Part 21
"The dinner did not interrupt their conversation. Besides the matter in hand, they spoke of the events of the time, the hopes of the church, and other topics. The dessert passed, consisting of some Septmoncel cheese, three apples, and some preserved fruit; and then the servant placed on a small table a cup of hot mocha, clear as amber, and filling the room with its aroma. Having sipped his coffee, the curé said grace. 'I never drink spirits,' he said as they rose; 'it is a superfluity I offer to my guests, but personally reserve as a resource for old age should it please God that I live so long.'
"In the meantime six o'clock had arrived, and Madame R., hurrying home, found herself late for dinner, and several friends waiting for her whom she had invited for that day. I was one of the party, and thus came to hear of the curé's omelette; for our hostess did nothing but speak of it during dinner, and everybody was certain it must have been excellent.
"Thus it is that as a propagator of truths I feel it my duty to make known the preparation; and I give it the more willingly to all lovers of the art that I have not been able to find it in any cookery book.
"Hash up together the roes of two carp, carefully bleached, a piece of fresh tunny, and a little minced shallot; when well mixed throw the whole into a saucepan with a lump of the best butter, and whip it up till the butter is melted. This constitutes the specialty of the omelette.
"Then in an oval dish mix separately a lump of butter with parsley and chives, and squeezing over it the juice of a lemon, place it over hot embers in readiness. Next complete the omelette by beating up twelve eggs, pouring in the roes and tunny, and stirring till all is well mixed; then, when properly finished, and of the right form and consistence, spread it out skilfully on the oval dish which you have ready to receive it, and serve up to be eaten at once.
"This dish should be reserved for breakfasts of refinement, for connoisseurs in gastronomic art--those who understand eating, and where all eat with judgment; but especially let it be washed down with some good old wine, and you will see wonders."
Among the dignitaries of the Roman Church, Richelieu was preëminent as an entertainer, his table being renowned for its excellence, and no one being more exacting with his cooks. _A chartreuse à la Cardinal_ or a _boudin_ of fowls _à la Richelieu_ at once recalls his Eminence, and the brilliant reign during which he himself virtually wielded the sceptre. "I do not think very highly of that man," said the Comte de M. in speaking of a candidate who had just secured an important position: "he has never eaten _boudin à la Richelieu_, and is unacquainted with cutlets _à la Soubise_."
During the war of Hanover, when the surrounding country had been devastated by the French army, Maréchal Richelieu, grandnephew of the cardinal, wished to give a suitable dinner to a large number of distinguished captives before setting them free. He was informed by his cooks that the larder was empty.
"But it was only yesterday that I saw two horns passing by the window."
"That is true, Monseigneur, there is a beef and some few roots; but what would you do with them?"
"What would I do with them? _Pardieu_, I would have the best supper in the world!"
"But, Monseigneur, it is impossible."
"Nothing is impossible. Rudière, write out the menu that I will dictate. Do you know how to write out a menu properly?"
"I acknowledge, Monseigneur, that--"
"Give me your pen."
And with this the maréchal, taking the place of his secretary, improvised a classic supper worthy of Vatel. At the end of the bill of fare was added:
"If through any mischance this repast is not an excellent one, I will deduct one hundred pistoles from the wages of Maret and Rouquelère. Begin, and doubt no more. RICHELIEU."
There was a certain Bishop of Burgundy who took his share of responsibility in consuming, with a humour all his own, viands which had not been come by legally. Desiring to eat venison when not quite in season, he sent half the body of the deer that tempted him as a present to the prefect, who lived in the same town, accompanying the gift with the following note: "_Partageons la responsabilité: chargez-vous du temporel; je me charge du spirituel._" (Let us share the responsibility; charge yourself with the temporal part; I will attend to the spiritual.)
Equally felicitous is an incident recounted of Archbishop de Sanzai of Bordeaux, who was especially fond of the fowl which Savarin pronounced one of the finest gifts of the New World to the Old. Having won a truffled turkey on a wager from a grand vicar of his diocese, the archbishop, after waiting a week, became impatient at the delay of the loser in providing the bird. Accordingly, he took him to task and reminded him that delays are dangerous, to which the vicar replied that the truffles were not good that year. "Bah, bah!" was the rejoinder, "we will chance the truffles; depend upon it, it is only a false report that has been circulated by the turkeys."
"There needs to be two to eat a truffled turkey," the Abbé Morellet was accustomed to say; "I never do otherwise. I have one to-day; we will be two--the turkey and myself."
It may be of interest to note that the importation of the turkey to Europe has been attributed by various scholiasts to the Jesuits, in proof of which they assert that in many French provinces it was formerly termed a _jésuite_, and that in some of the more remote departments it was the custom to refer to it in the following manner: "Come to dine with me; we will have a fat jésuite." "Monsieur, will you pass me some of the jésuite?" It is also said to have been referred to as a _jésuite en capilotade_ and a _jésuite au feu d'enfer_. Savarin gives the period of its importation by the order in question as the latter part of the seventeenth century; while the Marquis de Cussy states it was imported a century earlier from Paraguay by the Jesuits, and was served for the first time in public at the marriage of Charles IX of France, when, according to Montluc, the young king disposed of the left wing.
The true date of the turkey's flight into history is the early part of the sixteenth century, when the learned confessor and historian to Cortez, Fra Agapida, returned to Spain from his first visit to Mexico, and wrote a brief narrative of the wonders of the New World. In this account he called attention to the abundance of fine fish-food, and the excellence of the venison and a variety of "wild cattle." "There is also a bird," adds the discerning presbyter, "much greater in bigness than a peacock, that is found within the forests and _vegas_ (meadows) all over this country. It surpasses as food any wild bird we have found up to this time. The natives do shoot these birds with arrows and catch them in various kinds of springes and snares. They are sometimes very large, being as much as thirty pounds in weight. They can fly, but prefer to run, which they can do with exceeding swiftness."
No less is the introduction of the potato from South America due to the monks, who first brought it to Europe in the proud galleons of Spain.
In Canon Barham's "A Lay of St. Nicholas," where the temptations of the flesh proved stronger than the spiritual powers of the head of the abbey, turkey and chine figure as the pieces of "resistance," with old sherris sack, hippocras, and malmsey to flank them,--
"The Abbot hath donn'd his mitre and ring, His rich dalmatic and maniple fine; And the choristers sing as the lay-brothers bring To the board a magnificent turkey and chine."
The capon, however, appears to have been the greatest favourite with the clergy; its frequent companion, the carp, doubtless owing its popularity to the fact that it is so easily raised, rather than that it is more esteemed than numerous other species of fish. Even more than the capon, the carp suggests the cenobites, bringing up a whole train of monastic orders--with the cloister and the abbey as its most congenial home. It is inalienably associated with the cassock and chasuble, the rosary and censer, the peal of the organ and the glory of old stained glass. It is essentially the sacred fish--the true "sole" of piety. It whispers of sanctity and breathes of _Benedicites_. In fancy one sees the abbot, rotund and rubicund, presiding at table, with one eye upon the fish and the other lifted aloft, uttering his _Bonum est confiteri_ ere the loud "Amen" resounds through the vaulted chamber, and carp and capon are bathed in the red juices of the monastery vineyard. Or it may be a pike, a mullet, or a dish of eels that, cunningly prepared by the master-cook of the brotherhood, steeps the refectory with the perfume of shallots and fine herbs, and justly merits a _Benedic, anima mea_ from the partakers of the repast.
From an anecdote related by the Franciscan Jean Paulli de Thann, it would appear that the olden monks had learned from the Scriptures a particular method of carving fowls when they partook of them in secular company. A gentleman had invited his confessor, who was a monk, to dine in company with his wife, his two sons, and two daughters. There was a fine capon for the roast, which the host requested the guest to carve. The latter excused himself, but the host insisted.
"Inasmuch as you demand it," replied the monk, "I will carve the fowl according to biblical principles."
"Yes," exclaimed the hostess, "act according to the Scriptures."
The theologian therefore began the carving. The baron was tendered the head of the fowl, the baroness the neck, the two daughters a wing apiece, and the two sons a first joint, the monk retaining the remainder.
"According to what interpretation do you make such a division?" inquired the host of his confessor, as he regarded the monk's heaping plate and the scant portions doled out to the family.
"From an interpretation of my own," replied the monk. "As the master of your house, the head belongs to you by right; the baroness, being most near to you, should receive the neck, which is nearest the head; in the wings the young girls will recognize a symbol of their mobile thoughts, that fly from one desire to another; as to the young barons, the drumsticks they have received will remind them that they are responsible for supporting your house, as the legs of the capon support the bird itself."
In England, during Elizabeth's reign, fish was largely consumed on the festival of St. Ulric, a pious custom referred to by Barnaby Googe:
"Wheresoever Huldryche hath his place, the people there brings in Both carpes and pykes, and mullets fat, his favour here to win. Amid the church there sitteth one, and to the aultar nie, That selleth fishe, and so good cheep, that every man may buie; Nor anything he loseth here, bestowing thus his paine, For when it hath been offred once, 't is brought him all againe, That twise or thrise he selles the same, vngodlinesse such gaine Doth still bring in, and plenteously the kitchen doth maintaine. Whence comes this same religion newe? What kind of God is this Same Huldryche here, that so desires and so delightes in fishe?"
With fish much is possible in the way of a generous dietary during the Lenten penance and on meagre days. To the devout Thomas à Kempis nothing was more delicious to the taste than a salmon, always excepting the Psalms of David. The possibilities of a fish diet, however, have nowhere been more appreciably set forth than by Father Prout on the occasion of the classic "Watergrasshill Carousal," when Sir Walter Scott was among the guests. And though the turkey which was in readiness was forgone on account of the day being Friday and therefore a fast-day, the repast, nevertheless, did not languish. The trout, it will be remembered, the witty priest had caught himself from the neighbouring stream, as well as a large eel from the lake at Blarney. To these were added from the excellent market at Cork a turbot, two lobsters, a salmon, and a hake, with a hundred of Cork-harbour oysters. Besides these figured also a keg of cod-sounds, a great favourite of the bishop of the diocese, which invariably appeared at the table of Father Prout when his lordship was expected. With eggs, potatoes, sauce piquante, lobster-sauce, whiskey and claret in addition, the sacerdotal banquet proved a signal success, fully bearing out the sentiment expressed by the shepherd in the "Noctes" at the end of a Scottish repast,--"We 've just had a perfec' dinner, Mr. Tickler--neither ae dish ower mony, nor ae dish ower few."
Fish naturally demands a white wine; but a carp may be prepared--and doubtless is prepared--so sauced and spiced and aromatised by practised cloistral hands that a red wine, the favoured colour of the cowl, may accord with it perfectly. This is not saying that an abbot who may be as renowned for his gastronomic abilities as for his oratory necessarily confines himself or his followers to red wine with fish. Much will depend, of course, upon the mode of preparation,--it is to be supposed that the cellarer has both red and white wine at command to draw from as occasion demands; to be confined to a single variety must be as onerous to the cloth as to the layman. When the celebrated vineyard of Clos-Vougeot was the property of the Bernardin monks, before it was confiscated and declared national property, Dom Gobelot was the father-cellarer. It was he who, after being forced to retire to private life at Dijon, with a hundred dozen bottles of a famous year of his vineyard as a souvenir, proudly replied to the young Bonaparte, conqueror in Italy and returning from Marengo, when he requested some old Vougeot for his table: "If he wishes some forty-year-old Vougeot, let him come and drink it here; it is not for sale." And does not history record that Pope Gregory XVI, in the year 1371, made the Abbot of Clos-Vougeot a cardinal to express his gratitude for a present of a basket of his best old wine which the abbot had sent him?
The famous wine of "Est, Est, Est" owes its celebrity to a German bishop named Fuger, who, while on a journey to Italy, sent his secretary in advance in order to provide the best accommodations. He was especially charged to test the wine in all the inns en route, and wherever he found it best to write the word "Est" on the wall of the _albergo_. Arriving at Montefiascone, a small town on the highroad from Florence to Rome, the secretary found the wine so superior that he was at a loss to describe it until he bethought him of the inscription that a sultan of Lahore had engraved on the door of his seraglio,--"If there is a paradise on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here!" Accordingly, he wrote the word "Est" thrice in large characters on the wall of the principal inn--a fatal word for the bishop, who tarried so long and drank so freely that he died ere reaching his destination--Rome. His tomb exists at Montefiascone. On either side of his mitre and his arms his secretary had carved a reversed glass, with this epitaph on the stone: _Est, Est, Est, et propter nimium est Johannes de Fuger dominus meus mortuus est_. The explanation of the epitaph and emblems is given by the Roman prelate, Valery. It is still further averred that the death of Cardinal Mauri, a distinguished Italian prelate, whose remains were interred near those of the German bishop in the Church of St. Flavien, was also hastened by his fondness for the Montefiascone wine. The story of the bibulous bishop was told in 1825 in German, in a poem of fourteen stanzas, by Wilhelm Müller, father of Professor Max Müller.[39] It has also been excellently rendered in English verse by an American poetess whose name the efforts of the writer have been unable to trace:
"Men have ridden for love, And men have ridden for gold, And men have ridden for honour In the chivalrous days of old. Little of love recked he, Nor honour, nor golden store, But the Abbot would ride for dinner, And he rode for good wine more. 'I will travel the world, Travel the world in quest-- Taste red, white, and yellow,' Cried this jolly old fellow, 'Till I find the wine that is best.' _Vanitas vanitorum!_
"'My servant leal,' said he, 'Now ride thou on before, And drink where'er the branches Hang withering at the door. Then, if the wine be worthy, That I should stop at all, Write "est"--but if it is not, Write "non" upon the wall.'
"Promptly rode the man, In hamlet, city, and town, _Albergo_ and _osteria_, He gulped the good wine down. Where'er the wine was worthy There they slept or dined,-- Before, the trusty varlet, The lazier monk behind.
"Among the hills and valleys, Festooned with wreathing vine, Where purple grapes and opal Drop red and golden wine, There is a wine delicious In a hamlet little known, With a taste like the mountain flower That blooms in spring alone. Here pause, O wandering Abbot! Thy ponderous frame can rest, Lo! the prudent, observant, Intelligent servant Has written here 'Est, Est, Est.'
"The Abbot he drank at dinner, The Abbot he drank at night, And he called for more _fiasci_ When dawned the morning light. He murmured, 'I go no farther, _Per Bacco!_ I cease my quest; Wine of Hymettus sweetness, Nectar of gods,--_est, est_!
"But even an Abbot has limits, Though his were exceeding wide; He passed them and, as you can fancy, Dropped from the table and died: Drowned as it were in the nectar, Dead of the wine that is best, In his hand the empty wine-cup, His last words '_Est, est, est_!' _Vanitas vanitorum!_
"This very same wine we are drinking To-night in classic Rome, Sipping it after dinner In our quiet foreign home. I have told as I heard the story, And now the white wine that is best, Let us all fill a bowl of-- Here's peace to the soul of The monk of the _Est, Est, Est_!"
To judge of the quality of Montefiascone, one must drink it at its home; like other white wines of the former Papal States, it will not bear the shock of distant carriage. As for the German ecclesiast, one should not take him too seriously, but consider him rather from the picturesque point of view, as Rowlandson and Combe have done with the reverend Syntax. "Other times, other manners,"--to-day his reverence would have made the journey by rail and not by post, and thus, doubtless, would have missed the _fiasci_ of Montefiascone. One must also bear in mind that the wine in question, being of the muscat type, is extremely heady and exciting to the nerves, its deleterious effects being masked by its unctuousness and engaging aroma; so that an unsuspecting beer-drinking bishop, accustomed to copious libations of a milder fluid, might readily and unwittingly find himself under the table, and, even though a hierarch, prove an easy subject for a _De Profundis_. Many years have elapsed since the prelate's demise; and it is to be supposed that, meanwhile, the nectar of _Est_ has been rendered less potent and even more delectable in heavenly vineyards.
SUNDRY GUIDES TO GOOD CHEER
"Sir, _Respect Your Dinner_; idolize it, enjoy it properly. You will be many hours in the week, many weeks in the year, and many years in your life the happier if you do."--THACKERAY.
A review of the dinner-table were incomplete without a reference to several writers, other than those already cited, who have wielded a more or less pronounced influence on gastronomy. Of such, two English authors deserve especial mention, each of whom has sought to prove that the art of the gastronomer is the art of being happy; and that, if blessed with a good appetite and sound digestion, one may round off many a corner of life's miseries.
To Dr. William Kitchener the merit of reforming English cookery as it existed during the early part of the past century is due to no inconsiderable degree. The overladen table, with its pompous decorations, heavy viands, and superabundance of wines, was first severely censured in "The Cook's Oracle," and later in Thomas Walker's periodical, "The Original," since reprinted in book form. The first edition of the "Oracle" appeared in 1817; and, like Mrs. Glasse's "Art of Cookery," was subsequently much amended and enlarged.[40] An eccentric and would-be dietetic reformer, the author was ridiculed at first, as is often the case with those who advance new ideas or attempt to disturb existing conditions. "Christopher North," whose own Pegasus was often inclined to strange curvets, reviled him as he also did Tennyson; and Hood addressed him in three mock-heroic odes. But beneath his mannerisms and diatribes there remained much practical sense, an extended culinary knowledge, and no little shrewd observation.
It was the author's endeavour to "improve plain cookery and to render food acceptable to the palate without being expensive to the purse"--a precept altogether admirable. The preface to the third edition emphasises, very truly, that among the manifold causes which concur to impair health and produce disease, the most general is the improper quality of food, this most frequently arising from the injudicious manner in which it is prepared. Yet it remains to be added that since the days of the "Oracle" man has greatly improved in this respect, even in England; that despite the multiplicity of diseases, hygiene is becoming far better understood by the masses; and that for the various ills arising through the stomach, chemistry and the doctors have devised numerous simple correctives which have proved of inestimable value.
The key-note of the "Oracle" is contained in the sentence, "Unless the stomach be in good humour, every part of the machinery of life must vibrate with languor,"--a sentiment with which all those who have touched twoscore will profoundly agree. It is for elderly stomachs whose bloom may have been somewhat brushed off that the doctor's counsels will be found preëminently deserving of attention. To the epicure he likewise proved an excellent mentor; to the dyspeptic, a friend in need.
That he was strongly influenced by the writings of Grimod de la Reynière is readily perceptible, though he states in the introduction that his work is a bona-fide register of practical facts, and that he has not printed a recipe which has not been proved in his own kitchen. Before undertaking his task, he had consulted all the treatises obtainable on the subject, amounting to no less than two hundred and fifty volumes. These, he asserts, vary very little from one another, and any one who has occasion to refer to two or three of them will find the recipes almost always the same--equally unintelligible to those who are ignorant, and useless to those who are acquainted with the business of the kitchen. The numerous "Good Housewife's Closets," "Ladies' Companions," and "Gentlewomen's Cabinets," in fact, are virtually identical, save for their titles and forewords.