Part 12

I received once from Montpellier a box holding six pounds of these marvellous sweets, which were arranged in layers. Beginning with chocolates in every form, they passed upward by strata, until they reached the candied fruit, which was to be eaten at once. I think there were fifty-five varieties of delicious sweets in that box. Such lovely colours, such ineffable flavours, such beauties as they were! The only remarkable part of this anecdote is that I survived to tell it. I can only account for it by the fact that it was sent me by a famous physician, who must have hidden his power of healing in the box. Unlike Pandora's box which sent the troop of evils out into the world, this famous _cachet_ sent nothing but good-will and pleasure, barring perhaps a possible danger.

If, however, we speak of the bonbons themselves, what can we say of the _bonbonnières_! Everything that is beautiful, everything that is curious, everything that is quaint, everything that is ludicrous, everything that is timely, is utilized. I received an immense green satin grasshopper--the last _jour de l'an_, in Paris--filled to his uttermost _antennæ_ with bonbons. It could be for once said that the "grasshopper had not become a burden." The _panier Watteau_, formed of satin, pearls, straw, and flowers, may be made to conceal a handkerchief worth a thousand francs under the rose-satin lining. The boxes are painted by artists, and remain a lovely belonging for a toilet table.

Beautiful metal reproductions of some antique _chef d'oeuvre_ are made into _bonbonnières_. Some bonbon-boxes have themselves concealed in huge bouquets of violets, fringed with lace, or hidden under roses, which are skilfully growing out of white satin; beautiful reticules, all embroidered, hold the carefully bound up packages, where tinfoil preserves the silk and satin from contact with the sugar. If France did nothing else but make _bonbonnières_, she would prove her claim to being the most ingenious purveyor for the luxury of entertaining in all the world. If luxury means, "to freight the passing hour with flying happiness," France does her "possible" as she would say herself, to help along this fairy packing.

At Easter, when sweetmeats are almost as much in request as at the New Year,--the French make very little of Christmas,--these bonbon establishments are filled with Easter eggs of the gayest colours. There are nests of eggs, baskets of eggs, cradles full of eggs, and pretty peasants carrying eggs to market; nests of eggs, with birds of brilliant plumage sitting on the nests or hovering over them, while their freight of bonbons repose on softest swan's-down, lace, and satin; or again, the egg itself of satin, with its yolk of orange creams and its white of marshmallow paste. There is no end to this felicitous and dulcet strain.

The best candied fruit I have ever eaten, I bought in a railway depot at Venice. The Italians understand this art to perfection. They hang the fruit by its natural stem on a long straw; and no better accompaniment for a long railway journey can be imagined.

The French do not consider bonbons unhealthful. Instead of giving her boy a piece of bread and butter as he departs for the _Lycée_ the French mamma gives him two or three chocolate bonbons. The hunter takes these to the top of the Matterhorn; ladies take them in their pockets instead of a lunch-basket; and one assured me that two slabs of chocolate sufficed her for breakfast and supper on the road from Paris to Rome.

I do not know what Baron Liebig would say to this in his learned articles on the "Nutritive Value of Certain Kinds of Food," but the French children seem to be the healthiest in the world,--a tribute to chocolate of the highest. "By their fruits shall ye know them."

In the times of the Medici, and the St. Bartholomew Massacre, the French and Italian nobles had a curious custom of always carrying about with them, in the pockets of their silk doublets, costly little boxes full of bonbons. Henry IV., Marie de Medici, and all their friends and foes, carried about with them little gold and Limoges enamelled boxes, very pretty and desirable articles of _vertu_ now; and doubtless there was one full of red and white comfits in the pocket of Mary Queen of Scots, when she fell dead, poor, ill-used, beautiful woman, at the foot of the block, at Fotheringay. Doubtless there was one in the pouch of the grisly Duc de Guise, with his close-cropped bullet head, and long, spidery legs, when he fell, done to death by treacherous Catherine de Medici, dead and bleeding on the polished floor of Blois! It was a childish custom, and proved that the age had a sweet tooth; but it might have been useful for diplomatic purposes, and highly conducive to flirting. As a Lord Chief Justice once said that "snuff and snuff-boxes help to develop character," so the _bonbonnière_ helps to emphasize manners; and I am always pleased when an old or new friend opens for me a little silver box and offers me a sugared violet, or a rose leaf conserved in sugar, although I can eat neither of them.

A witty writer says that dessert should be "the girandole, or cunning tableau of the dinner." It should "surprise, astonish, dazzle, and enchant." We may almost decide upon the taste of an age as we read of its desserts. The tasteless luxury and coarse pleasures of the reign of Charles II.,--that society where Rochester fluttered and Buckingham flaunted,--how it is all described in one dessert! At a dinner given the father (of a great many) of his subjects by Lady Dormer, was built a large gilded ship of confectionery. Its masts, cabins, portholes, and lofty poop all smart and glittering, its rigging all taut, its bunting flying, its figure-head bright as gold leaf could make it. Its guns were charged with actual powder. Its cargo was two turreted pies, one full of birds and the other of frogs. When borne in by the gay pages, to the sound of music, the guns were discharged, the ladies screamed and fainted, so as to "require to be held up and consoled by the gallants, who offered them sips of Tokay." Poor little things! Such was the Court of Charles.

Then, to sweeten the smell of powder, the ladies threw at each other egg-shells filled with fragrant waters; and "all danger being over," they opened the pies. Out of one skipped live frogs; out of the other flew live birds who put out the lights; so, what with the screams, the darkness, the frogs, and the smell of powder, we get an idea of sports at Whitehall, where blackbrowed, swarthy-visaged Charles presided, on which grave Clarendon condescended to smile, and which the gentle Evelyn and Waller were condemned to approve.

We have not entirely refrained from such sugar emblems at our own great feasts; but fortunately, they have rather gone out, excepting for some emblem-haunted dinners where we do have sugared Monitors, and chocolate torpedos. I have seen the lovely Venus of Milo in frozen cream, which gave a wit the opportunity of saying that the home for such a goddess should be the temple of Isis; and Bartholdi's immortal Liberty lends herself to chocolate and nougat now and then, but very rarely at private dinners.

The fashion of our day, with its low dishes for the sweets, is so much better, that we cannot help congratulating ourselves that we do not live even in the days of the first George, when, as one witty author again says, "the House of Brunswick brought over sound protestantism, but German taste." Horace Walpole, great about trifles, incomparable decider of the width of a shoe-buckle, keen despiser of all meannesses but his own, neat and fastidious tripper along a flowery path over this vulgar planet, derided the new fashion in desserts. The ambitious confectioners, he says, "aspired to positive statuary, spindle-legged Venus, dummy Mars, all made of sugar;" and he mentions a confectioner of Lord Albemarle's who loudly complained that his lordship would not break up the ceiling of his dining-room to admit the heads, spear-points and upraised thunderbolts of a middle dish of Olympian deities eighteen feet high, all made of sugar.

The dishes known in France as _Les Quatres Mendiants_, one of nuts, one of figs or dried fruit, one of raisins, and another of oranges, still to be seen on old-fashioned dinner-tables, was, I supposed, so called because it is seldom touched,--in fact, goes a-begging.

But I have found this pretty little legend, which proves that it was far more poetical in origin. The name in French for aromatic vinegar is also connected with it. It is called "The Vinegar of the Four Thieves." So runs the legend: "Once four thieves of Marseilles, rubbing themselves with this vinegar during the plague, defied infection and robbed the dead." Who were these wretches? All that we know of them is that they dined beneath a tree on stolen walnuts and grapes, and imagined the repast a feast. We can picture them, Holbein men with slashed sleeves, as old soldiers of Francis I. who had wrestled with the Swiss. We can imagine them as beaten about by Burgundian peasants; and we know that they were grim, brown, scarred rascals, cutting purses, snatching silken cloaks,--sturdy, resolute, heartless, merry, desperate, God-forsaken scoundrels, living only for the moment. We can imagine Callot etching their rags, or Rembrandt putting in their dark shadows and high lights. We can see Salvator Rosa admiring them as they sleep under the green oak-tree, their heads on a dead deer, and the high rock above. Or we may get old Teniers to draw them for us, gambling with torn and greasy cards for a gold crucifix or a brass pot, or revelling at the village inn, swaggering, swearing, drunk, or tipsy, playing at shuffle-board. The only point in their history worth recording is that they were destined to be asked to every dinner party for four hundred years!--simply preceding the bonbons, as we see by the following verses:--

"Once on a time, in the brave Henry's age, Four beggars dining underneath a tree Combined their stores; each from his wallet drew Handfuls of stolen fruit, and sang for glee.

"So runs the story,--'_Garçon_, bring the _carte_, Soup, cutlets--stay--and mind, a _matelotte_.' And 'Charles,--a pint of Burgundy's best Beanne; In our deep glasses every joy shall float!'

"And '_Garçon_, bring me from the woven frail That turbaned merchants from fair Smyrna sent, The figs with golden seeds, the honeyed fruit, That feast the stranger in the Syrian tent.

"'Go fetch us grapes from all the vintage rows Where the brave Spaniards gaily quaff the wine, What time the azure ripple of the waves Laughs bright beneath the green leaves of the vine!

"'Nor yet, unmindful of the fabled scrip, Forget the nuts from Barcelona's shore, Soaked in Iberian oil from olives pressed, To the crisp kernels adding one charm more.

"'The almonds last, plucked from a sunny tree, Half way up Lybanus, blanched as snowy white As Leila's teeth, and they will fitly crown The beggars' four-fold dish for us to-night.

"'Beggars are happy! then let us be so; We've buried care in wine's red-glowing sea. There let him soaking lie--he was our foe; Joy laughs above his grave--and so will we!'"

It was from that love of contrast, then, was it, which is a part of all luxury, that the fable of the _Quatre Mendiants_ was made to serve like the olives at dessert. Perhaps the fillip which walnuts give to wine suggested it. It was a modern French rendering of the skull made to do duty as a drinking-cup. It is a part of the five kernels of corn at a Pilgrim dinner, without that high conscientiousness of New England. It is a part, perhaps, of the more melancholy refrain, "Be merry, be merry, for to-morrow ye die!" It is that warmth is warmer when we remember cold; it is that food is good when we remember the starving; it is that _bringing in_ of the pleasant vision of the four beggars under the tree, as a picture perhaps; at any rate there it is, moral at your pleasure.

The desserts of the middle ages were heavy and cumbrous affairs, and had no special character. There would be a good deal of Cellini cup and Limoges plate, and Palissy dish, and golden chased goblet about it, no doubt. How glad the collectors of to-day would be to get them! And we picture the heavy indigestible cakes, and poisonous bonbons. The taste must have been questionable if we can believe Ben Jonson, who tells of the beribboned dwarf jester who, at a Lord Mayor's dinner, took a flying header into a dish of custard, to the infinite sorrow of ladies' dresses; he followed, probably, that dish in which the dwarf Sir Geoffrey Hudson was concealed, and they both are after Tom Thumb, who was fishing about in a cup of posset a thousand years ago.

The dessert is allowed by all French writers to be of Italian origin; and we read of the _maîtres d'hotel_, before the Italian dessert arrived, probably introduced by Catherine de Medici and the Guises, that they gloried in mountains of fruit, and sticky hills of sweetmeats. The elegance was clumsy and ostentatious; there was no poetry in it. Paul Veronese's picture of the "Marriage of Cana" will give some idea of the primeval French dessert. The later fashion was of those trees and gardens and puppets abused by Horace Walpole; but Frenchmen delighted in seas of glass, flower-beds formed of coloured sand, and little sugar men and women promenading in enamelled bowling-greens. We get some idea of the magnificent fêtes of Louis XIV. at Versailles from the glowing descriptions of Molière.

Dufoy in 1805 introduced "frizzled muslin into a slice of fairyland;" that is, he made extraordinary pictures of temples and trees, for the centre of his dessert. And these palaces and temples were said to have been of perfect proportions; his trees of frizzled muslin were admirable. It sounds very much like children's toys just now.

He went further, Dufoy; having ransacked heaven and earth, air and water, he thrust his hand into the fire, and made harmless rockets shoot from his sugar temples. Sugar rocks were strewn about with precipices of nougat, glaciers of vanilla candy, and waterfalls of spun sugar. A confectioner in 1805 had to keep his wits about him, for after every victory of Napoleon he was expected to do the whole thing in sugar. He was decorator, painter, architect, sculptor, and florist--icer, yes, until after the Russian campaign, and then--they had had enough of ice. Thus we see that the dessert has always been more for the eye than for the stomach.

The good things which have been said over the walnuts and the wine! The pretty books written about claret and olives! One author says that if all the good things which have been said about the gay and smiling dessert could be printed, it would make a pleasant anecdotic little pamphlet of four thousand odd pages!

We must not forget all the absurdities of the dessert. The Prince Regent, whose tastes inclined to a vulgar and spurious Orientalism, at one of his costly feasts at Carleton House had a channel of real water running around the table, and in this swam gold and silver fish. The water was only let on at dessert.

These fancies may be sometimes parodied in our own time, as the bonbon makers of Paris now devote their talents to the paper absurdities of harlequins, Turks, Chinamen, and all the vagaries of a fancy-dress ball with which the passengers of steamships amuse themselves after the Captain's dinner. This is not that legitimate dessert at which we now find ices disguised as natural fruits, or copying a rose. All the most beautiful forms in the world are now reproduced in the frozen water or cream, as healthful as it is delicious, in the famous jelly with maraschino, or the delicate bonbon with the priceless liqueur, or, better still, that _eau de menthe_ cordial, our own green peppermint, which, after all, saves as by one mouthful from the horrors of indigestion and adds that "thing more exquisite still" to the perfect dessert,--a good night's sleep.

FAMOUS MENUS AND RECIPES.

Gather up the fragments that remain that nothing be lost. JOHN vi. 12.

This is not intended to be a cookery book; but in order to help the young housekeeper we shall give some hints as to _menus_ and a few rare recipes.

The great line of seacoast from New York to Florida presents us with some unrivalled delicacies, and the negroes of the State of Maryland, which was founded by a rich and luxurious Lord Baltimore, knew how to cook the terrapin, the canvas-back duck, oysters, and the superb wild turkey,--not to speak of the well-fattened poultry of that rich and luxurious Lorraine of America, "Maryland, my Maryland," which Oliver Wendell Holmes calls the "gastronomical centre of the universe."

Here is an old Virginia recipe for cooking terrapin, which is rare and excellent:--

Take three large, live, diamond-backed terrapin, plunge them in boiling water for three minutes, to take off the skin, wipe them clean, cook them in water slightly salted, drain them, let them get cold, open and take out everything from the shell. In removing the entrails care must be taken not to break the gall. Cut off the head, tail, nails, gall, and bladder. Cut the meat in even-size pieces, put them in a sauce-pan with four ounces of butter, add the terrapin eggs, and moisten them with a half pint of Madeira wine. Let the mixture cook until the moisture is reduced one-half. Then add two spoonfuls of cream sauce. After five minutes add the yolks of four raw eggs diluted with a half-cup of cream. Season with salt and a pinch of red pepper. The mixture should not boil after the yolk of egg is added. Toss in two ounces of butter before serving. The heat of the mess will cook egg and butter enough. Serve with quartered lemon.

This is, perhaps, if well-cooked, the most excellent of all American dishes.

A chicken gumbo soup is next:--

Cut up one chicken, wash and dry it, dip it in flour, salt and pepper it, then fry it in hot lard to a delicate brown.

In a soup kettle place five quarts of water and your chicken, let it boil hard for two hours, cut up twenty-four okra pods, add them to the soup, and boil the whole another hour. One large onion should be put in with the chicken. Add red pepper to taste, also salt, not too much, and serve with rice. Dried okra can be used, but must be soaked over night.

Another Maryland success was the tomato catsup:--

Boil one bushel of tomatoes until soft, squeeze through a sieve, add to the juice half a gallon of vinegar, 1½ pints salt, 3 ounces of whole cloves, 1 ounce of allspice, 2 ounces of cayenne pepper, 3 tablespoonfuls of black pepper, 3 heads of garlic, skinned and separated; boil three hours or until the quantity is reduced one-half, bottle without skimming. The spices should be put in a muslin bag, which must be taken out, of course, before bottling. If desired 1 peck of onions can be boiled, passed through a sieve, and the juice added to the tomatoes.

_Green pepper pickles_: Half a pound of mustard seed soaked over night, 1 quart of green pepper chopped, 2 quarts of onions chopped, 4 quarts of cucumbers also chopped, 8 quarts of green tomatoes chopped, 6 quarts of cabbage chopped; mix and measure. To every gallon of this mixture add one teacup of salt, let it stand until morning, then squeeze perfectly dry with the hands. Then add 8 pounds of sugar, and cover with good vinegar and boil five minutes. After boiling, and while still hot, squeeze perfectly dry, then add 2 ounces of cloves, 2 ounces of allspice, 3 ounces of cinnamon and the mustard seed.

The peppers should be soaked in brine thirty-six or forty-eight hours. After soaking, wipe dry and stuff, place them in glass jars, and cover with fresh vinegar.

This was considered the triumph of the Southern housekeeper.

_Chicken with spaghetti_: Stir four sliced onions in two ounces of butter till very soft, add one quart of peeled tomatoes; stew chicken in water until tender, and pick to pieces. Add enough of the gravy to make a quart, put with the onions and tomatoes. Let it stew fifteen minutes gently. Put into boiling water 2½ pounds of spaghetti and a handful of salt, boil twenty minutes or until tender; drain this and put in a layer on a platter sprinkled with grated cheese, and pour the stew on it. Fill the platter with these layers, reserving the best of the chicken to lay on top.

The old negro cooks made a delicious confection known as confection cake. Those who lived to tell of having eaten it declared that it was a dream. It certainly leads to dreams, and bad ones, but it is worth a nightmare:--

1½ cups of sugar, 2½ cups of flour, ½ cup of butter, ½ cup of sweet milk, whites of six eggs, 3 small teaspoons of baking powder. Bake in two or three layers on a griddle.

_Filling_: 1 small cocoanut grated, 1 pound almonds blanched, and cut up not too fine, 1 teacup of raisins chopped, 1 teacup of citron chopped, 4 eggs, whites only, 7 tablespoonfuls of pulverized sugar to each egg.

Mix this destructive substance well in the froth of egg, and spread between the layers of cake when they are hot; set it a few minutes in the oven, but do not burn it, and you have a delicious and profoundly indigestible dessert. You will be able to write Sartor Resartus, after eating of it freely.

_Walnut Cake_: 1 cup of butter, 2 cups of sugar, 6 eggs, 4 cups of flour, 1 cup of milk, 2 teaspoonfuls of yeast powder.

This is also baked in layers, and awaits the dynamite filling which is to blow you up:--

_Walnut Filling_: 2 cups of brown sugar, 1 cup of cream, a piece of butter the size of an egg. Cook twenty minutes, stirring all the time; when ready to take off the stove put in one cup of walnut meats. After this has cooked a few minutes longer, spread between the layers, and while both cake and filling are hot.

Perhaps a few _menus_ may be added here to assist the memory of her "who does not know what to have for dinner:"--

Tomato Soup. Golden Sherry. Whitefish broiled. Claret. Mashed potatoes. Round of beef _braisé_, Madeira. with glazed onions. Champagne. Roast plover with cress. Château Yquem. Chiccory Salad. Custard flavoured with vanilla. Cheese. Cordials. Chambertin. Fruit. Coffee.

Or a plain dinner:--

Sherry. Oxtail Soup. Claret. _Filet_ of lobster _à la Mazarin_. Turkey rings with _purée_ of chestnuts. Salad of fresh tomatoes. Cream tart with meringue. Cheese.

This last dinner is perhaps enough for only a small party, but it is very well composed. A much more elaborate _menu_ follows:--