Delicatessen

“ In our neighbourhood there are, too, a vast number of "caterers" and "fruiterers," and, particularly, delicatessen shops. Delicatessen shops in our neighbourhood are described upon the windows as places dealing in "fancy and table luxuries." I have heard my wife say that many people "just live out of them." They are certainly handsome places. Why, you wouldn't think there was any food in them. Everything is so dressed up that it doesn't look at all as if it were to eat, it is so attractive. ”

“ Usually Toodles was sent foraging to the delicatessen shops for fresh rolls, cold meats and sandwiches, eggs, fruit, tomatoes, and bakery dainties, and the hotel filled our thermos-bottles with hot coffee. We carried salt and11 pepper, mustard, sweet and sour pickles, or a relish, orange marmalade, or a fruit jam, in the hamper, and beyond that we took no staple supplies on the whole trip. We met so many people who carried with them a whole grocery-store, even to sacks of flour, that you would imagine there was not a place to get food from the Atlantic to the Pacific. ”

“ Catering and house-keeping can be reduced to their simplest terms with a rôtisserie right around the corner, a pâtisserie on the next block, and a delicatessen shop in between. French and Vienna bakeries supply crisp rolls and bread of every shape, size, and flavor fresh every morning with the newspaper. ”

“ As the lunch places and delicatessen stores were sure to be crowded at those particular hours, either all the workmen would have to bring cans, or those that did not must wait half or three-quarters of an hour before they ate. ”

“ In many houses the butler arranges the luncheon, table with flowers or fruit, plates of thin bread-and butter, jellies, creams, cakes, and preserves, a dish of cold salmon mayonnaise, and decanters of sherry and claret. He places a cold ham or chicken on the sideboard, and a pitcher of ice-water on a side-table, and then leaves the dining-room, and takes no heed of the baser wants of humanity until dinner-time. An underman or footman takes the place of this lofty being, and waits at table. ”

“ It is upon variety that the French cook confidently relies to make each dish of each meal not just something to eat because her family must have food, not merely a sop to the Cerberus-gnawings of hunger, but a delight to the eye, to the palate, to the stomach—truly a consummation devoutly to be wished for the American home table, and just as possible to attain as it is possible to procure from the grocer or the nearest pharmacist the ingredients by which these wonders are wrought. ”

“ I lived most regularly and monotonously; rising at eight I partook of coffee made by my landlady, accompanied by tinned fruit for which I formed a great taste. Then I went out, getting my mid-day meal where I could, eggs and bacon at a farmhouse, or tough steak at the hotel, and sometimes not getting anything at all until I returned ravenously hungry to my lodging. On these occasions the little Frenchwoman showed herself equal to the extent of cooking a chicken or liver and bacon very creditably and then I would write and read in my own room till eleven. ”

“ Those who go into the country looking for summer board in farmhouses know perfectly well that a table where the butter is always fresh, the tea and coffee of the best kinds and well made, and the meats properly kept, dressed, and served, is the one table of a hundred, the fabulous enchanted island. It seems impossible to get the idea into the minds of people that what is called common food, carefully prepared, becomes, in virtue of that very care and attention, a delicacy, superseding the necessity of artificially compounded dainties. ”

“ The Street-sellers of Eatables and Drinkables,—including the vendors of fried fish, hot eels, pickled whelks, sheep’s trotters, ham sandwiches, peas’-soup, hot green peas, penny pies, plum “duff,” meat-puddings, baked potatoes, spice-cakes, muffins and crumpets, Chelsea buns, sweetmeats, brandy-balls, cough drops, and cat and dog’s meat—such constituting the principal eatables sold in the street; while under the head of street-drinkables may be specified tea and coffee, ginger-beer, lemonade, hot wine, new milk from the cow, asses milk, curds and whey, and occasionally water. ”

“ This was the first time Elizabeth or I had sat down to dinner in a kitchen. Much we should have cared had it been in the scullery, the barn, or the hen-house! There is no appetite like that which comes from physical toil!
Glorious greed was a delicious sauce—if any sauce had been needed—to the plentiful and savoury farm-house meal that was provided for us of boiled bacon, potatoes, greens, butter, bread, buttermilk, fruit tart, and cheese. ”

“ The men not for the time employed in tidying up or airing bedding, &c., can, if they choose, go into the industrial ward, where they can work at several occupations for their own profit, as they are only charged for cost of materials. Dinner is served in the several messes by the appointed messmen at one o'clock, and consists on Sundays of roast beef, vegetables, and plum-pudding, and on week-days of roast or boiled meat, soup, vegetables, with one day a week salt fish, onions, potatoes, and plain suet-pudding, and in summer an occasional salad. A pint of beer is allowed for each man. ”

“ To this day it is likely that a last auspicated volume still sits on its shelf with the spice jars in some English country kitchen and that a worn and toothless cook still thumbs its leaves. If the guests about the table be of an antique mind, still will they pledge one another with its honeyed drinks, still will they pipe and whistle of its virtues, still will they—
"EAT"—A flaring sign hangs above the sidewalk. By this time, in our noonday search for food, we have come into the thick of the restaurants. In the jungle of the city, here is the feeding place. ”

“ There seems to me, more mere animalism in wading through a long bill of fare, eating three or four indifferently cooked vegetables, fish, meat, poultry, each second-rate in quality, or made so by bad cooking, and declaring that you have dined well, and are easy to please, than there is in taking pains to have a perfectly broiled chop, a fine potato, and a salad, on which any true epicure could dine well, while on the former fare he would leave the table hungry. ”

“ There, men could dine, like gentlemen and Christians, upon all the friandises of the French kitchen, much cheaper and far more wholesomely than at their own tables upon the tough, half-sodden fibres of the national roast and boiled, or on the hazardous resources of hash, gravy soup, and marrow puddings. ”

“ Furthermore, it is economical. Unless one wants hot dishes, you can get more things, and more delicious things, in the village shops or along the way than you can find at the wayside hotel or restaurant, and for half the amount. Our luncheon that day—we ate it between Arles and Tarascon—consisted of tinned chicken, fresh bread with sweet butter, [Pg 42] Roquefort cheese, ripe grapes, and some French cakes—plenty, and all of the best, at a cost of about sixty cents for our party of four. ”

“ Men and women, and most especially boys, purchase their meals day after day in the streets. The coffee-stall supplies a warm breakfast; shell-fish of many kinds tempt to a luncheon; hot-eels or pea-soup, flanked by a potato “all hot,” serve for a dinner; and cakes and tarts, or nuts and oranges, with many varieties of pastry, confectionary, and fruit, woo to indulgence in a dessert; while for supper there is a sandwich, a meat pudding, or a “trotter.”
The street provisions consist of cooked or prepared victuals, which may be divided into solids, pastry, confectionary, and drinkables. ”

“ In formal serving, it is good taste not to have too many. A first course of grapefruit or perhaps oyster cocktail, a soup, a fish course, or some light substitute for it,—the main course with meat, a salad, dessert, coffee—make a quite sufficient meal. The “entrée” is a light dish, say sweetbreads in cases, after the fish course, but it is quite unnecessary. Many people are becoming very weary of the long-drawn-out dinners and banquets, which are certainly far from hygienic. ”

“ When I hear of an addition to the long list, I fly at once to the grocer to obtain one of the crisp packages, and [81] hurry home to deposit it with the cook for early experiment. The adventurous sense is roused not only by the seductive advertisement but by the neatness of the container, the ears of corn or the wheat sheaf so vividly depicted on the wrapper, or the contagious smile of a radiant child brandishing a spoon and demanding more.
Only a slouchy and unimaginative housewife will repeat monotonously a breakfast schedule. ”

“ Amid the richer classes there was rude profusion, great joints ever on the sideboard, huge pies, beasts of the field and beasts of the chase, with ale and rough French or Rhenish wines to wash them down. But the very rich had attained to a high pitch of luxury in their food, and cookery was a science in which the ornamentation of the dish was almost as important as the dressing of the food. ”

“ Those whose employers were in a small way of business, or allowed them insufficient salaries, frequently used to ‘box Harry,’ that is, have a beaf-steak, or mutton-chop, or perhaps bacon and eggs, as I am going to have, along with tea and ale, instead of the regular dinner of a commercial gentleman, namely, fish, hot joint, and fowl, pint of sherry, tart, ale and cheese, and bottle of old port, at the end of all. ”

“ Others ran in and out of the kitchen, bearing to the waiters, to be dispensed among the guests, interminable relays of the waffles of those times, golden brown, delicately rich, soft, yet crisp, of a peculiar lightness,—a kind that will be seen no more, despite the food inventions and dietetic improvements, for the artists of that choice cookery are all dead and their receipts only serve to mark the decadence of proficiency. ”

“ Liberal hearts and willing hands will devise many ways to subserve the cause. We earnestly solicit mechanics, merchants, and farmers, to lay something upon this table of humanity. Supplies of eggs, butter, cheese, cream, turkeys, hams, dried beef, pickles, and fruit, of every description, will be acceptable offerings for the refreshment table. We invite and strongly hope that the ladies of our neighbouring towns, will unite their efforts in furnishing tables, and take charge of them with us at the Fair. ”

“ All that French cookery could suggest to impart variety to the separate meals of breakfast, luncheon, dinner, and supper, here went forward unceasingly; and the beggars who thronged around the bars, and were fed with the crumbs from the rich man's table, became by degrees so habituated to the delicacies and refinements of good living, that they would have turned up their noses with contempt at the humble and more homely fare of the respectable shopkeeper. ”

“ The remains of cold joints, nicely garnished, a few sweets, or a little hashed meat, poultry or game, are the usual articles placed on the table for luncheon, with bread and cheese, biscuits, butter, &c. If a substantial meal is desired, rump-steaks or mutton chops may he served, as also veal cutlets, kidneys, or any dish of that kind. In families where there is a nursery, the mistress of the house often partakes of the meal with the children, and makes it her luncheon. ”

“ The fruiterers' shops not only make you hungry, but into some of them you may enter and find a quiet little room up-stairs, where the proprietor and his wife and daughter, in the genial French fashion, will serve you with a cosey little dinner with wine for three francs, in front of the family grate fire, and the privilege of ordering up anything you want from the shop-window below. ”

“ Quick gravy-makers, pudding- and cake-powders, tinned foods of every description all ready for consumption, custards, porridges, and jellies that require only a few minutes’ cooking, jams and preserves, and a multitude of other artificial aids to replace, though not to equal, the dishes of former days, now compose the normal contents of almost every working-class and middle-class market-bag. ”

“ If you hate dinners on the grass, and meals ill-served, if you feel a pleasure in seeing a damask cloth that is dazzlingly white, a silver-gilt dinner service, and porcelain of exquisite purity, lighted by transparent candles, where miracles of cookery are served under silver covers bearing coats of arms, you must, to be consistent, leave the garrets at the tops of the houses, and the grisettes in the streets, abandon garrets, grisettes, umbrellas, and overshoes to men who pay for their dinners with tickets ”

“ Gastronomy became the fashion of that day. Every one spoke on the subject; many wrote on it. Cookery passed from the kitchen to the shop, from the shop to the counting-house, from the counting-house to the studies of lawyers and physicians; thence to the salons and cabinets of ladies and statesmen. The object of life, according, at least, to our simple English notions, seemed reversed: people in England eat to live; in France, they appeared to live only to eat. ”

“ The penetrating odors of meat cookery which announce their presence by escape from the kitchen, and will pervade the air of other rooms in any private house but a large one, and which are encountered in clubs, restaurants, and hotels without stint, alone suffice to blunt the inclination for food of one who, returning from daily occupation, fatigued and fastidious, desires food easy of digestion, attractive in appearance, and unassociated with any element of a repulsive character. ”

“ For dinner, which is to be partaken of at fourteen reals, one has a soup, a fry, an entrée, a roast, a salad, two sweets or fruits, bread and wine. The entrées are usually rib of mutton, veal or a beefsteak, which sometimes makes you think there is something like leather. A hen, which is a luxury, rates at fourteen reals, but a tortilla of the hen's eggs is to be preferred. ”