Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

Would you make a soft cheese? Then I’ll tell you how.
Take a gallon of milk quite fresh from the cow;
Ere the rennet is added, the dairyman’s daughter
Must throw in a quart of the clearest spring water.
When perfectly curdled, so white and so nice,
You must take it all out of the dish with a slice,
And put it ’thout breaking with care in the vat,
With a cheese-cloth at bottom--be sure to mind that.
This delicate matter take care not to squeeze,
But fill as the whey passes off by degrees.
Next day you may turn it, and do not be loth
To wipe it quite dry with a clean linen cloth.
This must be done you cannot well doubt,
As long as you see the whey oozing out.
The cheese is now finished, and nice it will be,
If enveloped in leaves of the green ashen tree.
Or what will do better, at least full as well,
In nettles just plucked from the bank of the dell.

In praise of the best food in the world--plain British roast and boiled--Mr. G. R. Sims has dilated in his weekly columns; a verse from his perfectly correct and strict “_Ballade_ of New-Time Simpson’s” is well worth quoting:--

They do not call the saddle “selle”
That you with currant jelly eat;
Boiled fowl’s not _à la_ Béchamel.
Your eyes no foreign phrases meet
That English waiters can’t repeat,
And so to Simpson’s I repair.
The English kitchen’s bad to beat,
Plain roast and boiled are British fare.

The “Envoi,” which commences most cleverly according to traditional rule, runs as follows:--

Prince’s and Carlton, you I greet,
Savoy, I own your chef is rare;
But you with Simpson’s shall compete.
Plain roast and boiled are British fare.

To come back to recipes, here is one for the famous _Homard à l’Amèricaine_ written by the chef of the Grand International Hotel at Chicago, who is quite annoyed with M. Rostand for his obvious plagiarism in “Cyrano de Bergerac.”

COMMENT ON FAIT LE HOMARD À L’AMÉRICAINE

Prenez un homard qu’on vend
Bien vivant;
Avant qu’il se carapate
Sans vous laisser attendrir,
Sans souffrir,
Détachez-lui chaque patte.

Faites alors revenir
Et blondir
Du beurre en la casserole;
Fourrez-y votre homard
Sans retard,
Mais avant qu’il ne rissole

Ajoutez un court-bouillon
De bouillon
A vous brûler la bedaine!
Faites cuire. Servez-le
Et c’est le
Homard à l’américaine!

Many curious old poems may be found by careful delving in the books our great-grandfathers used to read, and which we ought to read, but don’t. For instance, the Roxborough Ballads contain a delightful poem briefly entitled “The Cook-Maid’s Garland: or the out-of-the-way Devil: shewing how four highwaymen were bit by an ingenious cook-maid” (1720). There is a still older ballad in the same collection called “The Coy Cook-Maid, who was courted simultaneously by Irish, Welch, Spanish, French and Dutch, but at last was conquered by a poor English Taylor”; this is in blackletter, and is dated 1685.

A French lady with a happy knack of verse has written the following rhymed recipe for

SAUCE MAYONNAISE

Dans un grand bol en porcelaine
Un jaune d’œuf étant placé,
Sel et poivre, vinaigre à peine,
Et le travail est commencé.

On verse l’huile goutte à goutte;
La mayonnaise prend du corps,
Epaississant, sans qu’on s’en doute,
En flot luisant, jusqu’aux bords.

Quand vous jugez que l’abondance
Peut suffire à votre repas,
Au frais mettez-la par prudence....
Tout est fini; n’y touchez pas!

Under the title of “Women I have never married,” O. S. of “Punch” writes delightfully on the lady who knew too much about eating. This is one of his verses:--

She came. She passed a final word
Upon the _bisque_, the _Mornay_ sole,
The _poulet_ (said she thought the bird
Shewed at its best _en casserole_);
She found the _parfait_ “quite first-rate,”
Summed up the chef as “rather handy,”
Knew the Lafitte for ’88,
And twice encored a fine old brandy.

The following couplets are by--I think--an American author.

Always have lobster sauce with salmon,
And put mint sauce your roasted lamb on.

In dressing salad mind this law,
With two hard yolks use one that’s raw.

Roast veal with rich stock gravy serve,
And pickled mushrooms, too, observe.

Roast pork, sans apple sauce, past doubt,
Is “Hamlet” with the Prince left out.

Your mutton chops with paper cover
And make them amber-brown all over.

Broil lightly your beefsteak. To fry it
Argues contempt of Christian diet.

To roast spring chickens is to spoil ’em;
Just split ’em down the back and broil ’em.

It gives true epicures the vapours
To see boiled mutton minus capers.

The cook deserves a hearty cuffing
Who serves roast fowl with tasteless stuffing.

Nice oyster sauce gives zest to cod--
A fish, when fresh, to feast a god.

The Old Beef Steak Society, otherwise known as the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks, and of which the full history has too often appeared in print, entertained the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV, on his election as a member; the following is a verse of a song written in honour of the occasion by the poet-laureate to the Society, Captain Charles Morris of “Pall Mall” fame:--

While thus we boast a general creed,
In honour of our shrine, sir,
You find the world long since agreed
That beef was food divine, sir;
And British fame still tells afar
This truth, where’er she wanders,
For wine, for women, and for war,
Beefsteaks make Alexanders.

I venture to think that this little excerpt from Lafcadio Hearn’s “Kokoro” is worthy of record here as a piece of real poetry in prose. It is from a story called “The Nun of the Temple of Amida.” “Once daily, at a fixed hour, she would set for the absent husband, in his favourite room, little repasts faultlessly served on dainty lacquered trays--miniature meals such as are offered to the ghosts of the ancestors and to the gods. (Such a repast offered to the spirit of the absent one loved is called a _kagé-sen_, lit. ‘shadow-tray.’) These repasts were served at the east side of the room, and his kneeling-cushion placed before them. The reason they were served at the east side was because he had gone east. Before removing the food, she always lifted the cover of the little soup-bowl to see if there was vapour upon its lacquered inside surface. For it is said that if there be vapour on the inside of the lid covering food so offered, the absent beloved is well. But if there be none, he is dead, because that is a sign that his soul has returned by itself to seek nourishment. O-Toyo found the lacquer thickly beaded with vapour day by day.”

It would be unfair to omit mention of Molière, who so often and wisely devotes attention to the culinary craft, for which, indeed, he had a high appreciation. Did he not read his plays to his cook? A typical passage is that from his “Femmes Savantes,” when Chrysale expatiates to Philaminte and Bélise.

Que ma servante manque aux lois de Vaugelas,
Pourvu qu’a la cuisine elle ne manque pas.
J’aime bien mieux pour moi qu’en épluchant ses herbes,
Elle accommode mal les noms avec les verbes,
Et rédise cent fois un has et méchant mot,
Que de brûler ma viande ou saler trop mon pot.
Je vis de bonne soupe, et non de beau langage,
Vaugelas n’apprend point à bien faire un potage;
Et Malherbe et Balzac, si savans en beaux mots,
En cuisine peutêtre auraient été des sots.

Very few people, I am afraid, read the entirely delightful verse of Mortimer Collins, poet, journalist, novelist, epicure (in the best sense), and country-lover--all in one. He was among the nowadays less-known masters of gastronomics, a man who, although no cook himself, knew by intuition and experience just what was right, and if it were wrong, just why it was wrong. His novels and poems, although very unequal, do not deserve to be forgotten, for they contain many fine, thoughtful, and beautiful passages. His burlesque of Aristophanes, “The British Birds,” is, in its way, a masterpiece. He wrote much and well on cookery and dining, both in prose and verse. Here follows one of his sonnets from a sequence addressed to the months--from a gastronomic point of view.

JUNE

O perfect period of the sweet birds’ tune,
Of Philomel and Procne, known to fable;
Of wayward morns, and never utterable
Joys of the evenglome, beneath the moon!
Cool be thy food, O gourmand, runs the Rune:
Pigeon and quail are suited to the table;
Anchovy and sardine are noticeable;
Red mullet, first of fish, is prime in June.
Richmond and Greenwich tempt the Londoner
To dine where Thames is cool, and whitebait crisp,
And soft the manners are and lax the morals.
But I (when twilight’s breezes softly stir,
Rob the rich roses, though the woodbine lisp)
Dine on my lawn hedged in by limes and laurels.

The “Minora Carmina” of the late C. C. R., whose verse has much of the charm of J. K. S. and C. S. Calverley, contains a few verses anent the pleasure of dining out, which are headed

NUNC EST COENANDUM

Although the season sadly
May open, in contrast grim
With those when pleasure madly
Whirled on the wings of Whim--
Though sporting members sigh for
The huntsman, hound, and horn,
And invalids loud cry for
Health-spots from which they’re torn;
Yet e’en to town detested
Comes comfort in the line--
“Your presence is requested”--·
You’re going out to dine.

It would be easy to extend this list indefinitely, but enough is as good as a feast.

THE SALAD IN LITERATURE]

“I could digest a salad gathered in a churchyard
as well as in a garden. I wonder not at the
French with their dishes of frogs, snails, and
toadstools; nor at the Jews for locusts and
grasshoppers; but being amongst them make them
my common viands, and I find they agree with my
stomach as well as theirs.”

SIR THOMAS BROWNE, “Religio Medici.”

We have it on the authority of Chaucer that salad is cooling food, for he says:--

... And after that they yede about gadering
Pleasaunt Salades which they made hem eat,
For to refresh their great unkindly heat.

That the eating of green meat is and always has been closely bound up with healthy human life is a fact which needs no demonstration; but the constantly recurring references to it in the literature of all ages would seem to point the moral in so far as salads must always have appealed peculiarly to those leading a more or less sedentary life.

In a serious Biblical commentary of the eighteenth century, Baron von Vaerst, a German savant, refers to Nebuchadnezzar’s diet of grass as a punishment which did not in any way consist in the eating of salad, but in the enforced absence of vinegar, oil, and salt. That salad adds a zest to life is proved by St. Anthony, who said that the pious old man, St. Hieronymus, lived to the green old age of 105, and during the last ninety years of his life existed wholly upon bread and water, but “not without a certain lusting after salad.” This is confirmed by St. Athanasius.

In Shakespeare’s “Henry VI,” Jack Cade remarks that a salad “is not amiss to cool a man’s stomach in the hot weather.” Cleopatra too refers to her “salad days, when she was green in judgment, cool in blood.” In “Le Quadragesimal Spiritual,” a work on theology published in Paris in 1521, these lines occur:--

La Salade moult proffitable
Signe la parolle de Dieu
Qu’il faut ouyr en chascun lieu.
Pêcheurs, entendez ce notable!

All writers agree as to the cooling properties of salads, and particularly lettuce, on the blood. In his “Acetaria: a Discourse of Sallets” (1699), John Evelyn says that lettuce, “though by Metaphor call’d Mortuorum Cibi (to say nothing of Adonis and his sad Mistress) by reason of its soporiferous quality, ever was and still continues the principal Foundation of the universal Tribe of Sallets, which is to Cool and Refresh. And therefore in such high esteem with the Ancients, that divers of the Valerian family dignify’d and enobled their name with that of Lactucinii.” He goes on to say that “the more frugal Italians and French, to this Day, Accept and gather _Ogni Verdura_, any thing almost that’s Green and Tender, to the very Tops of Nettles; so as every Hedge affords a Sallet (not unagreeable) season’d with its proper Oxybaphon of Vinegar, Salt, Oyl, &c., which doubtless gives it both the Relish and Name of Salad, Ensalade, as with us of Sallet, from the Sapidity, which renders not _Plants_ and _Herbs_ alone, but _Men_ themselves, and their Conversations, pleasant and agreeable.”

In praise of Lettuce he has much to say, and waxes almost dithyrambic as to its virtues. “It is indeed of Nature more cold and moist than any of the rest; yet less astringent, and so harmless that it may safely be eaten raw in Fevers; for it allays Heat, bridles Choler, extinguishes Thirst, excites Appetite, kindly Nourishes, and above all represses Vapours, conciliates Sleep, mitigates Pain; besides the effect it has upon the Morals. Galen (whose beloved Sallet it was) from its pinguid, subdulcid and agreeable Nature, says it breeds the most laudable blood.”

And again: “We see how necessary it is that in the composure of a Sallet every plant should come in to bear its part without being overpowered by some herb of a stronger taste, but should fall into their place like the notes in music.”

Here is a salad recipe, _temp._ Richard II.

Take parsel, sawge, garlyc, chibolles, oynons, lettes,
borage, mynte, poirettes, fenel, and cressis; lave and
waithe hem clene, pike hem, plucke hem smalle wyth thyne
honde, and myng hem wel wyth rawe oyl, lay on vynegar and
salt and serve ytt forth.

This must have been a strong salad, and full-flavoured rather than delicate. “Honde” is of course “hand,” and to “myng” is to mix. The etymology of the recipe is interesting.

Old Gervase Markham, in his “English Housewife,” has this quaint account of how to make a “Strange Sallet.”

First, if you would set forth any Red flower, that you
know or have seen, you shall take your pots of preserved
Gilly-flowers, and suting the colours answerable to the
flower, you shall proportion it forth, and lay the shape of
the Flower in a Fruit dish, then with your Purslane leaves
make the Green Coffin of the Flower, and with the Purslane
stalks make the stalk of the Flower, and the divisions
of the leaves and branches; then with the thin slices of
Cucumers, make their leaves in true proportions, jagged or
otherwise; and thus you may set forth some full blown, some
half blown and some in the bud, which will be pretty and
curious. And if you will set forth yellow flowers, take
the pots of Primroses and Cowslips, if blew flowers, then
the pots of Violets or Buglosse flowers, and these Sallets
are both for shew and use, for they are more excellent for
taste, than for to look on.

Another variety of old “Sallet” is referred to in “The Gentlewoman’s Delight” (1654), which instructs one

How to make a Sallet of all manner of Hearbs. Take your
hearbs, and pick them clean, and the floures; wash them
clean, and swing them in a strainer; then put them into a
dish, and mingle them with Cowcumbers, and Lemons, sliced
very thin; then scrape on Sugar, and put in Vinegar and
Oil; then spread the floures on the top; garnish your dish
with hard Eggs, and all sorts of your floures; scrape on
Sugar and serve it.

An even earlier work, Cogan’s “Haven of Health” (1589), has the following reference: “Lettuse is much used in salets in the sommer tyme with vinegar, oyle, and sugar and salt, and is formed to procure appetite for meate, and to temper the heate of the stomach and liver.”

Montaigne recounts a conversation he had with an Italian chef who had served in the kitchen of Cardinal Caraffa up to the death of his gastronomic eminence. “I made him,” he says, “tell me something about his post. He gave me a lecture on the science of eating, with a gravity and magisterial countenance as if he had been determining some vexed question in theology.... The difference of salads, according to the seasons, he next discoursed upon. He explained what sorts ought to be prepared warm, and those which should always be served cold; the way of adorning and embellishing them in order to render them seductive to the eye. After this he entered on the order of table-service, a subject full of fine and important considerations.”

An excerpt from “a late exquisite comedy” called _The Lawyer’s Fortune, or Love in a Hollow Tree_, is quoted by Dr. King (1709):--

_Mrs. Favourite._ Mistress, shall I put any Mushrooms,
Mangoes, or Bamboons into the Sallad?

_Lady Bonona._ Yes, I prithee, the best thou hast.

_Mrs. Favourite._ Shall I use Ketchop or Anchovies in the
Gravy?

_Lady Bonona._ What you will!

A quaint old book on Salads is entitled “On the Use and Abuse of Salads in general and Salad Plants in Particular,” by Johann Friedrich Schütze, Doctor of Medicine, and Grand-Ducal Saxe-Coburg-Meiningen, Physician at Sonnenburg and Neuhaus: Leipzig, 1758. The learned doctor adopts the classical division of humanity into the Temperamentum Sanguineum, or warm and damp, the Cholericum, or warm and dry, the Phlegmaticum, or cold and damp, and the Melancholicum, or cold and dry. To each of these classes a particular form of Salad applies, and none other.

When Pope Sixtus the Fifth was an obscure monk he had a great friend in a certain lawyer who sank steadily into poverty what time the monk rose to the Papacy. The poor lawyer journeyed to Rome to seek aid from his old friend the Pope, but he fell sick by the wayside and told his doctor to let the Pope know of his sad state. “I will send him a salad,” said Sixtus, and duly dispatched a basket of lettuces to the invalid. When the lettuces were opened money was found in their hearts. Hence the Italian proverb of a man in need of money: “He wants one of Sixtus the Fifth’s salads.”

Fourcroy and Chaptal, notable chemists of the end of the eighteenth century, unite in praise of salads, and have written disquisitions on the dressing thereof; and Rabelais opines that the best salad-dressing is Good Humour, which is just the sort of thing that one might expect from him. His references to salad are numerous, and in the one oft-quoted case humorously apposite.

In the olden time salads were mixed by pretty women, and they did it with their hands. This was so well understood that down at least to the time of Rousseau (Littré gives a quotation from the “Nouvelle Heloise,” VI. 2) the phrase _Elle peut retourner la salade avec les doigts_ was used to describe a woman as being still young and beautiful. “Dans le siècle dernier,” says Littré, “les jeunes femmes rétournaient la salade avec les doigts: cette locution a disparu avec l’usage lui-même.”

Among the gastrological Italian authors of the seventeenth century I must refer to Salvatore Massonio, who wrote a great work on the manner of dressing salads, entitled “Archidipno, overo dell’ Insalata e dell’ uso di essa, Trattato nuovo Curioso e non mai più dato in luce. Da Salvatore Massonio, Venice, 1627.” The British Museum copy, by the way, belonged to Sir Joseph Banks. As was usual in those leisurely and spacious times, there is a most glowing dedication beginning thus: “A Molto Illustri Signori miei sempre osservandissimi i Signori fratelli Ludovico Antonio e Fabritio Coll’ Antonii.” There is also a compendious bibliography of 114 authors consulted and mentioned in this work, which, indeed, is of considerable importance and of great interest.

Every one knows the oft-told tale of the French _emigré_ who went about to noblemen’s houses mixing delicate salads at a high fee. Most authorities refer to him as d’Albignac, although Dr. Doran, in his “Table Traits,” calls him le Chevalier d’Aubigné; but Grenville Murray, who generally knew what he was writing about, says that his name was Gaudet. However, that matters little. He, whoever he was, appears to have been an enterprising hustler of the period, and it is recorded that he made a decent little fortune on which he eventually retired to his native land to enjoy peace and plenty for the remainder of his days.

In Mortimer Collins’s “The British Birds, by the Ghost of Aristophanes” (1872), there is a poetic tourney between three poets for the laureateship of Cloud-Cuckooland; the subject is “Salad.” The poet with the “redundant brow” sings:--

O cool in the summer is salad,
And warm in the winter is love;
And a poet shall sing you a ballad
Delicious thereon and thereof.
A singer am I, if no sinner,
My muse has a marvellous wing,
And I willingly worship at dinner
The Sirens of Spring.

Take endive ... like love it is bitter;
Take beet ... for like love it is red:
Crisp leaf of the lettuce shall glitter,
And cress from the rivulet’s bed:
Anchovies foam-born, like the Lady
Whose beauty has maddened this bard;
And olives from groves that are shady;
And eggs ... boil ’em hard.

The poet with the “redundant beard” chants next.

Waitress, with eyes so marvellous black,
And the blackest possible lustrous gay tress,
This is the mouth of the Zodiac
When I want a pretty deft-handed waitress.
Bring a china bowl, you merry young soul;
Bring anything green, from worsted to celery;
Bring pure olive oil, from Italy’s soil ...
Then your china bowl we’ll well array.
When the time arrives chip choicest chives,
And administer quietly chili and capsicum ...
(Young girls do not quite know what’s what
Till as a poet into their laps I come).
Then a lobster fresh as fresh can be
(When it screams in the pot I feel a murderer):
After which I fancy we
Shall want a few bottles of Heidseck or Roederer.

The poet of “the redundant hair” then sings his lay in Tennysonian-Arthurian lines, and is ultimately awarded the laureateship of Cloud-Cuckoo-Town.

The verses do not show poor Collins at his best, and are only interesting as relating to the subject of salad. Other songs of his have never been excelled in a certain delicate charm of fancy and quaint turns of versification.

Many salads have been mixed on the stage; the most famous perhaps is the Japanese salad which occurs in Alexandre Dumas fils’ “Francillon” (produced at the Théâtre Français, 17 January, 1887). It is not orthodox, and, even when deftly mixed, not particularly nice, the flavours being coarsely blended. Annette de Riverolles, inimitably played by Reichemberg of the smiling teeth, dictates the recipe to Henri de Symeux, originally acted by Laroche. Here is the passage:--

_Annette._ You must boil your potatoes in broth, then cut
them into slices, just as you would for an ordinary salad,
and whilst they are still lukewarm, add salt, pepper, very
good olive oil, with the flavour of the fruit, vinegar....

_Henri._ Tarragon?

_Annette._ Orleans is better, but it is not important.
But what is important is half a glass of white wine,
Château-Yquem, if possible. Plenty of finely-chopped
herbs. Now boil some very large mussels in a small broth
(_court-bouillon_), with a head of celery, drain them
well and add them to the dressed potatoes. Mix it all up
delicately.

_Thérèse._ Fewer mussels than potatoes?

_Annette._ One-third less. The flavour of the mussels must
be gradually felt; it must not be anticipated, and it must
not assert itself.

_Stanislas._ Very well put.

_Annette._ Thank you. When the salad is finished, mixed....

_Henri._ Lightly....

_Annette._ Then you cover it with slices of truffles, like
professors’ skull-caps.

_Henri._ Boiled in champagne.

_Annette._ Of course. All this must be done a couple of
hours before dinner, so that the salad may get thoroughly
cold before serving it.

_Henri._ You could put the salad-bowl on ice.

_Annette._ No, no. It must not be assaulted with ice. It
is very delicate, and the different flavours must combine
peacefully. Did you like the salad you had to-day?

_Henri._ Delicious!

_Annette._ Well, follow my recipe and you will make it
equally well.

A few years ago Mr. Charles Brookfield mixed an admirable salad on the stage of the Haymarket in the course of his clever monologue “Nearly Seven.” On 31 January, 1831, “La salade d’oranges, ou les étrennes dans la mansarde,” by M. M. Varin and Desvergers, was played at the Palais Royal. The first-named author was a sort of gastronomic playwright, for he wrote plays called “Le cuisinier politique,” “J’ai mangé mon ami,” and others.

In the Bohemian quarter of Paris, not so very many years ago, the students of the _plein air_ school, the _Paysagistes_, used to sing this song at their convivial meetings:--

Ah! que j’aime avec de la salade,
Un gros morçeau de jambon!
Y a pas danger qu’on soit jamais malade
Quand on mange avec de la salade
Un bon morçeau de jambon.
Amis, cassons les pots, les plats, les verres,
Cassons les verres, les plats, les pots;
Puisqu’il n’y a plus dans l’plat qu’des pommes de terre,
Cassons les verres, les pots, les plats!

“When summer is icumen in,” one naturally turns to the cooling salad, the refreshing salmon mayonnaise, and the concomitant delights of mid-season entertaining. Regularly at that time of the year learned pundits in the daily papers tell us with portentous gravity what we ought to eat and what we ought to let alone. All this is the direst nonsense. A man or a woman of sense will eat that for which he or she feels inclined, and will have the requisite gastronomic gumption to avoid heating dishes which are unseasonable and unpalatable.

With all changes of the weather sensible people accommodate their diet to the meteorological conditions; fish is preferable to meat, and fruit plays its strong suit, because its cooling juices are just what we yearn to dally with when our appetites are a little under the weather. All this is axiomatic. Of salads in particular. I should like to give here and now the recipe of a salad which I have found most soothing and comforting in hot weather. I may, perhaps, be permitted to act as godfather and christen it “Vanity Fair Salad.” It is quite simple and wholesome and toothsome. Here followeth the recipe.

VANITY FAIR SALAD.--Take eight to ten cold cooked artichoke
bottoms (_fonds d’artichauts_), fresh, not preserved, and
the yellow hearts of two young healthy lettuces (_cœurs
de laitue_). Break them into pieces with a silver fork or
your fingers (on no account let them be touched by steel);
add a not too thinly sliced cucumber, peeled; toss these
together. Let them stand for half an hour; then drain
off all the water. Now add two or three tablespoonfuls
of pickled red cabbage, minus all vinegar, and a dozen
sliced-up radishes. Add the dressing. As to this I prefer
not to dogmatize. My own mixture is three and a half
tablespoonfuls of the very best Nice olive oil to one of
wine vinegar and one-half of tarragon, with salt, pepper,
French mustard, and three drops of Tabasco sauce. But this
is a matter of opinion, and I insist on nothing except the
total avoidance of that horrible furniture-polish mixture
sold in quaint convoluted bottles, and humorously dubbed
“salad sauce.” Just before serving sprinkle the salad with
chopped chervil and a suspicion of chives.

Our great-grandmothers had various and curious recipes for the assuagement of summer fevers and megrims of that nature. From an old volume of “The Lady’s Companion, or an infallible Guide to the Fair Sex,” published anonymously in 1743, I cull the following recipe for “Gascoign Powder.”

Take prepar’d Crabs’ Eyes, Red Coral, White Amber, very
finely powdered, of each half an Ounce; burnt Hartshorn,
half an Ounce; Pearls very finely powdered, and Oriental
Bezoar, an Ounce of each; of the black Tops of Crabs’
Claws, finely powdered, four Ounces. Grind all these on a
Marble Stone, till they cast a greenish Colour; then make
it into Balls with Jelly made of English Vipers Skins,
which may be made, and will jelly like Hartshorn.

Of course, this was never meant to be taken seriously, but the old cookery-book compilers always thought that a few of these pseudo-medieval recipes, assumed to have been compounded by the wise men of old, added a certain dignity to their otherwise quite harmless volumes.

The late Sir Henry Thompson recommends that the host or hostess should mix the salad, because not many servants can be trusted to execute the simple details.

Mixing one saltspoon of salt and half that quantity of
pepper in a tablespoon which is to be filled three times
consecutively with the best fresh olive oil, stirring each
briskly until the condiments have been thoroughly mixed and
at the same time distributed over the salad, this is next
to be tossed thoroughly but lightly, until every portion
glistens, scattering meantime a little finely chopped fresh
tarragon and chervil, with a few atoms of chives over the
whole, so that sparkling green particles spot, as with a
pattern, every portion of the leafy surface. Lastly, but
only immediately before serving, one small tablespoonful of
mild French, or better still, Italian red-wine vinegar, is
to be sprinkled over all, followed by another tossing of
the salad.

“La Salade de la Grande Jeanne” is a pretty child’s story by the prolific writer, P. J. Stahl (really P. J. Hetzel), telling of the friendship of a tiny tot named Marie and a cow named Jeanne. They were born on the same day, but the calf grew to a big cow long before Marie became a big girl, but they remained firm friends, and Marie always took Jeanne to the pasture and Jeanne in return took care of Marie.

One day Marie’s little brother Jacques had a brilliant idea. He pitied poor Jeanne having always to eat her grass just plain without any dressing. How much better she would enjoy her food if it were properly mixed into a salad. So Jacques borrowed a big salad-bowl from his mother, and mixed a bundle of grass with oil and vinegar and pepper and salt. He put the bowl before Jeanne, who, being a polite cow, tasted the strange dish. Hardly had her great tongue plunged into the grass than she withdrew it with a melancholy moo, and swinging her tail in an expostulatory manner, she trotted off to the brook to take a long drink of water.

The moral is very trite. “The simple cuisine of nature suits cows better than that of man.”

MRS. GLASSE AND HER HARE]

“Every individual, who is not perfectly imbecile
and void of understanding, is an epicure in
his way; the epicures in boiling potatoes are
innumerable. The perfection of all enjoyments
depends on the perfection of the faculties of the
mind and body; the temperate man is the greatest
epicure, and the only true voluptuary.”
DR. KITCHINER.

Old myths die hard. Nevertheless, as we grow older and wiser and saner and duller, we drop the illusions of our youth, and one by one our cherished beliefs fall from us, argued away by force of circumstance, lack of substantiation, or sheer proof to the contrary.

In this last category we must perforce reckon the excellent Mrs. Hannah Glasse and her immortal saying, “First catch your hare, then cook it.” Alas and alack, Mrs. Glasse never existed--“there never was no sich person”--and, moreover, the cookery book bearing her name, in none of its many editions, contains the oft-quoted words.

The actual facts, although, indeed, these are open to a certain amount of dubiety, appear to be as follows. In Boswell’s “Johnson” there are several references to one Edward Dilly, who with his brother Charles carried on a flourishing book-shop in the Poultry. Dr. Johnson often dined with these estimable men, and at their table met most of the wits and scholars of the day. The great lexicographer referred to the brothers as his “worthy friends.” It is on record that Edward Dilly, in the presence of Boswell, Mayo, Miss Seward, and the Duke of Bedford’s tutor, the Rev. Mr. Beresford, said to Dr. Johnson, “Mrs. Glasse’s ‘Cookery,’ which is the best, was written by Dr. Hill. Half the trade knows this.”

Now this Dr. John Hill (not Aaron Hill, as assumed by Mr. Waller) was a rather interesting personality. He was a brilliant man in many directions, who misused his talents, and devoted his energies to so many various professions that it is not surprising to learn that he succeeded permanently in none. It is known of him that he was at different times apothecary, actor, pamphleteer, journalist, novelist, dramatist, herbalist, naturalist, and quack-doctor. He took a degree at St. Andrews, and his nickname was “Dr. Atall.” He married the sister of the then Lord Ranelagh, and by some manner of means got himself decorated with the Swedish order of the Polar Star, on the strength of which he paraded himself as Sir John Hill. No one, however, appears to have taken him at his own appraisement, for he was the general butt of wits, epigrammatists, and lampoonists. His death was attributed to the use of his own gout remedy, and these lines to him still survive:--

For physic and farces
His equal there scarce is;
His farces are physic,
His physic a farce is.

Well, this same John Hill, in his earlier and more obscure days, was doing hack-work for the booksellers, and also following the business of an apothecary in St. Martin’s Lane. This must have been in the year 1744 or 1745. He was struck (as who might not have been) by the ease with which a new cookery book might be compiled by extracting the best recipes from scores of old ones, and rehashing them with original remarks and new settings. He had plenty of material to work upon. The best-known cookery books prior to that date were, according to Dr. Kitchiner (who wrongly dates Mrs. Glasse 1757), Sarah Jackson’s “Cook’s Director,” La Chapelle’s “Modern Cook,” Kidder’s “Receipts,” Harrison’s “Family Cook,” “Adam’s Luxury and Eve’s Cookery,” “The Accomplish’d Housewife,” “Lemery on Food,” Arnaud’s “Alarm to all Persons touching their Health and Lives,” Smith’s “Cookery,” Hall’s “Royal Cookery,” Dr. Salmon’s “Cookery,” “The Compleat Cook,” and many more.

Hill accordingly made up his book, and his introduction was certainly ingenuous and modest; one phrase will prove this: “If I had not wrote in the high polite style, I hope I shall be forgiven; for my intention is to instruct the lower sort.” The sly dog knew his public, and this is further proved by his not putting his book to the world through a bookseller, but publishing it himself, and evolving an entirely new method of distribution. Among his friends he numbered the ingenious Mrs. Ashburn, or Ashburner, as it is spelt in some of the later editions. This good lady kept a glass and china shop in Fleet Street, hard by Temple Bar, and her customers came from the fashionable squares of Bloomsbury and St. James. Hill made an arrangement with Mrs. Ashburn, whereby she sold his book over her counter and recommended it warmly to all the ladies who called at her shop.

In order to make the illusion of authorship more complete, a female name was wanted for the title page. What could be more simple than “Mrs. Glasse,” seeing that Mrs. Ashburn kept a glass shop? The exact title of the _magnum opus_ ran, “The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy, which far exceeds anything yet published. By a Lady. Printed for the author and sold at Mrs. Ashburn’s, a china shop, the corner of Fleet Ditch, 1745.” The actual name of Mrs. Glasse did not, however, appear on the title page until the issue of the third edition, for the book was a great success from the first; every one came to Mrs. Ashburn’s to buy it, and its popularity vastly helped the glass and china trade.

About fourteen years ago a lively discussion as to the authentic authorship of Mrs. Glasse filled several columns in the newspapers, the principal correspondents being Mr. W. F. Waller and Mr. G. A. Sala. It was suggested that “first catch your hare” was a misprint for “first _case_ your hare.” Mr. Waller proved that neither of these passages occurred in any known edition of the book, although _case_, meaning “to skin,” would have been entirely legitimate and in place.

Shakespeare says in “All’s Well That Ends Well”:--

We’ll make you some sport with the fox ere we case him

And a reference to Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Love’s Pilgrimage” gives the lines--

Some of them knew me,
Else had they cased me like a coney.

The actual phrase used is “First cast your hare,” or, in another edition, “Take your hare, and when it is cast.” This simply means flayed or skinned, and was commonly used at the time. The verb “to scotch” or “to scatch” is East Anglian, and has the same meaning. So much for the authenticity of the quotation.

Curiously enough, in the newspaper controversy above referred to, George Augustus Sala strongly supported the claims of Mrs. Glasse herself as the real author, and there certainly appears to be some circumstantial evidence as to a lady of that name who was “habit-maker to the Royal family” about that period, although her connexion with the culinary art is not to be traced. Incidentally Sala mentions a receipt from a cookery book written by “An ingenious Gaul” towards the middle of the seventeenth century, which begins with what he terms “A Culinary Truism,” since changed into “A proverbial platitude”--namely, the words “_pour faire un civet, prenez un lièvre_.” This is, however, of course merely a commonplace of the kitchen, and, according to the learned authority of Dr. Thudichum, the imperative of _prendre_ has not the _catching_ meaning apparently attached to it by Sala.

Abraham Hayward, Q.C., whose “Art of Dining,” a reprint of certain “Quarterly Review” articles, must always remain one of the greatest classics of English gastronomical literature, says that Mrs. Glasse’s cookery book was written by Dr. Hunter, of York. This is, of course, an egregious error. Dr. Hunter was the author of “Culina Famulatrix Medicinæ; or, Receipts in Modern Cookery” (1804, fourth edition), with the delightful dedication, “To those gentlemen who freely give two guineas for a Turtle Dinner at the Tavern, when they might have a more wholesome one at Home for Ten Shillings, this work is humbly dedicated”; and an exquisite frontispiece of a pig, by Carr, headed “Transmigration”; but he was in no way responsible for Mrs. Glasse.

The case is very fairly summed up by Mrs. Joseph Pennell in “My Cookery Books.” She says, speaking of Mrs. Glasse: “Her fame is due, not to her genius, for she really had none, but to the fact that her own generation believed there was no such person, and after generations believed in her as the author of a phrase she never wrote.” There really seems no more to be said on the matter.

It matters little, after all, whether Mrs. Glasse really existed or not; anyhow, some of her precepts are excellent and endure to this day. She preached thorough mastication as a primary rule for good digestion. This is thoroughly sound and praiseworthy.

“Most men dig their graves with their teeth,” so says an old Chinese proverb, meaning, no doubt, that we all eat too much, and too fast, and too often, and too promiscuously. The propriety of eating slowly ought always to be remembered. Mr. Gladstone’s thirty-two bites are historical. Napoleon was a terribly fast eater, and this habit is supposed to have paralysed him on two of the most critical occasions of his life, the battles of Leipzig and Borodino, which he might have converted into decisive and influential victories by pushing his advantages as he was wont. On each of these occasions he was known to have been suffering from indigestion. On the third day at Dresden, too, the German novelist Hoffmann, who was present in the town, asserts that the Emperor would have done much more than he did but for the effects of a shoulder of mutton stuffed with onions.

It is a certain fact, although difficult to prove by statistics, that a large proportion of the drink consumed by the working-classes is directly due to the bad cooking which they have to endure in their homes. Improve the workman’s cuisine, and you will automatically lessen the drink bill. This is a point of view which philanthropists and temperance folk might adopt with immense advantage, and with practically immediate results.

Dr. Max Einhorn has recently written on the subject of correct eating, which he divides into three distinct headings: Tachyphagia, Bradyphagia, and Euphagia. The first of these is the common evil of hasty eating, in which the food is not sufficiently masticated, and hence enters the stomach without being properly insalivated and comminuted. Besides the deleterious mechanical effect, tachyphagia also encourages the taking of large quantities of food in too short a time, as well as its consumption too hot or too cold.

The rising generation is going to fight tachyphagia tooth and nail--especially tooth. It is being taught wisely and well by the disciples of the Cookery and Food Association how to improve the family digestion, and there is an old saying to the effect that digestion is the business of the cook, indigestion that of the doctor. It cannot be too often or too forcibly impressed upon the so-called working-classes, and upon a good many other classes of society also, that good cooking does not mean waste and extravagance, but, on the contrary, that it connotes economy and frugality. A daughter who can cook well is tantamount to possessing a Savings-Bank account.

Are you a Euphagist? Perhaps, like the immortal M. Jourdain, of Molière, you may have been one all your life--and never knew it. Anyhow, it is a question which is being bandied about at dinners just now a good deal, and as very few people know what a Euphagist really is, it may be as well to explain. Briefly then, Euphagists are the modern exponents of the old adage, “Laugh and grow fat.” As a sect, or a race, or a cult, or whatever they may please to call themselves, they refuse to take anything seriously at meal-times, which is an entirely sound and philosophical theory.

The learned German professor above referred to is the inventor, or discoverer, or resuscitator of the idea, and his doctrine is summed up in the brief instruction: Bite everything twenty times, don’t worry whilst eating, laugh at everything--and acquire sound health. After all, it is a tried truism that there is no digestive as efficacious as hearty laughter. A solemn diner, especially if he dine often alone, is almost invariably dyspeptic; whereas a bright, cheery man or woman, who has a keen sense of humour, and sees the comic side of most things, is rarely a sufferer from indigestion. “Even our digestion is governed by angels,” said William Blake, the artist-poet, and (if you will but resist the trivial inclination to substitute “bad angels”) is there really any greater mystery than the process by which beef is turned into brains, and jam into beauty?

Of course we do not laugh enough--at the utmost we giggle unmusically. Listen to the conversation in general at any restaurant, or even any dinner party; you will rarely hear a really hearty laugh. It is as extinct as silver épergnes or peacock-pie.

It is told of an American dining at the Carlton one night that, struck by the comparative silence of all the diners, he asked one of the waiters: “Say, does nobody ever laugh here?” The reply came pat enough: “Yes, sir, I believe there have been one or two complaints about it lately.” Are we too solemn, or too dull, or too afraid of shocking our neighbours?

It was not always so. According to that delightful work, “The Household of Sir Thomas More”: “What rare sport we had with a mummery we called ‘The Triall of Feasting.’ Dinner and Supper were brought up before my Lord Chief Justice, charg’d with Murder. Their accomplices were Plum-pudding, Mince-Pye, Drunkenness, and such-like. Being condemned to hang by ye neck, I, who was Supper, stuft out with I cannot tell you how manie pillows, began to call lustilie for a confessor, and on his stepping forthe, commenct a list of all ye fitts, convulsions, spasms, payns in ye head, and so forthe, I had inflicted on this one and t’other.”

In those days, no doubt, they did not require to adopt the tenets of Euphagism, they were well enough without it. To-day, however, as a change, and a delightful one too, from the hundred and one food-fads which abound, a general adoption of Euphagism would seem to promise brighter meals, more fun, and better health.

Among other aids to digestion which are flagrantly neglected is the taking of one’s food in the open air whenever the thermometrical conditions of our somewhat erratic climate render it possible.

Just exactly why we take every opportunity of dining in the open air when we are abroad, and carefully fight shy of it, under more or less similar circumstances, when we are at home, is one of those questions which are unsolved, and apparently unsolvable. Our distaste for British coal may be one answer to the conundrum, and another may be not unconnected with our national shyness at being seen eating our meals in public by our fellow-countrymen. Foreigners, of course, don’t count. Opportunity is not lacking, in London at any rate, for open-air dining. It can be done at several of the hotels, and in the summer there is Earl’s Court, where, despite certain obvious drawbacks of access and other things, it can be enjoyed without much discomfort.

But these are, after all, only town delights, and not comparable to a dinner on a July evening in the open air in the country. One such lingers most pleasantly in my memory. It was at a charming house in Hampshire. We dined on a marble terrace, on which soft rugs had been placed. The night was still enough for the candles on the table to burn without guttering. Below the terrace was a rose-garden, full of bloom, and in a shrubbery, not too close to the house, a Hungarian band played discreetly. The dinner, according to my recollection, was not extraordinarily good, but whatever it may have been, the surroundings, the _mise en scène_, were such that almost anything would have been appetizing and delightful. Why cannot more of this sort of thing be done? We cannot all possess marble terraces, rose-gardens, and Hungarian bands; but the permutations of the idea are innumerable, and I beg to present it to summer hostesses for development and improvement.

Exigencies of climate will probably never permit us to realize the al fresco meals suggested by a Watteau, a Boucher, or a Fragonard, and it is, indeed, more than questionable whether the French cuisine, which was flourishing round and about that period, was ever designed for the _dîner sur l’herbe_, which is, and was, an essentially bourgeois meal.

At any rate, a curious old book in four volumes, “Les Soupers de la Cour; ou L’Art de Travailler toutes sortes d’Alimens,” by Menon, which was published in Paris _au Lys d’Or_ in 1755, contains many appallingly long menus, some comprising five services and forty or more dishes, expressly designed to be eaten out of doors. No less an authority than Carême, however, says that these menus (and they are certainly extraordinarily elaborate) were the result of pure imagination on the part of _feu_ M. Menon, and were never actually carried out.

In our days even our shooting lunches tend to greater extent than can usefully be accommodated on the grass; and we are accordingly bidden to a farm-house, a tent, or sometimes a garnished barn. The lunch under a hedge, unloaded from the pony and spread temptingly on the grass, is almost a thing of the past, which, according to some old-fashioned fogies, is a pity.

Be that as it may, there is one open-air lunch which can never be altogether improved away. That is the river lunch, either in a punt or a skiff, with a table deftly made of the sculls and the stretchers. Moreover, it has this inestimable advantage: it is practically impossible for more than two to partake of a boat lunch with comfort. It can, of course, be done, but at a sacrifice of leg room--and other things. Of course the more dignified motor-launch lunches, served at a real table, do not count, for are they not the same as those eaten on dry land?

It was, I think, the late Sir William Vernon Harcourt who once remarked that “we are all Socialists now.” By the same token we may say to-day, “We are all motorists now,” and really, taking it by and large, the luncheon part of a motor trip is by no means the least interesting.

That British hotels, with very few exceptions, leave much to be desired is the tritest of truisms. Bad cookery, shocking attendance, and old-fashioned appointments, combined with disproportionate expense, are almost universal, and a big fortune awaits any Boniface who, with a good house on a much-frequented road, instals a really good cook, preferably a Frenchman and his wife, not necessarily a high-priced individual, and makes a speciality of well-cooked, daintily served, appetizing lunches and dinners.

We have all met, only too frequently, the miserable sham lamb, which is mere mutton saucily disguised with mint; the nearly raw cold beef; the maltreated chop; the apologetic steak; the absurd parody of a salad; the sad and heavy apple tart; and the anything but real Cheddar cheese. All these things are absurd and quite unnecessary.

It is really just as easy to cook a good dinner as a bad one. _Experto crede._

The usual alternative for the foregoing bill of fare is a cheap and nasty imitation of a French menu, where nothing is true to name, and only the frills on the cutlets are what they pretend to be. It really should not be difficult to give a well-cooked fillet of sole, a tender chicken, an omelet _aux fines herbes_, and a dish of vegetables in season, _sautés au beurre_; but if you asked for a lunch of this sort at a wayside British inn you would be put down at once as a lunatic. Why?

The question of packing a motor lunch is one of some difficulty and niceness. Personally, I do not for one moment believe in those elaborate ready-fitted baskets, of which the makers are so inordinately proud. Such a basket seldom fits the lunch, and I find by experience that a good-sized empty basket of convenient shape is far more practical.

The cutlery, glass, and china may be fixed, as a matter of convenience, although I do not consider even that to be necessary, for in packing up one is always trying to fit a table-knife into the place made for a teaspoon.

My ideal basket or hamper is quite bare inside (to begin with), and the cates, bottles, knives, forks, and spoons are packed therein, tightly and carefully, so as to prevent shaking and rattling.

A good method of keeping a salad fresh and crisp, by the way, is to hollow out a loaf of bread, cut off a slice at the top in the form of a lid, and pack the salad inside. Japanese paper serviettes are useful; little and big cardboard plates and dishes are to be bought for a trifle; fruit travels best if surrounded with green leaves; Devonshire cream in pots is an appreciable luxury; coffee can be made in the _cafetière gourmet_, if boiling water be handy. And, lastly, don’t forget the corkscrew!

According to the calendar, spring begins officially on 21 March. But the _restaurateurs_ can beat Dame Nature, who, presumably, edits the calendar (another lady’s paper!), by at least six weeks. For the season of _primeurs_ commences six weeks earlier, and coming before their time, they are appreciated all the more for their vernal suggestion of the flavour of the real thing, arriving in due season when all the world and his wife may eat thereof.

Early green peas, for instance, which have hitherto been imported from Algiers, come from Nice, also the famous _Lauris_ giant asparagus, white and succulent. This earliest open-air asparagus, of indubitable excellence, is to be had at about thirty-eight to forty-five shillings per bundle of fifty heads. It is worth the price.

Now too is the time to eat the real Pauillac lamb, reared on the salt marshes of Pauillac, young, fat, white, and so luscious that it melts in the mouth. The whole young lamb barely weighs fourteen pounds, and a cut of this veritable _pré salé_, so often badly imitated and misnamed, is worth a king’s ransom.

But perpend when you order the dish at a restaurant. The _maître d’hôtel_ will recommend a leg, because it has the better appearance; the knowledgeable diner, however, will inevitably prefer the shoulder, which is the quintessence of delicacy.