Dinant

“ To eat a table-d'hôte dinner is like landing a fish which has been hooked and played by someone else.
Mr. Echenard, late of the Savoy, in chatting over the vagaries of diners, shook his head over the want of knowledge of the wines that should be drunk with the various kinds of food. No man knows better what goes to make a perfect dinner than Mr. Echenard does, and as to the sinfulness of Britons in this particular, I quite agreed with him. In Paris no man dreams of drinking champagne, and nothing but champagne, for dinner ”

“ The latter charge has a foundation in fact: he does ask a few of his more fortunate patients to dinner. More than this, he gives them a dinner much too artistic for most of them to understand. To bring Art into a menu, to invent and build up a dinner which shall be completely artistic in every part, a harmonious whole; one course leading naturally to the next; a dinner of one colour in many tints; the wine gurgling like part of an orchestra, is a gift within the powers of very few. ”

“ We find no fault with the elegances of the table, in plate, crystal, china, and so forth; but an English dinner is not an elegant meal. The guests are supposed, by a polite fiction, to have the hunger of the whole day to satisfy, and provision is made accordingly. Varieties of soup, fish, flesh, fowl, game, rich-made dishes, load the board spread for a group of well-dressed men and women, known to have already dined, and who would affect to shudder at so heavy a meal, if it was termed supper. ”

“ Then I wished that dinner might go on indefinitely like the tea party of the Mad Hatter. All too soon the glory of a French menu flickered down to a dying spark of nuts and raisins, and hardly had I cracked my first almond (was it an ill omen that there should be a worm in it?) when a steward handed me a twisted note from the executioner. "The rule for conductor's dinner speech is, rise with the raisins! Hope you won't find your lecture too hard a nut to crack. Yours sympathetically, Corkran. Bang on the table to make them stop gabbling. ”

“ How I mourn for the departed petits soupers of Paris!... and how far are her pompous dinners from being able to atone for their loss! For those people, and I am afraid there are many of them, who really and literally live to eat, I know that the word "dinner" is the signal and symbol of earth's best, and, perhaps, only bliss. For them the steaming vapour, the tedious long array, the slow and solemn progress of a dîner de quatre services, offers nothing but joy and gladness; but what is it to those who only eat to live? ”

“ Le diner étant de chaque jour, de chaque saison, de chaque siècle, est non seulement la seule mode héréditaire, mais aussi l’âme de la sociabilité; lisez l’histoire, et vous y verrez que de tous les temps, et chez tous les peuples, le bien qui s’est fait, et quelquefois le mal, fut toujours précédé ou suivi d’un copieux diner. ”

“ We have to dine—for man must dine, if possible, once a day—and to Paris we turn for its cooks and cookery. It is there that the art of dining is carried to perfection. ‘Unquiet meals make ill digestions.’ There is no fear of that as I sit down to my well-prepared repast at the handsome buffet attached to the French Northern Railway, and yet there my troubles begin. As a barbarous Englander, I ask why in Paris, the centre, as it deems itself, of civilization and refinement, I am compelled to help myself to salt by putting my knife into the saltcellar. ”

“ After a late dinner, at which their appetites were pretty effectually taken away by seeing dishes of snails passed round and eaten like nuts, with large pins to pick out the squirming meat; a night's rest somewhat disturbed by the incessant clatter of sabots in the market-place, and a breakfast rendered merry by being served by a garçon whom Dickens would have immortalised, our travellers went on to Caulnes-Dinan. ”

“ When I give my orders, whether for dinner or for anything else, they are not to be improved upon."
"My lady, in regard to adding to the dinner yesterday, I did it for the best; not to act in opposition to you," replied Sinnett, respectfully. "A good dinner has to be sent in always: those are the general orders. The young gentlemen are so much in the habit of bringing in chance guests, that the contingency has to be provided for. ”

“ The "rational" part is the menu. We are allowed a soup, one roast, one vegetable and dessert, and two wines, one of which, according to the regulations, must be good. We do not even need so much, for there is more laughing than eating. A stuffed goose from the Smithsonian Institution serves as a milieu de table, and is sent, on the day of the dinner, to the person who gives it.
We always have music. Schurz and Schlözer play the piano alternately, and I do the singing. I must say that a more appreciative audience than our co-diners cannot be imagined. ”

“ I occupied myself with my affairs till sunset, when the ass-driver came for me and I took fifty dinars in a handkerchief and rode to the house, where I found the marble floor swept, the brass burnished, the lamps filled and the candles lighted, the meats ready dished and the wines strained. When my mistress saw me, she threw her arms round my neck and exclaimed, ‘Thou hast desolated me by thine absence!’ Then they set the tables and we ate till we were satisfied, when the serving-maids took away the tray of food and set on wine. ”

“ Society's brightest widower is once more on the Freak Dinner stunt. All our exclusive citizens will recall the Perambulator Parade Dinner, in which Last-Trick Todd, at his palatial home at Pilgrim's Pond, caused so many of our prominent débutantes to look even younger than their years. ”

“ It requires judgment to take the right line. We need not attempt, in our everyday dinner, to realize Disraeli's ideal of dining: "eating ortolans to the sound of soft music." But we may try to make our dinner an enjoyment as well as a refreshment; and although our set banquets may be rare, taste and attention will impart to every meal something of the character of a feast. ”

“ Oh! happy consummation of those honours, which from the last evening seemed about to centre round your head, and raise you to the pinnacle of gastronomy and of ton. During the first moments of all dinners a very few monosyllables are uttered—a sort of murmuring conversation then ensues between the parties nearest each other,—till at last one individual more gifted or more hardy than the rest hazards a remark across the table, and the talking becomes general.
It was Lady Tilney who on the present occasion broke the monotony of those half-audible sounds that whispered round the table. ”

“ Palmer's reception of Lady Anne's note was forgotten, and it was not till they heard her bell ring violently, that Isabella recollected that she still held the important missive in her hand.
The next day was one of constant hurry and anxiety. In all places, and under all places and circumstances, (English places and circumstances) the dinner is the most important event—the epoch of the day, the first care of the morning, the last satisfaction of night. Modern history might be told by a succession of dinners; to-day, a dinner commemorates reform ”

“ Some call supper dinner, and others call dinner luncheon. First comes the prevailing mode instituted by fashionable society, and then a foolish subscription to it by a section of the community who are too poor to follow it, and too proud not to seem to do so. Formerly it was usual for the Great to dine and sup earlier than the Little; but now the rule is reversed, and the later a man dines the more distinguished he argues himself. We have multiplied our daily seasons of refreshment, and eat and drink far oftener than our ancestors ”

“ There are no restaurants where one can get a cheap and good dinner. When the editor of the “Times” said, during the Crimean war, that the French were “born cooks,” he could never have heard of Saumur. I wish he had had my goose for dinner, that’s all. I was tired of dining on melons, peaches, bread, and sour wine; and seeing an old woman under a tree at Pont Fouchard, with geese and half-geese and quarter-geese to sell, I desired Madame Bayot to buy me half a goose. ”

“ But if in France far too much attention has been paid to the culinary art, too little attention has surely been paid to it at home; for the art of cookery, properly understood, is not only the art of pleasing the palate, but the stomach also. [64] In France, the dinner is the thought of the morning, and sometimes the business of the day, but in France everybody dines; in England, where the word ‘dinner’ never occurs till it is announced, [29] a few wealthy men dine well, the middling ranks badly, and the poor not at all. ”

“ The dinner was excellent, and I paid it the encomiums which were its due.
"Do not be afraid, my dear fellow—my cook is an artiste extraordinaire—a regular Cordon Bleu. You may eat anything without fear of indigestion. How people can live upon the English cookery of the present day, I cannot conceive. I seldom dine out, for fear of being poisoned. Depend upon it, a good cook lengthens your days, and no price is too great to insure one." ”

“ The dinner looks at first glance to be an exceedingly long one, but it is also an exceedingly light one, the saddle of veal being the only substantial dish of the feast. The aiguillettes of duckling from one of the special dishes at the Ritz, and the soufflés and the mousses that come from the Ritz kitchens are always ethereal. This banquet is an excellent example of a feast which is important without being heavy. ”

“ If I had looked at the book in which the names of people ordering dinners are noted, I should no doubt have found that there were a dozen people among the well-dressed diners whose names are familiar in our mouths as household words.
The little ante-room, with its green and cream walls, its mirrors, its big fireplace, and its comfortable chairs, is cosy enough to have a soothing effect on a worse-tempered man than myself; and my patience was not much tried, for Sir George formally handed over Miss Brighteyes [Pg 241] to me not five minutes after the time at which I had ordered dinner. ”

“ True enjoyment, as well as true virtue, lies in the Golden Mean; and, as we round the corner where the eighteenth century meets the nineteenth, we begin to encounter a system of dining less profligately elaborate than the Tavern Dinner of 1751, and yet less poisonously crude than Dr. Johnson's Easter Dinner of 1773. The first Earl of Dudley (who died in 1833) disdained kickshaws, and, with manly simplicity, demanded only "a good soup, a small turbot, a neck of venison, ducklings with green peas (or chicken with asparagus) , and an apricot tart." ”

“ The luxury of Paris must have at least some effect in making gourmands of the young generation, even if their fathers did not set the example. The operation, or rather the solemn function, of breakfast or dinner, is with many Frenchmen the only serious act in life. When people can afford to order a dinner in exact accordance with the lofty standard of excellence meant by its being “good,” the diner approaches the great proceeding with a staid and watchful air, and we may well leave him now he is involved in such important service. ”

“ At three o'clock, dinner is served in a well-proportioned, well-lighted room, seventy feet long by thirty-one wide, occupied by two parallel tables, perfectly appointed, and provided with every delicacy of the season, well dressed and in great abundance,—the French cooking the best in the country,—this par parenthèse. Meantime, the attendance is very sufficient for a man not in a "devouring rage," and the wines of every kind really unexceptionable to any reasonable gourmet. ”

“ TWENTY or thirty years ago the late dinner was not nearly so popular as it is now. The majority of the people dined in the middle of the day, and not a few of them considered a six-o'clock dinner as an effort after fashion that was unworthy the imitation of sensible men and women. Even in large cities servants rebelled against an alteration of the time-honored custom of serving the principal meal of the day at or near noon, while in small towns the late dinner was so unusual that it was almost impossible to persuade domestics to consent to it. ”

“ She set the dish on, touched my guardian quietly on the arm with a finger to notify that dinner was ready, and vanished. We took our seats at the round table, and my guardian kept Drummle on one side of him, while Startop sat on the other. It was a noble dish of fish that the housekeeper had put on table, and we had a joint of equally choice mutton afterwards, and then an equally choice bird. Sauces, wines, all the accessories we wanted, and all of the best, were given out by our host from his dumb-waiter; and when they had made the circuit of the table, he always put them back again. ”

“ In moderate houses in Paris there is far less pretension than there is among us. For instance, an eminent lawyer, doctor, or publisher, will give you at a small friendly dinner of four or six, a good soup, a good fish plain or dressed, a good roti, and a couple of side dishes, all of which are excellent in their way, with a salmi of game and a couple of entremets quite perfect of their kind, and this at an expense of little [70] more than one half of what an English dinner costs. ”

“ The "dishes of the day" are always [Pg 9] excellent, and I have dined off a plate of soup, a pint of Bordeaux, and some slices of a gigot de sept heures—one of the greatest achievements of cookery—for a very few francs. I always find that I can dine amply, and on food that even a German doctor could not object to, for less than a louis. For instance, a dinner at the Anglais of half-a-dozen Ostende Oysters, Potage Laitues et Quenelles, Merlans Frits, Cuisse de Poularde de Rôtie, Salade Romaine, cheese, half a bottle of Graves 1^e Cru, and a bottle of St-Galmier costs 18 francs. ”