Part 7
You must provide some of those dear little fireproof china cups especially made for the purpose. Butter these little cups. Put two teaspoonsful of cream into each. Then break very carefully an egg into each. Dust with pepper, salt, and parsley. Stand these cups in the Chafing Dish with enough boiling water to come half-way up the cups. Have the lower pan full of hot water underneath. Boil up gently till the eggs are just set. Serve in the cups very hot, taking care in hauling them out of the Chafing Dish as they are very easily dropped.
Lady Effingham’s Eggs.
Put two slices of Gruyère cheese (not very thin) in the Chafing Dish with a tablespoon of butter. Break two eggs in a saucer and slide them on to the cheese; sprinkle with salt and Paprika and let it simmer (over the hot-water pan) till the eggs are set. Serve with fingers of toast.
Newmarket Eggs.
Put a tablespoon of butter in the Chafing Dish. When it sizzles add an onion cut into slices; let it get well browned. Then throw in three fair-sized potatoes in slices. Pour over these the well-beaten yolks of two eggs, adding salt and pepper. Heat up to boiling-point. Serve with toast.
Kempton Eggs.
Cut into slices three hard-boiled eggs and one onion; put the latter only in the Chafing Dish with a tablespoon of butter. Stir it, and fry the onion to a light brown, then sprinkle in half a tablespoon of flour, and add two tablespoons of milk, pepper and salt. Boil up and then add the eggs; serve at once with grated Parmesan cheese.
Anchovy Eggs.
Place a tablespoon of butter in the Chafing Dish, add half a teaspoon of dry mustard, two tablespoons of tomato sauce, one of Worcester sauce, and one of mushroom ketchup. Let it simmer, and then drop in four hard-boiled eggs cut into quarters, salted and peppered. Prepare four rounds of toast, spread them with good anchovy paste, or, better still, with Patum Peperium, and put the eggs on the toast, pouring over them the mixture.
This a remarkably good dish after a dance in the country and a ten-mile drive home. If the proper preparations are made, it can be turned out in five minutes in the billiard-room, and it picks one up in a thoroughly businesslike and efficient manner. Those cold winter drives after a busy night’s dancing, especially if the supper was good and frequent, demand a powerful restorative.
Now come we to the great question of Welsh Rabbit. I venture to doubt whether Rarebit is defensible, and I have read shoals of arguments for and against. Anyhow, my kind is a Rabbit, and it tastes as nice--or nicer.
A small boy walking across a common with his mother espied a bunny. “Look, mother, there goes a rabbit!” “Nonsense, my boy, it must have been imagination.” “Mother, is imagination white behind?”
There is no imagination about a Welsh Rabbit. It is sternly real. But not, I think, quite as indigestible as generally supposed, especially if it be liberally dosed with Paprika, which I find to be marvellously digestive. A well-made Rabbit should be suave in flavour, not harsh, stringy, or pungent. There should be a silky sensation of sensuous softness, and, above all things, it should not tickle the palate. I fear that I am led to dogmatise on the rabbit, and to ferret out my own didactic ideas on the subject, but if my rabbit be carefully concocted and intelligently degustated, I am convinced that I shall be forgiven.
Welsh Rabbit.
Use about half a pound of hard, dry, sound, mild cheese, without flaw or speck. Cut it up into tiny dice, in fact the smaller the better; some indeed insist on grating the cheese, but I have found this to be an unnecessary labour. Put a tablespoon of butter into the dish and knead it well with a wooden spoon until it begins to sizzle. Add half a teaspoon of Paprika, rather less of salt, and a tablespoon of beer (anything except bitter). Mix all thoroughly. Turn in the cheese and stir it about until it gets as consistent as thick cream, adding two to three more tablespoons of beer gradually, and taking great care that it does not become lumpy or stringy. Now put in a teaspoonful of made mustard. Keep on stirring until bubbles appear. It is then ready. You should beforehand get some toasts ready and as soon as the bubbling is well developed plunge in the toasts and cover them with the cheese. Serve on very hot plates. Milk can be used instead of beer, and condiments may be added in the shape of Worcester sauce or Tabasco, but I do not recommend them. Everything depends on regular and practically continuous stirring, always in one direction of course.
If you want to turn the Welsh Rabbit into a Buck Rabbit, drop a poached egg upon each piece of toast on top of the cheese. Here you have the whole art of Rabbiting, and it is a very good thing to eat--sometimes.
The right and only place for Savouries at a dinner-party is fixed and determined by immutable custom, but at a Chafing-Dish meal, be it luncheon or supper, more latitude is allowed, and a savoury may pop up here and there at the most unexpected--and thereby most delightful--moment. I see nothing heterodox in having a savoury instead of _hors d’œuvres_, or introducing it after the fish or instead of sweets. Few people, and those only of the baser sort, despise a simple savoury. It is such a succulent trifle, a mere mouthful of suggestion, an airy nothing that agrees with everything. There are of course savouries and savouries. I can only give a very few recipes, but have tried to make them as diverse and appetising as possible.
Ham Toast.
A quarter of a pound of lean ham, chopped fine. Do not mince it. Mincing machines, however patent and “adjustable,” have a way of reducing everything to an unholy pulp. Put the ham in the Chafing Dish with a teaspoon of Worcester sauce, half a teaspoon of good curry powder (I like Ventacachellum’s), a small tablespoon of butter, three drops of Tabasco, and two tablespoons of milk. Mix all well, heat up for five minutes and then spread on hot fingers of toast.
Cheese Matador.
Put a walnut of butter into the Chafing Dish, also a Spanish onion sliced. Simmer for three minutes. Then cut a quarter of a pound of hard dry cheese into dice, and drop into the mixture; add half a cup of milk and stir well till it is all thoroughly amalgamated and the cheese melted; add salt and Paprika and one beaten-up egg. Hot up for another three minutes and serve with toast.
Savoury Biscuits.
Mix up the yolks of two eggs and two tablespoons of grated Parmesan cheese. You can buy this ready grated, but it is not as good as if you grate it yourself. Add half a teaspoon of mustard and some salt. Spread the mixture on thinly buttered water biscuit (or thin Captains), put the biscuits in the Chafing Dish, over boiling water, and let them get slowly hot.
Braised Olives.
Stone neatly a dozen Spanish olives. Put them in the Chafing Dish with enough strong bouillon to cover them. Add a wine-glass of claret and the rind of half a lemon. Boil up quickly, strain, and serve the olives on toast or heated biscuit.
Bombay Toast.
A tablespoon of butter in the Chafing Dish; as it melts stir in two eggs, yolks and whites, half a teaspoon of Paprika, the same of anchovy sauce, and half a dozen capers, chopped up. When very hot spread this upon rounds of buttered toast.
Devilled Chestnuts.
Boil half a pound of chestnuts and remove the shells and skins. Break them in handy little lumps. When cold and hard return them to the Chafing Dish and fry them in a tablespoon of butter, half a teaspoon of Paprika, and plenty of salt, until they are well cooked through. Drain and dry them on blotting-paper, and put a drop of Tabasco on each lump.
Salted Almonds.
Melt one and a half tablespoons of butter. Drop into it a quarter of a pound of blanched almonds, and hot up till the almonds are well burned, brown but not black. Drain them on blotting-paper and sprinkle them with plenty of salt and a little Paprika.
The Devil.
One can devil bones, biscuits, meat and fish in a Chafing Dish very nearly as well as on the grill. Care must be taken always to score the flesh across with deep incisions, so that the devil mixture penetrates well into the meat. This is the best devil mixture for Chafing-Dish purposes that I know. There may be better, but I have not come across them. Mix well upon a plate a teaspoon of mustard, the same of Worcester sauce and anchovy sauce, two teaspoons of olive oil and half a teaspoon of Paprika. Let the meat soak up this mixture, and then hot it up in a tablespoon of butter till it almost boils. A chicken drumstick makes the best devil in the world, but biscuits dipped in the mixture are not to be despised, and even slices of cold cooked meat, beef or mutton, are very toothsome if treated in the same manner. Any cold bird makes an excellent devil.
Macaroni.
Although it may not come quite strictly under the head of Eggs and Savouries, this seems about the right place to expatiate upon Macaroni, the national food of Italy and the delight of every cultivated nation.
Real macaroni is made of hard wheat of a semi-translucent kind, which is richer in gluten and other nitrogenous matter than soft wheat. Macaroni is nothing but flour and water mixed in a cylinder, which concocts it into stiff paste. Then it is rolled under a huge granite wheel which flattens it into a smooth mass. It is cut into squares, and flattened by the wheel again and again until it is thoroughly kneaded. The dough then goes into an upright metal cylinder closed at the lower end with a thick disc of copper. This is pierced with openings through which a plunge-piston squeezes the dough into threads. The threads are cut off at regular intervals, and hung upon wooden drying-rods. Real macaroni is tender, yellowish, rough in texture, and elastic. It breaks with a clean, porcelainlike fracture. When it boils it swells to twice its size, and does not become sticky, but keeps its tubular form without collapse. It will keep any length of time in a dry cool place.
There are many agreeable variations on the macaroni theme, some of which suggest music rather than cooking. Everybody knows Vermicelli, but among the lesser known but equally admirable kinds are Tagliatelli, Lasagnete, Fuselli, Bicorni, Candele, Cannelloni, Pennoni, Capelli di Angelo, and many more. Each has its own little special peculiarity. All are alike excellent.
Tagliatelli.
Perhaps the handiest for Chafing-Dish purposes is Tagliatelli. Boil two pints of water in the Dish, put in half a pound of Tagliatelli, boil eight minutes, then strain. Return to the Dish, add a tablespoon of grated Parmesan cheese, and the same of butter. Toss round and round until well mixed, and serve very hot. Tomatoes mix well with macaroni, and so do mushrooms; but the real macaroni-lover will prefer it by itself, accompanied always, of course, by plenty of cheese. Mustard mixes well with it, but be very chary of the salt, for it is already salted during the process of preparation. To make macaroni _au gratin_, which seems (unaccountably enough) to be the only way in which it is served in nine British households out of ten, the top of the cooked macaroni must be well covered with grated Parmesan cheese, and then carefully browned with a salamander.
Ravioli.
Another most useful Italian preparation is Ravioli, which is compounded of a variety of good things. As Leporello says in Don Giovanni: “Madamina, il catalogo è questo!” Eggs, Macaroni, Paste, Pork, Chicken, Vegetables, and Cheese. It is a sort of White Knight portmanteau food, and if quite fresh (it is best in summer) is rightly termed “A dinner in one course”--if you cook it badly you may omit one letter in the last word.
This is how to prepare Ravioli with the help of Chaffinda. To two pints of boiling water in the Chafing Dish put a quarter of a pound of Ravioli; boil for ten minutes, then strain. Return to the dish; add half a teaspoon of butter, the same of grated Parmesan cheese, and hot it up for three minutes. Additional zest may be given, though it is by no means necessary, by cooking with the Ravioli a few fresh mushrooms, tomatoes, or even anchovies or olives. The best Ravioli I have found in London come from the Vegetable Meal Company of Soho.
With Macaroni or Ravioli I always suggest the drinking of Chianti, or Lacrima Christi. The former can often be obtained of quite good quality, not too rough or fiery. As to the latter, it is rare to find it drinkable. As a rule it is impossible. But the combination of food and wine is a good memory-reviver of a week at Genoa.
“Like as, to make our appetites more keen, With eager compounds we our palates urge; As, to prevent our maladies unseen, We sicken, to shun sickness, when we purge; Even so, being full of your ne’er cloying sweetness To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding.”
SHAKESPEARE (Sonnet cxviii.).
Madame de Staël said that she did not believe in ghosts--but that she was afraid of them. After the same fashion, I do not altogether believe in sauces, or perhaps I ought to say in any save the very simplest; but I fully recognise their great value in the assimilation of food.
Many dishes, without their special sauces, would be like a well-known song sung without an accompaniment. However beautifully delivered, no one, be he never so musical, could honestly say that he enjoyed Schubert’s “Erlkönig,” unaccompanied. The accompaniment is so much a part of the artistic whole that to separate them would be sheer vandalism. Something of the same intimate oneness exists in cookery. Who would care to eat lamb divorced from mint sauce, or boiled mutton without the necessary caper sauce, or goose minus apple sauce?
At the same time it is a culinary axiom that the less sauce used the better. A dish--any dish--“covered in sauce” is an abomination. We have the august authority of Pliny for moderation and simplicity. “Their best and most wholesome feeding is upon one dish, and no more, and the same plaine and simple: for surely this huddling of many meats one upon another of divers tastes is pestiferous. But sundrie sauces are more dangerous than that.” This is Holland’s translation.
Another point worthy of consideration is that sauce is to a great extent a geographical expression. What may be most excellent in Madrid is wholly out of place in Inverness; and what is nice at Nice is nasty at Norwich.
Insufficient account, I venture to think, is taken of the influence of climate upon national food, and it is often difficult if not impossible to acclimatise foreign fare to British stomachs, not because of anything inherent in the food, but simply as a matter of latitude. It is an historical commonplace that in the bleak cold north of Europe boar’s flesh was found more to man’s taste than that of the bull or bear, because it is fatter, richer, and produces much more heat. For this very reason in the South and East of Europe the flesh of swine is an abomination. In the Scandinavian Edda we are told that a boar was killed every night for the food of the warriors who feasted in high Valhalla. The bones were all preserved, together with the hide and head, and in the morning they were put together and re-endowed with life. The name of this huge pig was Sœhrimner, the cauldron in which it was boiled was called Eldhrimner, and the cook Andhrimner.
Both bear-ham and boar-ham are delicacies to this day in the North of Europe.
Much depends, too, upon the cooking; bad cooking is waste, both of money and comfort. Those whom God has joined in matrimony, ill-cooked joints and worse-cooked potatoes have often put asunder. In sauces, above all things, careful cooking, implicit keeping to the exact formulæ of recipes, and a restraint of all imagination, are immensely necessary. Not even the greatest artist can afford to juggle with sauces. They are fixed, immutable, and unalterable. A very favourite expression in French culinary manuals is the injunction to the cook: _Travaillez bien votre sauce_. The amateur sauce-maker would do well to bear this in mind. The sauce must be well worked, amalgamated, combined; otherwise it is a mere mess, lacking cohesion and perfection.
It is alleged of the incomparable Soyer that he said that sauces are to cookery what grammar is to language. Whether he really said so or not matters little. Some of the Soyer sauces are classics to this day, and not to be lightly imitated--especially on the Chafing Dish.
Let it be borne in mind that each and every sauce should have a character of its own. Many otherwise quite virtuous cooks live and die in the belief that they cannot make a sauce sufficiently savoury without putting into it everything that happens to be available, thinking, ignorantly enough, that every addition is bound to be an improvement.
There are only two real foundation sauces--_mères sauces_, or _grandes sauces_, as the French call them--the white and the brown sauce. All other sauces are more or less based on these two.
The great Carême resigned the position of Master of the Mouth to George IV. after only a few weeks’ service, and at an honorarium of £1000 a year, because he could not bear the English climate. His culinary swan-song took the form of a wondrous sauce, now alas! lost, which he called _la dernière pensée de Carême_.
A quite excellent and easily prepared sauce, which the very poorest households can make, and which will give zest to the simplest meal, is that described in the Delamere Cookery Book. This is the recipe for Pleasant Companionship sauce. A kind word will stir up the dormant appetite, while a harsh one will extinguish it, and, what is worse, will check the digestion of nutriment already taken. Such sauce may be regarded as Moral Sauce.
Reasoning from these winged words, we may infer that the remark so often heard from the mouths of little girl-children in the street: “Now, I won’t ’ave none o’ your sauce!” must really mean that there is a lack of Moral Sauce in the family circle.
In the recipes for the following sauces, I have purposely kept the ingredients as simple as possible; they are all reliable and appetising. As to which sauce appertains especially to which fish or meat, I do not propose to enter. That is a matter of taste, experience, and individuality, and I need hardly add that a white sauce does not go well with brown meat, nor brown sauce with white meat. Such admonitions are surely unnecessary to the advanced Chafist.
Butter Sauce.
Two tablespoons of butter, the same of flour; melt and mix together in the Dish, bring to boiling-point and allow to boil up for half a minute, then pour in a cupful of boiling water, to reduce the same to the consistency of cream; boil up again, stirring all the time, add a squeeze of lemon before serving.
White Sauce.
Mix well in the Chafing Dish two tablespoons of flour, one of butter, a small grating of nutmeg, a little pepper and salt; add a tumbler of milk; hot it up, stirring the while, and strain before using.
Brown Sauce.
Two tablespoons of butter. Heat and stir until it is brown and sizzling, then add a tablespoon of Tarragon vinegar, the same of Worcester sauce, half a tablespoon of chopped capers, a teaspoon of anchovy sauce, and a wine-glass of bouillon. Boil up all this for three minutes.
Piquant Sauce.
Mix up in the Dish a teaspoon of each of the following, chopped finely: gherkins, capers, shallots (or mild onions); add half a teaspoon of black pepper and a tablespoon of vinegar. Boil this for three minutes, then add a wine-glass of bouillon and a tablespoon of “brown thickening”--which is sold ready made by grocers--and a dash of anchovy sauce. Boil up again and skim the surface before using.
Maître d’Hôtel Sauce.
Mix up well two tablespoons of butter with one of flour, a grating of nutmeg, half a teaspoon of black pepper, the same of salt, rather more of chopped parsley, and a good squeeze of lemon. Put all this in the Chafing Dish with a tablespoon of milk. Stir it until it boils up, and then serve very hot.
Ravigote or Rémoulade Sauce.
These are to all intents and purposes the same sauce, save that Rémoulade has an added dose of oil and mustard. Mix a tablespoon of flour with the same of butter, a grating of nutmeg, half a teaspoon of pepper, the same of salt, the same of chopped parsley, and a good squeeze of lemon. Put this in the Chafing Dish with a tablespoon of bouillon, boil it up and skim it. Now mix up separately a tablespoon each of Tarragon and Chili vinegar and Worcester sauce, with a teaspoon of anchovy sauce. Boil up this mixture, and after two minutes’ boiling add it to the former mixture and combine the two.
Reform Sauce.
A cupful of bouillon in the Dish, add a wine-glass of port (or claret, but port is more orthodox), half as much Worcester sauce, a teaspoon of anchovy sauce, and a full tablespoon of red currant jelly. Boil it all up for three minutes, and skim before using.
Soubise Sauce.
Peel and slice four onions; put them in the Dish with a teaspoon of butter, a little nutmeg, pepper, and salt. Cover up and stew very slowly until the onions are almost dissolved. Then add two tablespoons of flour, a cold cooked potato cut into dice, a cupful of bouillon, and the same of milk. Stir and boil for three minutes. Then rub the sauce through a sieve and hot up again before serving.
Bread Sauce.
A tablespoon of bread-crumbs in the Dish with an onion, pepper and salt, a cup of milk, and half a tablespoon of butter. Hot up and stir for four minutes. Take out the onion before using.
Mustard Sauce.
To the foregoing plain butter sauce add a teaspoon of made mustard, a tablespoon of Chili vinegar, a squeeze of lemon, and a teaspoon of anchovy sauce. Make and serve very hot.
Poor Man’s Sauce.
Chop up a fair-sized onion in the Chafing Dish with half a tablespoon of butter. Fry to a light brown, then add a cup of bouillon, a teaspoon of vinegar, pepper and salt, and a teaspoon of chopped parsley. Stir vigorously and add gradually half a tablespoon of flour, and another half-tablespoon of butter. Boil up the sauce for two minutes.
Madeleine Sauce.
Put in the Dish a teaspoon of bread-crumbs, two shredded shallots, a walnut of butter, a teaspoon of vinegar and two tablespoons of bouillon. Boil this for three minutes with pepper and salt. The sauce should not be too thick.
Black Butter Sauce.
A walnut of butter in the dish; heat it till it is thoroughly brown, then add a tablespoon of vinegar, pepper and salt, and hot it up again.
Italian Sauce.
Put in the dish the peel of a quarter of a lemon, three sprigs of parsley, one of thyme, four button mushrooms, cut up small, a walnut of butter, and a suspicion of garlic. Hot up, and when all is well mixed pour in half a cup of bouillon; let it get thick, but not boil. Then take out the garlic, and add half a walnut of butter.
Onion Sauce.
Cut up two good-sized onions into slices. Simmer them gently with a tablespoon of butter and two slices of ham, one fat slice and one lean slice, a teaspoon of flour, salt, pepper, a pinch of sugar, a wine-glass of bouillon, and a good squeeze of lemon juice. Hot up for three minutes.
Gubbins’ Sauce.