THE “CHEESE” AND ITS FARE—A GREAT FALL IN PUDDING
Resurgam.
_La découverte d’un mets nouveau fait plus pour le bonheur du genre
humain que la découverte d’une étoile._—BRILLAT-SAVARIN.
If, as Brillat-Savarin says, the discovery of a new dish does more
for the happiness of mankind than the discovery of a star, how much
more deserving of human gratitude is the discoverer of the “Cheese”
pudding than a Herschel or an Adams?
The _Sportsman_ of March 30, 1887, has a long and eulogistic article
on the “Cheese,” but exigencies of space preclude its being quoted
in its entirety. The writer says: “Happily the most famous of London
ancient taverns is left to us in the Old Cheshire Cheese, which
is yet nightly haunted by the shade of Dr. Johnson, whose modern
prototypes still enjoy their steaks and punch, and discuss politics,
polemics, and plays, though they wear short hair and masher collars
instead of full-bottomed wigs and ruffles.
“The ‘Old C.C.’ is a retiring, respectable, very conservative, and
hoary-headed aristocrat of the bygone school. Changes are made with
a very rebellious spirit, and the introduction of a patent American
machine for squeezing lemons savoured so much of modern progress
that its appearance nearly raised a riot amongst the patrons of the
sawdust-strewed bar. The ‘Cheese’ has no glaring front, nor does
it invite custom by acres of plate glass, glittering gasaliers, or
gorgeous frescoes. A modest representation of a cheese in dingy glass
does duty for a sign, so far as the street of Fleet is concerned.
The house has its school of customers, who look upon it as a species
of club, without the expense of entrance fee. How old the original
edifice was I am not prepared to say, but I notice by an ancient
sideboard that it was rebuilt in 1667.
“Inside, the hostelry has a curiously quaint, old-world appearance,
and this has been jealously preserved to good purpose by successive
proprietors. Rebuilt, decorated in the prevailing style of
public-house architecture, the ‘Old C.C.’ would have nothing to
recommend it over scores—nay, hundreds—of its fellows.
“The dining-room is fitted with rows of wooden benches and wooden
tables without the slightest pretence of show. But the cloths are
white and clean, and the cutlery bright, while the china service is
of that ancient and undemonstrative blue design which delighted our
forefathers, and is known as the willow pattern.... On the walls hang
three prominent objects, a barometer, a print of Dr. Johnson, and an
old oil painting by Wageman, representing the interior of the room,
with a gentleman trying his steak with his knife; a waiter holding up
a port wine cork in the well-known attitude ‘two with you’; and a cat
rubbing her oleaginous hide in anxious expectation against the leg
of the settle. This picture, like one in the bar, is an heirloom, or
rather a fixture, which cannot be sold—‘for ever and ever, amen!’—but
must pass from landlord to landlord.
“Upstairs there are extensive ranges of kitchens where burnt
sacrifices are being perpetually offered up in the shape of mutton
and beef; a dining-room and a smoke-room, dark-panelled and cosy,
where a man may forget the world and be lost to it during a much
coveted mid-day rest. Of other rooms on other floors no man knoweth,
save that in rumours it is alleged there have been private parties
over marrow-bones and puddings, a theory which is well borne out by
echoes of peals of laughter, and the popping of champagne corks.
Whatever the place may be above, however, it has no comparison
with the glories that lie below the paving. The privileged few who
are allowed to go into the wondrous cellars—redolent of sawdust,
cobweb-coated, and covered with dust—wander amidst avenues of
wine-bins with wonder and astonishment at the space occupied
underground as compared with the upper regions. The entrance to the
cellars is in the dingy office in the street of Fleet, which is
devoted to the wholesale department, and here a record is kept of the
rich old ports and generous clarets sleeping below, with the merry
devils of laughter bottled up in quarts and magnums in overcoats of
pink and foil. No man could remember them, be his experience as a
cellar-man what it may.
“The ‘Old C.C.’ is a fine record of the passing seasons. When
genial spring has brought forward vegetation, the waiter’s cheerful
intimation that ‘Asparagus is on, sir,’ recalls the fact forcibly to
your notice. When, later, ‘’Am and peas’ can be secured, the vision
of early summer is perfect, and is not even disturbed by boiled beans
and bacon. In the hot, sultry days, cool salads are appropriate, and
when these disappear there is a closing in of daylight and a general
warning that the year is past its prime. Then does the ‘Cheese’ draw
its blinds and light its gas, stoke up its fires, and announce its
great puddings. Yet further ahead, when raw November days come upon
us, the savoury smell of Irish stew—that fine winter lining for
the hungry—pervades the place and so the season goes round. Of all
the changes brought about by the rolling year, however, none is so
popular as the advent of
THE PUDDING,
though it means frost, and damp, and cold winds. _The_ pudding
(italics for ‘the,’ please,) has no rival in size or quality. Its
glories have been sung in every country. The pudding ranges from
fifty to sixty, seventy, and eighty pounds’ weight, and gossip has
it that in the dim past the rare dish was constructed to proportions
of a hundredweight. It is composed of a fine light crust in a huge
basin, and there are entombed therein beefsteaks, kidneys, oysters,
larks, mushrooms, and wondrous spices and gravies, the secret of
which is known only to the compounder. The boiling process takes about
SIXTEEN TO TWENTY HOURS,
and the smell on a windy day has been known to reach as far as the
Stock Exchange. The process of carving the pudding on Wednesdays and
Saturdays is a solemn ceremony. The late proprietor, Mr. Beaufoy A.
Moore, could be with difficulty restrained from rising from his bed,
when stricken down with illness, to drive to the ‘Cheese’ and serve
out the pudding. No one, he believed, could do it with such judicious
care and judgment as he did.
“Once, and once only was that pudding dropped. Alas, the sad day!
In the room sat an expectant hungry army of fifty men. The waiter,
bearing in triumph the pudding, appeared smiling on the scene. His
foot slipped, he tripped, the pudding wavered, and then bowled along
the floor, breaking up and gathering sawdust as it went. There was a
breathless silence. The proprietor dropped the upraised carver, stood
speechless for a moment, and then went out and wept bitterly. The
occasion was too much for him. One after another the awed and hungry
crowd put their hats on and departed, with sorrowful faces and watering
mouths.”