Elizabeth Robins Pennell

“ It stimulates imagination, it awakens ambition. A thousand and one ways there be of preparing it, each better than the last. With celery, with carrots, with tomatoes, with radishes, with parsley, with cucumber, with every green thing that grows—in greatest perfection with okras, the vegetable dear to Hungarian and American, unknown to poor Britons—it combines graciously and deliciously, each combination a new ecstasy. And, moreover, it is capable of endless decoration; any woman with a grain of ingenuity can make of it a thing of beauty, to look upon which is to sharpen the dullest appetite. ”

“ Spring is the year's playtime. Who, while trees are growing green and flowers are budding, can toil with an easy conscience? Later, mere "use and wont" accustoms the most sensitive to sunshine and green leaves and fragrant blossoms. It is easy to work in the summer. But spring, like wine, goes to the head and gladdens the heart of man, so that he is fit for no other duty than the enjoyment of this new gladness. If he be human, and not a mere machine, he must and will choose it for the season of his holiday.
This is why in the spring the midday breakfast appeals with most charm. ”

“ It must whet the appetite, not blunt it. In its flavour must its strength lie; at once keen and subtle, it should stimulate, but never satisfy. An anchovy salad touches perfection; the anchovies—the boneless species from France—the olives skilfully stoned, the capers in carefully studied proportions, the yellow of the egg well grated, the parsley, chopped fine, must be arranged by an artist with a fine feeling for decorative effect, and the dressing of oil, vinegar, pepper, and salt, poured gently over the design so as not to destroy the poetry of line and colour. ”

“ For what culinary masterpiece is there that may not be improved by it? It gives vivacity to soup, life to sauce; it is the "poetic soul" of the salad bowl; the touch of romance in the well-cooked vegetable. To it, sturdiest joint and lightest stew, crisp rissole and stimulating 156 stuffing look for inspiration and charm—and never are they disappointed! But woe betide the unwary woman who would approach it for sacrilegious ends. If life holds nothing better than the onion in the right hand, it offers nothing sadder and more degrading than the onion brutalised. ”

“ Too often the poet sees but the tears that live in an onion; not the smiles. And yet the smiles are there, broad and genial, or subtle and tender. "Rose among roots," its very name revives memories of pleasant feasting; its fragrance is rich forecast of delights to come. Without it, there would be no gastronomic art. Banish it from the kitchen, and all pleasure of eating flies with it. Its presence lends colour and enchantment to the most modest dish; its absence reduces the rarest dainty to hopeless insipidity, and the diner to despair. ”

“ What cheese, you ask? Suisse, of course. Is not the month March? Has not the menu, so lovingly devised, sent the spring rioting through your veins? Suisse with sugar, and prolong the sweet dreaming while you may. What if work you cannot, after thus giving the reins to fancy and to appetite? At least you will have had your hour of happiness. Breakfast is not for those who toil that they may dine; their sad portion is the midday sandwich.
Wine should be light and not too many. The true epicure will want but one, and he may do worse than let his choice fall upon Graves, though good Graves, alas! ”

“ Again, when elaborate dinner draws to an end, and dessert follows upon long procession of soup and fish and entrées and roasts and vegetables and salads and poultry and sweets and savouries, and who knows what—then the strawberry becomes most irresistible upon yielding itself, a willing victim, to the bold demands of Kirsch. A macédoine of Kirsch-drowned strawberries, iced to a point, is a dish for which gods might languish without shame.
She who loves justice never fears to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. To cook the strawberry is to rob it of its sweetest bloom and freshness. ”

“ The French will give you for breakfast a bowl of Soissons, for dinner a Romaine, which long survive as tender memories; even the humble dandelion they have enlisted in the good cause. With the Italian you will fare no less well; better it may be, for, with the poetic feeling that has disappeared for ever from their art and architecture, they fill the salad bowl at times with such delicate conceits as tender young violet leaves, so that you may smell the spring in the blossoms at your throat, while you devour it in the greens set before you. ”

“ If you have learned the trick of association, at once you see before you a steaming harmony in pale yellow and scarlet, the long soft tubes of macaroni or spaghetti encompassed round about by a deep stream of tomatoes stewed and seasoned; at once you feast upon macaroni al pomodoro and Chianti, and Italy lies, like a map, before your mind's eye, its towns and villages marked by this dish of dishes. With rice, tomatoes are no less in pleasant, peaceful unity; in stuffed paprika, or pepper, they find their true affinity. Grilled, they make a sympathetic garniture for filet piqué à la Richelieu ”

“ The gentle little spring chicken is sweet and adorable above all its kindred poultry. It is innocent and guileless as Bellini's angels, dream-like and strange as Botticelli's. It is the very concentration of spring; as your teeth meet in its tender, yielding flesh, you think, whether you will or no, of violets and primroses, and hedgerows white with may; you feel the balmy breath of the south wind; the world is scented for you with lilac and narcissus; and, for the time being, life is a perfect poem. ”

“ Europe might be laid waste; beauty and learning and art might be aliens in the land that was once their home; human enjoyment might centre upon a millennium to come rather than upon delights already warm within men's grasp. But still the strawberry survived. Life grew ugly and rue and barren. But from under broad leaves the little red fruit still looked out and up to the sun; and, by loveliness of colour and form, of flavour and scent, proved one of the chief factors in reclaiming man from barbarism, in leading him gently along the high road to civilisation and the joy of life. ”

“ As the painter mixes his colours upon his palette until the right tint springs into being, so, if in befitting humility and patience, you blend coffee with coffee, know that, the day is at hand when the perfect flavour will be born of the perfect union. From venturing to recommend one harmony above all others, the most daring would refrain; Mocha and Java 257 might inspire hymns of praise in Paradise; and yet many gourmets would yearn for a keener, stronger aroma, many sigh for a subtler. As in matters of love, for yourself must you choose and decide. ”

“ In all art it is the same—simplicity, the fruit of knowledge and experience, is a virtue beyond compare. But poor blind humans, groping after would-be ideals, seek the complicated, mistaking it to be the artistic. Arguing then, from their own foolish standpoint, they invent strange and weird machines in which they hope to manufacture perfection; coffee-pots, globular in shape, which must be turned suddenly, swiftly, surely, at the critical instant, else will love's labour all be lost; coffee-pots, with glass tubes up which the brown liquid rushes, then falls again, a Niagara in miniature ”

“ The ambitious will trust to her kitchen to win her reputation; the poet will offer lyrics and pastorals with every course; the painter will present in every dish a lovely scheme of colour.
Gross are they who see in eating and drinking nought but grossness. The woman who cannot live without a mission should now find the path clear before her. Let her learn first for herself the rapture that lies dormant in food; let her next spread abroad the joyful tidings. Gluttony is a vice only when it leads to stupid, inartistic excess. ”

“ Make it of tomatoes, scarlet and stirring, like some strange tropical blossoms decking the shrine of the sun. Just a suspicion of shallot in the bowl; the perfect dressing of vinegar and oil, pepper and salt; and the luxuriant tropics could not yield a richer and more fragrant offering. It is a salad that vies with Cleopatra in its defiance to custom. Love for it grows stronger with experience. The oftener it is enjoyed the greater the desire to enjoy it again. ”

“ But bitterness is in your wine cup, for the wine is flat; heaviness is in your breakfast or dinner, for bread is underdone and sodden, and butter is bad, and the endless array of little plates discourages with its suggestion of vulgar plenty and artless selection; and all is vanity and vexation, save the corn bread—the beautiful golden corn bread, which deserves a chapter to itself—and the fruit: the bananas and grapes, and peaches and oranges, luscious and ravishing as they seldom are on any but American soil. ”

“ Drink nothing else until wineglass be pushed aside for cup of coffee, black and sweet of savour, a blend of Mocha and Mysore. Rich, thick, luxurious, Turkish coffee would be a most fitting epilogue. But then, see that you refuse the more frivolous, feminine liqueurs. Cognac, old and strong-hearted, alone would meet the hour's emotions—Cognac, the gift of 58 the gods, the immortal liquid. Lean back and smoke in silence, unless speech, exchanged with the one kind spirit, may be golden and perfect as the dinner. ”

“ Insipid, as life without love, is the dinner without imagination.
Vegetables have no special place in the scheme of August's dinner. But a salad will not come amiss. Remember, the feast is ordered in sheer voluptuousness of spirit. The fifth course calls for the scarlet splendour of tomatoes; and the presiding dahlias, in bowl of Delft, clamour for the gold of mayonnaise sauce to carry out the exulting trumpeting harmony. A hint, here, to the earnest, ambitious gourmand; if cream be worked, deftly and slowly, into the thickening sauce, sublime will be the results. ”

“ Sucking-pig is sole consolation offered by benevolent De la Reynière to well-nigh inconsolable man. But what a poem in the sucking-pig that gambols gaily over his pages: a delicious roasted creature, its little belly stuffed full of liver and truffles and mushrooms, capers, anchovies, aromatic pepper, and salt, all wrought together into one elegant farce; while in dish apart, as indispensable acolyte, an orange sauce waits to complete the masterpiece! ”

“ A sprinkling of salt, a touch of Cayenne, a dash of lemon juice, and then eat, and know how good it is for man to live in a world of oysters. For a light lunch or the perfect midnight supper, for an inspiring hors d'œuvre, without rival is this king of shell-fish. If for the midnight meal you reserve it, you may be kindled into ecstasy by the simple addition of a glass of fine old Chablis or Sauterne—be not led astray by vulgar praise of stout or porter—and brown bread and butter cut in slices of ethereal thinness. ”

“ It is not limited to the half-demolished joint—sad wreck of midday's meal. It may be as fair and harmonious as dinner itself, as noble a tribute to the artist, as superb a creation. Only the thoughtless and prosaic will dismiss it carelessly in the ordering, believing that any odds and ends will answer. Whatever is left over is to many the one possible conception of the late evening meal. But the gourmand, exulting in his gluttony, makes of it a work of art, good in the eating, good in the remembrance thereof. ”

“ Not a whit less important in the history of his civilisation is his emancipation from that vile, vinegar-drenched abomination to the succulent tomato, the unrivalled potato, well "fatigued" in the "capacious salad-bowl."
Of every woman worthy of the name, it is the duty to master the secret of the perfect salad, and to prepare it for her own—and man's—greater comfort and joy in this life, and—who knows?—salvation in the next. This secret is all in the dressing. It is easy enough to buy in the market, or order at the greengrocer's a lettuce, or a cucumber, or a pound of tomatoes. ”

“ What the great Alexandre calls the grand consommé is the basis of all soup—and sauce making. Study his very word with reverence; carry out his every suggestion with devotion. Among the ingredients of this consummate bouillon his mighty mind runs riot. Not even the adventures of the immortal Musketeers stimulated his fancy to wilder flights. His directions, large and lavish as himself, would the economical housewife read with awe and something of terror. Veal and beef and fowl—a venerable cock will answer—and rabbit and partridges of yester-year; these be no more than the foundation. ”

“ As soufflé, either au Gruyère or au Parmesan, it becomes light and dainty as the poet's lyric, and surely should be served only on porcelain of the finest. It is simple to say how the miracle is worked: a well-heated oven, a proper saucepan, butter, water, pepper, salt and sugar in becoming proportions, the yolks of eggs and grated Parmesan, the whites of the eggs added, as if an afterthought; and twenty-five minutes in the expectant oven will do the rest. But was ever lyric turned out by rule and measure? Even the inspired artist has been known to fail with his soufflé. ”

“ The sun may shine, wild winds may blow, but every evening brings with it the happy dinner hour. With the autumn days foolish men play at being pessimists, and talk in platitudes of the cruel fall of the leaf and death of love. And what matter? May they not still eat and drink? May they not still know that most supreme of all joys, the perfect dish perfectly served? Small indeed is the evil of a broken heart compared to a coarsened palate or disordered digestion. ”

“ Roast turkey, with cranberry sauce, is suggestive of November's drear days; Brussels sprouts sum up greengrocers' resources in midwinter. But why falter? Hope need never be abandoned by the wise, whose faith is strong in himself.
The season presents difficulties, but the beautiful dinner may still be designed. To meet August's flaming mood, it should be rich, and frankly voluptuous. Let flowers that bespeak autumn's approach and the fulness of harvest give the dinner its keynote. ”

“ Was there ever a menu in sunny Italy that did not include this meat or that vegetable al pomodoro? The very Spaniard, whom rumour weds irrevocably to garlic, nourishes a tender passion for the voluptuous red fruit, and wins rapture from it. And deep and true is the Provençal's love for his pomme d'amour; is not the name a measure of his affection? The Love Apple! Were there, after all, tomatoes in Judea, and were these the apples that comforted the love-sick Shulamite? ”