CHAPTER IX

DINNER (_continued_)

"The combat deepens. On ye brave, The _cordon bleu_, and then the grave! Wave, landlord! all thy _menus_ wave, And charge with all thy devilry!"

French soup--A regimental dinner--A city banquet--_Baksheesh_--Aboard ship--An ideal dinner--Cod's liver--Sleeping in the kitchen--A _fricandeau_--Regimental messes--Peter the Great--Napoleon the Great--Victoria--The Iron Duke--Mushrooms--A medical opinion--A North Pole banquet--Dogs as food--Plain unvarnished fare--The Kent Road cookery--More beans than bacon.

"What's in a name?" inquired the love-sick Juliet. "What?" echoes the bad fairy "_Ala_." After all the fuss made by the French over their soups, we might expect more variety than is given us. If it be true that we English have only one sauce, it is equally true that our lively neighbours have only one soup--and that one is a broth. It is known to the frequenters of restaurants under at least eleven different names _Brunoise_, _Jardinière_, _Printanier_, _Chiffonade_, _Macédoine_, _Julienne_, _Faubonne_, _Paysanne_, _Flamande_, _Mitonnage_, _Croûte au Pot_, and, as Sam Weller would say, "It's the flavouring as does it." It is simply _bouillon_, plain broth, and weak at that. The addition of a cabbage, or a leek, or a common or beggar's crust, will change a _potage à la Jardinière_ into a _Croûte au Pot_, and _vice versa_. Great is "_Ala_"; and five hundred per cent is her profit!

The amount of money lavished by diners-about upon the productions of the alien _chef_ would be ludicrous to consider, were not the extravagance absolutely criminal. The writer has partaken of about the most expensive dinner--English for the most part, with French names to the dishes--that could be put on the table, the charge being (including wines) one guinea per mouth. Another banquet, given by a gay youth who had acquired a large sum through ruining somebody else on the Stock Exchange--the meal positively reeking of _Ala_--was charged for by the hotel manager at the rate of _sixteen pounds_ per head, also including wines. I was told afterwards, though I am still sceptical as to the veracity of the statement, that the flowers on the table at that banquet cost alone more than £75. And only on the previous Sunday, our host's father--a just nobleman and a God-fearing--had delivered a lecture, at a popular institution, on "Thrift."

Here follows the _menu_ of the above-mentioned guinea meal,

_A Regimental Dinner_,

held at a well-known city house.

_Vins._ | _Hors d'OEuvres._ | Crevettes. Thon Mariné. Beurre. | Radis. | | _Potages._ Madère. | Tortue Claire et Liée. | Gras de Tortue Vert. | | _Relevés de Tortue._ Ponche Glacé. | Ailerons aux fines Herbes. | Côtelettes à la Périgueux. | | _Poissons._ | Souché de Saumon. Schloss Johannisberg. | Turbot au Vin Blanc. | Blanchaille Nature et Kari. | | _Entrées._ Amontillado. | Suprême de Ris de Veau à la Princesse. | Aspic de Homard. | Champagne. | _Relevés._ Piper Heidsieck, 1884. | Venaison, Sauce Groseille. Boll et Cie., 1884. | York Ham au Champagne. Burgundy. | Poulardes à l'Estragon. Romanée, 1855. | ----- | Asperges. Haricots Verts. | Pommes Rissoliées. | | _Rôt._ Port, 1851. | Canetons de Rouen. | | _Entremets._ Claret. | Ananas à la Créole. Patisserie Parisienne. Château Léoville. | Gelées Panachées. | | _Glace._ Liqueurs. | Soufflés aux Fraises. | | _Dessert, etc._

And some of the younger officers complained bitterly at having to pay £1:1s. for the privilege of "larking" over such a course!

There are only three faults I can find in the above programme: (1) Confusion to the man who expects the British Army to swallow green fat in French. (2) Whitebait is far too delicately flavoured a fowl to curry. (3) Too much eating and drinking.

_City Dinners_

are for the most part an infliction (or affliction) on the diner. With more than fourscore sitting at meat, the miracle of the loaves and fishes is repeated--with, frequently, the fish left out.

"I give you my word, dear old chappie," once exclaimed a gilded youth who had been assisting at one of these functions, to the writer, "all I could get hold of, during the struggle, was an orange and a cold plate!"

The great and powerful system of

_Baksheesh_,

of course, enters largely into these public entertainments; and the man who omits to fee the waiter in advance, as a rule, "gets left." Bookmakers and others who go racing are the greatest sinners in this respect. A well-known magnate of the betting-ring (1896) invariably, after arriving at an hotel, hunts up the _chef_, and sheds upon him a "fiver," or a "tenner," according to the size of the house, and the repute of its cookery. And that metallician and his party are not likely to starve during their stay, whatever may be the fate of those who omit to "remember" the Commissariat Department. I have seen the same bookmaker carry, with his own hands, the remains of a great dish of "Hot-pot" into the dining-room of his neighbours, who had been ringing for a waiter, and clamouring for food for the best part of an hour, without effect.

The same system prevails aboard ship; and the passenger who has not propitiated the head steward at the commencement of the voyage will not fare sumptuously. The steamship companies may deny this statement; but 'tis true nevertheless.

_Dinner Afloat._

Here is an average dinner-card during a life on the ocean wave:

Julienne soup, boiled salmon with shrimp sauce, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, jugged hare, French beans _à la Maître d'Hôtel_, chicken curry, roast turkey with _purée_ of chestnuts, _fanchouettes_ (what are they?), sausage rolls, greengage tarts, plum-puddings, lemon-jellies, biscuits and cheese, fruit, coffee.

Plenty of variety here, though some epicures might resent the presence of a sausage-roll (the common or railway-station bag of mystery) on the dinner table. But since the carriage of live stock aboard passenger ships has been abandoned, the living is not nearly as good; for, as before observed, the tendency of the ice-house is to make all flesh taste alike. Civilisation has, doubtless, done wonders for us; but most people prefer mutton to have a flavour distinct from that of beef.

My

_Ideal Dinner_

was partaken of in a little old-fashioned hostelry (at the west end of London), whose name the concentrated efforts of all the wild horses in the world would not extract. Familiarity breeds contempt, and publicity oft kills that which is brought to light. Our host was a wine-merchant in a large way of business.

"I can only promise you plain food, good sirs," he mentioned, in advance--"no foreign kick-shaws; but everything done to a turn."

Six of us started with clear turtle, followed by a thick wedge out of the middle of a patriarchal codfish, with plenty of liver. And here a pause must be made. In not one cookery-book known to mankind can be found a recipe for cooking the

_Liver of a Cod_.

Of course it should not be cooked _with_ the fish, but in a separate vessel. The writer once went the rounds of the kitchens to obtain information on this point.

"'Bout half-an-hour," said one cook, a "hard-bitten" looking food-spoiler.

"_Ma foi!_ I cook not at all the liver of the cod," said an unshorn son of Normandy. "He is for the _malade_ only."

After asking a number of questions, and a journey literally "round the town," the deduction made from the various answers was that a piece of liver enough for six people would take eighteen minutes, after being placed in _boiling_ water.

To continue with our dinner. No sauce with the oysters, but these simply scalded in their own liquor. Then came on a monster steak, an inch thick, cut from the rump immediately before being placed on the gridiron. And here a word on the grilling of a steak. We English place it nearer the fire than do our lively neighbours, whose grills do not, in consequence, present that firm surface which is the charm of an English steak. The late Mr. Godfrey Turner of the _Daily Telegraph_ (who was almost as great an authority as Mr. Sala on gastronomies) once observed to the writer, "Never turn your steak, or chop, more than once." Though by no means a disciple of _Ala_, he was evidently a believer in the French method of grilling, which leaves a sodden, flabby surface on the meat. The French cook only turns a steak once; but if he had his gridiron as close to the fire as his English rival, the _chef_ would inevitably cremate his _morçeau d'boeuf_. I take it that in grilling, as in roasting, the meat should, in the first instance, almost touch the glowing embers.

We had nothing but horse-radish with our steak, which was succeeded by golden plovers (about the best bird that flies) and marrow bones. And a dig into a ripe Stilton concluded a banquet which we would not have exchanged for the best efforts of Francatelli himself.

Yes--despite the efforts of the bad fairy _Ala_, the English method of cooking good food--if deftly and properly employed--is a long way the better method. Unfortunately, through the fault of the English themselves, this method is but seldom employed deftly or properly. And at a cheap English eating-house the kitchen is usually as dirty and malodorous as at an inexpensive foreign restaurant. As both invariably serve as sleeping apartments during the silent watches of the night, this is, perhaps, not altogether to be wondered at.

But there is one _plât_ in the French cookery book which is not to be sneered at, or even condemned with faint praise. A properly-dressed _fricandeau_ is a dainty morsel indeed. In fact the word _fricand_ means, in English, "dainty." Here is the recipe of the celebrated _Gouffé_ for the FRICANDEAU:

Three pounds of veal fillet, trimmed, and larded with fat bacon. Put in the glazing stewpan the trimmings, two ounces of sliced carrot, two ditto onion, with pepper and salt. Lay the _fricandeau_ on the top; add half a pint of broth; boil the broth till it is reduced and becomes thick and yellow; add a pint and a half more broth, and simmer for an hour and a quarter--the stewpan half covered. Then close the stewpan and put live coals on the top. Baste the _fricandeau_ with the gravy--presumably after the removal of the dead coals--every four minutes till it is sufficiently glazed; then take it out and place on a dish. Strain the gravy, skim off the fat, and pour over the meat. It may be added that a spirit lamp beneath the dish is (or should be) _de rigueur_.

In their clubs, those (alleged) "gilded saloons of profligacy and debauchery, favoured of the aristocracy," men, as a rule dine wisely, and well, and, moreover, cheaply. The extravagant diner-out, with his crude views on the eternal fitness of things, selects an hotel, or restaurant, in the which, although the food may be of the worst quality, and the cookery of the greasiest, the charges are certain to be on the millionaire scale. For bad dinners, like bad lodgings, are invariably the dearest.

_At the Mess-Table_

of the British officer there is not much riot or extravagance nowadays, and the food is but indifferently well cooked; though there was a time when the youngest cornet would turn up his nose at anything commoner than a "special _cuvée_" of champagne, and would unite with his fellows in the "bear-fight" which invariably concluded a "guest night," and during which the messman, or one of his myrmidons, was occasionally placed atop of the ante-room fire. And there was one messman who even preferred that mode of treatment to being lectured by his colonel. Said officer was starchy, punctilious, and long-winded, and upon one occasion, when the chaplain to the garrison was his guest at dinner, addressed the terrified servant somewhat after this wise:

"Mr. Messman--I have this evening bidden to our feast this eminent divine, who prayeth daily that we may receive the fruits of the earth in due season; to which I, an humble layman, am in the habit of responding: 'We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.' Mr. Messman, don't let me see those d----d figs on the table again."

At a military guest-night in India, a turkey and a "Europe" ham are--or were--_de rigueur_ at table; and on the whole the warrior fares well, if the _khansamah_ do not attempt luxuries. His chicken cutlets are not despicable, and we can even forgive the repetition of the _vilolif_ but his _bifisteakishtoo_ (stewed steak) is usually too highly-spiced for the European palate. Later in the evening, however, he will come out strong with _duvlebone_, and grilled sardines in curlpapers. The presence of the bagpipes, in the mess-room of a Highland regiment, when men have well drunk, is cruelly unkind--to the Saxon guest at all events. The bagpipe is doubtless a melodious instrument (to trained ears), but its melodies are apt to "hum i' th' head o'er muckle ye ken," after a course of haggis washed down with sparkling wines and old port.

"Tell me what a man eats," said Brillat Savarin, "and I'll tell you what he is."

_Peter the Great_

did not like the presence of "listening lacqueys" in the dining-room. Peter's favourite dinner was, like himself, peculiar: "A soup, with four cabbages in it; gruel; pig, with sour cream for sauce; cold roast meat with pickled cucumbers or salad; lemons and lamprey, salt meat, ham, and Limburg cheese."

"Lemons and lamprey" must have had a roughish seat, atop of pig and sour cream. I once tasted lampreys--only once. It was in Worcestershire, and said lampreys were stewed (I fancy) in burgundy, and served in a small tureen--_en casserole_, our lively neighbours would have called the production, which was grateful, but much embarrassed with richness.

_Napoleon the Great_,

whose tastes were simple, is said to have preferred a broiled breast of mutton to any other dinner-dish. Napoleon III., however, encouraged extravagance of living; and Zola tells us in _Le Débâcle_ that the unfortunate emperor, ill as he was, used to sit down to so many courses of rich foods every night until "the downfall" arrived at Sédan, and that a train of cooks and scullions with (literally) a "_batterie_" _de cuisine_, was attached to his staff.

_Her Majesty_

Queen Victoria's dinner-table is invariably graced with a cold sirloin of beef, amongst other joints; and the same simple fare has satisfied the aspirations and gratified the palate of full many a celebrity. The great

_Duke of Wellington_

was partial to a well-made Irish stew; and nothing delighted Charles Dickens more than a slice out of the breast of a hot roast-goose.

A word about the mushroom. Although said to be of enormous value in sauces and ragouts, I shall always maintain that the mushroom is best when eaten all by his quaint self. His flavour is so delicate that 'tis pitiful to mix him with fish, flesh, or fowl--more especially the first-named. I have seen mushrooms and bacon cooked together, and I have seen beef-steak (cut into small pieces) and bacon cooked together, and it was with some difficulty that my Irish host got me out of the kitchen. If ever I am hanged, it will be for killing a cook. Above all never eat mushrooms which you have not seen in their uncooked state. The mushroom, like the truffle, loses more flavour the longer he is kept; and to "postpone" either is fatal.

"The plainer the meal the longer the life." Thus an eminent physician--already mentioned in these pages. "We begin with soup, and perhaps a glass of cold punch, to be followed by a piece of turbot, or a slice of salmon with lobster sauce; and while the venison or South-down is getting ready, we toy with a piece of sweetbread, and mellow it with a bumper of Madeira. No sooner is the mutton or venison disposed of, with its never-failing accompaniments of jelly and vegetables, than we set the whole of it in a ferment with champagne, and drown it with hock and sauterne. These are quickly followed by the wing and breast of a partridge, or a bit of pheasant or wild duck; and when the stomach is all on fire with excitement, we cool it for an instant with a piece of iced pudding, and then immediately lash it into a fury with undiluted alcohol in the form of cognac or a strong liqueur; after which there comes a spoonful or so of jelly as an emollient, a morsel of ripe Stilton as a digestant, a piquant salad to whet the appetite for wine, and a glass of old port to persuade the stomach, if it can, into quietness. All these are more leisurely succeeded by dessert, with its baked meats, its fruits, and its strong drinks, to be afterwards muddled with coffee, and complicated into a rare mixture with tea, floating with the richest cream."

Hoity, toity! And not a word about a French _plât_, or even a curry, either! But we must remember that this diatribe comes from a gentleman who has laid down the theory that cold water is not only the cheapest of beverages, but the best. Exception, too, may be taken to the statement that a "piquant salad" whets the appetite for wine. I had always imagined that a salad--and, indeed, anything with vinegar in its composition--rather spoilt the human palate for wine than otherwise. And what sort of "baked meats" are usually served with desert?

_How the Poor Live._

An esteemed friend who has seen better days, sends word how to dine a man, his wife, and three children for 7½d. He heads his letter

_The Kent Road Cookery_.

A stew is prepared with the following ingredients: 1 lb. bullock's cheek (3½d.), ½ pint white beans (1d.), ½ pint lentils (1d.), pot-herbs (1d.), 2 lb. potatoes (1d.)--Total 7½d.

When he has friends, the banquet is more expensive: 1 lb. bullock's cheek (3½d.), ½ lb. cow-heel (2½d.), ½ lb. leg of beef (3d.), 1 pint white beans (2d.), ½ pint lentils (1d.), pot-herbs (1d.), 5 lb. potatoes (2d.)--total 1s. 3d.

As we never know what may happen, the above _menus_ may come in useful.

_Doctor Nansen's Banquet_

on the ice-floe, to celebrate his failure to discover the Pole, was simple enough, at all events. But it would hardly commend itself to the _fin de siècle_ "Johnny." There was raw gull in it, by way of a full-flavoured combination of _poisson_ and _entrée_; there was meat chocolate in it, and peli--I should say, pemmican. There were pancakes, made of oatmeal and dog's blood, fried in seal's blubber. And I rather fancy the _relevé_ was _Chien au nature_. For in his most interesting work, _Across Greenland_, Doctor Nansen has inserted the statement that the man who turns his nose up at raw dog for dinner is unfit for an Arctic expedition. For my own poor part, I would take my chance with a Porterhouse steak, cut from a Polar bear.

_Prison Fare._

Another simple meal. Any visitor to one of H.M. penitentiaries may have noticed in the cells a statement to the effect that "beans and bacon" may be substituted for meat, for the convicts' dinners, on certain days. "Beans and bacon" sounds rural, if not absolutely bucolic. "Fancy giving such good food to the wretches!" once exclaimed a lady visitor. But those who have sampled the said "beans and bacon" say that it is hardly to be preferred to the six ounces of Australian dingo or the coarse suet-duff (plumless) which furnish the ordinary prison dinner. For the tablespoonful of pappy beans with which the captive staves off starvation are of the _genus_ "haricot"; and the parallelogram of salted hog's-flesh which accompanies the beans does not exceed, in size, the ordinary railway ticket.