Part 8
This is the best sauce I know, and I have tried many, for grills or anything in that way. I copy it verbatim (and without permission) from that most excellent food-book entitled “Cakes and Ale,” by Mr. Edward Spencer. Gubbins’ Sauce is peculiarly adaptable to the Chafing Dish, and is made in this wise: Fill the lower hot-water dish with boiling water. Keep it so. Melt in the Chafing Dish proper a lump of butter the size of a large walnut. Stir into it, when melted, two teaspoonsful of made mustard, then a dessert-spoonful of vinegar, half that quantity of Tarragon vinegar, and a tablespoonful of cream--Devonshire or English. Season with salt, black pepper and cayenne, according to the (presumed) tastes and requirements of the breakfasters. So far the recipe. I should add that although the ingenious inventor puts Gubbins’ Sauce with a grill among his breakfast allurements, it is by no means necessary to confine it to that meal. I have found it excellent at midnight--and later--with devilled kidneys, and it is not to be despised at any time of the day when you feel that way inclined.
“The Gastronomic Regenerator: a Simplified and entirely New System of Cookery,” by Monsieur A. Soyer of the Reform Club, London, 1846. Such is the mouth-filling title of one of the most interesting and curious works of the last century. The two-page dialogue with Lord M(arcus) H(ill), and the extraordinary recipe for “The Celestial and Terrestrial Cream of Great Britain,” are in themselves inimitable in their quaint pomposity. _Maga_ for August 1846 reviews the work kindly and good-humouredly, and says that the “Gastronomic Regenerator” reminds them of no book so much as the “Despatches of Arthur Duke of Wellington.” It may be a matter of dispute, adds _Maga_, whether Wellington or Soyer acquired his knowledge in the face of the hotter fire. Although Soyer was comic in his pompous affectation it must not be forgotten that he did splendid work in the Crimea in feeding the sick and wounded. Also his sauces are master works. And for these two things much may be forgiven him.
The foregoing sauces are best described as the regulars. There are plenty of others, mostly of a rather elaborate description, which those more experienced than myself must describe. I will content myself with adding quite a few irregular or freak sauces, if I may use the expression.
Fisherman’s Sauce.
This is a rather rich mixture, adapted for fresh-water fish. After a decent day’s sport with the tricksome Mayfly, the quarter of an hour just before dinner may profitably be employed in concocting it. Half a pint of cream, or milk, but cream is better, two tablespoons of walnut ketchup, home made for choice, and one tablespoon of anchovy sauce. Boil these up for five minutes, and just before serving add a small walnut of butter, a teaspoon of flour, a squeeze of lemon, and a pinch of cayenne. Stir up all together, and serve very hot. It is the best fresh-water fish-sauce going.
Bigarade Sauce.
This is essentially the wild-duck sauce, and is a welcome and agreeable variant on the stereotyped port-wine sauce. Pare the rind of two oranges, shred the rind thinly, and boil up for five minutes in as little water as possible. Set the rind aside. Melt a walnut of butter in the Dish, mix it with half a tablespoon of flour, and stir it till it begins to burn; add a cupful of bouillon, pepper and salt, the squeezed juice of both oranges, and a teaspoon of soft white sugar. Now put in the shredded rinds, boil up for two minutes, and serve with the duck. If you have not time to make this sauce, mix a glass of port wine, a dash of cayenne, and a squeeze of lemon. Slice the breast of the duck and pour this mixture over it. A very useful adjunct to wild duck is a simple orange salad. Divide two or three oranges into sections, dress them with oil, vinegar, pepper and salt, and eat it as you would any ordinary salad.
Périgueux Sauce.
This is simply Truffle Sauce, and appeals mainly to the vulgar-minded. It is made thus: Chop up two truffles very finely. Put them in the Chafing Dish with a glass of sherry and a walnut of butter, and boil for five minutes; add pepper and salt and a squeeze of lemon. I am of opinion that truffles (which the ancients thought were the product of thunder) should only be eaten in one way, and that is _en serviette_, cooked in hot wood ashes and eaten with praise and thanksgiving. The flavour of truffles I take to be one of the most perfect in the whole category of food-stuffs. Their indiscriminate use in shreds, choppings, patterns, and for ornament, I consider to be a capital sin. The _charcutier_ is mostly to blame for this; any old thing dressed up _aux truffes_ he considers a delicacy. One day a band of knowledgeable eaters will slay all _charcutiers_.
Truffles suggest pigs; pigs suggest, to me, Berkshire; and Berkshire a certain witty lady who, speaking of a local magnate, a self-made man, and a very wealthy one too, but who retained his awfully uncouth manners, described him as a wild boar whom civilisation had turned into a pig. I fear me there are many such.
One of the English Kings died of a surfeit of lampreys, and one of the French Ministers of a surfeit of truffles, which were also alleged to have mainly contributed to the demise of the famous gourmand Béquet, who was the predecessor of Jules Janin on the _Débats_, and on whom Roger de Beauvoir wrote this epitaph:
“Cy-gît Béquet, le franc glouton Qui but tout ce qu’il eut de rente; Son gilet n’avait qu’un bouton, Son nez en avait plus de trente!”
An ex-chef to whom I told this story of Béquet was profoundly moved, and said simply: “It must have been a beautiful death!”
“And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.”
SHAKESPEARE (Sonnet cii.).
The warm glow of virtuous satisfaction induced by the knowledge that one has done what was expected of one is my sole excuse for the contents of this chapter. I have no sweet tooth, and my experience in the cooking of sweets has been limited to the few recipes which come later on. Even these I would rather have omitted, because it is so easy to buy _éclairs_, _petits fours_, and other “dulceties” wherewith to finish off a Chafing-Dish meal, but it is just on the confines of possibility that this book may be read by a lady--or, if I am lucky, by two or even three--and I should be indeed accounted a poor instructor if I omitted sweets from my curriculum. “I humbly beg pardon of heaven, and the lady,” as Mr. Pepys said when he kissed the cook.
“Give the bairns pudding in plenty, again say I”--so wrote Sir Walter Scott, and I am heartily at one with him, but Chaffinda does not accommodate herself to the fabrication of pudding--and, besides, children ought to be in bed when supper-time brings the Chafing Dish on the table. Baking is of course impossible, and boiling in a cloth equally so. I have already said that Chaffinda--being so nearly human--has her limitations, and these are two of them, which I, for one, in no wise regret. Nevertheless, pudding is a great institution--in its proper place--which is childhood.
Our national Jack Pudding was a common object of whilom country fairs, a sort of typical buffoon who performed pudding tricks on a stage; one of them being to swallow a number of yards of black puddings amidst yokel plaudits. Curiously enough, and this is an etymological puzzle well worth following up, the typical buffoon of most European countries is christened after the commonest article of the daily food of the people. France has her Jean Potage; Germany, Hanswurst; Italy, Macaroni; and Holland, Pickel Herringe. This can hardly be a coincidence.
The learned Dr. Thudichum wisely says: “The state of culture of every nation can be estimated comparatively by its confectionery, even when we know little of its cookery, for confectionery is the most advanced and refined part of cookery, and thus enables an expert to draw a conclusion backwards regarding the kind of cookery out of which it originated.”
This is certainly true to a limited extent, but to attempt a rough and ready analysis on these lines is like dissecting a hummingbird with a hatchet. Generalisations are as dangerous as July oysters.
Apple Fritters.
Now for my sweets. The first one on the list is the familiar Apple Fritter, or _Beignet de Pommes_. It is quite easily cooked, especially if a little care be taken over the concoction of the all-important matter of batter.
Begin by carefully peeling four apples, fairly large ones for choice, then cut them into slices, about one-eighth of an inch thick, and take out the cores. Now make the batter. Put four tablespoons of flour in a basin with half a teaspoon of salt. Pour one tablespoon of oil on to half a tumbler of tepid water. They will not mix of course. Add this gradually to the flour, stirring it well. Next beat up two whites of egg to a very stiff froth, and stir it lightly into the flour. The batter is then ready for use. The eggs should not be added until you are quite ready to make the fritters. Now with a skewer or fork take up the apple rings, one by one, dip them in the batter, see that they are well covered, and then drop them into the Chafing Dish in which you have heated two tablespoons of butter to boiling-point. Fry the apples until they are soft, and of a golden brown colour. Drain them on kitchen paper, and sprinkle them with a little castor sugar.
Stewed Apples.
Apples, plainly stewed in slices, in milk and sugar, and then served on a bed of rice, are very satisfactory. The experimenting Chafist will find that sweets can very often be adapted so as to be suitable for the Chafing Dish. But always rehearse your impromptus before trying them in public.
Stewed Rhubarb.
Cut a pound of fresh sweet rhubarb into two-inch lengths, put it in the Chafing Dish with a tumbler of water, the peel of one lemon, and a tablespoon of soft white sugar. Let it boil up until the rhubarb is quite soft, and then either serve hot, or--preferably--let it get quite cold and serve with clotted cream.
Almost any stoneless fruit can be cooked in the same way. Gooseberries, currants, strawberries, and raspberries all make excellent compote, but care must be taken that the fruit does not get pulpy: it should be quite soft, but retain its proper shape. Quite ripe fruit is not so desirable as fruit that is just going to be ripe.
Fried Pineapple.
Cut a smallish pine into half-inch slices, paring the skin, of course, and split in half three or four ordinary penny sponge cakes. Fry these latter in the Chafing Dish in a tablespoon of butter till they are light brown on both sides. Take them out and keep them hot. Fry the pine slices in a like amount of butter and their own juice. Pour over them a wine-glassful of brandy and serve on the browned sponge cake. Cream may be added, but it is not at all necessary.
Coffee Chestnuts.
Shell a dozen chestnuts, and boil them for five minutes, then remove the skins. Put them back in the Chafing Dish with enough fresh water to cover them, and a tablespoon of soft white sugar, boil them until they are soft. Take them out and drain them, but do not break them up. Now put in the Chafing Dish the yolk of one egg, another tablespoon of soft white sugar, half a teacup of strong black coffee, a liqueur of brandy and a tablespoon of milk or cream. Keep on stirring till just upon boiling, then pour over the chestnuts, and serve hot.
It is not requisite to add brandy or other spirits to the foregoing dishes. It certainly tends to completeness of flavour, and, especially with cooked fruits, seems to bring out a subtle aroma or bouquet, but many most estimable gourmets dispense with all spirits in cookery, and are none the less well fed. Spirits should never be given in food for the young.
A Surrey curate opened the Sunday School one day with the well-known hymn, “Little drops of water, little grains of sand.” In the middle of the first verse he stopped the singing, and complained strongly of the half-hearted manner in which it was sung. He made a fresh start. “Now then,” he shouted, “little drops of water, and for goodness sake put some spirit into it!” And he wore a blue ribbon in his buttonhole too!
I should have liked to give the full recipe for a seventeenth-century “Quelque-Shose,” according to Master Robert May’s cook-book. The ingredients read temptingly--if somewhat lavish in quantity. Forty eggs are required, which are to be made in the form of omelets, which are to be “rolled up like a wafer” and served with “white wine, sugar, and juyce of lemon.” Another recipe of the same artist was for “Pie Extraordinary, or Bride Pie, which was made of ”severall compounds, being of severall distinct pies on one bottom.” At a rough guess this may have been the forerunner of our latter-day Bride-cakes, with their superimposed layers of almond paste, and consolidated indigestion. It is always marvellous to me that there are so few sudden deaths after a wedding, particularly if the cut cake has been handed about promiscuously.
Bananas contain three times as much nourishment as meat or potatoes, and as a food are declared to be superior to bread. They are as good raw as cooked, and my only advice is to take care to buy the smaller, more delicate kinds, and to avoid the grosser plantains, which are musty and flavourless. The kind known as “Lady’s Fingers” are the best of all.
Banana Cream.
Tear off a strip of skin from each of half a dozen bananas. Put them in the Dish with a tablespoon of milk, and a sprinkle of soft sugar. Heat them up until the skins are quite brown and the fruit soft and pulpy. Then strip the skins, add some more sugar, and serve with sponge-cake fingers.
Rice Milk.
Put in the Chafing Dish a teacupful of clean boiled rice, rather more than a pint of milk, a small stick of cinnamon, and a bay leaf. Add a heaped tablespoon of soft white sugar, and a suspicion of vanilla. Boil up very slowly, and remove spices before serving.
Skansk Gröt.
There is a very good Swedish pudding, known as Skansk Gröt, which is made in the following wise: Boil in the Chafing Dish half a pound of clean rice, with the peel of a lemon, and half a stick of cinnamon, and a cup of milk. Just before it comes to the boil add four apples, sliced and cored but not peeled, and a handful of stoned raisins, a tablespoon of sifted sugar, and a wine-glass of sherry. Boil all this for eight minutes, then take out the lemon peel and the cinnamon before serving. This Skansk Gröt can be eaten hot or cold, with or without cream or milk. It is good anyway.
Stuffed Figs.
Stuff a quarter of a pound of good pulled figs with blanched almonds, split in half. Put in the Chafing Dish a tablespoon of soft white sugar, a teaspoon of lemon juice, and a wine-glass of claret. Heat this up, but do not boil. Add the figs, cover up, and cook for eight minutes, when they ought to be quite tender and ready to serve.
Whisky Apples.
Peel and core, but do not cut up, four largeish apples, not necessarily cooking ones; in fact sweet eating apples are better. Put them in the Chafing Dish with six tablespoons of soft white sugar, the rind and juice of half a lemon, and an inch stick of cinnamon, a tiny bit of vanilla, and half a tumbler of whisky. Let this simmer over a low flame for a good half-hour, till the apples are soft. When quite done put them on a hot dish and pour the sauce over them.
There is an old tradition among whist players to the effect that there are at the present moment seven hundred and fourteen Englishmen wandering in destitution upon the continent of Europe, because they would not lead trumps when they held five. I do not desire to find myself in a like case, so I have played my trumps, and must abide by the consequences. I do not propose to invent impossible sweets which I have not tested in the Chafing Dish, give them high-falutin’ titles, and palm them off on unsuspecting and all-confiding Chafing students. Let them turn inventors themselves, and my blessing go with them!
I have purposely said little or nothing on the subject of appropriate drinks to accompany Chaffinda’s efforts, because that is, to a certain extent, a personal matter. At the same time it may be useful to know that it is very easy to mature cheap claret. The trick is French, and fairly reliable. It happens sometimes that the ordinary dinner claret of commerce leaves something to be desired in the way of flavour and palatability. It may be sour, acrid, harsh, biting, vinegary, and half a dozen other things, all unpleasant. Add to a glass of such ordinary wine a teaspoonful of very hot water. The effect is usually magical. The wine seems ten years older. It becomes softer, mellower, suaver, and really almost drinkable. _Le petit vin bleu du pays_ becomes almost a _cru_.
Some people drink coffee after dinner, and eke after lunch, if they have time--and lunch. Others use it as a barometer. You can do both, if you know how. It is very simple. The coffee must be very hot. Drop a lump of sugar into the cup, and before stirring it observe how the bubbles rise. If they rush towards the middle of the cup and meet, then it is going to be fine weather. If they remain close to the edge of the cup it will rain or snow. If they separate but wander about vaguely, then the weather will be changeable. This barometer is not infallible, but it has been known to be accurate. Try it. Café frequenters on the boulevards spend hours in checking the prognostications of their coffee by the weather reports in the papers.
I should like to give a few final hints on Chafing-Dish party-giving, the result of my own experience, which has been both bitter and sweet. Imprimis: “Don’t ask too many people,” as H. J. Byron said on his deathbed, when his coachman told him that one of his horses was ailing and he thought he had better give him a ball. “You should always be two,” quoth the Abbé Morellet, “to eat a truffled turkey. It is my invariable practice. I am going to dine off one to-day. We shall be two--the turkey and myself.”
A fellow feeding makes us wondrous kind, and I do not for a moment suggest that Chafing-Dish meals should always be soli, far from it; a duet is delightful, a trio tactful, and a quartet quieting. I cannot advise going beyond that number. Chaffinda is always present, of course, but she does not count as company, she is merely the hand-maiden, the _geisha_, the tutelary genius hovering over the meal.
I have already enjoined the absolute necessity of rehearsal; leave nothing to chance. If you want to make your little effect, see that it is properly stage-managed: your properties ready, your limes in working order, and your band parts ready and complete. “In the green salad days of my youth, when I rarely spoke aught but the truth,” I tried more than once to dazzle my guests with unrehearsed effects, but in every case the result was dire failure. All that sort of thing is magnificent, but it is not cookery.
Again, do not attempt too elaborate a bill of fare. Be pre-Raphaelite in your attention to detail rather than Academic in your mass of lavish decoration. Of two evils choose the prettier, and prefer a discreet little meal of soup, meat, vegetable and savoury, to an elaborate programme which defeats its own ends, and clogs the appetite.
It is such much better form to be simple, poor and proud--besides, it costs less. About forty years ago the late Lord Sidney Godolphin Osborn wrote a letter on the growing love of luxury to the _Times_, in the course of which he said: “The wealthy per force of their positions must have large expensive establishments; they are doomed to live in show houses; they are the proper consumers of the produce of the decorative arts; but they yet have to eat, and here comes the question. How can they eat in character? How can they dine up to their pictures, sculpture, plate, and music?”
The answer is easy enough. They can never dine up to their pictures, because they are usually dyspeptic.
“I had some hopes of the cook at first, but when I talked to her tightly and closely, I could make nothing of her: she was all wiggle-waggle, and I could never persuade her to be categorical.”
DR. JOHNSON (“D’Arblay’s Memoirs”).
Some of us have been to school. It was usually a long time ago. Still, here and there a man with a memory may recollect that when Achilles, in the “Iliad,” has granted the request of the unhappy Priam in reference to the dead body of his son, his next remark to the old man is an eminently practical and sensible one: “Let us now go to dinner!” It has struck me that this classical allusion may have been one of the reasons for the erection of the Achilles statue at Hyde Park Corner; just to remind late dawdlers in the Park that dinner-time and dressing-tide wait for no man or woman.
I have already had the presumption to suggest that we eat too often and too much and too late and too elaborately; this has emboldened me to further frankness. A French friend who “knew himself” in dining matters said to me once: “En Angleterre on se nourrit bien, mais on ne dine pas.” He was both right and wrong. Right as regards the very pseudo-French cookery of the affluent middle-class, wrong as regards the best restaurants and hotels.
Buckle, in his “History of Civilisation,” following Cabanis, considers food as one of the four physical agents most powerfully influencing the human race. Men’s manners and morality, their customs and condition, depend mainly on what they eat. The boldness of the Norseman and the timidity of the Bengalee are justly due to their respective preference for meat or vegetables, for carbonaceous or nitrogenous diet. Slavery in India is the direct result of rice, in Egypt of dates, of maize in Mexico and Peru.
We must, therefore, adapt ourselves to circumstances in so far as the circumstances adapt themselves to us. It is no longer fashionable to get drunk, and in a generation or two it will be the worst kind of form to eat more than three courses at dinner.
“Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are,” said Brillat-Savarin, Judge of the French Court of Cassation in 1826, and _not_ a professed cook, as so many folk seem to imagine. He goes on to say: “The gourmets by predestination can be easily told. They have broad faces, bright eyes, small foreheads, short noses, full lips, and rounded chins. The females are plump and pretty rather than handsome, with a tendency to _embonpoint_.”
This is not complimentary, and does not seem to be borne out by experience. Women gourmets are fewer than men, but they make up in knowledge what they lack in number. Both Goethe and Byron have left it on record that they objected to seeing women eat, but nowadays, with better table manners, it is not a disagreeable sight, except perhaps at a Swiss _table d’hôte_.
An English dinner-party, in the present year of grace, is not at all ugly. It may be--and sometimes is--almost a thing of beauty. The modern dinner-table approaches as nearly to the old Greek type as is compatible with the widely divergent character of the two civilisations. It certainly follows the classic pattern in two valuable particulars--beauty and repose. True, we do not wreathe our heads in roses, nor carry doves nestling in the folds of our robes, nor pour libations of wine over one another (such a messy habit!), but we have done away, for good and all, let us hope, with the dreadful mid-Victorian table decorations. Instead of hideous dish-covers, branching candelabra, hideous _épergnes_, and appalling “set pieces,” we have Hawthorn bowls of roses, delicate Venetian glass, beaten copper finger-bowls, perfectly plain silver, and the simplest of white china. Everything perfect of its kind, and its kind the non-ostentatious.