Part 20
It is most unfortunate that La Reynière omitted to bequeath to posterity a certain monastic recipe of marvellous merit used in connection with wild fowl and all manner of game-birds, which is thus described in the brilliant opening essay of the first year of the "Almanach," the author's reference being to the wild duck, which he advises to be cooked _à la broche_, as it thus preserves all its _fumet_ without losing any of its other qualities:
"After it has been roasted and carved" [he proceeds to say] "a sort of poignant _salmis_ may be prepared on the table, the recipe for which we have been in possession of for a long time, and which was given to us by the _procureur_ of a Bernardin abbey--the sole riches that the Revolution could not confiscate from him; this formula, however, we must reserve for our most intimate friends. The recipe is not to be found in any nutritive dispensary, and it becomes all the more precious inasmuch as, not being applicable to the duck alone, it may be utilized with all kinds of dark-fleshed feathered game, and especially with partridges and woodcock--which renders it inappreciable."
Far less can be said of the Protestant clergy on the score of cookery or with respect to the improvement of the vine and the invention of beverages. Nearly all clerical roads lead through Rome, it would seem, in so far as relates to gastronomy. Moreover, in Protestant countries--at least among the lesser lights of the church--it is rather the rector who is fêted than who does the fêting, and who, even were he inclined to asceticism, would scarcely be allowed to practise it by his parishioners. In one of his essays, "The Country Sunday," Richard Jefferies tells how the chapel pastor is entertained at table in Wiltshire:
"There is no man so feasted as the chapel pastor. He dines every Sunday, and at least once a week besides, at the house of one of his stoutest upholders.... After dinner the cognac bottle is produced, and the pastor fills his tumbler half full of spirit, and but lightly dashes it with water. It is cognac, and not brandy, for your chapel minister thinks it an affront if anything more common than the best French liquor is put before him: he likes it strong, and with it his long clay pipe. Very frequently another minister, sometimes two or three, come in at the same time, and take the same dinner, and afterwards form a genial circle with cognac and tobacco, when the room speedily becomes full of smoke and the bottle of brandy soon disappears. In these family parties there is not the least approach to over-conviviality; it is merely the custom, no one thinks anything of a glass and a pipe; it is perfectly innocent; it is not a local thing, but common and understood. The consumption of brandy and tobacco and the good things of dinner, tea, and supper (for the party generally sit out the three meals) must in a month cost the host a good deal of money, but all things are cheerfully borne for the good of the church. Never were men feasted with such honest good-will as these pastors; and if a budding Paul or Silas happens to come along who has scarce yet passed his ordination, the youthful divine may stay a week if he likes, and lick the platter clean."
One also remembers the curates' dinner as described in "The Professor" by that keen observer, Charlotte Brontë:
"The curates had good appetites, and though the beef was tough, they ate a great deal of it. They swallowed, too, a tolerable allowance of the 'flat beer,' while a dish of Yorkshire pudding and two tureens of vegetables disappeared like leaves before locusts. The cheese, too, received distinguished marks of their attention; and a 'spice-cake,' which followed by way of dessert, vanished like a vision and was no more found."
Anthony Hayward, in "The Art of Dining," tells the story of the phenomenal appetite of a chaplain during the Old Bailey sittings, when it was the custom to serve two dinners (exact duplicates) a day, the first at three o'clock, the second at five:
"The first course was rather miscellaneous, varying with the season, though marrow-puddings always formed a part of it; the second never varied and consisted exclusively of beefsteaks. As the judges relieved each other, it was impracticable for them to partake of both; but a little chaplain whose duty it was to preside at the lower end of the table was never absent from his post. This invaluable public servant persevered from a sheer sense of duty till he had acquired the habit of eating two dinners a day, and practised it for nearly ten years without any perceptible injury to his health. We had the pleasure of witnessing his performance at one of the five o'clock dinners, and can assert with confidence that the vigour of his attack on the beefsteaks was wholly unimpaired by the effective execution a friend assured us he had done on them two hours before."
The last communication from the Rev. Sydney Smith to Canon Barham, better known as Thomas Ingoldsby, related to gastronomy, with the ethics of which he was so conversant, the canon having just sent him a pannier of pheasants.
"Many thanks, my dear sir, for your kind present of game," wrote the appreciative recipient. "If there is a pure and elevated pleasure in this world, it is that of roast pheasant and bread-sauce; barn-door fowls for dissenters, but for the real churchman, the thirty-nine times articled clerk, the pheasant! the pheasant!"
Why the witty rector of Combe-Florey declared that when he found himself seated next to a bishop at a dinner-party he became so nervous that he could do nothing but crumble his bread, and when his place adjoined that of an archbishop he crumbled it with both hands, seems inexplicable, unless it had been his mischance to encounter among his superiors in office more accomplished epularians than himself. Besides his celebrated poetical recipes for a salad, which are presented in a following chapter, his less familiar "Receipt to Roast Mutton" may not be omitted from references to ecclesiastic good cheer:
"Gently stir and blow the fire, Lay the mutton down to roast, Dress it quickly, I desire, In the dripping put a toast, That I hunger may remove-- Mutton is the meat I love.
"On the dresser see it lie; Oh! the charming white and red; Finer meat ne'er met the eye, On the sweetest grass it fed: Let the jack go swiftly round, Let me have it nicely brown'd.
"On the table spread the cloth, Let the knives be sharp and clean, Pickles get and salad both, Let them each be fresh and green. With small beer, good ale, and wine, O ye gods! how I shall dine!"
Canon Barham, no less than Sydney Smith, wielded a valiant spoon, and to the unpunctual at dinner he has delivered one of his most forcible sermons in "The Lay of St. Cuthbert":
"When asked out to dine by a Person of Quality, Mind and observe the most strict punctuality! For should you come late, and make dinner wait, And the victuals get cold, you'll incur, sure as fate, The Master's displeasure, the Mistress's hate. And though both may, perhaps, be too well-bred to swear,-- They'll heartily wish you--I need not say _Where_."
Grace before meat is usually well expressed by the reverend clergy, and perhaps the brief introductory thanksgiving of the late Canon Shuttleworth is as happy as any: "For good life and good health; for good company and good cheer, may the Giver of all good things make us thankful." So far as orthodox graces are concerned, it were difficult to improve upon the two fervent thanksgivings of Psalms XXXIV and CXLV:
"The lions do lack, and suffer hunger: but they who seek the Lord shall want no manner of thing that is good.
"The eyes of all wait upon thee, O Lord: and thou givest them their meat in due season.
"Thou openest thine hand: and fillest all things living with plenteousness."
So many Protestant denominations exist in America that the manner of entertaining the ministry varies considerably. In no religious sect does _fine champagne_ or any other form of cognac figure, as a general rule, though the use of vinous beverages is less denounced at present than formerly. The most genial hosts and guests among Protestant divines are unquestionably the Episcopalians. But if claret and alcoholic beverages are the exception on the tables of many denominations, the pastor does not lack for substantial aliments when entertained by his parishioners, who here, as in England, fairly dispute for his possession.
That the duck at least, among the toothsome contributions to the table, is appreciated by the Protestant clergy no less than the laity is apparent from the apostrophe to the canvasback of the Rev. Joseph Barber, who has addressed the king of the _Anseres_ in these colourful stanzas:
"A duck has been immortalized by Bryant, A wild one, too; Sweetly he hymned the creature, lithe and buoyant, Cleaving the blue. But whoso says the duck through ether flying, Seen by the bard, Equals the canvasback before me lying, Tells a _canard_.
"Done to a turn, the flesh a dark carnation, The gravy red; Four slices from the breast--on such a ration Gods might have fed. Bryant, go to: to say that thy rare ghost-duck, Traced 'gainst the sky, Could e'er at all compare with this rare roast duck, Is all my eye."[37]
As regards wine the case is vastly different in Europe, among both the clergy and those who welcome them. When Urban X resolved to remove the Papal See from Avignon to Rome grave discord resulted among his cardinals, several of whom refused to accompany him. Petrarch, in reply to a letter received from the Pope soon afterwards, wherein his Holiness expressed his astonishment at their action, explained the reason thus briefly: "Most holy Father," he wrote, "the princes of the church esteem the wine of Provence, and know that the wines of France are more rare than holy water at Rome."
The anecdote of the curé of a village in the Bordelais would indicate, furthermore, that the cloth prefer their wine in a non-diluted state. On the occasion of a wedding dinner at which the officiating pastor was present, he would exclaim after every course, as he raised his glass: "My children, with this you must drink some wine." The turn of dessert arriving, he repeated his injunction for the tenth time, again setting the example himself.
"Pardon, Monsieur le Curé," one of the guests interrupted, "but with what do you not drink wine?"
"With water, my son!"
During the episcopate of Bishop Timon of Buffalo, a Roman Catholic prelate of great ability but of small stature, complaint was entered against a certain German priest of the diocese for his over-conviviality and partiality for the foaming glass of Gambrinus, the offender being a man of Falstaffian proportions. The priest was accordingly summoned, and, after being severely reprimanded, was asked by the bishop if he could bring forward any extenuating circumstances with regard to his conduct.
"Your Reverence is a small man, and my detractors are men of small calibre, who require but little beer," was the reply. "I am a large man, as you are aware, with a large appetite, and what might suffice for others were scant pittance for me: the vessel should be filled according to its capacity."
That so distinguished a church dignitary as a bishop should dine well goes without saying. How else might he be so urbane, so stately, and so contented! And without wine how might he dispense such sunshine or pronounce his blessings so sonorously! For a bishop, dean, or archdeacon to be tendered scanty fare or be toasted with ice-water were as incongruous as to deprive the beverage termed "bishop" of its main ingredient. When Bishop Magee of Peterborough, afterwards Archbishop of York, was "entertained" by another church dignitary he was told on his arrival that he would find wine in his room. The dinner which he afterwards sat down to was a wineless one. A few weeks later the positions of host and guest were reversed, whereupon the bishop, shaking hands heartily with his visitor, informed him that he would find water in his room and wine upon the table.
"Scarcely any bishop," says Sydney Smith, "is sufficiently a man of the world to deal with fanatics. The way is not to reason with them, but to ask them to dinner. They are armed against logic and remonstrance, but they are puzzled in a labyrinth of wines, disarmed by facilities and concessions, introduced to a new world, and come away thinking more of hot and cold and dry and sweet than of Newman, Keble, and Pusey."
A number of years ago, when long tables were in vogue at the great hostelries at Saratoga, Bishop Onderdonk of New York was among the guests. The bishop, in accordance with his station, was seated at the head of the table, where the attentive head waiter had just placed his bottle of hotel "Pontet-Canet." Among the other clerical guests was a Connecticut divine and teetotaler who had come to test the restorative virtues of Congress water, so delicious when drunk at the fountainhead in the morning.
"Ah!" said the cynical dominie to a ministerial vis-à-vis, as he frowned over his Oolong and the portly prelate beamed over his Bordeaux, "he wants to prove his apostolic descent by showing that if he drink of any deadly thing it shall not hurt him."
Later, when his Right Reverence was informed of the remark, he observed, quoting Ecclesiasticus as his would-be detractor had quoted St. Mark, "'Wine measurably drunk and in season bringeth gladness of the heart and cheerfulness of the mind,' and as a churchman it were heretical for me to take exception to so orthodox a precept."
The minister whose knowledge of gastronomy is far exceeded by his zeal in "reforming," notably in an attempted extermination of all joyous fluids, is far more prevalent in the United States than abroad. While no one will object to his denunciation of "King Rum" or the "Wine-cup,"--though rum is but little used as a beverage, and wine is supposed to be consumed in glasses at the dinner-table,--one must nevertheless deplore the inconsistency which would annihilate all alcoholic fluids and permit the grossest heterodoxness of diet to pass unscathed. Not undeserved, perchance, are the lines addressed to this class of the clergy by a Western versifier:
"He preached 'gainst whisky, rum, and gin, All use of liquor he'd decry; He said that drinking was a sin-- But eat the toughest kind of pie.
"He said there was no greater vice Than that which made of man a sot-- But took not water without ice, And gorged himself on biscuit hot.
"He flouted the advice of Paul To drink wine for the stomach's sake-- But give him dumpling in a ball, And any quantity he'd take.
"Tobacco in each form he spurned, Its soothing virtues he denied; For him no soft Havana burned-- But he would eat a beefsteak fried.
"Jaundiced he lived, and died of spleen, And some kept green his memory then-- Called him 'reformer,' who had been The most intemperate of men."
On more catholic lines is the gastronomic experience of a distinguished Baptist doctor of divinity of western New York, who, though always temperate, still believes in the sentiment of the grace that was once uttered by an English Episcopal clergyman: "God hath given us all things richly to enjoy; let us enjoy them." The learned divine in his younger days was one of a party of four who were concluding a long sojourn abroad, and ere leaving Paris he was desirous of testing the much-vaunted cuisine of the "Trois Frères Provençeaux." His suggestion that the appetising odours which greeted the passer-by from without be verified from within having met with immediate approval, the _officier de bouche_ of the famous restaurant was interviewed and a dinner arranged for the following evening.
"What will be the price of a nice dinner," inquired the ecclesiast,--"a dinner that will leave us no cause for regret? We do not care for the menu in advance, as we prefer a surprise; but we wish a perfect dinner, neither too little nor too much."
The reply was promptly forthcoming, and here we transcribe a leaf from the ecclesiast's note-book:
"'Pour vingt francs un dîner ordinaire.
"'Pour quarante francs un très joli dîner!
"'Pour cent francs un grand dîner!!'--the voice of the restaurateur rising with the advancing prices."
These interesting notes then follow:
"Tuesday, June 3, 1860. Present:----,----,----,----. Dinner at 7 P.M. Dress suits. _Voiture de remise._ _Portier_ with red waistcoat. Cabinet in entresol hung with pink silk tapestry. Three _garçons_, fine china, silver and table appointments. A bouquet of roses. Perfect service.
"Menu. Nine courses:--_Melon musqué d'Algiers._ _Potage à la bisque_ (red soup with little red shrimps in centre of each dish). _Vol-au-vent de saumon_.... _Salade_. Checkerboard ice-cream (sixteen different colours and flavours). Great strawberries. Coffee (_demi-tasse_), cognac, cigars. Four wines: Sauterne, claret, and two champagnes."
Unfortunately, the menu itself has been lost, and the memory of our clerical informant has retained only a portion of the carte, which we have transcribed from the memoranda he has contributed. Was there a _chapon à la Toulouse_ or _noix de veau à la Soubise_ for the _relevé_; did lamb's _ears à la Tortuë_ or _carbonnades de mouton à la Macédoine_ form the entrée; did a _caneton de Rouen_, a _poularde truffée_, or a _coq-vièrge_ do the honours of the roast; could _des truffes au vin de Champagne_ or a _gelée au marasquin_ have figured as the entremets; and, finally, what might have been the _grosse pièce_? Alas! these questions, like many questions of theology, must remain unanswered. It will be observed, notwithstanding, how the wall furnishings, the roses, the red of the _bisque_, the ripe hues of the melon and the salmon, the erubescence of the strawberries, and the very waistcoat of the _avertisseur_ were happily combined; and also that as far back as 1860 the muskmelon had already been employed as an admirable prologue of the dinner during warm weather. As for the checkerboard _crême glacée_, with four flavours and four colours for each person, it is an addition to the dessert that is almost worthy of a sermon.
The following supplementary notes conclude the interesting account of the dinner:
"The solid part of the menu I have no record or memory of. All I know is that we ate pretty much everything that was in sight, and then had just enough and no more. The dinner concluded with four toasts and four speeches, the only one I recall being on the theme, 'The Four Homes'--not one of the four speakers having at the time set up a home of his own.
"A thing of beauty is a joy forever. We went upon the Latin maxim, _In medio tutissimus ibis_, and so we took the _très joli dîner_, which, with _vins compris_, cost us forty francs or eight dollars apiece. But the recollection of it has been worth at least two dollars a year since then: and as it is forty years ago last summer, and two times forty is eighty, I now count that I then paid only ten per cent. of its value."
It is needless to add that the sermons and addresses of the ecclesiast in question, which join to their fervour and scholarship an originality all their own (were they not inspired by the dinner at the "Trois Frères"?), are always listened to with marked attention by his large and appreciative audiences. It also goes without saying that he has distinguished himself in literature, and that his presence is invariably in demand either at a dinner or a debate of theologians.
Of dishes invented by the Roman Catholic priesthood, the _omelette à la purée de pintade_, devised by the Capuchin Chabot, is well known, although "The Curé's Omelette" for which Savarin stands sponsor is far more in evidence and is difficult to improve upon either for fat or meagre days. Should the recipe be already familiar, it will well bear repetition--one cannot dine too often with a broad-minded divine; if unknown, the reader should become acquainted with it--it is one of the most sprightly of the _Variétés_. The tunny prescribed is not obligatory, and for this and the carp-roes the resources of the American sea-coast will furnish abundant equivalents:
"Every one knows that for twenty years Madame R.[38] has occupied the throne of beauty unchallenged. It is also well known that she is extremely charitable, taking interest in most of those schemes whose object is to console and assist the wretched.
"Wishing to consult M. le Curé on something connected with that subject, she called upon him at five o'clock one afternoon, and was astonished to find him already at table. She thought everybody in Paris dined at six, not knowing that the ecclesiastics generally begin early because they take a light collation in the evening.
"Madame R. was about to retire, but the curé begged her to stay, either because the matter they were to talk about need not prevent him dining, or because a pretty woman is never a mar-feast for any man; or perhaps because he bethought himself that somebody to talk to was all that was wanted to convert his dining-room into a gastronomic Elysium.
"The table was laid with a neat white cloth, some old wine sparkled in a crystal decanter, the white porcelain was of the choicest quality, the plates had heaters of boiling water under them, and a servant, demure but neat, was in attendance.
"The repast was a happy mean between the frugal and the luxurious. Some crab soup had just been removed, and there was now on the table a salmon-trout, an omelette, and a salad.
"'My dinner shows you what perhaps you did not know,' said the pastor, with a smile, 'that according to the laws of the church meat is forbidden to-day.' The visitor bowed her assent, but at the same time, as a private note informs me, slightly blushed, which, however, by no means prevented the curé from eating.
"Operations were already begun upon the trout, its upper side being fully disposed of; the sauce gave proof of a skilful hand, and the pastor's features betokened inward satisfaction. That dish removed, he attacked the omelette, which was round, full-bellied, and cooked to a nicety. At the first stroke of the spoon, there ran out a thick juice, tempting both to sight and smell; the dish seemed full of it, and my dear cousin confessed that her mouth watered.
"Some signs of natural sympathy did not escape the curé, accustomed to watch the passions of men; and, as if in answer to a question which Madame R. took great care not to put, 'this is a tunny omelette,' said he. 'My cook has a wonderful knack at them. Nobody ever tastes them without complimenting me.' 'I am not at all astonished,' replied the lady visitor; 'for on our worldly tables there is never seen an omelette half so tempting.'
"This was followed by the salad--a finishing item which I recommend to the use of all who have faith in my teaching, for salad refreshes without fatiguing, and strengthens without irritating. I usually say it renews one's youth.