Part 16

Our dinner-tables in America are generally long and narrow, fitted to the shape of the dining-room. Once I saw in England, in a great house, a table so narrow that one could almost have shaken hands with one's opposite neighbour. The ornaments were high, slender vases filled with grasses and orchids, far above our heads. One or two matchless ornaments of Dresden, the gifts of monarchs, alone ornamented the table. This was a very sociable dinner-table and rather pleasing. Then came the round table, so vast that the footmen must have mounted up on it to place the centre piece, like poor distraught Lady Caroline Lamb, whose husband came in to find her walking up and down the table, telling the butler to "produce pyramidal effects." There is also the fine broad parallelogram, suited to a baronial hall; and this is copied in our best country houses. As no conversation of a confidential character is ever allowed at an English table until all the servants have left the room, so it is not considered good-breeding to allow a servant to talk to the mistress or the young ladies of what she hears in the servants' hall. The gossip of couriers and maids at a foreign watering-place reaches American ears, and unluckily gets into American newspapers sometimes. It is a wise precaution on the part of the English never to listen to this. As we have conquered everything else in America, perhaps we shall conquer the servant question, to the advantage of both parties. We should try to keep our servants a longer time with us.

There are some houses where the law of change goes on forever, and there are some where the domestic machine runs without friction. The hostess may be a person with a talent for governing, and may be inspired with a sixth sense. If she is she can make her composite family respectful, helpful, and happy; but it must be confessed that it is as yet a vexed question, one which gives us trouble and will give us more. Those people are the happiest who can get on with three or four servants, and very many families live well and elegantly with this number, while more live well with two.

To mark the difference in feeling as between those who employ and those who serve, one little anecdote may apply. At a watering-place in Europe I once met an English family, of the middle class. The lady said to her maid, "Bromley, your master wishes you to be in at nine o'clock this evening."

Bromley said, "Yes, my lady."

An American lady stood near with her maid, who flushed deeply.

"What is the matter, Jane?" asked her lady.

"I never could stand having any one called my master," said the American.

This intimate nerve of self-love, this egotism, this false idea of independence affects women more than men, and in a country where both can go from the humblest position to the highest, it produces a "glistering grief." The difficulty of getting good servants prevents many families from keeping house. It brings on us the foreign reproach that we live in hotels and boarding-houses. It is at this moment the great unsolved American Question. What shall we do with it?

SOMETHING ABOUT COOKS.

"Last night I weighed, quite wearied out, The question that perplexes still; And that sad spirit we call doubt Made the good naught beside the ill.

"This morning, when with rested mind, I try again the selfsame theme, The whole is altered, and I find The balance turned, the good supreme."

What amateur cook has not had these moments of depression and exaltation as she has weighed the flour and sugar, stoned the raisins, and mixed the cake, or, even worse in her young novitiate, has attempted to make a soup and has begun with the formula which so often turns out badly:--

"Take a shin of beef and put it in a pot with three dozen carrots, a dozen onions, two dozen pieces of celery, twelve turnips, a fowl, and two partridges. It must simmer six hours, etc." Yes, and last week and the week before her husband said, "it was miserable." How willingly would she allow the claim of that glorious old coxcomb, Louis Eustache Ude, who had been cook to two French kings and never forgave the world for not permitting him to call himself an artist.

"Scrapers of catgut," he says, "call themselves artists, and fellows who jump like a kangaroo claim the title; yet the man who has under his sole direction the great feasts given by the nobility of England to the allied sovereigns, and who superintended the grand banquet at Crockford's on the occasion of the coronation of Victoria, was denied the title prodigally showered on singers, dancers, and comedians, whose only quality, not requiring the microscope to discern, is vanity."

Ude was the most eccentric of cooks. He was _maître d'hôtel_ to the Duke of York, who delighted in his anecdotes and mimicry. In his book, which he claims is the only work which gives due dignity to the great art, he says: "The chief fault in all great peoples' cooks is that they are too profuse in their preparations. Suppers are after all only ridiculous proofs of the extravagance and bad taste of the givers." He mentions great wastes which have seared his already seared conscience thus:

"I have known balls where the next day, in spite of the pillage of a pack of footmen, which was enormous, I have seen thirty hams, one hundred and fifty to two hundred carved fowls, and forty or fifty tongues given away. Jellies melt on all the tables; pastries, patties, aspics, and lobster salads are heaped up in the kitchen and strewed about in the passages; and all this an utter waste, for not even the footmen would eat this; they do not consider it a legitimate repast to dine off the remnants of a last night's feast. Footmen are like cats; they only like what they steal, but are indifferent to what is given them."

This was written by the cook of the bankrupt Duke of York, noted for his extravagance; but how well it would apply to-day to the banquet of many a _nouveau riche_, to how many a hotel, to how much of our American housekeeping. Ude was a poet and an enthusiast. Colonel Damer met him walking up and down at Crockford's in a great rage, and asked what was the matter. "Matter! _Ma foi!_" answered he; "you saw that man just gone out? Well he ordered red mullet for his dinner. I made him a delicious little sauce with my own hand. The mullet was marked on the carte two shillings. I added sixpence for the sauce. He refuses to pay sixpence for the sauce. The imbecile! He seems to think red mullets come out of the sea with my sauce in their pockets."

Carême, one of the greatest of French cooks, became eminent by inventing a sauce for fast-days. He then devoted several years to the science of roasting in all its branches. He studied design and elegance under Robert Lainé. His career was one of victory after victory. He nurtured the Emperor Alexander, kept alive Talleyrand through "that long disease, his life," fostered Lord Londonderry, and delighted the Princess Belgratine. A salary of a thousand pounds a year induced him to become _chef_ to the Regent; but he left Carlton House, he would return to France. The Regent was inconsolable, but Carême was implacable. "No," said the true patriot, "my soul is French, and I can only exist in France." Carême, therefore, overcome by his feelings, accepted an unprecedented salary from Baron Rothschild and settled in Paris.

Lady Morgan, dining at the Baron's villa in 1830, has left us a sketch of a dinner by Carême which is so well done that, although I have already alluded to it, I will copy _verbatim_: "It was a very sultry evening, but the Baron's dining-room stood apart from the house and was shaded by orange trees. In the oblong pavilion of Grecian marble refreshed by fountains, no gold or silver heated or dazzled the eye, but porcelain beyond the price of all precious metals. There was no high-spiced sauce in the dinner, no dark-brown gravy, no flavour of cayenne and allspice, no tincture of catsup and walnut pickle, no visible agency of those vulgar elements of cooking of the good old times, fire and water. Distillations of the most delicate viands had been extracted in silver, with chemical precision. Every meat presented its own aroma,"--it was not cooked in a gas stove,--"every vegetable its own shade of verdure. The mayonnaise was fixed in ice, like Ninon's description of Sevigné's heart, '_une citronille frité à la neige_.' The tempered chill of the _plombière_ which held the place of the eternal _fondus_ and _soufflets_ of our English tables, anticipated and broke the stronger shock of the exquisite avalanche, which, with the hue and odour of fresh-gathered nectarines, satisfied every sense and dissipated every coarser flavour. With less genius than went to the composition of that dinner, men have written epic poems."

Comparing Carême with the great Beauvilliers, the greatest restaurant cook in Paris from 1782 to 1815, a great authority in the matter says: "There was more _aplomb_ in the touch of Beauvilliers, more curious felicity in Carême's. Beauvilliers was great in an _entrée_, Carême sublime in an _entremet_; we should put Beauvilliers against the world for a _rôti_, but should wish Carême to prepare the sauce were we under the necessity of eating an elephant or our great grandfather."

Vatel was the great Condé's cook who killed himself because the turbot did not arrive. Madame de Sevigné relates the event with her usual clearness. Louis XIV. had long promised a visit to the great Condé at Chantilly, the very estate which the Duc d'Aumale has so recently given back to France, but postponed it from time to time fearing to cause Condé trouble by the sudden influx of a gay and numerous retinue. The old château had become a trifle dull and a trifle mouldy, but it got itself brushed up. Vatel was cook, and his first mortification was that the roast was wanting at several tables. It seemed to him that his great master the captain would be dishonoured, but the king had brought a larger retinue than he had promised. "He had thought of nothing but to make this visit a great success." Gourville, one of the prince's household, finding Vatel so excited, asked the prince to reassure him, which he did very kindly, telling him that the king was delighted with his supper. But Vatel mournfully answered: "Monseigneur, your kindness overpowers me, but the roast was wanting at two tables." The next morning he arose at five to superintend the king's dinner. The purveyor of fish was at the door with only two baskets. "And is this all?" asked Vatel. "Yes," said the sleepy man. Vatel waited at the gates an hour; no more fish. Two or three hundred guests, and only two packages. He whispered to himself, "The joke in Paris will be that Vatel tried to save the prince the price of two red mullets a month." His hand fell on his rapier hilt, he rushed up-stairs, fell on the blade; as he expired the cart loaded with turbot came into the yard. Voila!

Times have changed. Cooks now prefer living on their masters to dying for them.

The Prince de Loubise, inventor of a sauce the discovery of which has made him more glorious than twenty victories, asked his cook to draw him up a bill of fare, a sort of rough estimate for a supper. Bertrand's first estimate was fifty hams. "What, Bertrand! Are you going to feast the whole army of the Rhine? Your brains are surely turning." Bertrand was blandly contemptuous. "My brains are surely turning? No, Monseigneur, only one ham will appear on the table, but the rest are indispensable for my _espagnoles_, my garnishing."

"Bertrand, you are plundering me," stormed the prince. "This article shall not pass." The blood of the cook was up. "My lord," said he, sternly, "you do not understand the resources of our art. Give the word and I will so melt down these hams that they will go into a little glass bottle no bigger than my thumb." The prince was abashed by the genius of the spit, and the fifty hams were purchased.

The Duke of Wellington liked a good dinner, and employed an artist named Felix. Lord Seaforth, finding Felix too expensive, allowed him to go to the Iron Duke, but Felix came back with tears in his eyes.

"What is the matter," said Lord Seaforth; "has the Duke turned rusty?"

"No, no, my lord! but I serve him a dinner which would make Francatelli or Ude die of envy, and he say nothing. I go to the country and leave him to try a dinner cooked by a stupid, dirty cook-maid, and he say nothing; that is what hurt my feelings."

Felix lived on approbation; he would have been capable of dying like Vatel.

Going last winter to see _le Bourgeoise Gentilhomme_ at the Comédie Française, I was struck with the novelty of the dinner served by this hero of Molière's who is so anxious to get rid of his money. All the dishes were brought in by little fellows dressed as cooks, who danced to the minuet.

In a later faithful chronicle I learn that a certain marquis of the days of Louis XVI. invented a musical spit which caused all the snowy-garbed cooks to move in rhythmical steps. All was melody and order. "The fish simmered in six-eight time, the ponderous roasts circled gravely, the stews blended their essences to solemn anthems. The ears were gratified as the nose was regaled; this was an idea worthy of Apecius."

So Molière, true to the spirit of his time, paid this compliment to the Marquis.

Béchamel was cook to Louis XIV., and invented a famous sauce.

Durand, who was cook to the great Napoleon, has left a curious record of his tempestuous eating. Francatelli succeeded Ude in England, was the _chef_ at Chesterfield House, at Lord Kinnaird's, and at the Melton Club. He held the post of _maître d'hôtel_ for a while but was dismissed by a cabal.

The gay writer from whose pages we have gathered these desultory facts winds up with an advice to all who keep French cooks. "Make your _chef_ your friend. Take care of him. Watch over the health of this man of genius. Send for the physician when he is ill."

Imagine the descent from these poets to the good plain cook,--you can depend upon the truth of this description,--with a six weeks' reference from her last place. Imagine the greasy soups, the mutton cutlets hard as a board, the few hard green peas, the soggy potatoes. How awful the recollections of one who came in "a week on trial!" Whose trial? Those who had to eat her food. It is bad to be without a cook, but ten times worse to have a bad one.

But if Louis Eustache Ude, the cook _par excellence_ of all this little study, lamented over the waste in great kitchens, how much more should he revolt at that wholesale destruction of food which might go to feed the hungry, nourish and sustain the sick, and perhaps save many a child's life. What should be done with the broken meats of a great household? The cook is too apt to toss all into a tub or basket, to swell her own iniquitous profits. The half-tongues, ends of ham, roast beef, chicken-legs, the real honest relics of a generous kitchen would feed four or five poor families a week. What gifts of mercy to hospitals would be the half of a form of jelly, the pudding, the blanc mange, which are thrown away by the careless!

In France the Little Sisters of the Poor go about with clean dishes and clean baskets, to collect these morsels which fall from the rich man's table. It is a worthy custom.

While studying the names of these great men like Ude and Carême, Vatel and Francatelli, what shades of dead _pâtissiers_, spirits of extinct _confiseurs_, rise around us in savoury streams and revive for us the past of gastronomic pleasure! Many a Frenchman will tell you of the iced meringues of the Palais Royal and the _salades de fraises au marasquin_ of the Grand Seize as if they were things of the past. The French, gayer and lighter handed at the moulding of pastry, are apt to exceed all nations in this delicate, delicious _entremet_. The _vol au vent de volaille_, or chicken pie, with its delicate filling of chicken, mushroom, truffles, and its enveloping pastry, is never better than at the Grand Hôtel at Aix les Bains, where one finds the perfection of good eating. "Aix les Bains," says a resident physician, "lies half-way between Paris and Rome, with its famous curative baths to correct the good dinners of the one, and the good wines of the other." Aix adds a temptation of its own.

The French have ever been fond of the playthings of the kitchen,--the tarts, custards, the frothy nothings which are fashioned out of the evanescent union of whipped cream and spun sugar. Their politeness, their brag, their accomplishments, their love of the external, all lead to such dainties. It was observed even so long ago as 1815, when the allies were in Paris, that the fifteen thousand _pâtés_ which Madame Felix sold daily in the _Passage des Panoramas_ were beginning to affect the foreign bayonets; and no doubt the German invasion may have been checked by the same dulcet influence.

There is romance and history even about pastry. The _baba_, a species of savoury biscuit coloured with saffron, was introduced into France by Stanislaus, the first king of Poland, when that unlucky country was alternately the scourge and the victim of Russia. The dish was perhaps oriental in origin. It is made with _brioche_ paste, mixed with madeira, currants, raisins, and potted cream.

French jellies are rather monotonous as to flavour, but they look very handsome on a supper-table. A _macédoine_ is a delicious variety of dainty, and worthy of the French nation. It is wine jelly frozen in a mould with grapes, strawberries, green-gages, cherries, apricots, or pineapple, or more economically with slices of pears and apples boiled in syrup coloured with carmine, saffron, or cochineal, the flavour aided by angelica or brandied cherries. An invention of Ude and one which we could copy here is jelly _au miroton de pêche_:--

Get half a dozen peaches, peel them carefully and boil them, with their kernels, a short time in a fine syrup, squeeze six lemons into it, and pass it through a bag. Add some clarified isinglass and put some of it into a mould in ice; then fill up with the jelly and peaches alternately and freeze it.

Fruit cheeses are very pleasant, rich conserves for dessert. They can be made with apricots, strawberries, pineapple, peaches, or gooseberries. The fruit is powdered with sugar and rubbed through a colander; then melted isinglass and thick cream is added, whipped over ice and put into the mould.

The French prepare the most ornamental ices, both water and cream, but they do not equal in richness or flavour those made in New York.

Pancakes and fritters, although English dishes, are very popular in France and very good. Apple fritters with sherry wine and sugar are very comforting things. The French name is _beignet de pomme_. Thackeray immortalizes them thus:--

"Mid fritters and lollypops though we may roam, On the whole there is nothing like _beignet de pomme_. Of flour half a pound with a glass of milk share, A half-pound of butter the mixture will bear. _Pomme! Pomme! Beignet de pomme!_ Of _beignets_ there's none like the _beignet de pomme_!

"A _beignet de pomme_ you may work at in vain If you stir not the mixture again and again. Some beer just to thin it may into it fall, Stir up that with three whites of eggs added to all. _Pomme! Pomme! Beignet de pomme!_ Of _beignets_ there's nothing like _beignet de pomme_!

"Six apples when peeled you must carefully slice, And cut out the cores if you'll take my advice; Then dip them in butter and fry till they foam, And you'll have in six minutes your _beignet de pomme_. _Pomme! Pomme! Beignet de pomme!_ Of _beignets_ there's nothing like _beignet de pomme_!"

In the _Almanach de Gourmands_ there appeared a philosophical treatise on pastry and pastry cooks, probably by the learned Giedeaud de la Reynière himself. Pastry, he says, is to cooking what rhetorical metaphors are to oratory,--life and ornament. A speech without metaphors, a dinner without pastry, are alike insipid; but, in like manner, as few people are eloquent, so few can make perfect pastry. Good pastry-cooks are as rare as good orators.

This writer recommends the art of the rolling-pin to beautiful women as being at once an occupation, a pleasure, and a sure way of recovering embonpoint and freshness. He says: "This is an art which will chase _ennui_ from the saddest. It offers varied amusement and sweet and salutary exercise for the whole body; it restores appetite, strength, and gayety; it gathers around us friends; it tends to advance an art known from the most remote antiquity. Woman! lovely and charming woman, leave the sofas where _ennui_ and hypochondria prey upon the springtime of your life, unite in the varied moulds sugar, jasmine, and roses, and form those delicacies that will be more precious than gold when made by hands so dear to us." What woman could refuse to make a pudding and any number of pies after that?

There seems to be nothing left to eat after all this perilous sweet stuff but a devilled biscuit at ten o'clock.

"'A well devilled biscuit!' said Jenkins, enchanted, 'I'll have after dinner,--the thought is divine!' The biscuit was brought and he now only wanted, To fully enjoy it, a glass of good wine. He flew to the pepper and sat down before it, And at peppering the well-buttered biscuit he went; Then some cheese in a paste mixed with mustard spread o'er it, And down to the kitchen the devil was sent.

"'Oh, how!' said the cook, 'can I thus think of grilling? When common the pepper, the whole will be flat; But here's the cayenne, if my master be willing I'll make if he pleases a devil with that.' So the footman ran up with the cook's observation To Jenkins, who gave him a terrible look; 'Oh, go to the devil!'--forgetting his station-- Was the answer that Jenkins sent down to the cook."

A slice of _pâté de foie gras_, olives stuffed with anchovy, broiled bones, anchovy on toast, Welsh rarebit, devilled biscuit, devilled turkey-legs, devilled kidneys, _caviare_, devilled crabs, soft-shell crabs, shrimp salad, sardines on toast, broiled sausages, etc., are amongst the many appetizers which _gourmets_ seek at ten or twelve o'clock, to take the taste of the sweets out of their mouths, and to prepare the pampered palate perhaps for punch, whiskey, or brandy and soda.

THE FURNISHING OF A COUNTRY HOUSE.

The hostess should, in furnishing her house, provide a number of bath-tubs. The tin ones, shaped like a hat, are very convenient, as are also india-rubber portable baths. If there is not a bath-room belonging to every room, this will enable an Englishman to take his tub as cold as he pleases, or allow the American to take the warmer sponge bath which Americans generally prefer.