Gourmet

“ To snatch from his daily toil a few moments, here and there, in order to arrange with some degree of symmetry, not the delicacies that would awaken the jaded appetite of the gourmet, but to prepare an ensemble that might, with equal grace, adorn the home table or banquet board, has proven a task of no mean proportions. ”

“ Every appetite, every variety of whim, the cravings of the gourmet and the dreams of the sybarite, may be gratified to the utmost. A spendthrift might spend a handsome patrimony within these limits, nor, at the end of his time, would he call to mind a taste he had not been able to gratify. ”

“ GOURMET, a French term for one who takes a refined and critical, or even merely theoretical pleasure in good cooking and the delights of the table. The word has not the disparaging sense attached to the Fr. gourmand, to whom the practical pleasure of good eating is the chief end. ”

“ The love of good cheer in France has all the characters of vulgarity and refinement. In former times gourmand meant a judge of eating, and gourmet a judge of wine. We find those interpretations still in the dictionaries, even in Littré and Lafaye, but custom has given the words a new significance. Gourmet is now universally understood to refer to eating and not to drinking. Gourmand has acquired a lower sense between gourmet and glouton. The gourmand of the present day is a passionate lover of good eating, who gives it inordinate attention, and usually eats more than is good for him. ”

“ A gourmet with social and convivial tastes, possessed of much good sense, with 'no small fund of useful and various knowledge, heightened by many strokes of art,' he enjoyed greater popularity than most of his predecessors and successors in his difficult office. ”

“ The gourmet of to-day is too complex in his tastes, mixing many flavours and so losing the true significance of each, and it is therefore of the highest importance to avoid giving any one person two differently flavoured slices of the same joint. ”

“ I shall ever be grateful to Colonel Halliwell, who, by the bye, is a very distinguished artist and a discriminating epicure. Excuse the remark, dear reader, but a man, as I have already remarked in my Regenerator, may be either a gourmet or a gourmand, but never both: “car le gourmand n’est jamais gourmet; l’un mange sans déguster, l’autre déguste en mangeant.” The gourmet is the Epicurean dilettante, who eats scientifically and with all his organs—ears, of course, included. ”

“ This reasoning is very just, for none but the most thankless of gourmands, or the gourmet who wished to affect the sorrows of the great man of antiquity,—would sit down and weep for new worlds of luxury. Good cookery is too rarely understood and practised to justify any such wishes ”

“ He enjoys with discrimination, and is above the vulgarity of estimating the quality of dishes by their elaboration or their costliness. He values the commonest things, if they are good of their own kind; he will praise [Pg 241] well-baked bread or pure water. He is entirely on the side of temperance. A French gourmet once said to me, “I am excessively fond of oysters, but never exceed one dozen, being convinced that after the first dozen the palate has become incapable of fully appreciating the flavour.” A real gourmet preserves his palate in the healthiest and most natural condition. ”

“ Many people will say that it is unbecoming for women to be gourmands; we agree with them, and that it is equally unbecoming for men to be so. But to be a gourmet is another thing; and we ought not to lose sight of the fact that food eaten with real enjoyment and the satisfaction which accompanies a [111] well-prepared meal, is greatly enhanced in value. ”

“ The eating of satisfactory food and the drinking of sound wine are not the only dining pleasures that make glad the heart of an epicure, and to be amongst people who are enjoying themselves thoroughly is a delight that cannot be written down on a menu or contained between the covers of a wine list. ”

“ The palate alone can relish the charm of degustation, and only feels satiated when the stomach, being the working organ, refuses to deal with improper food, never failing to acquaint you physically of its ill treatment, both as regards ill-cooked food or bad beverages. Now, to illustrate this argument more forcibly, I would wager that I could give a first-class indigestion to the greatest gourmet, even while using the most recherché provisions, without his being able to detect any fault in the preparation of the dishes of which he had partaken ”

“ Lord M.—The greatest wit lacks eloquence, if he neglect too much the nature of his repast.
S.—Which proves, my Lord, that our most agreeable sensations depend, not solely on nature, but on the care we take of ourselves.
Lord M.—Yes, the more sensitive the soul, the greater the power of degustation. The degustative sensations operate with as great activity on the palate as the charm of melody acts on the ear; for example, man in a state of madness feels the want of eating, but the enchanting pleasure of degustation is as much denied to him as that of reason. ”

“ Still, there is no question but that the American palate would benefit much by being cultivated, not only in the interests of economy, but also with a view to the increase of gastronomic pleasure, for a taste attuned to many variations is as an ear sensitive to the nuances of sweet sounds or an eye trained to perceive delicate tones and tints. It is really a matter for regret 7–8that we, as a people, have not been as willing to learn from the French the art of cooking and eating as we have been to acquire from them knowledge of the art of dress. ”

“ The mere sight of the food our twelve-pound-a-year cook put upon the table would take away her appetite. Love does not change the palate, give you a taste for cheap claret when you have been accustomed to dry champagne. We have bodies to think of as well as souls ”

“ All dishes must be beautifully prepared and disposed to woo and win the sense of sight; the assembled articles must give off odors harmoniously blended to delight and cultivate the sense of smell; and each substance must balance with every other in point of flavor, to meet the natural demands of taste; otherwise the entertainment is shorn of its virtue to bless and tranquillize the soul! . . . .
"But lo, the fanatic in eating appears! Miserably hot with gluttonous debauchery. He has feasted upon a thousand deaths! ”

“ It is you that are the materialist, not I, for the reason that the familiarity of the process of eating blinds you to its essentially mysterious nature; that process of transmutation of gastronomic alchemy, by which food is changed into genius and beauty, and the kitchen seen to be the power-house of the soul. ”

“ We deliberately surrender the enjoyment of the luxury of good cooking because we most stupidly mix up eating with talking, and lose the subtle and fine flavours of our best dishes because we consider ourselves obliged to converse with somebody on our right or our left whilst we eat them. We neutralise the exquisite odours of our finest flowers by the scent of wines and smoking dishes. We spoil our masterpieces of art by putting them together pell-mell in our rooms, smothered under a discordant mingling of different objects and various styles. ”

“ But to rise above the unimportant consideration of mere life, which is held in our land at its true value, and regarding cookery from a loftier point of view, is there not something noble in the art that moulds together the various subjects of taste, and builds up an exquisite, soul-thrilling composition? ”

“ But the modern cuisine is a perfect system of chemistry. The science of the cook consists in decomposing, in rendering easy of digestion, in quintessencing (so to speak) the viands, in extracting from them light and nourishing juices, and in so mixing them together, that no one flavour shall predominate, but that all shall be harmonised and blended. This is the high aim and great effort of art. The harmony which strikes the eye in a picture should in a sauce cause in the palate as agreeable a sensation.” There is nothing new under the sun. ”

“ Three things are required to give an enjoyable dinner party; good taste, good judgment and an intuitive sense of harmony. Good taste suggests the proper thing in table dressing, in menu cards, in viands and beverages. Good judgment dictates the fortunate time, the appropriate guests, the seasonable dishes and topics; and last, a sense of harmony is the quality that throws a glamour over all, combining pleasant parts in one symmetrical whole, making a picture "distinct like the billows, but one like the sea." ”

“ Deprived of the illusive accompaniments of the lights, the sparkling eyes, the tinkling glasses, and the indulgent good-nature engendered by an excellent dinner, good wines, and an ample dessert, these table libertinages, when read nearly a century afterwards, lose all their piquancy of flavor and become simply nauseous. ”

“ I burned with passion for this charming girl; but would I have done so in her taste for literature and science had not been backed up by her personal charms? I suspect not. I like a dish pleasing to the palate, but if it is not pleasing to the eye as well, I do not taste it but put down as bad. The surface is always the first to interest, close examination comes afterwards. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the desire expressed is half aspiration and half appetite, and the dainty rises into ideal beauty under this dear little aspirant's gaze, and is seen in a light quite other than that which falls on a gourmand's table, after he is gorged with viands and wine, and ends his gross banquet with a dessert of fruit which his stupid and uncertain eye can hardly distinguish. ”

“ It is obvious that opportunity has dominated its history, for the art of cookery is to some extent the product of an increased refinement of taste, consequent on culture and increase of wealth. To this extent it is a decadent art, ministering to the luxury of man, and to his progressive inclination to be pampered and have his appetite tickled. ”

“ It is true indeed that this taste is generally of such excellent flavor that it exceeds the power of French cookery to treat the palates of the rich with anything more exquisitely delicate; so that was fish the common food of the poor it might put them too much upon an equality with their betters in the great article of eating, in which, at present, in the opinion of some, the great difference in happiness between man and man consists. ”

“ The harmonious blending of tastes, odors, colors, and the like is an art. Just as there are pleasing combinations of sound, so there are harmonies of flavor; certain dishes seem naturally to “go together.” Habit has a great deal to do with food combinations. A Chinaman would not eat sugar on rice; a Japanese would not cook beans with molasses as the Bostonian does. It is interesting to experiment with new combinations, and study to find out why old ones are pleasing. Why do we like crackers with soup? Butter on bread? Toast with eggs? Peas with lamb chops? ”

“ I think cooking should be considered one of the fine arts—and the woman who prepares a dainty, appetizing dish of food, which appeals to the sense of taste, should be considered as worthy of praise as the artist who paints a fine picture to gratify our sense of sight. ”

“ So in all grades are there various matters of taste which become extravagance if rushed into by persons unbreeched for the occasion. Luckily for the present day, the tastes of the gourmand and epicure are merged in more manly sports; the great class of Corinthian aristocrats cull sweets from the blackened eyes of policemen—raptures from wrenched-off knockers—merriment in contusions—and frantic delight in fractured limbs! ”

“ Lord M.—It is that which has always made me say that a good cook is as useful as a good tutor.
S.—I have always perceived, my Lord, that the finest palate is the most difficult to please, but also the most just in praise.
Lord M.—The choice of wines is of great importance in the progress of a dinner: a fine wine, light and generous, protects the cook and becomes the benefactor of the guest. ”

“ You become acutely aware of the natural taste of the plants ripening in the fields outside at that very moment. But to enjoy this cuisine you must sharpen your senses; no flavor is allowed to be dominant, no spice overwhelming. You must reach out with your sensibilities and attune yourself to the world around you. ”

“ But this is precisely what has occurred in the efforts to define art. Now, if we consider the food question, it will not occur to anyone to affirm that the importance of food consists in the pleasure we receive when eating it. Everyone understands that the satisfaction of our taste cannot serve as a basis for our definition of the merits of food, and that we have therefore no right to presuppose that the dinners with cayenne pepper, Limburg cheese, alcohol, etc., to which we are accustomed and which please us, form the very best human food. ”

“ He ate and drank with the deliberation and relish of a man who, without being exactly a gourmand, nevertheless counted the art of dining among the fine arts, and prided himself on being something of a connoisseur. ”

“ Is not the spirit of the wholesome breeze, fresh from the mountain, and perfumed with wild flowers, infinitely more invigorating to the senses than the air of the crowded drawing-room, loaded with scented powder and essences? Did we relish so well the disguised dishes with which a French cook strove to whet our sickly appetites, as we do our draught of new milk, our homemade loaf, and the other articles of our simple fare? ”