Part 16
"Truss eight quails as for braising, put them in a stewpan, cover them with thin slices of fat bacon, pour in one gill of Madeira and one half pint of _mirepoix_, and let simmer until the quails are cooked. Fill a plain border-mould one and a quarter inches high with chicken forcemeat, poach it _au bain-marie_, and turn the border out of the mould into a dish and fill the centre with a _financière ragoût_ made of _foies gras_, truffles, cockscombs, cocks'-kernels, and chicken forcemeat quenelles mixed in _financière_ sauce. Drain the quails, untie them, and place them half on the border, half on the _ragoût_, the leg towards the centre, put a cockscomb between each quail, and a large truffle in the centre; glaze the border, the quails, and truffle with a brush dipped in glaze, and serve with _financière_ sauce."
With Jules Gouffé, Urbain-Dubois, a chef of the highest order, and author of six important works on cookery, will be known to posterity as one of the greatest masters of the range of the second half of the nineteenth century.
In marked contrast to those of Gouffé and Dubois are the numerous culinary works of Ildefonse-Léon Brisse, more familiarly known as Baron Brisse, and who was sometimes termed the Baron Falstaff. Two of his manuals, moulded on somewhat similar lines, are excellent mentors for the modest household--"The 366 Menus" (1868) and "La Petite Cuisine" (1870), of which many editions have appeared. In these a large number of good, uncommon, and simple dishes are presented, and both works may be comprehended by all who have a fair practical knowledge of cookery at command. According to Théodore de Banville, Baron Brisse was "at once an accomplished cook, a fine and delicate gourmet, and a gourmand always tormented with an insatiable hunger." It may therefore be assumed that all his recipes have been personally tested, and that those he particularly recommends are well worthy of trial, bearing out the sentiment he expresses in the preface to "La Petite Cuisine,"--"This book is a good action for which I will be duly credited in this world or the other." Besides his numerous volumes on cookery, he founded and contributed to several culinary journals. He laughed and ate. He was of enormous stature, and always was obliged to secure two places in the diligence between Paris and his home at Fontenay-aux-Roses, where he resided previous to his death in 1876. With Jules Gouffé he instituted a series of dinners where the guests were expected to dine in white frocks and round white caps, like the fat old cooks that Roland has painted--dinners presided over by the baron, whose _bonhomie_ was proverbial, and executed under the directions of Gouffé himself. But apart from his excellent cookery-books, Baron Brisse should be held in abiding reverence by all entertainers that are worthy of the name, if only for his splendid axiom,--"The host whose guest has been obliged to ask him for anything is a dishonoured man!"
THE COOK'S CONFRÈRE
"Les vûës courtes, je veux dire les esprits bornez et resserrez dans leur petite sphère, ne peuvent comprendre cette universalité de talens que l'on remarque quelquefois dans un même sujet."--LA BRUYERE: Du Mérite Personnel.
It were ungracious to trace the development of gastronomy further, or to peruse its literature at greater length, without rendering justice to the chief cause of its progress, deprived of which a Carême and a Gouffé were impossible, and cookery, from a fine art, would resolve itself into a perfunctory obligation. The reader who has followed the writer thus far will surely not require to be told that the great evolutionist of the table is neither the cook nor yet the range or the pot-au-feu so much as the quadruped that Rome once selected for its badge and cognisance. _A tout seigneur, tout honneur!_--let us not be unmindful of the inestimable benefits the hog has conferred upon mankind. Where, indeed, may one find that universality of talents referred to by La Bruyère so combined in a single individual as in the animal which the "short-sighted and narrow-minded" has so unjustly maligned? To what utilities does he not lend and blend himself, and where among _Ungulata_ or ruminators terrene were his substitute--a _pièce de résistance_ for the poor, a _jouissance_ and benison for all.
If we accept the testimony of various pagan writers, pork, of which the ancients were so fond, originally came into use about a thousand years after the deluge, when Ceres, having sown a field of wheat, found it invaded one day by a pig. This so incensed the goddess that she forthwith punished the offender with death, and afterwards, having him cooked, discovered his superior virtues--to set the example of utilising him as food. The usual corn-cob placed in the mouth of a freshly killed porker, therefore, not only reflects the delicacy of his tastes, but is also classic in a measure--a symbol of his intimate relationship with mythology and his place amid the Graces.
By the ancient Egyptians the flesh of the swine was held to be impure. So was that of the camel, the cony, and the hare; so also the fat of the ox or of sheep or of goat. "Every beast of the wood or the hedge or the burrow, over and above the beasts of the chase and the warren, according to the ancient writers, is to be called 'rascal.'" The hog is likewise placed under ban by the Hindus and strict Buddhists, and is still generally regarded as unclean by the Mohammedans. But the Mohammedans and Hindus have no cuisine worthy of the name, and what were a cuisine without the resources supplied by his inexhaustible larder! The religious tenet of the Israelites by which the swine is proscribed as an article of diet is honoured more in the breach than in the observance. The Chinese have ever been fond of his savoury flesh, and it may be said that with nearly all nations he forms one of the leading staples of consumption. With the onion and that priceless herb parsley, which stimulates appetite, facilitates digestion, and renders nearly all sauces more attractive, he forms one of the most indispensable adjuncts of alimentation. Deprived of his lardship, the onion tribe, and parsley, cookery would soon decline, if indeed the skilled practitioner would not find it well-nigh impossible to exercise his art.
Despite what slanderous tongues of the East may utter to his discredit, therefore, the weight of evidence as to his utility remains overwhelmingly in his favour. We do not necessarily require him in our parlours; his true place is the kitchen and the dining-room. Think how unendurable life would be without him! Of all beasts he is the one whose empire is most universal, and whose worth is least attested. It is true that a eulogistic but now unprocurable work of forty-eight pages was written in Modena in 1761 by D. Giuseppe Ferrari, with the title "Gli Elogi del Porco." A treatise entitled "Dissertation sur le Cochon," by M. Buc'hoz, published in 1789, is also cited. But as this appeared in a series of monographs relating to coffee, cacao, and various fruits, and has been passed by without comment, it probably treats the quadruped merely from a sordid point of view, and possesses no interest unless to the husbandman and stock-raiser.
Few have sung his praises, and, with the exception of Southey's colloquial poem, no genethliac has been addressed to him in English rhyme. Monselet has apostrophised him in a poem wherein he terms him "cher ange," and M. Pouvoisin, in "La Mort du Goret," has tenderly referred to him as "mon frère." His _oraison funèbre_ is worthy of Bossuet:
"Fameux par sa naissance et par son éleveur, Il est mort, le goret, célèbre à tant de titres: C'est un deuil, mais un deuil qui n'est pas sans saveur; Versons des pleurs, amis, surtout versons des litres! Il était si mignon, si lardé, si soyeux: Nous l'aimions! Maintenant qu'il a subi la flamme, Qu'il est accommodé, qu'il est délicieux; Nous lui servons de tombe, et nous en mangeons l'âme. Dans la profonde paix des estomacs gourmands, Son échine avec sa fressure vont descendre; Il n'avait pas rêvé, dans ses gras ronflements, D'un semblable caveau pour contenir sa cendre. C'est un honneur bien dû. Quel que soit ton regret Des repas plantureux, du son, de l'auge pleine, Tu peux t'enorgueillir, ô mon frère, ô goret. Nous allons te changer, nous, en substance humaine!"
(Of birth renowned, entitled well to boast, And reared with care, the little pig is dead: We sorrow, but we scent the savoury roast, And mix a bumper while our tears we shed. We loved him, silky-soft, and plump, and fine, And now that he has felt the crisping fire We wait his soul and body to enshrine, A morsel for an epicure's desire. He little thought, when grunting in his pen, That, seasoned thus to tickle gourmand taste, His chine would glide down throats of feasting men, And to a noble tomb within us haste. Regret not, little pig, thine early fate: Honours are thine beyond the fattening sty,-- We eat thee, brother, and incorporate Thy substance, thus, in our humanity.)[30]
Another poet, in a "Hymn to the Truffle," has accorded him a semi-complimentary stanza, referring to him as "a useful animal." A mediocre sonnet has also been addressed to him by Ernest d'Hervilly in a series of seven tributes to the oyster, the pig, the gudgeon, the rabbit, the roebuck, the herring, and the lobster.
"Man's ingratitude toward him," as Grimod de la Reynière remarks in the "Almanach," "has basely reviled the name of the animal that is the most useful to the human race when he is no more. He is treated as the Abbé Geoffroy treats Voltaire; his memory is defamed whilst his flesh is being savoured, and he is repaid with ironical contempt for the ineffable pleasures he procures for us."
His classic Porcosity! sacred to Thor, patron of St. Anthony, the device of Richard III, the favourite animal of Morland and Jacque, how ungenerously he has been treated!
"All his habits are gross, all his appetites are impure; his stomach is unbounded and his gluttony unparalleled," say his calumniators. Yet, in fact, he is no more unclean than most domestic beasts, any lapses in this respect being due to man and to the evil communications to which he has been subjected under domestication. The wild hog is proverbially cleanly, and is almost exclusively a vegetarian. In his natural state his courage is undaunted. The peccary will challenge the jaguar, while the wild boar is not unfrequently victorious in his combats with the tiger himself.
"In this animal," says Beauvilliers, "there is almost nothing to cast aside." Without him there were, in truth, an aching void and an empty cuisine,--no lard, no hams, no bacon; no sausages, no spare-rib, no larded _filets_ and game; no truffles and scientifically blended _pâtés_; no souse or headcheese; no "Dissertation on Roast Pig"; no chine "with rising bristles roughly spread." His ways are ways of fatness, and all his paths are progressive. He not only seeks to instruct, like Virgil; but seeks to please, like Theocritus. Civilisation radiates from him as light from a prism. With his increase culture advances, wealth accumulates, and cookery improves. And think of the services of his ploughshare to the farmer, whose orchards in many cases would otherwise remain untilled!
His unctuous Lardship! the very fat and marrow of the stock-exchange, the grease of the commercial wheel. Did he not directly furnish the inspiration to Dubufe for one of the grandest paintings the world has produced--the "Return of the Prodigal Son" who shared his husks--to say nothing of Hogarth and the Scottish poet Hogg, whose ode "To a Skylark" is scarcely excelled by Shelley's, and whose "Kilmeny" is enduring among poetic strains? And what were the spirited hunting scenes of Weenix, Sneyders, and Oudry without the great wild boar?
In the fourth canto of "The Faerie Queene" he is pictured as the symbol of gluttony:
"And by his side rode loathsome Gluttony, Deformèd creature on a filthy swine. His belly was upblown with luxury, And eke with fatness swollen was his eyne. Full of diseases was his carcass blew, And a dry Dropsie through his flesh did flow, Which by misdiet daily greater grew; Such one was Gluttony, the second of that crew."
But is he a glutton? and has he not been outrageously reviled by Spenser as well as by the poets in general? Is it fair to accept the dogmas and predications concerning his status, his vulgarity, and his voracity that have been bequeathed him from time immemorial? Is he not a _gourmet_ rather than a _gourmand_? Does he not infinitely prefer the smallest truffle of Périgord to the hugest pumpkin of the fat prairies of the West? Not only inordinately fond of the truffle, without which a pâté de foie gras were a flower without perfume, he is the great hunter of this highly prized esculent, recognising with Autolycus that a good nose is requisite to smell out work for the other senses. Yet even then he is thanklessly treated by man, who, instead of remunerating him with an occasional tuber, grudgingly tosses him a few kernels of corn. The despised razorback of the South, in like manner, steadfastly performs his mission of waging war upon the rattlesnake without ever having been chosen as the emblem of a State.
To the epicure he must ever bring to mind the perfumed product of the sunny provinces of Guienne and Dauphiné, the artists of Alsace, and the _Wurstmachereis_ of Germany. His fondness for the truffle, as instanced in the wild boar, far exceeds that of the hare, the squirrel, and the deer; and although the basset-hound and sheep-dog are also of service in locating the tuber, the pig not only points it, but deftly uproots it for the greedy hand of man. The pig seeks it by instinct; the dog, through long and patient training. The pig's education is accomplished in a few lessons by obtaining his confidence and appealing to his epicurean taste. A boiled potato accompanied with a few truffle peelings is placed in a mound of sand, after finding which the animal is rewarded by a few chestnuts, acorns, or kernels of maize--and the rest is left to his infallible memory. In fact, the discovery of the truffle is due to the animal under consideration. "His long snout," says La Reynière, "perceived the odour of this treasure at a depth of several metres. Up to this time, without a doubt, it had been reserved for the table of some evil genius jealous of the happiness of man; by his cunning he concealed it from the researches of the scientist, and some fairy, a friend of the human race, charged the pig, whose keen scent the goblin had forgotten to forefend, to mine the buried marvel and bring it to the light of day. However this may be, the first pig that discovered the truffle had excellent taste; there is no _bel esprit_ to-day who is not eager to imitate him."[31]
The boar's head, likewise, how suggestive of good cheer! It at once takes one back to the great baronial dining-halls, the Knights of the Round Table, and the feasts and wassails of eld. It suggests the joyous festivals of harvest-home and Yule, with the chief table on the dais and the tables for retainers and servants, when the family and attendants assembled amid the blaze of the great hearth-fire and the music of the harpers and minstrels.
Again, consider his lovely appetite, exquisite digestion, and imperturbable slumbers that many a millionaire would gladly part with half his riches to obtain. The papillæ of his tongue are never furred by dyspepsia, flatulence, gout, or the spleen. Proverbially on the best of terms with his stomach, he needs no podophyllin, bicarbonates, or Hunyadi. Sudden variations of temperature affect him not, while all latitudes are equally conducive to his longevity. Ennui is to him unknown, and life is never a burden, unless it be the trifling burden of the weight he carries. He sleeps and eats and digests, and in his own way solves the problem of content that is still unsolved by man.
His blithesome Porkship! his graces steal into the heart insensibly if one be a minute philosopher. No cock-crowing or turkey-gobbling, no lowing of kine or bleating of flocks, no screaming of hawks or cawing of crows may vie as an expression of the rural landscape with his complacent grunt of satisfaction and "high-piping _Pehlevi_" of triumph. A vibrant chord of melody when snouted and bristled disputants crowd and jostle around the trough or squeal and scramble within the pen, it yet requires a more potent mediumship to draw forth in its fullest measure the piercing treble of the porcine lyre. Rather let us hear it, _arrectis auribus_, rising sonorously along the highway or drifting adown some reverberant lane, with the dog as the plectrum of the ham-strings. Thomson, less gracious but more observant than Lamb, recognised his accomplishments as a lyrist, and in a stanza in "The Castle of Indolence," a complement to the stanza cited from "The Faerie Queene," thus apostrophises his power of song:
"Ev'n so through Brentford town, a town of mud, An herd of bristly swine is pricked along; The filthy beasts that never chew the cud Still grunt and squeak, and sing their troublous song, And oft they plunge themselves the mire among: But aye the ruthless driver goads them on, And aye of barking dogs the bitter throng Make them renew their unmelodious moan; Ne ever find they rest from their unresting fone."
Like Spenser, Thomson has grossly traduced him, except so far as his musical gifts are concerned, though in this respect he might have been more discriminating in the use of his adjectives. Why "troublous" and "unmelodious," in place of expressing his thrilling _arpeggio_ of song?
But it is for qualities more sterling than those of a vocal nature that the confrère of the cook deserves recognition. He has his trifling faults, to be sure--who is without them? He is obstinate in being driven to market, perhaps, knowing the fate which awaits him, and possibly his assurance may be somewhat obnoxious at public gatherings. It is admitted also that his _savoir faire_ at table, while distinguished for _aplomb_, is not entirely without alloy. But although the ill-mannered among his tribe occasionally thrust their feet not under but upon the mahogany, and are sometimes guilty of elbowing one another at mealtime, yet it must be conceded that they are never late at their engagements to dine; neither do they ever commit that unpardonable breach of etiquette--eating with a knife. It is a _belle fourchette_ rather than a fine blade they ply.
The late Horace Greeley, to repeat a well-known story, tells of a farmer who drove a herd of Yorkshires to market,--
"When meads with slime were sprent, and ways with mire,"--
the march proving so fatiguing to his charges that they shrank in flesh and had to be disposed of at a sacrifice on finally arriving at their destination. When asked on his return how much he had realised from the transaction, he replied he had made nothing out of his charges themselves--"_he had had the pleasure of their company, though_." This point, through a singular oversight,--the idea is the same and equally charming everywhere,--Leigh Hunt has not touched upon in his essay "On the Graces and Anxieties of Pig-Driving." It may be of interest to those whose manuscripts have been rejected to know that Hunt's exquisite conceit was refused by the magazine to which it was addressed, but fortunately it was not on this account consigned to the waste-basket, but lives and is embalmed with Lamb's dissertation.
"I could never understand to this day," writes Hunt in his autobiography, "what it is that made the editor of a magazine reject an article which I wrote, with the mock-heroic title of 'The Graces and Anxieties of Pig-Driving.' I used to think he found something vulgar in the title. He declared it was not he who rejected it, but the proprietor of the magazine. The proprietor, on the other hand, declared that it was not he who rejected it, but the editor. I published it in a magazine of my own, 'The Companion,' and found it hailed as one of my best pieces of writing."
This reference of Hunt's recalls a piquant _épigramme_ of lamb that is not down in the cook-books. It was when the writer was taking his departure from an old Paris bookstall, a number of years ago, that, as he turned to leave, the proprietor remarked:
"Monsieur perhaps might like to glance at an English work, '_sur l'Agneau_,' which came in with some other volumes recently."
The volume in question referred, indeed, to "lamb," and proved to be the excessively rare first edition of "The Essays of Elia" (London, 1823). It was slightly foxed, but otherwise in excellent condition, and contained some marginal annotations in manuscript. On carefully examining the handwriting, we became convinced it was that of Charles Lamb--there could be no possible doubt of it. The only writing on the fly-leaf was, "To W. W., from C. L."--the "W. W." presumably being William Wordsworth. In the volume, since attired by the binder as it deserves, are several slight alterations in "The South Sea House," and some addenda to "Valentine's Day."
But by far the most important annotation occurs in "A Dissertation on Roast Pig." It is apparent at a glance that this was a serious afterthought ere the volume left the author's hands and the types confronted him with any lapses he had made--an apology, in fact, on the part of the author for whatever reference might be considered disparaging or in any wise inconsiderate as regards the worth of the elder animal. For, in consistency, a jewel that sparkles throughout the pages of "Elia," the parents might not be reviled without reflecting upon the children. Moreover, however "mild and dulcet" a nursling pigling, roasted _secundum artem_, may be to those of educated tastes, it is a dish that cloys from its very mellifluence if repeated too often, whereas in pork matured it is invariably a case of cut and come again.
From the volume and chapter in question we transcribe the annotation, _verbatim et literatim_, where it follows, as a postscript, the concluding line, "he is a weakling--a flower":
"Methinks my mind (animadverted by the infant pearl) hath been too evasive. There is he who, having shed the downy robes of childhood, is clad in the _toga virilis_ of a glorious chief. Hast thou ever on occasion savoured his matured nether extremities, if haply thou wert blessed with an appetite and appreciation commensurate with their unctuous worth? Regard those feet--those parsley-garnished feet! See the pearly whiteness of the ankles, the coral pink of the petitoes! Meseems a man might arise in the small hours of a winter morning to savour such a dish. It should summon the shade of Lucullus. It should not only reconcile man to his lot, but it should render him thankful for it. Imagine the passion of a stricken youth (stricken by the pedal glories and faultless poise of a Taglioni), and then note by comparison the exalted rapture which should be engendered by _such_ feet as these!
"In wandering through Covent Garden market, and passing from floral dreams to the vegetables, I often pause before the peas. Do I yearn for them in their adolescence? do I associate them with the duckling and the lamb? Nay; I await a time when they shall have folded and creased within themselves their _perfected_ saccharine excellence, to be released in the kitchen of the winter.