Chapter I: Preface

A long time ago, an estimable lady fell at the feet of an habitual publisher, and prayed unto him:--

"Give, oh! give me the subject of a book for which the world has a need, and I will write it for you."

"Are you an author, madam?" asked the publisher, motioning his visitor to a seat.

"No, sir," was the proud reply, "I am a poet."

"Ah!" said the great man. "I am afraid there is no immediate worldly need of a poet. If you could only write a good cookery book, now!"

The story goes on to relate how the poetess, not rebuffed in the least, started on the requisite culinary work, directly she got home; pawned her jewels to purchase postage stamps, and wrote far and wide for recipes, which in course of time she obtained, by the hundredweight. Other recipes she "conveyed" from ancient works of gastronomy, and in a year or two the _magnum opus_ was given to the world; the lady's share in the profits giving her "adequate provision for the remainder of her life." We are not told, but it is presumable, that the publisher received a little adequate provision too.

History occasionally repeats itself; and the history of the present work begins in very much the same way. Whether it will finish in an equally satisfactory manner is problematical. I do not possess much of the divine _afflatus_ myself; but there has ever lurked within me some sort of ambition to write a book--something held together by "tree calf," "half morocco," or "boards"; something that might find its way into the hearts and homes of an enlightened public; something which will give some of my young friends ample opportunity for criticism. In the exercise of my profession I have written leagues of descriptive "copy"--mostly lies and racing selections,--but up to now there has been no urgent demand for a book of any sort from this pen. For years my ambition has remained ungratified. Publishers--as a rule, the most faint-hearted and least speculative of mankind--have held aloof. And whatever suggestions I might make were rejected, with determination, if not with contumely.

At length came the hour, and the man; the introduction to a publisher with an eye for budding and hitherto misdirected talent.

"Do you care, sir," I inquired at the outset, "to undertake the dissemination of a bulky work on Political Economy?"

"Frankly, sir, I do not," was the reply. Then I tried him with various subjects--social reform, the drama, bimetallism, the ethics of starting prices, the advantages of motor cars in African warfare, natural history, the martyrdom of Ananias, practical horticulture, military law, and dogs; until he took down an old duck-gun from a peg over the mantelpiece, and assumed a threatening attitude.

Peace having been restored, the self-repetition of history recommenced.

"I can do with a good, bold, brilliant, lightly treated, exhaustive work on Gastronomy," said the publisher, "you are well acquainted with the subject, I believe?"

"I'm a bit of a parlour cook, if that's what you mean," was my humble reply. "At a salad, a grill, an anchovy toast, or a cooling and cunningly compounded cup, I can be underwritten at ordinary rates. But I could no more cook a haunch of venison, or even boil a rabbit, or make an economical Christmas pudding, than I could sail a boat in a nor'-easter; and Madam Cook would certainly eject me from her kitchen, with a clout attached to the hem of my dinner jacket, inside five minutes."

Eventually it was decided that I should commence this book.

"What I want," said the publisher, "is a series of essays on food, a few anecdotes of stirring adventure--you have a fine flow of imagination, I understand--and a few useful, but uncommon recipes. But plenty of plums in the book, my dear sir, plenty of plums."

"But, suppose my own supply of plums should not hold out, what am I to do?"

"What do you do--what does the cook do, when the plums for her pudding run short? Get some more; the Museum, my dear sir, the great storehouse of national literature, is free to all whose character is above the normal standard. When your memory and imagination fail, try the British Museum. You know what is a mightier factor than both sword and pen? Precisely so. And remember that in replenishing your store from the works of those who have gone before, you are only following in their footsteps. I only bar Sydney Smith and Charles Lamb. Let me have the script by Christmas--d'you smoke?--mind the step--_good_ morning."

In this way, gentle reader, were the trenches dug, the saps laid for the attack of the great work. The bulk of it is original, and the adventures in which the writer has taken part are absolutely true. About some of the others I would not be so positive. Some of the recipes have previously figured in the pages of the _Sporting Times_, the _Lady's Pictorial_, and the _Man of the World_, to the proprietors of which journals I hereby express my kindly thanks for permission to revive them. Many of the recipes are original; some are my own; others have been sent in by relatives, and friends of my youth; others have been adapted for modern requirements from works of great antiquity; whilst others again--I am nothing if not candid--have been "conveyed" from the works of more modern writers, who in their turn had borrowed them from the works of their ancestors. There is nothing new under the sun; and there are but few absolute novelties which are subjected to the heat of the kitchen fire.

If the style of the work be faulty, the reason--not the excuse--is that the style is innate, and not modelled upon anybody else's style. The language I have endeavoured to make as plain, homely, and vigorous as is the food advocated. If the criticisms on foreign cookery should offend the talented _chef_, I have the satisfaction of knowing that, as I have forsworn his works, he will be unable to retaliate with poison. And if the criticisms on the modern English methods of preparing food should attract the attention of the home caterer, he may possibly be induced to give his steam-chest and his gas-range a rest, and put the roast beef of Old England on his table, occasionally; though I have only the very faintest hopes that he will do so. For the monster eating-houses and mammoth hotels of to-day are for the most part "run" by companies and syndicates; and the company within the dining-room suffer occasionally, in order that dividends may be possible after payment has been made for the elaborate, and wholly unnecessary, furniture, and decorations. Wholesome food is usually sufficient for the ordinary British appetite, without such surroundings as marble pillars, Etruscan vases, nude figures, gilding, and looking-glasses, which only serve to distract attention from the banquet. It is with many a sigh that I recall the good old-fashioned inn, where the guest really received a warm welcome. Nowadays, the warmest part of that welcome is usually the bill.

It is related of the wittiest man of the nineteenth century, my late friend Mr. Henry J. Byron, that, upon one occasion, whilst walking home with a brother dramatist, after the first performance of his comedy, which had failed to please the audience, Byron shed tears.

"How is this?" inquired his friend. "The failure of my play appears to affect you strangely."

"I was only weeping," was the reply, "because I was afraid you'd set to work, and write another."

But there need be no tears shed on any page of this food book. For I am not going to "write another."

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

BREAKFAST

Formal or informal?--An eccentric old gentleman--The ancient
Britons--Breakfast in the days of Good Queen Bess--A
few tea statistics--Garraway's--Something about coffee--Brandy
for breakfast--The evolution of the staff of life--Free
Trade--The cheap loaf, and no cash to buy it Pages 1-9

CHAPTER II

BREAKFAST (_continued_)

Country-house life--An Englishwoman at her best--Guests'
comforts--What to eat at the first meal--A few choice
recipes--A noble grill-sauce--The poor outcast--Appetising
dishes--Hotel "worries"--The old regime and the new--"No
cheques"; no soles, and "whitings is hoff"--A
halibut steak--Skilly and oakum--Breakfast out of the
rates 10-21

CHAPTER III

BREAKFAST (_continued_)

Bonnie Scotland--Parritch an' cream--Fin'an haddies--A knife
on the ocean wave--_À la Français_--In the gorgeous East--_Chota
hazri_--English as she is spoke--Dâk bungalow fare--Some
quaint dishes--Breakfast with "my tutor"--A Don's
absence of mind 22-33

CHAPTER IV

LUNCHEON

Why lunch?--Sir Henry Thompson on overdoing it--The children's
dinner--City lunches--"Ye Olde Cheshyre Cheese"--Doctor
Johnson--Ye pudding--A great fall in food--A
snipe pudding--Skirt, not rump steak--Lancashire hot-pot--A
Cape "brady" 34-43

CHAPTER V

LUNCHEON (_continued_)

Shooting luncheons--Cold tea and a crust--Clear turtle--Such
larks!--Jugged duck and oysters--Woodcock pie--Hunting
luncheons--Pie crusts--The true Yorkshire pie--Race-course
luncheons--Suggestions to caterers--The "Jolly
Sandboys" stew--Various recipes--A race-course sandwich--Angels'
pie--"Suffolk pride"--Devilled larks--A light lunch
in the Himalayas 44-58

CHAPTER VI

DINNER

Origin--Early dinners--The noble Romans--"Vitellius the
Glutton"--Origin of haggis--The Saxons--Highland hospitality--The
French invasion--Waterloo avenged--The bad
fairy "_Ala_"--Comparisons--The English cook or the foreign
food torturer?--Plain or flowery--Fresh fish and the flavour
wrapped up--George Augustus Sala--Doctor Johnson
again 59-72

CHAPTER VII

DINNER (_continued_)

Imitation--Dear Lady Thistlebrain--Try it on the dog--Criminality
of the English caterer--The stove, the stink,
the steamer--Roasting v. baking--False economy--Dirty
ovens--Frills and fingers--Time over dinner--A long-winded
Bishop--Corned beef 73-81

CHAPTER VIII

DINNER (_continued_)

A merry Christmas--Bin F--A _Noel_ banquet--Water-cress--How
Royalty fares--The Tsar--_Bouillabaisse_--_Tournedos_--_Bisque_--
_Vol-au-vent_--_Pré salé_--Chinese banquets--A fixed
bayonet--_Bernardin Salmi_--The duck-squeezer--American
cookery--"Borston" beans--He couldn't eat beef 82-96

CHAPTER IX

DINNER (_continued_)

French soup--A regimental dinner--A city banquet--_Baksheesh_--Aboard
ship--An ideal dinner--Cod's liver--Sleeping in the
kitchen--A _fricandeau_--Regimental messes--Peter the
Great--Napoleon the Great--Victoria--The Iron Duke--Mushrooms--A
medical opinion--A North Pole banquet--Dogs
as food--Plain unvarnished fare--The Kent Road
cookery--More beans than bacon 97-110

CHAPTER X

VEGETABLES

Use and abuse of the potato--Its eccentricities--Its origin--Hawkins,
not Raleigh, introduced it into England--With or
without the "jacket"?--Don't let it be _à-la_-ed--Benevolence
and large-heartedness of the cabbage family--Pease on
earth--Pythagoras on the bean--"Giving him beans"--"Haricot"
a misnomer--"Borston" beans--Frijoles--The
carrot--Crécy soup--The Prince of Wales--The Black
Prince and the King of Bohemia 111-122

CHAPTER XI

VEGETABLES (_continued_)

The brief lives of the best--A vegetable with a pedigree--
Argenteuil--The Elysian Fields--The tomato the emblem of
love--"Neeps"--Spinach--"Stomach-brush"--The savoury
tear-provoker--Invaluable for wasp-stings--Celery merely
cultivated "smallage"--The "_Apium_"--The parsnip--O
Jerusalem!--The golden sunflower--How to get pheasants--A
vegetarian banquet--"Swelling wisibly" 123-133

CHAPTER XII

CURRIES

Different modes of manufacture--The "native" fraud--"That
man's family"--The French _kari_--A Parsee curry--"The
oyster in the sauce"--Ingredients--Malay curry--Locusts--When
to serve--What to curry--Prawn curry--Dry curry,
champion recipe--Rice--The Bombay duck 134-146

CHAPTER XIII

SALADS

Nebuchadnezzar _v._ Sydney Smith--Salt?--No salad-bowl--French
origin--Apocryphal story of Francatelli--Salads _and_
salads--Water-cress and dirty water--Salad-maker born
not made--Lobster salad--Lettuce, Wipe or wash?--Mayonnaise--Potato
salad--Tomato ditto--Celery ditto--A
memorable ditto 147-157

CHAPTER XIV

SALADS AND CONDIMENTS

Roman salad--Italian ditto--Various other salads--Sauce for
cold mutton--Chutnine--Raw chutnee--Horse-radish sauce--Christopher
North's sauce--How to serve a mackerel--_Sauce
Tartare_--Ditto for sucking pig--Delights of making
_Sambal_--A new language 158-169

CHAPTER XV

SUPPER

Cleopatra's supper--Oysters--Danger in the Aden bivalve--Oyster
stew--Ball suppers--Pretty dishes--The _Taj Mahal_--Aspic--Bloater
paste and whipped cream--Ladies' recipes--Cookery
colleges--Tripe--Smothered in onions--North
Riding fashion--An hotel supper--Lord Tomnoddy at the
"Magpie and Stump" 170-180

CHAPTER XVI

SUPPER (_continued_)

Old supper-houses--The Early Closing Act--Evans's--Cremorne
Gardens--"The Albion"--Parlour cookery--Kidneys fried
in the fire-shovel--The true way to grill a bone--"Cannie
Carle"--My lady's bower--Kidney dumplings--A Middleham
supper--Steaks cut from a colt by brother to "Strafford"
out of sister to "Bird on the Wing" 181-191

CHAPTER XVII

"CAMPING OUT"

The ups and downs of life--Stirring adventures--Marching on to
glory--Shooting in the tropics--Pepper-pot--With the
_Rajah Sahib_--Goat-sacrifices at breakfast time--Simla to
Cashmere--Manners and customs of Thibet--Burmah--No
place to get fat in--Insects--Voracity of the natives--Snakes--Sport
in the Jungle--Loaded for snipe, sure to
meet tiger--With the gippos--No baked hedgehog--Cheap
milk 192-205

CHAPTER XVIII

COMPOUND DRINKS

Derivation of punch--"Five"--The "milk" brand--The best
materials--Various other punches--Bischoff or Bishop--"Halo"
punch--Toddy--The toddy tree of India--Flip--A
"peg"--John Collins--Out of the guard-room 206-218

CHAPTER XIX

CUPS AND CORDIALS

Five recipes for claret cup--Balaclava cup--Orgeat--Ascot cup--Stout
and champagne--Shandy-gaff for millionaires--Ale
cup--Cobblers which will stick to the last--Home Ruler--Cherry
brandy--Sloe gin--Home-made, if possible--A new
industry--Apricot brandy--Highland cordial--Bitters--Jumping-powder--
Orange brandy--"Mandragora"--"Sleep rock thy brain!" 219-231

CHAPTER XX

THE DAYLIGHT DRINK

Evil effects of dram-drinking--The "Gin-crawl"--Abstinence in
H.M. service--City manners and customs--Useless to argue
with the soaker--Cocktails--Pet names for drams--The
free lunch system--Fancy mixtures--Why no cassis?--Good
advice like water on a duck's back 232-245

CHAPTER XXI

GASTRONOMY IN FICTION AND DRAMA

Thomas Carlyle--Thackeray--Harrison Ainsworth--Sir Walter
Scott--Miss Braddon--Marie Corelli--F. C. Philips--Blackmore--Charles
Dickens--_Pickwick_ reeking with alcohol--Brandy
and oysters--_Little Dorrit_--_Great Expectations_--Micawber
as a punch-maker--_David Copperfield_--"Practicable"
food on the stage--"Johnny" Toole's story of Tiny
Tim and the goose 246-259

CHAPTER XXII

RESTORATIVES

William of Normandy--A "head" wind at sea--Beware the
druggist--Pick-me-ups of all sorts and conditions--Anchovy
toast for the invalid--A small bottle--Straight talks to
fanatics--Total abstinence as bad as the other thing--Moderation
in all matters--Wisely and slow--_Carpe diem_--But
have a thought for the morrow 260-274