Chapter VI: Part 6

If, however, we speak of the bonbons themselves, what can we say of the _bonbonnières_! Everything that is beautiful, everything that is curious, everything that is quaint, everything that is ludicrous, everything that is timely, is utilized. I received an immense green satin grasshopper--the last _jour de l'an_, in Paris--filled to his uttermost _antennæ_ with bonbons. It could be for once said that the "grasshopper had not become a burden." The _panier Watteau_, formed of satin, pearls, straw, and flowers, may be made to conceal a handkerchief worth a thousand francs under the rose-satin lining. The boxes are painted by artists, and remain a lovely belonging for a toilet table.

Beautiful metal reproductions of some antique _chef d'oeuvre_ are made into _bonbonnières_. Some bonbon-boxes have themselves concealed in huge bouquets of violets, fringed with lace, or hidden under roses, which are skilfully growing out of white satin; beautiful reticules, all embroidered, hold the carefully bound up packages, where tinfoil preserves the silk and satin from contact with the sugar. If France did nothing else but make _bonbonnières_, she would prove her claim to being the most ingenious purveyor for the luxury of entertaining in all the world. If luxury means, "to freight the passing hour with flying happiness," France does her "possible" as she would say herself, to help along this fairy packing.

At Easter, when sweetmeats are almost as much in request as at the New Year,--the French make very little of Christmas,--these bonbon establishments are filled with Easter eggs of the gayest colours. There are nests of eggs, baskets of eggs, cradles full of eggs, and pretty peasants carrying eggs to market; nests of eggs, with birds of brilliant plumage sitting on the nests or hovering over them, while their freight of bonbons repose on softest swan's-down, lace, and satin; or again, the egg itself of satin, with its yolk of orange creams and its white of marshmallow paste. There is no end to this felicitous and dulcet strain.

The best candied fruit I have ever eaten, I bought in a railway depot at Venice. The Italians understand this art to perfection. They hang the fruit by its natural stem on a long straw; and no better accompaniment for a long railway journey can be imagined.

The French do not consider bonbons unhealthful. Instead of giving her boy a piece of bread and butter as he departs for the _Lycée_ the French mamma gives him two or three chocolate bonbons. The hunter takes these to the top of the Matterhorn; ladies take them in their pockets instead of a lunch-basket; and one assured me that two slabs of chocolate sufficed her for breakfast and supper on the road from Paris to Rome.

I do not know what Baron Liebig would say to this in his learned articles on the "Nutritive Value of Certain Kinds of Food," but the French children seem to be the healthiest in the world,--a tribute to chocolate of the highest. "By their fruits shall ye know them."

In the times of the Medici, and the St. Bartholomew Massacre, the French and Italian nobles had a curious custom of always carrying about with them, in the pockets of their silk doublets, costly little boxes full of bonbons. Henry IV., Marie de Medici, and all their friends and foes, carried about with them little gold and Limoges enamelled boxes, very pretty and desirable articles of _vertu_ now; and doubtless there was one full of red and white comfits in the pocket of Mary Queen of Scots, when she fell dead, poor, ill-used, beautiful woman, at the foot of the block, at Fotheringay. Doubtless there was one in the pouch of the grisly Duc de Guise, with his close-cropped bullet head, and long, spidery legs, when he fell, done to death by treacherous Catherine de Medici, dead and bleeding on the polished floor of Blois! It was a childish custom, and proved that the age had a sweet tooth; but it might have been useful for diplomatic purposes, and highly conducive to flirting. As a Lord Chief Justice once said that "snuff and snuff-boxes help to develop character," so the _bonbonnière_ helps to emphasize manners; and I am always pleased when an old or new friend opens for me a little silver box and offers me a sugared violet, or a rose leaf conserved in sugar, although I can eat neither of them.

A witty writer says that dessert should be "the girandole, or cunning tableau of the dinner." It should "surprise, astonish, dazzle, and enchant." We may almost decide upon the taste of an age as we read of its desserts. The tasteless luxury and coarse pleasures of the reign of Charles II.,--that society where Rochester fluttered and Buckingham flaunted,--how it is all described in one dessert! At a dinner given the father (of a great many) of his subjects by Lady Dormer, was built a large gilded ship of confectionery. Its masts, cabins, portholes, and lofty poop all smart and glittering, its rigging all taut, its bunting flying, its figure-head bright as gold leaf could make it. Its guns were charged with actual powder. Its cargo was two turreted pies, one full of birds and the other of frogs. When borne in by the gay pages, to the sound of music, the guns were discharged, the ladies screamed and fainted, so as to "require to be held up and consoled by the gallants, who offered them sips of Tokay." Poor little things! Such was the Court of Charles.

Then, to sweeten the smell of powder, the ladies threw at each other egg-shells filled with fragrant waters; and "all danger being over," they opened the pies. Out of one skipped live frogs; out of the other flew live birds who put out the lights; so, what with the screams, the darkness, the frogs, and the smell of powder, we get an idea of sports at Whitehall, where blackbrowed, swarthy-visaged Charles presided, on which grave Clarendon condescended to smile, and which the gentle Evelyn and Waller were condemned to approve.

We have not entirely refrained from such sugar emblems at our own great feasts; but fortunately, they have rather gone out, excepting for some emblem-haunted dinners where we do have sugared Monitors, and chocolate torpedos. I have seen the lovely Venus of Milo in frozen cream, which gave a wit the opportunity of saying that the home for such a goddess should be the temple of Isis; and Bartholdi's immortal Liberty lends herself to chocolate and nougat now and then, but very rarely at private dinners.

The fashion of our day, with its low dishes for the sweets, is so much better, that we cannot help congratulating ourselves that we do not live even in the days of the first George, when, as one witty author again says, "the House of Brunswick brought over sound protestantism, but German taste." Horace Walpole, great about trifles, incomparable decider of the width of a shoe-buckle, keen despiser of all meannesses but his own, neat and fastidious tripper along a flowery path over this vulgar planet, derided the new fashion in desserts. The ambitious confectioners, he says, "aspired to positive statuary, spindle-legged Venus, dummy Mars, all made of sugar;" and he mentions a confectioner of Lord Albemarle's who loudly complained that his lordship would not break up the ceiling of his dining-room to admit the heads, spear-points and upraised thunderbolts of a middle dish of Olympian deities eighteen feet high, all made of sugar.

The dishes known in France as _Les Quatres Mendiants_, one of nuts, one of figs or dried fruit, one of raisins, and another of oranges, still to be seen on old-fashioned dinner-tables, was, I supposed, so called because it is seldom touched,--in fact, goes a-begging.

But I have found this pretty little legend, which proves that it was far more poetical in origin. The name in French for aromatic vinegar is also connected with it. It is called "The Vinegar of the Four Thieves." So runs the legend: "Once four thieves of Marseilles, rubbing themselves with this vinegar during the plague, defied infection and robbed the dead." Who were these wretches? All that we know of them is that they dined beneath a tree on stolen walnuts and grapes, and imagined the repast a feast. We can picture them, Holbein men with slashed sleeves, as old soldiers of Francis I. who had wrestled with the Swiss. We can imagine them as beaten about by Burgundian peasants; and we know that they were grim, brown, scarred rascals, cutting purses, snatching silken cloaks,--sturdy, resolute, heartless, merry, desperate, God-forsaken scoundrels, living only for the moment. We can imagine Callot etching their rags, or Rembrandt putting in their dark shadows and high lights. We can see Salvator Rosa admiring them as they sleep under the green oak-tree, their heads on a dead deer, and the high rock above. Or we may get old Teniers to draw them for us, gambling with torn and greasy cards for a gold crucifix or a brass pot, or revelling at the village inn, swaggering, swearing, drunk, or tipsy, playing at shuffle-board. The only point in their history worth recording is that they were destined to be asked to every dinner party for four hundred years!--simply preceding the bonbons, as we see by the following verses:--

"Once on a time, in the brave Henry's age,
Four beggars dining underneath a tree
Combined their stores; each from his wallet drew
Handfuls of stolen fruit, and sang for glee.

"So runs the story,--'_Garçon_, bring the _carte_,
Soup, cutlets--stay--and mind, a _matelotte_.'
And 'Charles,--a pint of Burgundy's best Beanne;
In our deep glasses every joy shall float!'

"And '_Garçon_, bring me from the woven frail
That turbaned merchants from fair Smyrna sent,
The figs with golden seeds, the honeyed fruit,
That feast the stranger in the Syrian tent.

"'Go fetch us grapes from all the vintage rows
Where the brave Spaniards gaily quaff the wine,
What time the azure ripple of the waves
Laughs bright beneath the green leaves of the vine!

"'Nor yet, unmindful of the fabled scrip,
Forget the nuts from Barcelona's shore,
Soaked in Iberian oil from olives pressed,
To the crisp kernels adding one charm more.

"'The almonds last, plucked from a sunny tree,
Half way up Lybanus, blanched as snowy white
As Leila's teeth, and they will fitly crown
The beggars' four-fold dish for us to-night.

"'Beggars are happy! then let us be so;
We've buried care in wine's red-glowing sea.
There let him soaking lie--he was our foe;
Joy laughs above his grave--and so will we!'"

It was from that love of contrast, then, was it, which is a part of all luxury, that the fable of the _Quatre Mendiants_ was made to serve like the olives at dessert. Perhaps the fillip which walnuts give to wine suggested it. It was a modern French rendering of the skull made to do duty as a drinking-cup. It is a part of the five kernels of corn at a Pilgrim dinner, without that high conscientiousness of New England. It is a part, perhaps, of the more melancholy refrain, "Be merry, be merry, for to-morrow ye die!" It is that warmth is warmer when we remember cold; it is that food is good when we remember the starving; it is that _bringing in_ of the pleasant vision of the four beggars under the tree, as a picture perhaps; at any rate there it is, moral at your pleasure.

The desserts of the middle ages were heavy and cumbrous affairs, and had no special character. There would be a good deal of Cellini cup and Limoges plate, and Palissy dish, and golden chased goblet about it, no doubt. How glad the collectors of to-day would be to get them! And we picture the heavy indigestible cakes, and poisonous bonbons. The taste must have been questionable if we can believe Ben Jonson, who tells of the beribboned dwarf jester who, at a Lord Mayor's dinner, took a flying header into a dish of custard, to the infinite sorrow of ladies' dresses; he followed, probably, that dish in which the dwarf Sir Geoffrey Hudson was concealed, and they both are after Tom Thumb, who was fishing about in a cup of posset a thousand years ago.

The dessert is allowed by all French writers to be of Italian origin; and we read of the _maîtres d'hotel_, before the Italian dessert arrived, probably introduced by Catherine de Medici and the Guises, that they gloried in mountains of fruit, and sticky hills of sweetmeats. The elegance was clumsy and ostentatious; there was no poetry in it. Paul Veronese's picture of the "Marriage of Cana" will give some idea of the primeval French dessert. The later fashion was of those trees and gardens and puppets abused by Horace Walpole; but Frenchmen delighted in seas of glass, flower-beds formed of coloured sand, and little sugar men and women promenading in enamelled bowling-greens. We get some idea of the magnificent fêtes of Louis XIV. at Versailles from the glowing descriptions of Molière.

Dufoy in 1805 introduced "frizzled muslin into a slice of fairyland;" that is, he made extraordinary pictures of temples and trees, for the centre of his dessert. And these palaces and temples were said to have been of perfect proportions; his trees of frizzled muslin were admirable. It sounds very much like children's toys just now.

He went further, Dufoy; having ransacked heaven and earth, air and water, he thrust his hand into the fire, and made harmless rockets shoot from his sugar temples. Sugar rocks were strewn about with precipices of nougat, glaciers of vanilla candy, and waterfalls of spun sugar. A confectioner in 1805 had to keep his wits about him, for after every victory of Napoleon he was expected to do the whole thing in sugar. He was decorator, painter, architect, sculptor, and florist--icer, yes, until after the Russian campaign, and then--they had had enough of ice. Thus we see that the dessert has always been more for the eye than for the stomach.

The good things which have been said over the walnuts and the wine! The pretty books written about claret and olives! One author says that if all the good things which have been said about the gay and smiling dessert could be printed, it would make a pleasant anecdotic little pamphlet of four thousand odd pages!

We must not forget all the absurdities of the dessert. The Prince Regent, whose tastes inclined to a vulgar and spurious Orientalism, at one of his costly feasts at Carleton House had a channel of real water running around the table, and in this swam gold and silver fish. The water was only let on at dessert.

These fancies may be sometimes parodied in our own time, as the bonbon makers of Paris now devote their talents to the paper absurdities of harlequins, Turks, Chinamen, and all the vagaries of a fancy-dress ball with which the passengers of steamships amuse themselves after the Captain's dinner. This is not that legitimate dessert at which we now find ices disguised as natural fruits, or copying a rose. All the most beautiful forms in the world are now reproduced in the frozen water or cream, as healthful as it is delicious, in the famous jelly with maraschino, or the delicate bonbon with the priceless liqueur, or, better still, that _eau de menthe_ cordial, our own green peppermint, which, after all, saves as by one mouthful from the horrors of indigestion and adds that "thing more exquisite still" to the perfect dessert,--a good night's sleep.

FAMOUS MENUS AND RECIPES.

Gather up the fragments that remain that nothing be lost.
JOHN vi. 12.

This is not intended to be a cookery book; but in order to help the young housekeeper we shall give some hints as to _menus_ and a few rare recipes.

The great line of seacoast from New York to Florida presents us with some unrivalled delicacies, and the negroes of the State of Maryland, which was founded by a rich and luxurious Lord Baltimore, knew how to cook the terrapin, the canvas-back duck, oysters, and the superb wild turkey,--not to speak of the well-fattened poultry of that rich and luxurious Lorraine of America, "Maryland, my Maryland," which Oliver Wendell Holmes calls the "gastronomical centre of the universe."

Here is an old Virginia recipe for cooking terrapin, which is rare and excellent:--

Take three large, live, diamond-backed terrapin, plunge them
in boiling water for three minutes, to take off the skin, wipe
them clean, cook them in water slightly salted, drain them,
let them get cold, open and take out everything from the
shell. In removing the entrails care must be taken not to
break the gall. Cut off the head, tail, nails, gall, and
bladder. Cut the meat in even-size pieces, put them in a
sauce-pan with four ounces of butter, add the terrapin eggs,
and moisten them with a half pint of Madeira wine. Let the
mixture cook until the moisture is reduced one-half. Then add
two spoonfuls of cream sauce. After five minutes add the yolks
of four raw eggs diluted with a half-cup of cream. Season with
salt and a pinch of red pepper. The mixture should not boil
after the yolk of egg is added. Toss in two ounces of butter
before serving. The heat of the mess will cook egg and butter
enough. Serve with quartered lemon.

This is, perhaps, if well-cooked, the most excellent of all American dishes.

A chicken gumbo soup is next:--

Cut up one chicken, wash and dry it, dip it in flour, salt and
pepper it, then fry it in hot lard to a delicate brown.

In a soup kettle place five quarts of water and your chicken,
let it boil hard for two hours, cut up twenty-four okra pods,
add them to the soup, and boil the whole another hour. One
large onion should be put in with the chicken. Add red pepper
to taste, also salt, not too much, and serve with rice. Dried
okra can be used, but must be soaked over night.

Another Maryland success was the tomato catsup:--

Boil one bushel of tomatoes until soft, squeeze through a
sieve, add to the juice half a gallon of vinegar, 1½ pints
salt, 3 ounces of whole cloves, 1 ounce of allspice, 2 ounces
of cayenne pepper, 3 tablespoonfuls of black pepper, 3 heads
of garlic, skinned and separated; boil three hours or until
the quantity is reduced one-half, bottle without skimming. The
spices should be put in a muslin bag, which must be taken out,
of course, before bottling. If desired 1 peck of onions can be
boiled, passed through a sieve, and the juice added to the
tomatoes.

_Green pepper pickles_: Half a pound of mustard seed soaked
over night, 1 quart of green pepper chopped, 2 quarts of
onions chopped, 4 quarts of cucumbers also chopped, 8 quarts
of green tomatoes chopped, 6 quarts of cabbage chopped; mix
and measure. To every gallon of this mixture add one teacup of
salt, let it stand until morning, then squeeze perfectly dry
with the hands. Then add 8 pounds of sugar, and cover with
good vinegar and boil five minutes. After boiling, and while
still hot, squeeze perfectly dry, then add 2 ounces of cloves,
2 ounces of allspice, 3 ounces of cinnamon and the mustard
seed.

The peppers should be soaked in brine thirty-six or
forty-eight hours. After soaking, wipe dry and stuff, place
them in glass jars, and cover with fresh vinegar.

This was considered the triumph of the Southern housekeeper.

_Chicken with spaghetti_: Stir four sliced onions in two
ounces of butter till very soft, add one quart of peeled
tomatoes; stew chicken in water until tender, and pick to
pieces. Add enough of the gravy to make a quart, put with the
onions and tomatoes. Let it stew fifteen minutes gently. Put
into boiling water 2½ pounds of spaghetti and a handful of
salt, boil twenty minutes or until tender; drain this and put
in a layer on a platter sprinkled with grated cheese, and pour
the stew on it. Fill the platter with these layers, reserving
the best of the chicken to lay on top.

The old negro cooks made a delicious confection known as confection cake. Those who lived to tell of having eaten it declared that it was a dream. It certainly leads to dreams, and bad ones, but it is worth a nightmare:--

1½ cups of sugar, 2½ cups of flour, ½ cup of butter, ½ cup of
sweet milk, whites of six eggs, 3 small teaspoons of baking
powder. Bake in two or three layers on a griddle.

_Filling_: 1 small cocoanut grated, 1 pound almonds blanched,
and cut up not too fine, 1 teacup of raisins chopped, 1 teacup
of citron chopped, 4 eggs, whites only, 7 tablespoonfuls of
pulverized sugar to each egg.

Mix this destructive substance well in the froth of egg, and spread between the layers of cake when they are hot; set it a few minutes in the oven, but do not burn it, and you have a delicious and profoundly indigestible dessert. You will be able to write Sartor Resartus, after eating of it freely.

_Walnut Cake_: 1 cup of butter, 2 cups of sugar, 6 eggs, 4
cups of flour, 1 cup of milk, 2 teaspoonfuls of yeast powder.

This is also baked in layers, and awaits the dynamite filling which is to blow you up:--

_Walnut Filling_: 2 cups of brown sugar, 1 cup of cream, a
piece of butter the size of an egg. Cook twenty minutes,
stirring all the time; when ready to take off the stove put in
one cup of walnut meats. After this has cooked a few minutes
longer, spread between the layers, and while both cake and
filling are hot.

Perhaps a few _menus_ may be added here to assist the memory of her "who does not know what to have for dinner:"--

Tomato Soup.
Golden Sherry. Whitefish broiled. Claret.
Mashed potatoes.
Round of beef _braisé_, Madeira.
with glazed onions.
Champagne. Roast plover with cress. Château Yquem.
Chiccory Salad.
Custard flavoured with vanilla.
Cheese. Cordials.
Chambertin. Fruit.
Coffee.

Or a plain dinner:--

Sherry. Oxtail Soup. Claret.
_Filet_ of lobster _à la Mazarin_.
Turkey rings with _purée_ of chestnuts.
Salad of fresh tomatoes.
Cream tart with meringue. Cheese.

This last dinner is perhaps enough for only a small party, but it is very well composed. A much more elaborate _menu_ follows:--

Oysters on the half-shell.
Soup:
_Consommé royale_.
Fish: Rudesheimer.
Fried smelts, sauce Tartare,
Duchess potatoes.
Sherry. _Releves_:
Boned capon.
Roast ham. Champagne.
Madeira, _Entreés_:
Sweetbreads _braisé_.
Quails. Claret.
_Sorbet au kirsch_.
Game:
Port, Broiled woodcock, Chambertin.
Canvas-back duck.
Vegetables:
Cauliflower, Spinach, French peas,
Stewed tomatoes. Château Yquem.
Dessert:
Frozen pudding, _Biscuits Diplomats_.
_Meringues Chantilly_, Assorted Cake.
Fruit.
Brandy. Coffee. Cordials.

An excellent bill of fare for eight persons, in the month of October, is the following:--

Soup.
Bisque of crayfish.
Fish.
Baked smelts, _à la Mentone_,
Potato balls, _à la Rouenaise_,
Ribs of beef braised, stewed with vegetables.
Brussels sprouts.
Roast birds, or quail on toast.
Celery salad.

To make a bisque of crayfish is a very delicate operation, but it is worth trying:--

Have three dozen live crayfish, wash them well, and take the
intestines out by pinching the extreme end of the centre fin,
when with a sudden jerk the gall can be withdrawn. Put in a
stewpan two ounces of butter, with a carrot, an onion, two
stalks of celery, two ounces of salted pork, all sliced fine,
and a bunch of parsley; fry ten minutes, add the crayfish,
with a pint of French white wine and a quart of veal broth.
Stir and boil gently for an hour, then drain all in a large
strainer, take out the bunch of parsley and save the broth;
pick the shells off the crayfish tails, trim them neatly and
keep until wanted. Cook separately a pint and a half of rice,
with three pints of veal broth, pound the rest of the crayfish
and vegetables, add the rice, pound again, dilute with the
broth of the crayfish, and add more veal broth if too thick.
Pass forcibly through a fine sieve with a wooden presser, put
the residue in a saucepan, warm without boiling, and stir all
the while with a wooden spoon. Finish with three ounces of
table butter, a glass of Madeira wine, and a pinch of cayenne
pepper; serve hot in soup tureen with the crayfish tails.

_To prepare baked smelts à la Mentone_: Spread in a large and
narrow baking-dish some fish forcemeat half an inch thick,
have two dozen large, fresh, well-cleaned smelts, lay them
down in a row on the forcemeat, season with salt, pepper, and
grated nutmeg, pour over a thick white Italian sauce, sprinkle
some bread crumbs on them, put a small pat of butter on each
one and bake for half an hour in a pretty hot oven, then
squeeze the juice of a lemon over and serve in a baking-dish.

_To make potato balls à la Rouenaise_: Boil the potatoes and
rub them fine, then roll each ball in white of egg, lay them
on a floured table, roll into shape of a pigeon's egg, dip
them in melted butter, and fry a light brown in clear hot
grease. Sprinkle fine salt over and serve in a folded napkin.

_To prepare braised ribs of beef_: Have a small set of three
ribs cut short, cook it as _beef à la mode_, that is, stew it
with spices and vegetables, dish it up with carrots, turnips,
and onions, pour the reduced gravy over.

_To prepare Brussels sprouts, demi-glacé_: Trim and wash the
sprouts, soak them in boiling salted water about thirty
minutes, cool them in cold water, and drain them. Put six
ounces of butter in a large frying-pan, melt it and put the
sprouts in it, season with salt and pepper, fry on a brisk
fire until thoroughly hot, serve in a dish with a rich
drawn-butter sauce with chopped parsley.

A diplomatic supper was once served at the White House, of which the following _menu_ is an accurate report:--

Salmon with green sauce.
Cold boned turkey, with truffles.
_Pâtés_ of game, truffled.
Ham cooked in Madeira sauce.
Aspic of chicken.
_Pâté de foie gras._
Salads of chicken and lobster in forms, surrounded by jelly.
Pickled oysters. Sandwiches.
Scalloped oysters.
Stewed terrapin.
Chicken and lobster croquettes.
_Chocolat à la crème._ Coffee.
Dessert:
Ices. Fancy meringue baskets filled with cream.
Pancakes. Large cakes.
Fancy jellies. Charlotte Russe.
Fruits.
Cake. Wafers. Nougat.

One could have satisfied an appetite with all this.

General Grant was probably the most _fêted_ American who ever visited Europe. He was entertained by every monarch and by many most distinguished citizens. The Duke of Wellington opened the famous Waterloo Room in Apsley House in his honour, and toasted him as the first soldier of the age. But it is improbable that he ever had a better dinner than the following:--

It was given to him in New York, in 1880, at the Hotel Brunswick. It was for ten people only, in a private parlour, arranged as a dining-room _en suite_ with the Venetian parlour. The room was in rich olive and bronze tints. The buffet glittered with crystal, and Venetian glass. On the side tables were arranged the coffee service and other accessories. The whole room was filled with flowers, the chandelier hung with smilax, dotted with carnations. The table was arranged with roses, heliotrope, and carnations, the deep purple and green grapes hanging over gold dishes. The dinner service was of white porcelain with heliotrope border, the glass of iridescent crystal. The furnishing of the Venetian parlour, the rich carvings, the suits of armour, the antique chairs were all mediæval; the dinner was modern and American:--

Oysters.
Soup, _Consommé Royale_.
Fish:
Fried smelts, sauce Tartare.
_Releves_:
Boned capon.
_Entrées_:
Sweetbreads, _braisé_, Quails, _à la Perigord_.
_Sorbet au kirsch_.
Game.
Broiled woodcock, Canvas-back duck.
Terrapin.
Vegetables:
Cauliflower, Spinach, Artichokes, French peas.
Dessert:
_Biscuits Diplomatiques_, Frozen pudding,
_Meringue Chantilly_, Assorted cakes.
Fruit. Coffee. Cigars.
Liqueurs.

Probably the last item interested and amused the General, who was no _gourmet_, much more than even the terrapin.

This _menu_ for a November dinner cannot be surpassed.

COOKERY AND WINES OF THE SOUTH OF EUROPE.

Aufidius for his morning beverage used
Honey in strong Falernian wine infused;
But here methinks he showed his want of brains:
Drink less austere best suits the empty veins.

* * * * *

Shell fish afford a lubricating slime!
But then you must observe both place and time.
They're caught the finest when the moon is new;
The Lucrine far excel the Baian too.
Misenum shines in cray fish; Circe most
In oysters; scollops let Tarentum boast.
The culinary critic first should learn
Each nicer shade of flavour to discern:
To sweep the fish stalls is mere show at best

* * * * *

Unless you know how each thing should be drest.
Let boars of Umbrian game replete with mast,
If game delights you, crown the rich repast.
SATIRES OF HORACE.

Italian cookery is excellent at its best. The same drift of talent, the same due sense of proportion which showed itself in all their art, which built St. Mark's and the Duomo, the Ducal Palace, the Rialto, and the churches of Palladio, comes out in their cookery. Their cooks are Michel Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci in a humbler sphere.

They mingle cheese in cookery, with great effect; nothing can be better than their cauliflower covered with Parmesan cheese, and baked. Macaroni in all its forms is of course admirable. They have mastered the use of sweet oil, which in their cookery never tastes oily; it is simply a lambent richness.

The great dish, wild boar, treated with a sweet and a sour sauce, with pine cones, is an excellent dish. Wild boar is a lean pork with a game flavour. All sorts of birds, especially _becafico_, are well cooked, they lose no juice or flavour over the fire.

They make a dozen preparations of Indian meal, which are very good for breakfast. One little round cake, like a muffin, tastes almost of cocoanut; this is fried in oil, and is most delicious.

The _frittala_ is another well-known dish, and is composed of liver, bacon, and birds, all pinned on a long stick, or iron pin.

In an Italian palace, if you have the good luck to be asked, the dinner is handsome. It is served in twelve courses in the Russian manner, and if national dishes are offered they are disguised as inelegant. But at an ordinary farmhouse in the hills near Florence, or at the ordinary hotels, there will be a good soup, trout fresh from the brooks, fresh butter, macaroni with cheese, a fat capon, and a delicious omelette, enriched with morsels of kidney or fat bacon, a _frittala_, a bunch of grapes, a bottle of Pogio secco, or the sweet Italian straw wine.

The Italians are very frugal, and would consider the luxurious overflow of American munificent hospitality as vulgar. At parties in Rome, Naples, and Florence it is not considered proper to offer much refreshment. At Mr. Story's delightful receptions American hospitality reigned at afternoon tea, as it did in all houses where the hostess was American, but at the houses of the Princes nothing was offered but weak wine and water and little cakes.

Many travellers have urged that the cookery of the common Italian dinner is too much flavoured with garlic, but in a winter spent in travelling through Italy I did not find it so. I remember a certain leg of lamb with beans which had a slight taste of onions, but that is all. They have learned, as the French have, that the onion is to cookery what accent is to speech. It should not be _trop prononcée_. The lamb and pistachio nuts of the Arabian Nights is often served and is delicious.

They give you in an Italian country house for breakfast, at twelve o'clock, a sort of thick soup, very savoury, probably made of chicken with an herb like okra, one dish of meat smothered in beans or tomatoes, followed by a huge dish of macaroni with cheese, or with morsels of ham through it. Then a white curd with powdered cinnamon, sugar, and wine, a bottle of _vino santo_, a cup of coffee or chocolate, and bread of phenomenal whiteness and lightness.

Alas, for the poor people! They live on the chestnuts, the frogs, or nothing. The porter at the door of some great house is seen eating a dish of frogs, which are, however, so well cooked that they send up an appetizing fragrance more like a stew of crabs than anything else. One sees sometimes a massive ancient house, towering up in mediæval grandeur, with shafts of marble, and columns of porphyry, lonely, desolate, and beautiful, infinitely impressive, infinitely grand. Some member of a once illustrious family lives within these ruined walls, on almost nothing. He would have to kill his pet falcon to give you a dinner, while around his time-honoured house cluster his tenants shaking with malaria,--pale, unhappy, starved people. It is not a cheerful sight, but it can be seen in southern Italy.

The prosperous Italians will give you a well-cooked meal, an immense quantity of bonbons, and the most exquisite candied fruits. Their _confetti_ are wonderful, their cakes and ices, their candied fruit, their _tutti frutti_, are beyond all others. They crown every feast with a Paradise in spun sugar.

But they despise and fear a fire, and foreigners are apt to find the old Italian palaces dreary, and very cold. A recent traveller writes from Florence: "I have been within the walls of five Italian houses at evening parties, at three of them, music and no conversation; all except one held in cold rooms, the floors black, imperfectly covered with drugget, and no fire; conversation, to me at least, very dull; the topics, music, personal slander,--for religion, government, and literature, were generally excluded from polite society. In only one house, of which the mistress was a German, was tea handed around; sometimes not even a cup of water was passed." We learn from the novels of Marion Crawford that the Italians do not often eat in each others' houses.

Victor Emmanuel, the mighty hunter, had a mighty appetite. He used to dine alone, before the hour for the State dinner. Then with sword in hand, leaning on its jewelled hilt, in full uniform, his breast covered with orders, the King sat at the head of his table, and talked with his guests while the really splendid dinner was served.

Royal banquets are said to be dull. The presence of a man so much above the others in rank has a depressing effect. The guest must console himself with the glorious past of Italy, and fix his eyes on the magnificent furniture of the table, the cups of Benvenuto Cellini, the vases of Capo di Monti, the superb porcelain, and the Venetian glass, or he must devote himself to the lamb and pistachio nuts, the _choux fleurs aux Parmesan_, or the truffles, which are nowhere so large or so fine as at an Italian dinner. Near Rome they are rooted out of the oak forests by the king's dogs, and are large and full of flavour.

King Humbert has inherited his father's taste for hunting, and sends presents of the game he has shot to his courtiers.

The housekeeping at the Quirinal is excellent; a royal supper at a royal ball is something to remember. And what wines to wash them down with!--the delicious Lacryma Christi, the Falerno or Capri, the Chianti, the Sestio Levante or Asti. Asti is a green wine, rich, strong, and sweet. It makes people ill if they drink it before it is quite old enough--but perhaps it is not often served at royal banquets.

Verdeaux was a favourite wine of Frederic the Great, but Victor Emmanuel's wine was the luscious _Monte Pulciano_.

"Monte Pulciano d'ogni vino e il Re."

The brilliant purple colour, like an amethyst, of this noble wine is unlike any other. The aromatic odour is delicious; its sweetness is tempered by an agreeable sharpness and astringency; it leaves a flattering flavour on the tongue.

These best Italian wines have a deliciousness which eludes analysis, like the famous Monte Beni, which old Tommaso produced in a small straw-covered flask at the visit of Kenyon to Donatello. This invaluable wine was of a pale golden hue, like other of the rarest Italian wines, and if carelessly and irreligiously quaffed, might have been mistaken for a sort of champagne. It was not, however, an effervescing wine, although its delicate piquancy produced a somewhat similar effect upon the palate. Sipping, the guest longed to sip again, but the wine demanded so deliberate a pause in order to detect the hidden peculiarities, and subtile exquisiteness of its flavour, that to drink it was more a moral than a physical delight. There was a deliciousness in it which eluded description, and like whatever else that is superlatively good was perhaps better appreciated by the memory than by present consciousness. One of its most ethereal charms lay in the transitory life of the wine's richest qualities; for while it required a certain leisure and delay, yet if you lingered too long in the draught, it became disenchanted both of its fragrance and flavour. The lustre and colour should not be forgotten among the other good qualities of the Monte Beni wine, for "as it stood in Kenyon's glass, a little circle of light glowed on the table around about it as if it were really so much golden sunshine."

There are few wines worthy of this beautiful eloquence of Hawthorne. The description bears transportation; the wine did not. The transportation of even a few miles turned it sour. That is the trouble with Italian wines. Monte Pulciano and Chianti do bear transportation. Italy sends much of the latter wine to New York. Italy has, however, never produced a really good dry wine, with all its vineyards.

The dark Grignolino wine grown in the vineyards of Asterau and Monferrato possesses the remarkable quality of keeping better if diluted with fresh water.

The Falernian from the Bay of Naples, is the wine of the poets, nor need we remind the classical scholar that the hills around Rome were formerly supposed to produce it.

The loose, volcanic soil about Mount Vesuvius grows the grapes from which Lacryma Christi is produced. It is sometimes of a rich red colour, though white and sparkling varieties are produced.

The Italians are supremely fond of _al fresco_ entertainments,--their fine climate making out-of-door eating very agreeable. How many a traveller remembers the breakfast or dinner in a vine-covered _loggia_ overhanging some splendid scene! It forms the subject of many a picture, from those which illustrate the stories of Boccaccio up to the beautiful sketch of Tasso, at the court of the Duc d'Este. The dangers of these feasts have been immortalized in verse and prose from Dante down, and Shakspeare has touched upon them twice. George Eliot describes one in a "_loggia_ joining on a garden, with all one side of the room open, and with numerous groups of trees and statues and avenues of box, high enough to hide an assassin," in her wonderful novel of Romola. In modern days, since the Borgias are all killed, no one need fear to eat out-of-doors in Italy.

Not much can be said of the cookery of Spain. In the principal hotels of Spain one gets all the evils of both Spanish and Gascon cookery. Garlic is the favourite flavour, and the bad oil expressed from the olive, skin, seed and all, allowed to stand until it is rancid, is beloved of the Spanish, but hated by all other nations. I believe, however, that an _olla podrida_ made in a Spanish house is very good. It may not be inappropriate here to give two recipes for macaroni. The first, _macaroni au gratin_ is very rarely found good in an American house:--

Break two ounces of best Italian macaroni into a pint of
highly seasoned stock, let it simmer until very tender. When
done, toss it up with a small piece of butter, and add pepper
and salt to taste; put in a large meat dish, sift over it some
fried bread-crumbs, and serve. It will take about an hour to
cook, and should be covered with the stock all the time.

* * * * *

_Macaroni with Parmesan cheese_: Boil two ounces of macaroni
in half a pint of water, with an ounce of butter, until
perfectly tender. If the water evaporates add a little more,
taking care that the macaroni does not stick to the stewpan,
or become broken. When it is done, drain away the water and
stir in two ounces of good cheese grated, cayenne pepper and
salt to taste. Keep stirring until the cheese is dissolved.
Pour on to a hot dish and serve. A little butter may be
stirred into the macaroni before the cheese, and is an
improvement.

Through the Riviera, and indeed in the south of France, one meets with many peculiar dishes. No one who has read Thackeray need be reminded of _bouillabaise_, that famous fish chowder of Marseilles. It is, however, only our chowder with much red pepper. A cook can try it if she chooses, and perhaps achieve it after many failures.

There are so many very good dishes awaiting the efforts of a young American housewife, that she need not go out of her way to extemporize or explore. The best cook-book for foreign dishes is still the old Francatelli.

The presence in our midst of Italian warehouses, adds an infinite resource to the housewife. Those stimulants to the appetite called _hors d'oeuvres_, we call them relishes, are much increased by studying the list of Italian delicacies. Anchovy or caviar, potted meat, grated tongue, potted cheese, herring salad, the inevitable olive, and many other delicacies could be mentioned which aid digestion, and make the plainest table inexpensively luxurious. The Italians have all sorts of delicate vegetables preserved in bottles, mixed and ready for use in a _jardinière_ dressing; also the best of cheeses, _gargonzala_, and of course the truffle, which they know how to cook so well.

The Italians have conquered the art of cooking in oil, so that you do not taste the oil. It is something to live for, to eat their fried things.

Speaking of the south of Europe reminds us of that wonderful bit of orientalism out of place, which is called Algiers, and which France has enamelled on her fabulous and many-coloured shield. Algiers has become not only a winter watering-place, high in favour with the traveller, but it is a great wine-growing country. The official statement of Lieut. Col. Sir R. L. Playfair, her Majesty's consul-general, may be read with interest, dated 1889:

"Viticulture in Algeria, was in 1778 in its infancy; now nearly one hundred and twenty-five thousand acres are under cultivation with vines, and during the last year about nine hundred thousand hectolitres of wine were produced. In 1873 Mr. Eyre Ledyard, an English cultivator of the vine in Algeria, bought the property of Chateau Hydra near Algiers. He found on it five acres of old and badly planted vineyards, which produced about seven hogsheads of wine. He has extended this vineyard and carried on his work with great intelligence and industry. He cultivates the following varieties: the Mourvedie, of a red colour resembling Burgundy, Cariguan, giving a wine good, dark, and rough, Alicante or Grenache, Petit Bouschet, Cabernot and Côt, a Burgundy, Perian Lyra, Aramen, and St. Saux.

Chasselas succeeds well; the grapes are exported to France for the table.

Clairette produces abundantly and makes a good dry wine. Ainin Kelb, more correctly Ain Kelb, dog's-eye, is an Arab grape which makes a good strong wine, but which requires keeping. Muscat is a capricious bearer. From the two last-named varieties, sweet as well as dry wines are produced by adding large quantities of alcohol to the juice of the grape, and thus preventing fermentation. The crops yield quantities varying from seven hundred gallons per acre in rich land to four hundred on the hillside, except Cariguan which yields more. Aramen yields as much, but the quality is inferior.

The red wines are sent to Bordeaux and Burgundy, to give strength and quality to the French clarets, as they are very useful for blending. The dry, white wine is rather stronger and fuller than that of France or Germany, and is much used to give additional value to the thinner qualities of Rhine wine.

The cellars of Château Hydra, are now probably the best in the colony. They are excavated in the soft rock here incorrectly called tufa, in reality an aggregation of minutely pulverized shells; it is soft and sandy, and easily excavated. The surface becomes harder by exposure to the atmosphere, and it is not subject to crumbling.

Mr. Ledyard has excavated extensive cells in this rock, in which extreme evenness of temperature is ensured,--a condition most necessary for the proper manufacture of wine.

Mr. Eyre Ledyard's vineyards and cellars of the Chateau Hydra estate are now farmed by the _Société Anonyme Viticole et Vinicole d'Hydra_, of which Mr. Ledyard is chairman. These wines have been so successfully shipped to England and other countries that the company now buys grapes largely from the best vineyards, in order to make sufficient wines to meet the demand. The Hydra Company supplies wine to all vessels of the Ocean Company going to India and China. A very carefully prepared quinine white wine is made for invalids, and for use in countries where there is fever. I especially recommend a trial of this last excellent wine to Americans, as it is most agreeable as well as healthful. The postal address is M. Le Gerant, Hydra Caves, Birmandreis, Algiers.

All the stories of Algiers read like tales of the Arabian Nights, and none is more poetic than the names and the story of these delicious wines.

The Greek wines are well spoken of in Europe: Santorin, and Zante, and St. Elié, and Corinth, and Mount Hymettus, Vino Santo, and Cyprus, while from Magyar vineyards come Visontaè, Badescony, Dioszeg, Bakator, Rust, Szamorodni, Oedenburger, Ofner, and Tokay.

The Hungarian wines are very heady. He must be a swashbuckler who drinks them. They are said to make the drinker grow fat. To this unhappy class Brillat Savarin gives the following precepts:--

"Drink every summer thirty bottles of seltzer water, a large tumbler the first thing in the morning, another before lunch, and the same at bedtime.

"Drink white wines, especially those which are light and acid, and avoid beer as you would the plague. Ask frequently for radishes, artichokes with hot sauce, asparagus, celery; choose veal and fowl rather than beef and mutton, and eat as little of the crumb of bread as possible.

"Avoid macaroni and pea soup, avoid farinaceous food under whatever form it assumes, and dispense with all sweets. At breakfast take brown bread, and chocolate rather than coffee."

Indeed Brillat Savarin seems to have inspired this later poet:--

"Talk of the nectar that flowed for celestials
Richer in headaches it was than hilarity!
Well for us animals, frequently bestials,
Hebe destroyed the recipe as a charity!
Once I could empty my glass with the best of 'em,
Somehow my system has suffered a shock o' late;
Now I shun spirits, wine, beer, and the rest of 'em,
Fill me, then fill me, a bumper of chocolate.

"Once I drank logwood, and quassia and turpentine,
Liqueurs with coxcubes, aloes, and gentian in,
Sure, 't is no wonder my path became serpentine,
Getting a state I should blush now to mention in.
Farewell to Burgundy, farewell to Sillery,
I have not tasted a drop e'en of Hock o' late,
Long live the kettle, my dear old distillery,
Fill me, oh fill me, a bumper of chocolate."

As we cannot all drink chocolate, I recommend the carefully prepared white wine, with quinine in it, which comes from Chateau Hydra in Algiers, or some of the Italian wines, Barolo for instance, or the excellent native wines which are produced in Savoy.

About Aix les Bains, where the cuisine is the best in Europe, many wines are manufactured which are honest wines with no headaches in them.

SOME ODDITIES IN THE ART OF ENTERTAINING.

"Comparisons are odorous."

I prithee let me bring thee where crabs grow;
And I with my long nails will dig thee pig nuts;
Show thee a jay's nest, and instruct thee how
To snare the nimble marmozet; I'll bring thee
To clustering filberds, and sometimes I'll get thee
Young staniels from the rocks. Wilt thou go with me?
THE TEMPEST.

In the lamb roasted whole we have one of the earliest dishes on record in the history of cookery. Stuffed with pistachio nuts, and served with pilaf, it illustrates the antiquity of the art, and at the same time gives an example of the food upon which millions of our fellow creatures are sustained.

At a dinner of the Acclimatization Society in London, all manner of strange and new dishes were offered, even the meat of the horse. A roast monkey filled with chestnuts was declared to be delicious; the fawn of fallow deer was described as good; buffalo meat was not so highly commended; a red-deer ham was considered very succulent; a sirloin of bear was "tough, glutinous, and had, besides, a dreadful, half-aromatic, half-putrescent flavour, as though it had been rubbed with assafoetida and then hung for a month in a musk shop."

We will not try bear unless we are put to it. However, at this same dinner--we read on--haunch of venison, saddle of mutton, roast beef of old England, which is really the roast beef which is of old Normandy now, all gave way to a Chinese lamb roasted whole, stuffed with pistachio nuts, and served with _consousson_, a preparation of wheat used among the Moors, Africans, and other natives of the north of Africa littoral, in place of rice. The Moorish young ladies are, it is said, fattened into beauty by an enforced meal of this strengthening compound. The _consousson_ is made into balls and stuffed into the mouths of the marriageable young lady, until she grows as tired of balls as a young belle of three seasons.

In Spain, in those damp swamps near Valencia, where the poor are old before forty and die before forty-five, the best rice sells at eleven farthings, the poorest at eight farthings per pound. This, cooked with the ground dust of _pimientos_, or capsicums, is the foundation of every stew in the south of Spain. It is of a rich brick-dust hue, and is full of fire and flavour. Into this stew the cook puts the "reptiles of the sea" known as "spotted cats," "toads" and other oily fish, sold at two pence a pound, or the _vogar_, a silvery fish, or the _gallina_, a coarse fish, chick peas, garlic, pork, and sausages. If rich she will make an _olla podrida_ with bacon, fresh meat, potatoes, cabbages, and she will pour off the soup, calling it _caldo_, then the lumps of meat and bacon, called _cocida_, will be served next. Then the cigarette is smoked. If you are a king she will add a quince and an apple to the stew.

Of puddings and pies they know nothing; but what fruit they have!--watermelons weighing fifteen pounds apiece; lemon pippins called _perillons_; crimson, yellow, and purple plums; purple and green figs; tomatoes by the million; carob beans, on which half the nation lives; small cucumbers and gourds; large black grapes, very sweet; white grapes and quinces; peaches in abundance; and all the chestnuts and filberts in the world. In the summer they eat goat's flesh; and on All Saints' Day they eat pork and chestnuts and sweet _babatas_ of Malaga. In exile, in Mexico and Florida, the Spaniard eats alligator, which could scarcely be called a game bird; but the flesh of young alligators' tails is very fair, and tastes like chicken if the tail is cut off immediately after death, and stewed.

The frost fish of the Adirondacks is seldom tasted, except by those who have spent a winter in the North Woods. They are delicious when fried. There is a European fish as little known as this, the _Marena_, caught in Lake Moris in the province of Pomerania, also in one lake in southern Italy, which is very good.

There are two birds known in Prussia, the bustard, and the kammel, the former a species of small ostrich, once considered very fine eating, the latter very tough, except under unusual conditions.

The Chinese enjoy themselves by night. All their feasts and festivals are kept then, generally by moonlight. When a Chinaman is poor he can live on a farthing's worth of rice a day; when he gets rich he becomes the most luxurious of sybarites, indulges freely in the most _recherché_ delicacies of the table, and becomes, like any Roman voluptuary, corpulent and phlegmatic. A lady thus describes a Chinese dinner:--

"The hour was eleven A. M., the _locale_ a boat. Having heard much of the obnoxious stuff I was to eat, I adopted the prescription of a friend. 'Eat very little of any dish, and be a long time about it.'