Frank Schloesser

“ 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? ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Just exactly why we take every opportunity [Pg 95] 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Joseph, who, by the way, was born in Birmingham, was a mâitre d’hôtel of genius, though even he had his little weaknesses, and merely to watch the play of his wrists whilst he was “fatiguing” a salad for an especially favoured guest was a lesson in inspired enthusiasm. His rebuke to a rich American in Paris is historic. The man of dollars had ordered an elaborate déjeuner, and whilst toying with the hors-d’œuvre carefully tucked his serviette into his collar and spread it over his waistcoat, as is the way with some careless feeders. ”

“ It is surely quite superfluous to enter upon any defence of Snails as an article of food. If you like them, well, you like them. If you do not, then you probably detest them. No one ever just tolerated snails. There is good historical precedent, as shall be shown hereafter, for their systematic cultivation. They are most nutritious, containing, it is alleged, twice the amount of proteid possessed by the oyster. Be that as it may, they have been a desirable article of food for many centuries past.
Paris, according to the “Figaro,” consumes eight hundred thousand kilogrammes of snails annually. ”

“ In referring just now to the excellent Miss Jane Austen, I am reminded that eating and drinking play no small part in her delightful novels. Who does not remember Mrs. Bennet, who dared not invite Bingley to an important dinner, “for although she always kept a good table, she did not think anything less than two courses could be good enough for a man on whom she had such anxious designs, or satisfy the appetite and pride of one who had ten thousand a year.” The dinner eventually served consisted of soup, venison, partridges, and an unnamed pudding. ”

“ The late Sir Henry Thompson once had a new cook, and, in an interview with her [Pg 3] after the first dinner-party, she expressed herself as being delighted that everything had been so satisfactory. “But how do you know it was?” asked Sir Henry. “I’ve not given you my opinion yet.” “No, Sir Henry,” said the cook, “but I know it was all right, because none of the salt-cellars were touched.”
It is a mistaken idea that a man-cook can be a cordon-bleu. That title of high distinction is reserved for the feminine sex. ”

“ So saying, he would rush headlong into the kitchen just as he was in his usual working dress, with his shirt-sleeves rolled up above his elbows, and calling everybody in the place round him to watch his prowess, [Pg 230] he would labour among the stewpans for a good hour, ordering all those who had followed him to the kitchen to different menial tasks—one to slice the carrots, one to peel potatoes, one to chop up herbs—turning them all into scullions in fact.
The blustering, boisterous genius as easily dominated the kitchen as he did the literary world of the time. ”

“ She was cook and politician too, and even Alexandre Dumas père did not disdain to dine with her at a dinner of her own cooking; and moreover eminent statesmen of the period consulted her about politics, her clear-headed simplicity and wide experience of popular sentiment rendering her opinions of considerable value. The editor adds that her name was not Sophie, but that her many friends will nevertheless easily recognize her.
The value of a good chef in a well-ordered household cannot be over-estimated. His tact, his experience, and his art go far to make life pleasant and easy. ”

“ In rereading an old book by the never-to-be-forgotten Guy de Maupassant I came across a delightful passage which so aptly describes the feelings of a true gourmet that I am tempted to transcribe it here for the benefit of all who belong to that noble fraternity. “To be wanting in the sense of taste is to have a stupid mouth, just as one may have a stupid mind. ”

“ How admirable and beautiful are eating and drinking, and what a great invention the human digestive system is! How much better to be a man than an alligator! The alligator can fast for a year and a half, whereas five hours’ abstinence will set an edge on the most pampered human appetite. ”

“ Sydney Smith’s recipe for a salad is only too well known, and it may be hoped that it is not often tried, because from a gastronomic point of view it is a dire decoction. Arthur Hugh Clough in “Le Diner” (Dipsychus) has this entirely charming verse:—
A clear soup with eggs: voilà tout; of the fish
The filets de sole are a moderate dish
A la Orly, but you’re for red mullet you say.
By the gods of good fare, who can question to-day?
How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!
How pleasant it is to have money! ”