Part 24
"Anchovy sauce is also employed in several sorts of gravies, and one may say that it is not misplaced in any piquante sauce: for it is in itself an excellent _épigramme_. It follows from these remarks that the anchovy is an indispensable adjunct to good cheer. Its body figures admirably for the déjeuner and with the hors-d'œuvres, and its spirit makes itself distinctly felt in all sauces that it permeates. It imparts to them a savour which stimulates the appetite and agreeably captivates the palate."
In the middle ages the office of the _saucier_, or master sauce-maker, was invested with great importance. A chief functionary in all grand houses, under him were clerks, varlets, and youths termed _galopins de saucerie_, who stood ever ready to do his bidding. Old woodcuts depict him presiding over his receptacles--as imposing in his dignity as the master-carver himself. Even then the adage held good that the sauce was often worth more than the fish.
Indeed, the sauce is the sonnet of the table, as varied in its forms as the structure of the sonnet itself. The Gaul is its master, and to him belongs the majority of its most pleasing tenses. In the words of the distinguished Marquis de Cussy, who maintained that a good cook can remove your gout as you would remove your gloves,--"_Point de sauce, point de salut, point de cuisine_; where would we be if the grand sauces, the lesser ones, and the special ones that have rendered the French school illustrious had not been discovered by men of the greatest genius? The life labours of one alone would not have sufficed. What a brilliant ladder to scale, that which, leaving the last round--the sauce pauvre homme--is lost in the clouds with the velouté, the grande and petite espagnole, and the réductions!"[47]
Sauce Soubise, sauce d'Orléans, sauce d'Uxelles, and sauce à la Régence are all credited to great minds of the eighteenth century, so prolific of new culinary discoveries. Through their piquant instrumentality we may in imagination summon the splendours of the Regency and the reign of Louis, surnamed "le Bien-Aimé," with the brilliant toilets of its gay and pretty women--the high-heeled pointed shoe, the powdered hair, the rouge and beauty-spot, the painted fan and walking-stick of _fille_, duchesse, and marquise that still look at us from the canvases of Boucher and Watteau. We may see, too, the V-shaped satin corsage, the expansive pannier, the diaphanous _robe déshabillée_,--flounced, frilled, flowered, and furbelowed,--the embroidered petticoat and surge of lace and ribband, as fair dame and plumed gallant repair to the suppers of the Palais-Royal and the Parc aux Cerfs, or sit down amid umbrageous glades to the revels of a _fête champêtre_.
Almost as many varieties of sauces exist as of soups. But these may vary little or largely from their usually accepted names. The cook will tell you, if you are unacquainted with the fact yourself, that by adding to simple melted butter a liberal amount of finely chopped parsley (some ruin the relish with grated nutmeg, a spice which should be used with great discretion), salt and pepper, and a dash of lemon, you have what is termed a maître-d'hôtel sauce. Add to this finely minced garden-cress, chervil, and a little tarragon and burnet, and you produce a different sauce under the same name. Thus plain onion sauce and sauce Soubise, in each of which the onion forms the dominant chord, may differ equally, and sauce piquante and sauce Robert vary only in their titles and the additional mustard called for by the latter. Sauce poivrade, in like manner, is a sauce piquante with an increased supply of pepper and without the pickled cucumber.
Among the most valuable of all sauces, though employed only cold and served with cold viands, is that which at once suggests what Jules Janin in an inadvertent moment termed the "cardinal of the seas," and that at a luncheon or a late supper possesses a merit distinctively its own. This Carême has dealt with at length in his treatise on cold sauces. The origin of the word "mayonnaise," a blending supposed to be the invention of the Maréchal de Richelieu, has always remained in doubt. Its etymology has been attributed to Mahon, a town of southern France. Yet this supposed derivation is extremely dubious; and as it was also known as "bayonnaise," it might be ascribed equally to Bayonne, famous for its hams, its cheese, and its chocolate, and for having invented the bayonet.[48]
It has been variously termed mahonaise, bayonnaise, mahonnoise, magnonaise, and mayonnaise. But Carême, after minutely describing its preparation, from the first drop of oil to its final silky, white, and unctuous cream, denies its accepted derivation, and pronounces it _magnonaise_, from the verb _manier_--to stir; as it may be prepared only through the continual stirring it undergoes, which results in a marrowy, velvety, and very appetising sauce, unique of its kind, and bearing no resemblance to others that are obtained only through reductions of the range. Despite this ingenious explanation, the word is still written "mayonnaise"; and while lights shine brilliantly, and champagne sparkles, and the great crawfish, sublimated into salad, receives the encomiums of appreciative guests, the famous chef of the Empire is forgotten, and the chapter of the "Cuisinier Parisien" exists only as a tale that is told.
It may be observed that a good sauce should be perfect in flavour, colour, smell, and consistency. It should be savoury, flowing, and well defined. On the proper _liaison_, a correct apportionment of the flavourings, a knowledge of the range, and a discriminating palate, supplemented by long experience, depends its triumph. Of course the _bain-marie_ will be readily accessible when the sauce is obliged to wait, the butter will be unexceptionable, and the shallot especially will never be lacking when its virtues are in request. As has been previously stated in the case of numerous other culinary preparations, success depends more upon the practitioner than the formula. It is as difficult, therefore, to describe the subtle chiaroscuro of a perfect sauce as to define the hues that mantle the petals of the rose "Beauté Inconstante," or the combined odours hived by a windless night of June.
Comparatively few sauces may suffice for the modest household to supplement the espagnole, or brown sauce, and the velouté, or white sauce, the foundations from which most others are compounded. These two rudimentary sauces, to be well made, should not be greasy, but contain just enough fat, according to the authorities, to present the velvety appearance of a full-blown damask rose. Carême devotes twenty-five pages to these "mother sauces" and their two slight modifications, béchamel and allemande; while Francatelli points out that although great care and watchful attention are requisite in every branch of cookery, the exercise of these qualities is most essential in the preparation of the grand stock sauces. In the home kitchen these are naturally prepared in an infinitely more simple manner than according to the elaborate recipes of the great professors of the table.
The mistress of the household who would render herself trebly appreciated, and who by ministering to man's palate may the more readily guide, direct, and control his character, should train herself unerringly in the art of compounding appetising and wholesome sauces. To be sure, some of these manipulated by competent masculine hands--but how often slurred by some fatigued or indifferent _sous-chef_!--may be obtained at one's club or the better-class restaurants. But here in many instances the wine-cellar is apt to be uncertain; while frequent dining out is not to be compared with the sense of comfort of dining at home when the kitchen, even though unpretentious, is carefully administered, the menu varied, the wines perfect of their kind, and where Her Gracious Serenity's address may have conjured some dainty entrée whose sauce, sapid and velvety, leaves nothing to be desired. One might tire of this, perchance, with no change for a sixmonth, as one might weary of constant sunshine or a too lavish profusion of tender epithets. Yet it is a desirable condition, nevertheless, to fall back upon; and in the end far the safest for digestion.
And this despite Balzac, who well understood the cuisine no less than the "Comédie Humaine,"--that "marriage must necessarily combat a monster who devours everything--daily routine"; or his other definition in the "Physiology of Marriage," a physiological study that was inspired by Savarin's "Physiology of Taste,"--"_Pressurez le mariage, il n'en sortira jamais rien que du plaisir pour les garçons et de l'ennui pour les maris._"
The wise woman will have many side-lights in her composition; and in the kitchen her sauces will have many shadings.
Let us toast her in a glass of sparkling St. Péray, and acknowledge that without her there were no home cuisine and consequently no home life. So closely does the art advocated by the late lamented Mrs. Glasse touch upon the fundamental happiness of mankind; and sauces which render it an art supreme still further accentuate the amenities. It has been said that it is not obligatory for lovely arms and shoulders to be acquainted with rhetoric. However this may obtain--and there are admirers both of shapely shoulders and of the graces of languages, there can be no doubt that charming women who possess a taste for gastronomy which they can put to practical use upon occasion, are an infinitely greater desideratum than whose energies may be centred strictly upon flounces or the study of metaphysics.
With the following sauces, besides the simpler forms of espagnole and velouté, much may be accomplished at home: cream béchamel, sauce piquante, sauce bordelaise, maître-d'hôtel and béarnaise, hollandaise, sauce an vin blanc, sauce au beurre noir (plain, or with shallots and parsley added), tomato sauce and its special form _à la Richelieu_, and, finally, Francatelli's sauce Number 65 for mutton and dark-fleshed game.[49] If, apart from those enumerated, madame be an artist in the fashioning of sauce tartare, the mayonnaise and its shadings, and a plain French salad dressing, all will be lovely sailing. What's sauce for the goose, however, is not necessarily sauce for the gander, and _vice versa_. Women will prefer the cream béchamel, mayonnaise, and Francatelli, and the sterner sex will like them all.
It may not prove entirely without profit if to these be added sauce _à la Schönberg_, which harmonises not only with halibut, flounder, sea-bass, and sole, but with chicken-breasts and white-fleshed game-birds as well, when one desires a change from the usual modes of preparation:
"_Sauce à la Schönberg._ Make a roux of a tablespoon of butter and flour, brown slightly, add two shallots finely minced, and a pint of chicken broth, three tablespoons of tomato sauce, a small bay-leaf, two cloves, some finely minced parsley, a teaspoon of cognac, and a little white wine. Season with salt and pepper, and strain. Then add a half can of mushrooms, slice and brown them in a little butter with a few dice of sweetbreads previously cooked, and, just before removing from the range, the yolk of an egg and a half cup of cream."
The professional chef may possibly criticise it,--mesdames the "'Compleat' Housewives" will discover in it a fragrant note of satisfaction.
Will new sauces continue to be invented? Assuredly; of culinary as well as other novelties there will always be an abundant supply, however bizarre or lacking in excellence compared with the old. But in new dishes it will be new combinations for the most part, varying but little from the classics and those already known, rather than any distinctly novel forms of superior merit, such as have been recently evolved in floriculture, for instance. For the art of cookery is of ancient time, while the evolution of the flower, especially the floral queen, the rose, is comparatively new; and where the one has still untold possibilities, the other has well-nigh attained its full tide of savour and perfection, at least in theory and understanding, if not nearly so often in practice as were to be desired.
An extended disquisition, redolent of truffles and odorous of the herb-garden, might be devoted to the subject of sauces, of which Charles Ranhofer in his recent manual, "The Epicurean," presents two hundred and forty-six. But this were invading the practical domain of the cookery books, and wandering too far from the lines of the subject under consideration--the history and province of Gastronomy.
THE SPOILS OF THE COVER
"It is difficult to imagine a happier conjunction than the blending of the symbols when the arms of a sportsman are quartered with those of a cook. The tints of the autumnal woods reflected in the plumage of mature and lusty game are types of rich experiences and genial sentiments which flit about the sportsman's board and linger at his hearth with as gracious a fitness as that which diffuses a faint blush through the russet of a well-cooked mallard's breast, and with a zest equal to the relish which lurks within a woodcock's thigh."--JOHN ALDERGROVE.
How that beechwood on a distant hillside, its tall trees despoiled of their foliage, and its skirts lighted with the clinging gold of the saplings, stands out against a hoar November sky and the tablets of memory, as one recollects an accommodating covey of grouse, a successful "right and left," and the hoarse clamour of the crows whose conclave was disturbed by the salvo of the barrels!
Of the wealth of aliments bestowed upon man by a bountiful Providence for his sustenance and delectation, none lends a greater grace or ministers more to the variety of the table than game. The offspring of wild nature, nursed upon its fruits, its mast, and its vegetation, and exhaling the very essence of its most secluded recesses, it sheds an added lustre even upon the most elaborate repast. Its comparative rarity, together with that quality which may be best defined as distinction, invests it with a heightened charm; while to the sportsman it is indelibly associated with scenes the recollection of which causes the pulse to throb with a renewed joy in the sense of living. Its pursuit naturally leads to an abiding love for nature; so that the bird in the thicket, the wild fowl in the marsh, and the hare in the covert become to the votary of sport more than mere adjuncts of gustatory delight. Who shall ever forget the first game-bird he has killed, or the first "pound trout" he has captured with the fly?--the souvenir comes like a burst of autumnal radiance, or the redolence of vernal flowers. To what enchantments is not game the open-sesame; and what halcyon visions does it not enshrine! It is the emblem of plenteousness, the symbol of maturity. The gilded woods and ripened fruits, the teeming fields and garnered sheaves, the purple haze and mellow afterglow, the harvest moon and the elixir of the frost--all the largesse of the year is typified in the least of the wild life that is included in the term "game."
These woodcock, for instance, do they not at once bring to mind the beauties of their native haunts?--the devious alder tangle and jungle of wild grape where the dragon-fly flits above the murmurous stream, and the cardinal-flower reflects itself within the glassy pool. This ruffed grouse, in turn, how he recalls the pageant of the upland! Once more you scent the breath of the wildwood and drink the exhilarating draught of October. Again are you thrilled by the roar of strong pinions as the quarry rises in his strength, to fall beneath the leaden charge and fold his wings in everlasting sleep. Or, with the advent upon the board of that much-in-little, the snipe, the lonely marsh with its whispering flags and shifting cloud-shadow extends in imagination before you--where the killdeer calls, and the bittern booms, and the bird of mottled breast twists away with raucous cry to be lost in the grey horizon's marge.
Thus game to the sportsman embodies an æsthetic attribute unknown to the majority, the very associations of sport in themselves conferring the keenest appreciation of the true instincts of gastronomy. The range and the breech-loader are closely allied, and the field and the table become merged in ties of mutual affinity. Nor may we overlook the great worth of game in the sick-room, and as a ministering agent for the invalid and convalescent. It possesses, in addition, a virtue equalled by scarcely any other form of food, in calling forth the bouquet and flavour of wine--whether it be a white wine with the denizens of fresh and salt water that figure as game-fish, or a grand growth of Bordeaux or Burgundy that is appropriately served with the furred and feathered tenants of Sylva's court. Then if one has killed it himself, or a friend whose skill has checked its flight has been the means of contributing its graces, its quintessence becomes all the more adorable.
Combining so many advantages, it is to be deplored that the preservation of game in this country is not more carefully guarded, and that the scarcity of many species is becoming more and more apparent. The practice of spring shooting of snipe, duck, and shore-birds, when on their migrations to their northern nesting-grounds, cannot be too severely censured; while the laxity in enforcing the laws and the dissimilarity of close seasons in different counties operates still further to cause the depletion of wild life. The pot-hunter and the spaniel, the trap and the gin, are gradually exterminating the ruffed grouse; the olden flocks of plover and wild pigeon have well-nigh vanished; while snipe, woodcock, quail, and duck are now as rare in many localities where they formerly abounded as the trout which once swarmed in the streams. Deer and its congeners, it is true, have received better protection of recent years, the increasing numbers of deer at least attesting the wisdom of stringent laws stringently enforced. It will therefore be readily evident that preservation and protection become a question of paramount importance which may no longer be loosely considered, or soon the last grouse will have sounded his reveille, and the whistle of the woodcock will remain only as a memory. The remedy is easily prescribed, and may be briefly summarised--legitimate shooting and fishing, rigid enforcement of the laws with heavy penalties for the offender, a single close season for the smaller species that are found in proximity, abolishment of spring shooting, and a rigorous surveillance of the covers. By this means the table may possess one of its greatest luxuries in abundance, and sport resume its former sphere as the greatest of recuperative and edifying recreations.
In its relation to the table, the term "game" is held to include wild fowl as well as most furred and feathered spoils of the chase. Or, defined more accurately in its connection with gastronomy, it embraces everything belonging to the province of sport that is edible. Correctly speaking, no species of wild fowl, or species like the plover, rail, pigeon, etc., may be accounted game, the quality of which consists in the subtle presence of scent, instinctively recognised and followed by thoroughbred dogs,--a trait expressed by Hollar's lines,
"The Feasant Cocke the woods doth most frequent, Where Spaniells spring and pearche him by the sent."
Yet species foreign to the blue blood of flax and feather may, nevertheless, afford sport, and prove acquisitions for the table. The little spotted sandpiper, accordingly, whose musical _peet, weet, weet_ rings along the brooksides and moist meadow-lands, and even the squirrel if killed in cold weather, are entitled to rank as table-game, providing they be properly prepared.
It should not be supposed, however, that all individuals of a given species taste alike, flavour being the result of two important conditions. Neither should it be presumed that a game-bird, usually referred to as masculine, is preferable for the larder in that gender; the truth being that for culinary purposes the hen is generally preferable to the cock. Every sportsman will recall the difference in the taste of certain game-birds, more especially snipe and woodcock--depending upon the nature of their feeding-grounds, and upon the season. Like celery, moreover, most game requires a touch of the cold to develop its qualities. The snipe that bores in sweet, moist pastures, and the woodcock shot on high grounds during late autumn, would hardly be recognised as the same birds bagged under widely dissimilar conditions. The bobolink of our summer fields is scarcely prized until as a migrant he has fattened on the rice-fields of the South, to acquire an added bloom under the name of reed-bird or rice-bunting. Similarly, the sheep of Pré-Salé, the succulent salt-marsh mutton of the Brittany coasts, renowned for its delicious flavour, owe this quality largely to the herb absinthe which grows amid the herbage on which they browse. The mutton of sheep fed on pastures where thyme abounds also acquires a particularly fine savour. In like manner, when the ruffed grouse through stress of weather has been compelled to feed on birch-buds, or when he has dined on the berries and foliage of the wintergreen, his aroma is strikingly accentuated, becoming a veritable "steam of rich-distilled perfumes."
The wild duck is an apposite example of the effect of food upon flavour; and even a pheasant _à la Sainte Alliance_ must pale before a celery-fed canvasback or redhead bathed in its own carmine juices. The redhead, who dives down for the roots of the _Vallisneria_ which the lazier canvasback purloins, is identical in quality with the latter when shot on the same feeding-grounds; the only difference between the two when cooked consisting in the larger size of the canvasback. Equally, the blackbird and starling, when killed on the shocked corn-fields where the hazy sunlight broods, or in autumn woods where they are garrulously discussing the date of their approaching flight and marvelling at the exquisite gradations of the maples' changing hues, become possessed of a tenderness and succulence unknown to the glare and greenness of summer.