Frank Schloesser

“ Imagination and a due sense of proportion are as necessary in cooking as in any other art—more so than in some, for Impressionism in the kitchen simply means indigestion. Digestion is the business of the human interior, indigestion that of the doctor. It is so easy to cook indigestible things that a savoury cunningly concocted of Bismuth and Pepsine would seem an almost necessary adjunct to the menu (or Carte Dinatoire, as the French Revolutionists called it) of the budding Chafist. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Certain it is that I can spot a carrot-eating man by his hair, an onion-lover by his breath, and a Brussels-sprout devotee by his whiskers.
Take it, however, by and large, the food faddist, be it a he or a she, is rarely a pleasant table-companion, and in these times of strenuous dining he, she, or it, is usually a poor conversationalist and a poorer critic; which is a pity.
[Pg 159]
It is quite a mistake to imagine that a good dinner can afford to despise the adjuncts of a well-decorated table. Nothing could be more fallacious. One’s sense of taste should not alone be titillated. ”

“ A good egg is unspoilable, even by the worst cook. There are over four hundred and fifty ways of cooking eggs, each of which has some peculiar excellence denied to the others. You cannot even make an omelette without breaking eggs, and most people find breakfast almost impossible without the regulation hen-fruit. To teach one’s grandmother how to suck eggs is a futile labour partaking of juvenile presumption, but it is at least easier than persuading the average cook that the fried egg of commerce is only one out of scores of simple breakfast egg-dishes. ”

“ The real cuisine bourgeoise, which does not attempt to disguise the true flavour of the meats with unholy sauces, is nearly the very best in the world.
Last, but not least, of all, in all probability best of all, is a real English menu, and it is really difficult to say where it may best be ordered, for the maître d’hôtel of a big restaurant looks askance at a bill of fare without one single French word in it, not even an à la.
A dear lady whose wit was better than her French pronunciation once said at a little dinner, “It is not so much the menu that matters, as the men you sit next to.” ”

“ Wooden platters are affected by some people for meats, and I confess that the red juice of the meat on the well-scrubbed surface is very pleasing. Keep the centre ornament very low, so that one can see and talk across it. A big dish of almost any old blue and white ware, with a very few flowers, but each bloom perfect in itself, is my own ideal. Nothing is more trying than to talk to your opposite neighbour across a small table, through a mass of tightly packed towering flowers, or a jungle of dense fern. ”

“ Nothing could be smarter than a good English waiter with a knowledge of foreign dishes, or a good foreign waiter with a knowledge of English; and thanks to the interest now taken in everything appertaining to dining in public places, neither is now as uncommon as he used to be.
One P. Z. Didsbury, an American deipnosophist, once said in his wisdom: “In a restaurant when a waiter offers you turbot, ask for salmon, and when he offers you a sole, order a mackerel; as language to men, so fish has been given to the waiter to disguise his thoughts.” ”

“ That is judgment, however, not creation, and the French cook-artists call their dishes “creations”—like the dressmakers.
A chop, I contend, should only be cooked on a gridiron—grilled, that is to say, over an open fire. Any other treatment is an offence which, in a more enlightened age, would be made indictable. St. Lawrence would rise in his grave and object, were a chop put in a Chafing Dish—and quite right too! St. Lawrence is of course the patron saint of the grill, for is he not said to have been broiled alive on a gridiron? ”

“ The only thing that can be said against eating is that it takes away one’s appetite. True, there is a French proverb to the contrary, but that really only applies to the hors d’œuvre and the soup. We all eat three meals a day, some four, and a few even five, if one may reckon afternoon tea as a meal. Yet the art of eating—that is to say, how to eat, what to eat, and when [Pg 2] to eat it—is studiously neglected by those who deem they have souls superior to the daily stoking of the human engine.
Whosoever simply wants to eat certainly does not require to know how to cook. ”

“ Do what we will, we cannot get away from Sauce. It is a necessary if unobtrusive concomitant of the plainest meats. But it can be mitigated, assuaged; and from a loathly disguise it can be transformed into a dulcet accompaniment. “Les animaux se repaissent; l’homme mange: l’homme d’esprit seul sait manger,” said Brillat-Savarin, who achieved much of his literary success by gross flattery of the palates of his friends. ”

“ The chef, who is only, after all, a superior servant, paid (and well, too) to carry out the gastronomic ideas of his master, or, if he lack such ideas, to pander to his ignorance, too frequently arrogates to himself a culinary wisdom which is not justified by results. The chef need only be a thoroughly good cook. The ideas, the suggestions, the genius behind the pots and pans, come from the gastronomic student. Neither Brillat-Savarin nor Grimod de la Reynière was a cook—nor was Thomas Walker, G. A. Sala, or E. S. Dallas, but they were all notable authorities. ”

“ Their pictures of still life, the poulterers’ shops, the heaped baskets of good cheer, the brilliant lobster, the callow lemon, the russet hare, and the lustrous plumage of the pheasant, have inspired the hand of the Masters, who must have appreciated all such culinary delicacies in order to have painted them with such loving-kindness. ”

“ Some hostesses, indeed, cultivate the Japanese grammar of the arrangement of flowers, which gives a particular and especial value to each leaf, branch, and stalk. Others again will have merely half a dozen blooms, all told, on the table, but each bloom perfect of its kind, and displayed to the best advantage. High vases are as obsolete as the dodo, and people are gradually becoming alive to the fact that four or five exquisite roses in a big flat Hawthorn dish are more decorative than all the miserable little white china cupids in Regent Street. ”

“ In dealing with Chaffinda we may, after a minimum of practice, be almost certain of results. If one is naturally clean, neat and dainty in one’s tastes, then one’s cooking should display the same characteristics. One’s individuality shines forth in the Chafing Dish and is reflected in one’s sauces. Chaffinda conveys a great moral lesson, and, as a teacher, should not lack in honour and reverence. ”

“ It is worth while listening to good music. Bad music we are better without. Good cooking and good conversation are natural concomitants, and mutually assist one another. Ergo, it seems obvious that good music and a good dinner are incompatible. It is rude to talk whilst musical artists are giving of their best for your delectation, and, at the same time, a dinner partaking of Wordsworth’s Peter Bell’s party in a parlour “all silent and all damned” is contrary to the best gastronomic traditions. Thus I think I have the musical diner in an impasse. ”

“ Nevertheless, the benefits of onions toward the human race are probably not less than those attendant on the discovery of steam. It is a vegetable whose manifold properties and delights have never been properly sung. As a gentle stimulant, a mild soporific, a democratic leveller of exaggeration in flavour, a common bond between prince and peasant, it is a standing protest of Nature against Art. ”

“ Not one woman in a hundred can order a dinner at a restaurant. I’ve tried them, and I know. Not only can she not order a dinner with taste, discretion, and due appreciation of season, surroundings, and occasion; but she inevitably shows her character, or want of it, if she be allowed to choose the menu. The eternal feminine peeps out in the soup, [Pg 21] lurks designedly in the entrées, and comes into the full glare of the electric light in the sweets and liqueurs. ”

“ Pepys said when he kissed the cook.
“Give the bairns pudding in plenty, again say I”—so wrote Sir Walter Scott, and I am heartily at one with him, but Chaffinda does not accommodate herself to the fabrication of pudding—and, besides, children ought to be in bed when supper-time brings the Chafing Dish on the table. Baking is of course impossible, and boiling in a cloth equally so. I have already said that Chaffinda—being so nearly human—has her limitations, and these are two of them, which I, for one, in no wise regret. ”

“ As a matter of fact, our chefs are unimaginative—and a good job too; because when a chef, be he never so clever, begins to launch out on novelties of his own invention, he almost invariably comes to grief. A really good maître d’hôtel may occasionally suggest a new dish, but in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it is merely a slight variation of something perfectly well known and appreciated. ”

“ There is no imagination about a Welsh Rabbit. It is sternly real. But not, I think, quite as indigestible as generally supposed, especially if it be liberally dosed with Paprika, which I find to be marvellously digestive. A well-made Rabbit should be suave in flavour, not harsh, stringy, or pungent. There should be a silky sensation of sensuous softness, and, above all things, it should not tickle the palate. ”

“ As a bachelor who is lucky enough to be asked out to many dinner parties, I have cultivated a slight reciprocative hospitality in the shape of asking my hostesses (and their daughters, if they have any) to dine with me at sundry restaurants. It is my habit to beg my guests to order the dinner, “because a woman knows so much more about these things than a mere man”; and all unwittingly the dear ladies invariably fall into the innocent little trap, wrinkle up their foreheads and study the carte, while I sit tight and study character.
Luckily my digestion is excellent. ”

“ The Chafing Dish is much esteemed across the Atlantic, although one is forced to admit that it is sometimes put to base uses in the concoction of unholy stews, which have not the natural flavour of fish, flesh or fowl, or even good red herring. Still, if the Americans are vague in their French nomenclature, unorthodox in their sauces, eclectic in their flavourings, and over-lavish in their condiments, yet they have at any rate brought parlour cooking to a point where it may gracefully be accepted as an added pleasure to life. ”

“ But whosoever desires to criticize a dinner and the dishes that compose it—and enjoyment without judgment is unsatisfactory—need not be a cook, but must understand what cooking implies; he must have grasped the spirit of the art of cookery. ”

“ When entirely successful, however, it is most gratifying and self-flattering. You feel a real cook at last, and look upon Ude, Carême, Francatelli, and the other great names of history as brothers. All Chafers go through that pleasant period when all goes right and nothing goes wrong. Sometimes it lasts quite a while; but at last, sooner or later, there comes a moment when we know we feel that we know how little we know. As at golf, when we never play so well as during our first month, even so is it with Chaffinda.
The testing of eggs should not rightly be one of the Chafer’s duties. ”

“ There ought to be condign punishment meted out to any cook who makes any so-called alteration or improvement to any well-known standardized dish, of which the composition, flavour, and artistic completeness have been settled once and for all, and to touch which is something akin to sacrilege.
Really good, intelligent, careful cooks get on in their profession, and often end up by opening establishments of their own. Many a restaurant proprietor has qualified as a first-class chef. ”

“ I would not go quite as far as the poet, but I confess to a weakness for chives. A judicious touch to many salads and made dishes is very desirable. Chives are to onions as the sucking-pig is to pork, a baby scent, a fairy titillation, an echo of the great Might Be.
Charles Lamb had a friend who said that a man cannot have a pure mind who refuses apple dumplings. ”

“ All the Hungarians do not come from Hungary.
Curiously enough, there is an old-time connexion between music and dinner, although not precisely as we understand either. In the great houses of the seventeenth century dinner was announced by a concert of trumpets and drums, or with blasts from a single horn, blown by the head huntsman. The music of huntsmen running in upon their quarry was the music which declared the venison and wild boar ready for the trenchers. Blown to announce the coming of dinner and supper, the horn was also wound to celebrate the virtue of particular dishes. ”

“ The setting forth of menus seems to me to be an entirely futile method of filling up a cook-book. No one ever follows them, because things never happen just so as to make all the materials simultaneously available. It is much better to dip here and there in a book—to choose a soup, a meat, and a salad; or a fish, a bird, and a savoury ”

“ Say you want a French dinner, light, delicate, and appetizing, go to Kettner, in Church Street, Soho, or to Dieudonné, in Ryder Street, and you will find un petit diner très-fin, as good as you will obtain anywhere in Paris. If you patronize the former very old and very quaint establishment, ask to look over the kitchens; they are as neat and clean as those in a painting by an old Dutch master. As to the menu, you cannot do better than leave yourself in the hands of the maître d’hôtel. ”

“ Put three tablespoons of butter in the dish. When just melted add a tablespoon of flour; stir until smooth. Then add the Chipped Beef, which must have been previously soaked in cold water for ten minutes; let it simmer for eight minutes, then stir in the beaten-up yolks of two eggs, and serve very hot. Every day is Thanksgiving Day when one eats Chipped Beef, and it is a selfish dish to cook, because one wants to eat it all oneself; and the worst of eating is that it takes away one’s appetite—although there is a proverb to the contrary. ”

“ Many a dish that delighted his guests was cooked in this extraordinary fashion, between two thrilling chapters, and the wonderful part about his culinary work was that the very dishes and ingredients seemed in some unaccountable way to accommodate themselves to his casual and erratic manner. What would have been utterly ruined under any other chef seemed to succeed even extra well under his neglect.
Lacroix (le bibliophile Jacob) said of him: “Assuredly it is a great attainment to be a romancist, but it is by no means a mediocre glory to be a cook. ”

“ It has been borne in upon me that many quite nice folk may be glad to learn something of the possibilities of Chaffinda. Whether married or single, there are moments in the life of nearly every man and woman when the need of a quick, hot, and light little meal is worth much fine gold. To such I would politely address myself.
The ordinary domestic cook is a tireless enemy of the Chafing Dish. ”

“ At a splendid dinner given by the Legate of Avignon to the Prior of Chartreux, a superb fish, cooked to perfection and likely to have tempted the Pope himself had he been present, was handed to the Prior. He helped himself and was on the eve of eating, when one of the brothers said to him: “My father, do not touch that, it is not maigre. I went into the kitchen, and I saw things that would make you shudder; the sauce that you fancy is made from carrots and onions is made from ham and rabbits.” ”

“ Again, do not attempt too elaborate a bill of fare. Be pre-Raphaelite in your attention to detail rather than Academic in your mass of lavish decoration. Of two evils choose the prettier, and prefer a discreet little meal of soup, meat, vegetable and savoury, to an [Pg 191] elaborate programme which defeats its own ends, and clogs the appetite.
It is such much better form to be simple, poor and proud—besides, it costs less. ”