Part 4

A quaint old book on Salads is entitled “On the Use and Abuse of Salads in general and Salad Plants in Particular,” by Johann Friedrich Schütze, Doctor of Medicine, and Grand-Ducal Saxe-Coburg-Meiningen, Physician at Sonnenburg and Neuhaus: Leipzig, 1758. The learned doctor adopts the classical division of humanity into the Temperamentum Sanguineum, or warm and damp, the Cholericum, or warm and dry, the Phlegmaticum, or cold and damp, and the Melancholicum, or cold and dry. To each of these classes a particular form of Salad applies, and none other.

When Pope Sixtus the Fifth was an obscure monk he had a great friend in a certain lawyer who sank steadily into poverty what time the monk rose to the Papacy. The poor lawyer journeyed to Rome to seek aid from his old friend the Pope, but he fell sick by the wayside and told his doctor to let the Pope know of his sad state. “I will send him a salad,” said Sixtus, and duly dispatched a basket of lettuces to the invalid. When the lettuces were opened money was found in their hearts. Hence the Italian proverb of a man in need of money: “He wants one of Sixtus the Fifth’s salads.”

Fourcroy and Chaptal, notable chemists of the end of the eighteenth century, unite in praise of salads, and have written disquisitions on the dressing thereof; and Rabelais opines that the best salad-dressing is Good Humour, which is just the sort of thing that one might expect from him. His references to salad are numerous, and in the one oft-quoted case humorously apposite.

In the olden time salads were mixed by pretty women, and they did it with their hands. This was so well understood that down at least to the time of Rousseau (Littré gives a quotation from the “Nouvelle Heloise,” VI. 2) the phrase _Elle peut retourner la salade avec les doigts_ was used to describe a woman as being still young and beautiful. “Dans le siècle dernier,” says Littré, “les jeunes femmes rétournaient la salade avec les doigts: cette locution a disparu avec l’usage lui-même.”

Among the gastrological Italian authors of the seventeenth century I must refer to Salvatore Massonio, who wrote a great work on the manner of dressing salads, entitled “Archidipno, overo dell’ Insalata e dell’ uso di essa, Trattato nuovo Curioso e non mai più dato in luce. Da Salvatore Massonio, Venice, 1627.” The British Museum copy, by the way, belonged to Sir Joseph Banks. As was usual in those leisurely and spacious times, there is a most glowing dedication beginning thus: “A Molto Illustri Signori miei sempre osservandissimi i Signori fratelli Ludovico Antonio e Fabritio Coll’ Antonii.” There is also a compendious bibliography of 114 authors consulted and mentioned in this work, which, indeed, is of considerable importance and of great interest.

Every one knows the oft-told tale of the French _emigré_ who went about to noblemen’s houses mixing delicate salads at a high fee. Most authorities refer to him as d’Albignac, although Dr. Doran, in his “Table Traits,” calls him le Chevalier d’Aubigné; but Grenville Murray, who generally knew what he was writing about, says that his name was Gaudet. However, that matters little. He, whoever he was, appears to have been an enterprising hustler of the period, and it is recorded that he made a decent little fortune on which he eventually retired to his native land to enjoy peace and plenty for the remainder of his days.

In Mortimer Collins’s “The British Birds, by the Ghost of Aristophanes” (1872), there is a poetic tourney between three poets for the laureateship of Cloud-Cuckooland; the subject is “Salad.” The poet with the “redundant brow” sings:--

O cool in the summer is salad, And warm in the winter is love; And a poet shall sing you a ballad Delicious thereon and thereof. A singer am I, if no sinner, My muse has a marvellous wing, And I willingly worship at dinner The Sirens of Spring.

Take endive ... like love it is bitter; Take beet ... for like love it is red: Crisp leaf of the lettuce shall glitter, And cress from the rivulet’s bed: Anchovies foam-born, like the Lady Whose beauty has maddened this bard; And olives from groves that are shady; And eggs ... boil ’em hard.

The poet with the “redundant beard” chants next.

Waitress, with eyes so marvellous black, And the blackest possible lustrous gay tress, This is the mouth of the Zodiac When I want a pretty deft-handed waitress. Bring a china bowl, you merry young soul; Bring anything green, from worsted to celery; Bring pure olive oil, from Italy’s soil ... Then your china bowl we’ll well array. When the time arrives chip choicest chives, And administer quietly chili and capsicum ... (Young girls do not quite know what’s what Till as a poet into their laps I come). Then a lobster fresh as fresh can be (When it screams in the pot I feel a murderer): After which I fancy we Shall want a few bottles of Heidseck or Roederer.

The poet of “the redundant hair” then sings his lay in Tennysonian-Arthurian lines, and is ultimately awarded the laureateship of Cloud-Cuckoo-Town.

The verses do not show poor Collins at his best, and are only interesting as relating to the subject of salad. Other songs of his have never been excelled in a certain delicate charm of fancy and quaint turns of versification.

Many salads have been mixed on the stage; the most famous perhaps is the Japanese salad which occurs in Alexandre Dumas fils’ “Francillon” (produced at the Théâtre Français, 17 January, 1887). It is not orthodox, and, even when deftly mixed, not particularly nice, the flavours being coarsely blended. Annette de Riverolles, inimitably played by Reichemberg of the smiling teeth, dictates the recipe to Henri de Symeux, originally acted by Laroche. Here is the passage:--

_Annette._ You must boil your potatoes in broth, then cut them into slices, just as you would for an ordinary salad, and whilst they are still lukewarm, add salt, pepper, very good olive oil, with the flavour of the fruit, vinegar....

_Henri._ Tarragon?

_Annette._ Orleans is better, but it is not important. But what is important is half a glass of white wine, Château-Yquem, if possible. Plenty of finely-chopped herbs. Now boil some very large mussels in a small broth (_court-bouillon_), with a head of celery, drain them well and add them to the dressed potatoes. Mix it all up delicately.

_Thérèse._ Fewer mussels than potatoes?

_Annette._ One-third less. The flavour of the mussels must be gradually felt; it must not be anticipated, and it must not assert itself.

_Stanislas._ Very well put.

_Annette._ Thank you. When the salad is finished, mixed....

_Henri._ Lightly....

_Annette._ Then you cover it with slices of truffles, like professors’ skull-caps.

_Henri._ Boiled in champagne.

_Annette._ Of course. All this must be done a couple of hours before dinner, so that the salad may get thoroughly cold before serving it.

_Henri._ You could put the salad-bowl on ice.

_Annette._ No, no. It must not be assaulted with ice. It is very delicate, and the different flavours must combine peacefully. Did you like the salad you had to-day?

_Henri._ Delicious!

_Annette._ Well, follow my recipe and you will make it equally well.

A few years ago Mr. Charles Brookfield mixed an admirable salad on the stage of the Haymarket in the course of his clever monologue “Nearly Seven.” On 31 January, 1831, “La salade d’oranges, ou les étrennes dans la mansarde,” by M. M. Varin and Desvergers, was played at the Palais Royal. The first-named author was a sort of gastronomic playwright, for he wrote plays called “Le cuisinier politique,” “J’ai mangé mon ami,” and others.

In the Bohemian quarter of Paris, not so very many years ago, the students of the _plein air_ school, the _Paysagistes_, used to sing this song at their convivial meetings:--

Ah! que j’aime avec de la salade, Un gros morçeau de jambon! Y a pas danger qu’on soit jamais malade Quand on mange avec de la salade Un bon morçeau de jambon. Amis, cassons les pots, les plats, les verres, Cassons les verres, les plats, les pots; Puisqu’il n’y a plus dans l’plat qu’des pommes de terre, Cassons les verres, les pots, les plats!

“When summer is icumen in,” one naturally turns to the cooling salad, the refreshing salmon mayonnaise, and the concomitant delights of mid-season entertaining. Regularly at that time of the year learned pundits in the daily papers tell us with portentous gravity what we ought to eat and what we ought to let alone. All this is the direst nonsense. A man or a woman of sense will eat that for which he or she feels inclined, and will have the requisite gastronomic gumption to avoid heating dishes which are unseasonable and unpalatable.

With all changes of the weather sensible people accommodate their diet to the meteorological conditions; fish is preferable to meat, and fruit plays its strong suit, because its cooling juices are just what we yearn to dally with when our appetites are a little under the weather. All this is axiomatic. Of salads in particular. I should like to give here and now the recipe of a salad which I have found most soothing and comforting in hot weather. I may, perhaps, be permitted to act as godfather and christen it “Vanity Fair Salad.” It is quite simple and wholesome and toothsome. Here followeth the recipe.

VANITY FAIR SALAD.--Take eight to ten cold cooked artichoke bottoms (_fonds d’artichauts_), fresh, not preserved, and the yellow hearts of two young healthy lettuces (_cœurs de laitue_). Break them into pieces with a silver fork or your fingers (on no account let them be touched by steel); add a not too thinly sliced cucumber, peeled; toss these together. Let them stand for half an hour; then drain off all the water. Now add two or three tablespoonfuls of pickled red cabbage, minus all vinegar, and a dozen sliced-up radishes. Add the dressing. As to this I prefer not to dogmatize. My own mixture is three and a half tablespoonfuls of the very best Nice olive oil to one of wine vinegar and one-half of tarragon, with salt, pepper, French mustard, and three drops of Tabasco sauce. But this is a matter of opinion, and I insist on nothing except the total avoidance of that horrible furniture-polish mixture sold in quaint convoluted bottles, and humorously dubbed “salad sauce.” Just before serving sprinkle the salad with chopped chervil and a suspicion of chives.

Our great-grandmothers had various and curious recipes for the assuagement of summer fevers and megrims of that nature. From an old volume of “The Lady’s Companion, or an infallible Guide to the Fair Sex,” published anonymously in 1743, I cull the following recipe for “Gascoign Powder.”

Take prepar’d Crabs’ Eyes, Red Coral, White Amber, very finely powdered, of each half an Ounce; burnt Hartshorn, half an Ounce; Pearls very finely powdered, and Oriental Bezoar, an Ounce of each; of the black Tops of Crabs’ Claws, finely powdered, four Ounces. Grind all these on a Marble Stone, till they cast a greenish Colour; then make it into Balls with Jelly made of English Vipers Skins, which may be made, and will jelly like Hartshorn.

Of course, this was never meant to be taken seriously, but the old cookery-book compilers always thought that a few of these pseudo-medieval recipes, assumed to have been compounded by the wise men of old, added a certain dignity to their otherwise quite harmless volumes.

The late Sir Henry Thompson recommends that the host or hostess should mix the salad, because not many servants can be trusted to execute the simple details.

Mixing one saltspoon of salt and half that quantity of pepper in a tablespoon which is to be filled three times consecutively with the best fresh olive oil, stirring each briskly until the condiments have been thoroughly mixed and at the same time distributed over the salad, this is next to be tossed thoroughly but lightly, until every portion glistens, scattering meantime a little finely chopped fresh tarragon and chervil, with a few atoms of chives over the whole, so that sparkling green particles spot, as with a pattern, every portion of the leafy surface. Lastly, but only immediately before serving, one small tablespoonful of mild French, or better still, Italian red-wine vinegar, is to be sprinkled over all, followed by another tossing of the salad.

“La Salade de la Grande Jeanne” is a pretty child’s story by the prolific writer, P. J. Stahl (really P. J. Hetzel), telling of the friendship of a tiny tot named Marie and a cow named Jeanne. They were born on the same day, but the calf grew to a big cow long before Marie became a big girl, but they remained firm friends, and Marie always took Jeanne to the pasture and Jeanne in return took care of Marie.

One day Marie’s little brother Jacques had a brilliant idea. He pitied poor Jeanne having always to eat her grass just plain without any dressing. How much better she would enjoy her food if it were properly mixed into a salad. So Jacques borrowed a big salad-bowl from his mother, and mixed a bundle of grass with oil and vinegar and pepper and salt. He put the bowl before Jeanne, who, being a polite cow, tasted the strange dish. Hardly had her great tongue plunged into the grass than she withdrew it with a melancholy moo, and swinging her tail in an expostulatory manner, she trotted off to the brook to take a long drink of water.

The moral is very trite. “The simple cuisine of nature suits cows better than that of man.”

“Every individual, who is not perfectly imbecile and void of understanding, is an epicure in his way; the epicures in boiling potatoes are innumerable. The perfection of all enjoyments depends on the perfection of the faculties of the mind and body; the temperate man is the greatest epicure, and the only true voluptuary.” DR. KITCHINER.

Old myths die hard. Nevertheless, as we grow older and wiser and saner and duller, we drop the illusions of our youth, and one by one our cherished beliefs fall from us, argued away by force of circumstance, lack of substantiation, or sheer proof to the contrary.

In this last category we must perforce reckon the excellent Mrs. Hannah Glasse and her immortal saying, “First catch your hare, then cook it.” Alas and alack, Mrs. Glasse never existed--“there never was no sich person”--and, moreover, the cookery book bearing her name, in none of its many editions, contains the oft-quoted words.

The actual facts, although, indeed, these are open to a certain amount of dubiety, appear to be as follows. In Boswell’s “Johnson” there are several references to one Edward Dilly, who with his brother Charles carried on a flourishing book-shop in the Poultry. Dr. Johnson often dined with these estimable men, and at their table met most of the wits and scholars of the day. The great lexicographer referred to the brothers as his “worthy friends.” It is on record that Edward Dilly, in the presence of Boswell, Mayo, Miss Seward, and the Duke of Bedford’s tutor, the Rev. Mr. Beresford, said to Dr. Johnson, “Mrs. Glasse’s ‘Cookery,’ which is the best, was written by Dr. Hill. Half the trade knows this.”

Now this Dr. John Hill (not Aaron Hill, as assumed by Mr. Waller) was a rather interesting personality. He was a brilliant man in many directions, who misused his talents, and devoted his energies to so many various professions that it is not surprising to learn that he succeeded permanently in none. It is known of him that he was at different times apothecary, actor, pamphleteer, journalist, novelist, dramatist, herbalist, naturalist, and quack-doctor. He took a degree at St. Andrews, and his nickname was “Dr. Atall.” He married the sister of the then Lord Ranelagh, and by some manner of means got himself decorated with the Swedish order of the Polar Star, on the strength of which he paraded himself as Sir John Hill. No one, however, appears to have taken him at his own appraisement, for he was the general butt of wits, epigrammatists, and lampoonists. His death was attributed to the use of his own gout remedy, and these lines to him still survive:--

For physic and farces His equal there scarce is; His farces are physic, His physic a farce is.

Well, this same John Hill, in his earlier and more obscure days, was doing hack-work for the booksellers, and also following the business of an apothecary in St. Martin’s Lane. This must have been in the year 1744 or 1745. He was struck (as who might not have been) by the ease with which a new cookery book might be compiled by extracting the best recipes from scores of old ones, and rehashing them with original remarks and new settings. He had plenty of material to work upon. The best-known cookery books prior to that date were, according to Dr. Kitchiner (who wrongly dates Mrs. Glasse 1757), Sarah Jackson’s “Cook’s Director,” La Chapelle’s “Modern Cook,” Kidder’s “Receipts,” Harrison’s “Family Cook,” “Adam’s Luxury and Eve’s Cookery,” “The Accomplish’d Housewife,” “Lemery on Food,” Arnaud’s “Alarm to all Persons touching their Health and Lives,” Smith’s “Cookery,” Hall’s “Royal Cookery,” Dr. Salmon’s “Cookery,” “The Compleat Cook,” and many more.

Hill accordingly made up his book, and his introduction was certainly ingenuous and modest; one phrase will prove this: “If I had not wrote in the high polite style, I hope I shall be forgiven; for my intention is to instruct the lower sort.” The sly dog knew his public, and this is further proved by his not putting his book to the world through a bookseller, but publishing it himself, and evolving an entirely new method of distribution. Among his friends he numbered the ingenious Mrs. Ashburn, or Ashburner, as it is spelt in some of the later editions. This good lady kept a glass and china shop in Fleet Street, hard by Temple Bar, and her customers came from the fashionable squares of Bloomsbury and St. James. Hill made an arrangement with Mrs. Ashburn, whereby she sold his book over her counter and recommended it warmly to all the ladies who called at her shop.

In order to make the illusion of authorship more complete, a female name was wanted for the title page. What could be more simple than “Mrs. Glasse,” seeing that Mrs. Ashburn kept a glass shop? The exact title of the _magnum opus_ ran, “The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy, which far exceeds anything yet published. By a Lady. Printed for the author and sold at Mrs. Ashburn’s, a china shop, the corner of Fleet Ditch, 1745.” The actual name of Mrs. Glasse did not, however, appear on the title page until the issue of the third edition, for the book was a great success from the first; every one came to Mrs. Ashburn’s to buy it, and its popularity vastly helped the glass and china trade.

About fourteen years ago a lively discussion as to the authentic authorship of Mrs. Glasse filled several columns in the newspapers, the principal correspondents being Mr. W. F. Waller and Mr. G. A. Sala. It was suggested that “first catch your hare” was a misprint for “first _case_ your hare.” Mr. Waller proved that neither of these passages occurred in any known edition of the book, although _case_, meaning “to skin,” would have been entirely legitimate and in place.

Shakespeare says in “All’s Well That Ends Well”:--

We’ll make you some sport with the fox ere we case him

And a reference to Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Love’s Pilgrimage” gives the lines--

Some of them knew me, Else had they cased me like a coney.

The actual phrase used is “First cast your hare,” or, in another edition, “Take your hare, and when it is cast.” This simply means flayed or skinned, and was commonly used at the time. The verb “to scotch” or “to scatch” is East Anglian, and has the same meaning. So much for the authenticity of the quotation.

Curiously enough, in the newspaper controversy above referred to, George Augustus Sala strongly supported the claims of Mrs. Glasse herself as the real author, and there certainly appears to be some circumstantial evidence as to a lady of that name who was “habit-maker to the Royal family” about that period, although her connexion with the culinary art is not to be traced. Incidentally Sala mentions a receipt from a cookery book written by “An ingenious Gaul” towards the middle of the seventeenth century, which begins with what he terms “A Culinary Truism,” since changed into “A proverbial platitude”--namely, the words “_pour faire un civet, prenez un lièvre_.” This is, however, of course merely a commonplace of the kitchen, and, according to the learned authority of Dr. Thudichum, the imperative of _prendre_ has not the _catching_ meaning apparently attached to it by Sala.

Abraham Hayward, Q.C., whose “Art of Dining,” a reprint of certain “Quarterly Review” articles, must always remain one of the greatest classics of English gastronomical literature, says that Mrs. Glasse’s cookery book was written by Dr. Hunter, of York. This is, of course, an egregious error. Dr. Hunter was the author of “Culina Famulatrix Medicinæ; or, Receipts in Modern Cookery” (1804, fourth edition), with the delightful dedication, “To those gentlemen who freely give two guineas for a Turtle Dinner at the Tavern, when they might have a more wholesome one at Home for Ten Shillings, this work is humbly dedicated”; and an exquisite frontispiece of a pig, by Carr, headed “Transmigration”; but he was in no way responsible for Mrs. Glasse.

The case is very fairly summed up by Mrs. Joseph Pennell in “My Cookery Books.” She says, speaking of Mrs. Glasse: “Her fame is due, not to her genius, for she really had none, but to the fact that her own generation believed there was no such person, and after generations believed in her as the author of a phrase she never wrote.” There really seems no more to be said on the matter.

It matters little, after all, whether Mrs. Glasse really existed or not; anyhow, some of her precepts are excellent and endure to this day. She preached thorough mastication as a primary rule for good digestion. This is thoroughly sound and praiseworthy.

“Most men dig their graves with their teeth,” so says an old Chinese proverb, meaning, no doubt, that we all eat too much, and too fast, and too often, and too promiscuously. The propriety of eating slowly ought always to be remembered. Mr. Gladstone’s thirty-two bites are historical. Napoleon was a terribly fast eater, and this habit is supposed to have paralysed him on two of the most critical occasions of his life, the battles of Leipzig and Borodino, which he might have converted into decisive and influential victories by pushing his advantages as he was wont. On each of these occasions he was known to have been suffering from indigestion. On the third day at Dresden, too, the German novelist Hoffmann, who was present in the town, asserts that the Emperor would have done much more than he did but for the effects of a shoulder of mutton stuffed with onions.