell
crabs, shrimp salad, sardines on toast, broiled sausages, etc., are
amongst the many appetizers which _gourmets_ seek at ten or twelve
o'clock, to take the taste of the sweets out of their mouths, and to
prepare the pampered palate perhaps for punch, whiskey, or brandy and
soda.