Edward Spencer

“ You will be staying there, most likely, an you be a man, for hunting or shooting—it being one of the eccentric dispensations of the great goddess Fashion that country-houses should be guestless, and often ownerless, during that season of the year when nature looks at her loveliest. An you be a woman, you will be staying there for the especial benefit of your daughter; for flirting—or for the more serious purpose of riveting the fetters of the fervid youth who may have been taken captive during the London season—for romping, and probably shooting and hunting, too ”

“ The total abstainer, the rabid jackass who denies himself—or claims that he does so—the juice of the grape, and drinks the horrible, flatulent, concoctions known as “temperance beverages,” is just as great a sinner against common sense as that rabid jackass the habitual glutton, or drunkard, who, in abusing the good things of life—the gifts which are given us to enjoy—is putting together a rod of rattlesnakes for his own back. ”

“ Those that go down to the sea in ships, and can summon up sufficient presence of mind to go down to the saloon at meal times, have far from a bad time of it. Living was certainly better on the ocean wave in the days when livestock was kept on board, and slaughtered as required; for the effect of keeping beef, pork, and mutton in a refrigerating chamber for any length of time is to destroy the flavour, and to render beef indistinguishable from the flesh of the hog, and mutton as tasteless as infantine pap. ”

“ It has been repeatedly urged in favour of French cookery that it is so economical. But economy in the preparation of food is by no means an unmixed blessing. I do not believe that much sole-leather is used up in the ordinary ragoût, or salmi; but many of us who can afford more expensive joints have a prejudice against “scrags”; whilst the tails of mutton chops frequently have a tainted flavour, and the drumsticks and backs of fowls are only fit to grill, or boil down into gravy. And it is not only the alien who is economical in his preparation of the banquet. ”

“ Peter’s favourite dinner was, like himself, peculiar: “A soup, with four cabbages in it; gruel; pig, with sour cream for sauce; cold roast meat with pickled cucumbers or salad; lemons and lamprey, salt meat, ham, and Limburg cheese.”
“Lemons and lamprey” must have had a roughish seat, atop of pig and sour cream. I once tasted lampreys—only once. It was in Worcestershire, and said lampreys were stewed (I fancy) in burgundy, and served in a small tureen—en casserole, our lively neighbours would have called the production, which was grateful, but much embarrassed with richness. ”

“ Meat and drink are, like fire, very good servants, but the most oppressive and exacting of slave-drivers. Therefore enjoy the sweets of life, whilst ye can; but as civilised beings, as gentlemen, and not as swine. For here is a motto which applies to eating and drinking even more than to other privileges which we enjoy ”

“ We begin with soup, and perhaps a glass of cold punch, to be followed by a piece of turbot, or a slice of salmon with lobster sauce; and while the venison or South-down is getting ready, we toy with a piece of sweetbread, and mellow it with a bumper of Madeira. No sooner is the mutton or venison disposed of, with its never-failing accompaniments of jelly and vegetables, than we set the whole of it in a ferment with champagne, and drown it with hock and sauterne. These are quickly followed by the wing and breast of a partridge, or a bit of pheasant or wild duck ”

“ A slice or two of cold beef, or a leg of a chicken, with some particularly salt ham, formed the average fare; but those who possessed their souls with patience occasionally saw something hot, in the way of food—chiefly cutlets. The great virtue of the cutlet is that it can be reheated; and one dish not infrequently did duty for more than one party. The rejected portion, in fact, would “reappear” as often as a retiring actor. “I know them salmon cutlets,” the waiter in Pink Dominoes used to observe, “as well as I know my own mother!” ”

“ A much more graceful vegetable is the Phaseolus vulgaris, the kidney, or, as the idiotic French call it, the haricot bean. It is just as sensible to call a leg of Welsh mutton a pré salé, or salt meadow. No well-behaved hashed venison introduces himself to our notice unless accompanied by a dish of kidney beans. And few people in Europe besides Frenchmen and convicts eat the dried seeds of this form of bean, which is frequently sown in suburban gardens to form a fence to keep out cats. ”

“ Let your sideboard—it is assumed that you have a sideboard—sigh and lament its hard lot, under its load of cold joints, game, and pies,—I am still harping on the country-house; and if you have a York ham in cut, it should be flanked by a Westphalian ditto. For the blend is a good one. And remember that no York ham under 20 lb. in weight is worth cutting. You need not put it all on the board at once. A capital adjunct to the breakfast-table, too, is a reindeer’s tongue, which, as you see it hung up in the shops, looks more like a policeman’s truncheon in active employment than anything else ”

“ In fact a pretty woman never shows to more advantage than when nibbling a crisp, “short” head of celery—provided she possess pretty teeth.
With boiled turkey, or ditto pheasant, celery sauce is de rigueur; and it should be flavoured slightly with slices of onion, an ounce of butter being allowed to every head of celery. The French are fond of it stewed; and as long as the flavour of the gravy, or jus, does not disguise the flavour of the celery, it is excellent when thus treated. Its merits in a salad will be touched upon in another chapter. ”

“ Let it be laid down as a golden rule, that the concoction of a salad should never, or hardly ever, be entrusted to the tender mercies of the British serving-maid. For the salad-maker, like the poet, is born, not made; and the divine afflatus—I don’t mean garlic—is as essential in the one as in the other. ”

“ Then I maintain that to curry whitebait is wrong; partly because curry should on no account be served [Pg 142] before roast and boiled, and partly because the flavour of the whitebait is too delicate for the fish to be clad in spices and onions. The lesson which all dinner-givers ought to have learnt from the Ancient Romans—the first people on record who went in for æsthetic cookery—is that highly-seasoned and well-peppered dishes should figure at the end, and not the commencement of a banquet. Here follows a list of some of the productions of Nature which it is allowable to curry. ”

“ A Woodcock Pie
will be found extremely palatable at any shooting luncheon, although more frequently to be met with on the sideboards of the great and wealthy. In fact, at Christmas time, ’tis a pie which is specially concocted in the royal kitchen at Windsor Castle, to adorn Her Most Gracious Majesty’s board at Osborne, together with the time-honoured baron of specially fed beef. This last named joint hardly meets my views as part of a breakfast menu; but here is the recipe for the woodcock pie. ”

“ Would you treat a salmon in the British way, or smother him with thick brown gravy, fried onions, garlic, mushrooms, inferior claret, oysters, sugar, pepper, salt, and nutmeg, en Matelote, or mince him fine to make a ridiculous mousse? Similarly with the honest, manly sole; would you fry or grill him plain, or bake him in a coat of rich white sauce, onion juice, mussel ditto, and white wine, or cider, à la Normande ”

“ Mackerel is a fish but seldom seen at the tables of the great. And yet ’tis tasty eating, if his Joseph’s coat be bright and shining when you purchase him. When stale he is dangerous to life itself. And he prefers to gratify the human palate when accompanied by
Gooseberry Sauce,
which is made by simply boiling a few green gooseberries, rubbing them through a sieve, and adding a little butter and a suspicion of ginger. ”

“ Unless a man breakfast very early, and dine very late, he cannot do himself much good by eating a square meal at 1.30 or 2.0 P.M. There can be no question but that whilst thousands of the lieges—despite soup-kitchens, workhouses, and gaols—perish of absolute starvation, as many of their more fortunate brethren perish, in the course of time, from gluttony, from falling down (sometimes literally) and worshipping the Belly-god. ”

“ Johnson, after examining a French menu, “my brain is obfuscated after the perusal of this heterogeneous conglomeration of bastard English ill-spelt, and a foreign tongue. I prithee bid thy knaves bring me a dish of hog’s puddings, a slice or two from the upper cut of a well-roasted sirloin, and two apple-dumplings.”
“William,” said George Augustus Sala to the old waiter at the “Cheshire Cheese,” “I’ve had nothing fit to eat for three months; get me a point steak, for God’s sake!” ”

“ Although there are still many vegetarian restaurants in our large towns, the prejudice against animal food is, happily, dying out; and if ridicule could kill, we should not hear much more of the “cranks” who with delightful inconsistency, would spurn a collop of beef, and gorge themselves on milk, in every shape and form. If milk, butter, and cheese be not [Pg 132] animal food I should like to know what is? And it is as reasonable to ask a man to sustain life on dried peas and mushrooms as to feed a tiger on cabbages.
Once, and only once, has the writer attempted a
Vegetarian Banquet. ”

“ Plant potatoes in a game district, and if they come up you will find that after the haulms have withered you can capture all your rich neighbour’s pheasants, and half the partridges in the country. A nicely-baked potato, deftly placed beneath the root of his tail, will make the worst “jibber” in the world travel; whilst, when combined with buttermilk, and a modicum of meal, the earth-apple has been known to nourish millions of the rising generation, and to give them sufficient strength and courage to owe their back rents, and accuracy of aim for exterminating the brutal owner of the soil. ”

“ After all the fuss made by the French over their soups, we might expect more variety than is given us. If it be true that we English have only one sauce, it is equally true that our lively neighbours have only one soup—and that one is a broth. ”

“ Most certainly and decidedly, a heavy luncheon is a mistake if you want to “shoot clean” afterwards. And bear this in mind, all ye “Johnnies” who rail at your host’s champagne and turtle, after luncheon, in a comfortable pavilion in the midst of a pheasant battue, and whose very beaters would turn up [Pg 45] their noses at a pork pie and a glass of old ale, that there is nothing so good to shoot upon as cold tea, unless it be cold coffee. ”

“ Into the empty preserved-meat tin which he brought round to the back door I have seen emptied such assorted pabulum as mock turtle soup, lobster salad, plum pudding and custard, curry, and (of course) , the surplus vilolif; and in a few seconds he was squatting on his heels, and spading into the mixture with both hands.
In the Bengal Presidency cocoa-nut is freely used with a curry dressing; and as some men have as great a horror of this addition, as of oil in a salad, it is as well to consult the tastes of your guests beforehand. ”

“ During the autumn and winter months, race-course caterers seem to have but one idea of warm comforting food for their customers, and the name of that idea is Irish stew. This is no doubt an appetising dish, but might be varied occasionally for the benefit of the habitual follower of the sport of kings. Why not pea-soup, jugged hare (hares are cheap enough) , hot-pot, Scotch broth, mullagatawny, hotch-potch, stewed or curried rabbit, with rice, shepherd’s pie, haricot ox-tails, sheep’s head broth (Scotch fashion) , and hare soup! ”

“ In London, however, the free lunch seldom soars above salted almonds, coffee beans, cloves, with biscuits and American cheese. But at most refreshment-houses is to be obtained for cash some sort of a restorative sandwich, or bonne bouche, in the which anchovies and hard-boiled eggs play leading parts; and amongst other restorative food, I have noticed that parallelograms of cold Welsh rarebit are exceedingly popular amongst wine-travellers and advertisement-agents. The genius who propounded the statement that “there is nothing like leather” could surely never have sampled a cold Welsh rarebit! ”

“ Pour a little vinegar over the mixture.
“Sambal” will be found a delicious accompaniment to curry—when served on a salad plate—or to almost any description of cold meat and cheese. It is only fair to add, however, that the task of making the relish is arduous and exasperating to a degree; and that the woman who makes it—no male Christian in the world is possessed of a tithe of the necessary patience, now that Job and Robert Bruce are no more—should have the apartment to herself. For the labour is calculated to teach an entirely new language to the manufacturer. ”

“ Porridge, Yarmouth bloaters, potatoes, American hash, grilled mutton, bread and butter, tea or coffee.
An American breakfast is as variegated (and I fear I must add, as indigestible) as a Scotch one; and included in the bill of fare are as many, or more, varieties of bread and cake as are to be found in the land o’ shortbread. The writer has, in New York, started the morning meal with oysters, run the gamut of fish, flesh, and fowl, and wound up with buckwheat cakes, which are brought on in relays, buttered and smoking hot, and can be eaten with or without golden syrup. ”

“ It is criminal to smother the kidney bean with melted butter at table. A little oil, vinegar, and pepper agree with him much better.
In the great continent of America, the kidney-bean seed, dried, is freely partaken of. Pork and “Borston” beans, in fact, form the national dish, and right good it is. But do not attempt any violent exercise after eating the same. The Mexicans are the largest bean-eaters in the [Pg 121] world. They fry the vegetables in oil or stew them with peppers and onions, and these frijoles form the principal sustenance of the lower orders. ”