CAKES AND ALE

CAKES & ALE

A DISSERTATION ON BANQUETS

INTERSPERSED WITH VARIOUS RECIPES,
MORE OR LESS ORIGINAL, AND
ANECDOTES, MAINLY VERACIOUS

BY

EDWARD SPENCER

(‘NATHANIEL GUBBINS’)
AUTHOR OF “THE FLOWING BOWL,” ETC.

FOURTH EDITION

STANLEY PAUL & CO.
31, Essex Street, Strand, W.C.

First printed April 1897
Reprinted May 1897
Cheap Edition February 1900
Reprinted 1913

TO THE MODERN LUCULLUS
JOHN CORLETT
GRANDEST OF HOSTS, BEST OF TRENCHER-MEN

I DEDICATE

(WITHOUT ANY SORT OF PERMISSION)
THIS BOOK

[PREFACE]

A long time ago, an estimable lady fell at the feet of an habitual publisher, and prayed unto him:—

“Give, oh! give me the subject of a book for which the world has a need, and I will write it for you.”

“Are you an author, madam?” asked the publisher, motioning his visitor to a seat.

“No, sir,” was the proud reply, “I am a poet.”

“Ah!” said the great man. “I am afraid there is no immediate worldly need of a poet. If you could only write a good cookery book, now!”

The story goes on to relate how the poetess, not rebuffed in the least, started on the requisite culinary work, directly she got home; pawned her jewels to purchase postage stamps, and wrote far and wide for recipes, which in course of time she obtained, by the hundredweight. Other recipes she “conveyed” from ancient works of gastronomy, and in a year or two the magnum opus was given to the world; the lady’s share in the profits giving her “adequate provision for the remainder of her life.” We are not told, but it is presumable, that the publisher received a little adequate provision too.

History occasionally repeats itself; and the history of the present work begins in very much the same way. Whether it will finish in an equally satisfactory manner is problematical. I do not possess much of the divine afflatus myself; but there has ever lurked within me some sort of ambition to write a book—something held together by “tree calf,” “half morocco,” or “boards”; something that might find its way into the hearts and homes of an enlightened public; something which will give some of my young friends ample opportunity for criticism. In the exercise of my profession I have written leagues of descriptive “copy”—mostly lies and racing selections,—but up to now there has been no urgent demand for a book of any sort from this pen. For years my ambition has remained ungratified. Publishers—as a rule, the most faint-hearted and least speculative of mankind—have held aloof. And whatever suggestions I might make were rejected, with determination, if not with contumely.

At length came the hour, and the man; the introduction to a publisher with an eye for budding and hitherto misdirected talent.

“Do you care, sir,” I inquired at the outset, “to undertake the dissemination of a bulky work on Political Economy?”

“Frankly, sir, I do not,” was the reply. Then I tried him with various subjects—social reform, the drama, bimetallism, the ethics of starting prices, the advantages of motor cars in African warfare, natural history, the martyrdom of Ananias, practical horticulture, military law, and dogs; until he took down an old duck-gun from a peg over the mantelpiece, and assumed a threatening attitude.

Peace having been restored, the self-repetition of history recommenced.

“I can do with a good, bold, brilliant, lightly treated, exhaustive work on Gastronomy,” said the publisher, “you are well acquainted with the subject, I believe?”

“I’m a bit of a parlour cook, if that’s what you mean,” was my humble reply. “At a salad, a grill, an anchovy toast, or a cooling and cunningly compounded cup, I can be underwritten at ordinary rates. But I could no more cook a haunch of venison, or even boil a rabbit, or make an economical Christmas pudding, than I could sail a boat in a nor’-easter; and Madam Cook would certainly eject me from her kitchen, with a clout attached to the hem of my dinner jacket, inside five minutes.”

Eventually it was decided that I should commence this book.

“What I want,” said the publisher, “is a series of essays on food, a few anecdotes of stirring adventure—you have a fine flow of imagination, I understand—and a few useful, but uncommon recipes. But plenty of plums in the book, my dear sir, plenty of plums.”

“But, suppose my own supply of plums should not hold out, what am I to do?”

“What do you do—what does the cook do, when the plums for her pudding run short? Get some more; the Museum, my dear sir, the great storehouse of national literature, is free to all whose character is above the normal standard. When your memory and imagination fail, try the British Museum. You know what is a mightier factor than both sword and pen? Precisely so. And remember that in replenishing your store from the works of those who have gone before, you are only following in their footsteps. I only bar Sydney Smith and Charles Lamb. Let me have the script by Christmas—d’you smoke?—mind the step—good morning.”

In this way, gentle reader, were the trenches dug, the saps laid for the attack of the great work. The bulk of it is original, and the adventures in which the writer has taken part are absolutely true. About some of the others I would not be so positive. Some of the recipes have previously figured in the pages of the Sporting Times, the Lady’s Pictorial, and the Man of the World, to the proprietors of which journals I hereby express my kindly thanks for permission to revive them. Many of the recipes are original; some are my own; others have been sent in by relatives, and friends of my youth; others have been adapted for modern requirements from works of great antiquity; whilst others again—I am nothing if not candid—have been “conveyed” from the works of more modern writers, who in their turn had borrowed them from the works of their ancestors. There is nothing new under the sun; and there are but few absolute novelties which are subjected to the heat of the kitchen fire.

If the style of the work be faulty, the reason—not the excuse—is that the style is innate, and not modelled upon anybody else’s style. The language I have endeavoured to make as plain, homely, and vigorous as is the food advocated. If the criticisms on foreign cookery should offend the talented chef, I have the satisfaction of knowing that, as I have forsworn his works, he will be unable to retaliate with poison. And if the criticisms on the modern English methods of preparing food should attract the attention of the home caterer, he may possibly be induced to give his steam-chest and his gas-range a rest, and put the roast beef of Old England on his table, occasionally; though I have only the very faintest hopes that he will do so. For the monster eating-houses and mammoth hotels of to-day are for the most part “run” by companies and syndicates; and the company within the dining-room suffer occasionally, in order that dividends may be possible after payment has been made for the elaborate, and wholly unnecessary, furniture, and decorations. Wholesome food is usually sufficient for the ordinary British appetite, without such surroundings as marble pillars, Etruscan vases, nude figures, gilding, and looking-glasses, which only serve to distract attention from the banquet. It is with many a sigh that I recall the good old-fashioned inn, where the guest really received a warm welcome. Nowadays, the warmest part of that welcome is usually the bill.

It is related of the wittiest man of the nineteenth century, my late friend Mr. Henry J. Byron, that, upon one occasion, whilst walking home with a brother dramatist, after the first performance of his comedy, which had failed to please the audience, Byron shed tears.

“How is this?” inquired his friend. “The failure of my play appears to affect you strangely.”

“I was only weeping,” was the reply, “because I was afraid you’d set to work, and write another.”

But there need be no tears shed on any page of this food book. For I am not going to “write another.”

[CONTENTS]

[CHAPTER I]

BREAKFAST

“The day breaks slow, but e’en must man break-fast.”

Formal or informal?—An eccentric old gentleman—The ancient Britons—Breakfast in the days of Good Queen Bess—A few tea statistics—“Garraway’s”—Something about coffee—Brandy for breakfast—The evolution of the staff of life—Free Trade—The cheap loaf, and no cash to buy it.

This is a very serious subject. The first meal of the day has exercised more influence over history than many people may be aware of. It is not easy to preserve an equal mind or keep a stiff upper lip upon an empty stomach; and indigestible food-stuffs have probably lost more battles than sore feet and bad ammunition. It is an incontestable fact that the great Napoleon lost the battles of Borodino and Leipsic through eating too fast.

When good digestion waits on appetite, great men are less liable to commit mistakes—and a mistake in a great man is a crime—than when dyspepsia has marked them for her own; and this rule applies to all men.

There should be no hurry or formality about breakfast. Your punctual host and hostess may be all very well from their own point of view; but black looks and sarcastic welcomings are an abomination to the guest who may have overslept himself or herself, and who fails to say, “Good-morning” just on the stroke of nine o’clock. Far be it from the author’s wish to decry the system of family prayers, although the spectacle of the full strength of the domestic company, from the stern-featured housekeeper, or the chief lady’s-maid (the housekeeper is frequently too grand, or too much cumbered with other duties to attend public worship), to the diminutive page-boy, standing all in a row, facing the cups and saucers, is occasionally more provocative of mirth than reverence. But too much law and order about fast-breaking is to be deplored.

“I’m not very punctual, I’m afraid, Sir John,” I once heard a very charming lady observe to her host, as she took her seat at the table, exactly ten minutes after the line of menials had filed out.

“On the contrary, Lady V——” returned the master of the house, with a cast-iron smile, “you are punctual in your unpunctuality; for you have missed prayers by the sixth part of one hour, every morning since you came.” Now what should be done to a host like that?

In the long ago I was favoured with the acquaintance of an elderly gentleman of property, a most estimable, though eccentric, man. And he invariably breakfasted with his hat on. It did not matter if ladies were present or not. Down he would sit, opposite the ham and eggs—or whatever dish it might chance to be—with a white hat, with mourning band attached, surmounting his fine head. We used to think the presence of the hat was owing to partial baldness; but, as he never wore it at luncheon or dinner, that idea was abandoned. In fact, he pleaded that the hat kept his thoughts in; and as after breakfast he was closeted with his steward, or agent, or stud-groom, or keeper, for several hours, he doubtless let loose some of those thoughts to one or the other. At all events we never saw him again till luncheon, unless there was any hunting or shooting to be done.

This same old gentleman once rehearsed his own funeral on the carriage drive outside, and stage-managed the solemn ceremony from his study window. An under-gardener pushed a wheelbarrow, containing a box of choice cuttings, to represent the body; and the butler posed as chief mourner. And when anybody went wrong, or the pall-bearers—six grooms—failed to keep in step, the master would throw up the window-sash, and roar—

“Begin again!”

But this is wandering from the subject. Let us try back.

Having made wide search amongst old and musty manuscripts, I can find no record of a bill-of-fare of the first meal of the ancient Britons. Our blue forefathers, in all probability, but seldom assisted at any such smart function as a wedding-breakfast, or even a hunting one; for the simple reason that it was a case with them of, “no hunt, no breakfast.” Unless one or other had killed the deer, or the wild-boar, or some other living thing to furnish the refection the feast was a Barmecide one, and much as we have heard of the strength and hardiness of our blue forefathers, many of them must have died of sheer starvation. For they had no weapons but clubs, and rough cut flints, with which to kill the beasts of the country—who were, however, occasionally lured into pitfalls; and as to fish, unless they “tickled” them, the denizens of the streams must have had an easy time of it. They had sheep, but these were valuable chiefly on account of their wool; as used to be the case in Australia, ere the tinned meat trade was established. Most of the fruits and vegetables which we enjoy to-day were introduced into Britain by the Romans. Snipe and woodcock and (in the north) grouse may have been bagged, as well as hares. But these poor savages knew not rabbits by sight, nor indeed, much of the feathered fowl which their more favoured descendants are in the habit of shooting, or otherwise destroying, for food. The ancient Britons knew not bacon and eggs, nor the toothsome kipper, nor yet the marmalade of Dundee. As for bread, it was not invented in any shape or form until much later; and its primitive state was a tough paste of flour, water, and (occasionally) milk—something like the “damper” of the Australian bush, or the unleavened chupati which the poorer classes in Hindustan put up with, after baking it, at the present day.

The hardy, independent Saxon, had a much better time of it, in the way of meat and drink. But with supper forming the chief meal of the day, his breakfast was a simple, though plentiful one, and consisted chiefly of venison pasty and the flesh of goats, washed down with ale, or mead.

“A free breakfast-table of Elizabeth’s time,” says an old authority, “or even during the more recent reign of Charles II., would contrast oddly with our modern morning meal. There were meats, hot and cold; beef and brawn, and boar’s head, the venison pasty, and the

Wardon Pie

of west country pears. There was hot bread, too, and sundry ‘cates’ which would now be strange to our eyes. But to wash down these substantial viands there was little save ale. The most delicate lady could procure no more suitable beverage than the blood of John Barleycorn. The most fretful invalid had to be content with a mug of small beer, stirred up with a sprig of rosemary. Wine, hippocras, and metheglin were potations for supper-time, not for breakfast, and beer reigned supreme. None but home productions figured on the board of our ancestors. Not for them were seas traversed, or tropical shores visited, as for us. Yemen and Ceylon, Assam and Cathay, Cuba and Peru, did not send daily tribute to their tables, and the very names of tea and coffee, of cocoa and chocolate, were to them unknown. The dethronement of ale, subsequent on the introduction of these eastern products, is one of the most marked events which have severed the social life of the present day from that of the past.”

With the exception of the Wardon pie and the “cates,” the above bill-of-fare would probably satisfy the cravings of the ordinary “Johnny” of to-day, who has heard the chimes at midnight, and would sooner face a charging tiger than drink tea or coffee with his first meal, which, alas! but too often consists of a hot-pickle sandwich and a “brandy and soda,” with not quite all the soda in. But just imagine the fine lady of to-day with a large tankard of Burton ale facing her at the breakfast-table.

Tea,

which is said to have been introduced into China by Djarma, a native of India, about A.D. 500, was not familiar in Europe until the end of the sixteenth century. And it was not until 1657, when Garraway opened a tea-house in Exchange Alley, that Londoners began tea-drinking as an experiment. In 1662 Pepys writes—

“Home, and there find my wife making of tea”—two years before, he called it “tee (a China drink)”—“a drink which Mr. Pelling the Pothicary tells her is good for her cold and defluxions.”

In 1740 the price of tea ranged from 7s. to 24s. per lb. In 1725, 370,323 lbs. were drunk in England, and in 1890, 194,008,000. In 1840 the duty was 2s. 2¼d. per lb.; in 1858 1s. 5d. per lb.; and in 1890 4d. per lb.

The seed of

The Coffee-Tree,

which, when roasted, ground, and mixed with water, and unmixed with horse-beans, dandelion-root, or road-scrapings, forms a most agreeable beverage to those who can digest it, was not known to the Greeks or Romans, but has been used in Abyssinia and along the north-east coast of Africa almost as long as those parts have been populated. Here, in merry England, where coffee was not introduced until the eighteenth century, it was at first used but sparingly, until it almost entirely took the place of chocolate, which was the favoured beverage of the duchesses and fine madams who minced and flirted, and plotted, during the reign of the Merry Monarch, fifty years or so before. The march of knowledge has taught the thrifty housewife of to-day to roast her own coffee, instead of purchasing it in that form from the retail shopkeeper, who, as a rule, under-roasts the berry, in order to “keep the weight in.” But do not blame him too freely, for he is occasionally a Poor Law Guardian, and has to “keep pace with the Stores.”

During the Georgian era, the hard-drinking epoch, breakfast far too often consisted chiefly of French brandy; and the first meal was, in consequence, not altogether a happy or wholesome one, nor conducive to the close study of serious subjects.

The history of

The Staff of Life[1]

would require a much larger volume than this, all to itself. That the evolution of bread-making has been very gradual admits of no denial; and as late as the Tudor and Stuart periods the art was still in its infancy. The quality of the bread consumed was a test of social standing. Thus, whilst the haut monde, the height of society, lords and dukes, with countesses and dames of high degree, were in the habit of consuming delicate manchets, made of the finest wheaten flour, of snowy purity, the middle classes had to content themselves with white loaves of inferior quality. To the journeyman and the ’prentice (who had to endure, with patience, the buffets of master and mistress) was meted out coarse but wholesome brown bread, made from an admixture of wheat and barley flour; whilst the agricultural labourer staved off starvation with loaves made from rye, occasionally mixed with red wheat or barley. The introduction of

Free Trade

—by no means an unmixed blessing—has changed all this; and the working-classes, with their wives and families, can, when out of the workhouse, in the intervals between “strikes,” enjoy the same quality of bread, that “cheap loaf” which appears on the table of the wicked squire and the all-devouring parson. In Yorkshire, at the present day, almost the worst thing that can be urged against a woman is that she “canna mak’ a bit o’ bread.”

“Just look,” wrote an enthusiastic Free Trader, a quarter of a century ago, “at the immense change that has latterly taken place in the food of the English peasantry. Rye bread and pease-pudding exchanged for wheaten loaves. A startling change, but not greatly different from what has occurred in France, where, with the abuses of the Bourbon rule, an end was put to the semi-starvation of French tillers of the soil. Black bread is now almost as much a rarity in France as on our side of the Channel; while barley in Wales, oats in Scotland, and the potato in Ireland, are no longer the food-staples that they were.”

I have no wish for anything of a contentious nature to appear in this volume; but may deliver, with regard to the above, the opinion that pease-pudding is by no means despicable fare, when associated with a boiled leg of pork; and I may add that too many of the English peasantry, nowadays, have been reduced, by this same Free Trade, to a diet of no bread at all, in place of wheaten, or any other loaves.

Wedding breakfasts, with the formal speeches, and cutting of the cake, have gone out of fashion, and the subject of the British breakfast of to-day demands a new chapter.

[CHAPTER II]

BREAKFAST (continued)

“Sit down and feed, and welcome to our table.”

Country-house life—An Englishwoman at her best—Guests’ comforts—What to eat at the first meal—A few choice recipes—A noble grill-sauce—The poor outcast—Appetising dishes—Hotel “worries”—The old regime and the new—“No cheques”; no soles, and “whitings is hoff”—A halibut steak—Skilly and oakum—Breakfast out of the rates.

By far the pleasantest meal of the day at a large country-house is breakfast. You will be staying there, most likely, an you be a man, for hunting or shooting—it being one of the eccentric dispensations of the great goddess Fashion that country-houses should be guestless, and often ownerless, during that season of the year when nature looks at her loveliest. An you be a woman, you will be staying there for the especial benefit of your daughter; for flirting—or for the more serious purpose of riveting the fetters of the fervid youth who may have been taken captive during the London season—for romping, and probably shooting and hunting, too; for lovely woman up-to-date takes but little account of such frivolities as Berlin wool-work, piano-practice, or drives, well wrapped-up, in a close carriage, to pay calls with her hostess. As for going out with the “guns,” or meeting the sterner sex at luncheon in the keeper’s cottage, or the specially-erected pavilion, the darlings are not content, nowadays, unless they can use dapper little breech-loaders, specially made for them, and some of them are far from bad shots.

Yes, ’tis a pleasant function, breakfast at the Castle, the Park, or the Grange. But, as observed in the last chapter, there must be no undue punctuality, no black looks at late arrivals, no sarcastic allusions to late hours, nor inane chaff from the other guests about the wine cup or the whisky cup, which may have been drained in the smoking-room, during the small hours.

Her ladyship looks divine, or at all events regal, as she presides at what our American cousins would call the “business end” of the long table, whilst our host, a healthy, jolly-looking, “hard-bitten” man of fifty, faces her. His bright keen eye denotes the sportsman, and he can shoot as straight as ever, whilst no fence is too high, too wide, nor too deep for him. Sprinkled about, at either side of the table, amongst the red and black coats, or shooting jackets of varied hues—with a vacancy here and there, for “Algie” and “Bill,” and the “Angel,” who have not yet put in appearance—are smart, fresh-looking women, young, and “well-preserved,” and matronly, some in tailor-made frocks, and some in the silks and velvets suited for those of riper age, and some in exquisitely-fitting habits. It is at the breakfast-table that the Englishwoman can defy all foreign competition; and you are inclined to frown, or even say things under your breath, when that mincing, wicked-looking little Marquise, all frills, and ribbons, and lace, and smiles, and Ess Bouquet, in the latest creation of the first man-milliner of Paris, trips into the room in slippers two sizes too small for her, and salutes the company at large in broken English. For the contrast is somewhat trying, and you wonder why on earth some women will smother themselves with scents and cosmetiques, and raddle their cheeks and wear diamonds so early in the morning; and you lose all sense of the undoubted fascination of the Marquise in speculating as to what manner of “strong woman” her femme de chambre must be who can compress a 22-inch waist into an 18-inch corset.

There should, of course, be separate tea and coffee equipments for most of the guests—at all events for the sluggards. The massive silver urn certainly lends a tone to the breakfast-table, and looks “comfortable-like.” But it would be criminally cruel to satisfy the thirst of the multitude out of the same tea-pot or coffee-pot; and the sluggard will not love his hostess if she pours forth “husband’s tea,” merely because he is a sluggard. And remember that the hand which has held two by honours, or a “straight flush” the night before, is occasionally too shaky to pass tea-cups. No. Do not spare your servants, my lord, or my lady. Your guests must be “well done,” or they will miss your “rocketing” pheasants, or fail to go fast enough at that brook with the rotten banks.

“The English,” said an eminent alien, “have only one sauce.” This is a scandalous libel; but as it was said a long time ago it doesn’t matter. It would be much truer to say that the English have only one breakfast-dish, and its name is

Eggs and Bacon.

Pardon, I should have written two; and the second is ham and eggs. A new-laid egg—poached, not fried, an ye love me, O Betsy, best of cooks—and a rasher of home-cured hog are both excellent things in their way; but, like a partridge, a mother-in-law, and a baby, it is quite possible to have too much of them. The English hostess—I do not refer to the typical “her ladyship,” of whom I have written above, but to the average hostess—certainly launches out occasionally in the direction of assorted fish, kidneys, sausages, and chops, but the staple food upon which we are asked to break our fast is, undoubtedly, eggs and bacon.

The great question of what to eat at the first meal depends greatly upon whether you sit down to it directly you emerge from your bedroom, or whether you have indulged in any sort of exercise in the interim. After two or three hours “amateur touting” on such a place as Newmarket Heath, the sportsman is ready for any sort of food, from a dish of liver and bacon to a good, thick fat chop, or an underdone steak. I have even attacked cold stewed eels (!) upon an occasion when the pangs of hunger would have justified my eating the tom-cat, and the landlady as well. But chops and steaks are not to be commended to furnish forth the ordinary breakfast-table. I am coming to the hotel breakfast presently, so will say nothing about fried fish just yet. But here follows a list of a few of what may be called

Allowable Breakfast Dishes

Mushrooms (done plainly in front of the fire), sausages (toasted), scrambled eggs on toast, curried eggs, fish balls, kidneys, savoury omelette. Porridge may be useful for growing boys and briefless barristers, but this chapter is not written solely in their interests. Above all, do not, oh! do not, forget the grill, or broil. This should be the feature of the breakfast. Such simple recipes as those for the manufacture of fish balls or omelettes or curried eggs—though I shall have plenty to say about curries later on—need not be given here; but the following, for a grill-sauce, will be found invaluable, especially for the “sluggard.”

Gubbins Sauce

The legs and wings of fowl, turkey, pheasant, partridge, or moor-hen should only be used. Have these scored across with a sharp knife, and divided at the joints. And when your grill is taken, “hot as hot,” but not burnt, from the fire, have poured over it the following sauce. Be very particular that your cook pours it over the grill just before it is served up. And it is of the most vital importance that the sauce should be made, and well mixed, on a plate over hot water—for instance, a slop-basin should be filled with boiling water and a plate placed atop.

Melt on the plate a lump of butter the size of a large walnut. Stir into it, when melted, two teaspoonfuls of made mustard, then a dessert-spoonful of vinegar, half that quantity of tarragon vinegar, and a tablespoonful of cream—Devonshire or English. Season with salt, black pepper, and cayenne, according to the (presumed) tastes and requirements of the breakfasters.

Let your sideboard—it is assumed that you have a sideboard—sigh and lament its hard lot, under its load of cold joints, game, and pies,—I am still harping on the country-house; and if you have a York ham in cut, it should be flanked by a Westphalian ditto. For the blend is a good one. And remember that no York ham under 20 lb. in weight is worth cutting. You need not put it all on the board at once. A capital adjunct to the breakfast-table, too, is a reindeer’s tongue, which, as you see it hung up in the shops, looks more like a policeman’s truncheon in active employment than anything else; but when well soaked and then properly treated in the boiling, is very tasty, and will melt like marrow in the mouth.

A simple, excellent August breakfast can be made from a dish of freshly-caught trout, the legs and back of a cold grouse, which has been roasted, not baked, and

A Large Peach.

But what of the wretched bachelor, as he enters his one sitting-room, in his humble lodging? He may have heard the chimes at midnight, in some gay and festive quarter, or, like some other wretched bachelors, he may have been engaged in the composition of romances for some exacting editor, until the smallish hours. Poor outcast! what sort of appetite will he have for the rusty rasher, or the shop egg, the smoked haddock, or the “Billingsgate pheasant,” which his landlady will presently send up, together with her little account, for his refection? Well, here is a much more tasty dish than any of the above; and if he be “square” with Mrs. Bangham, that lady will possibly not object to her “gal” cooking the different ingredients before she starts at the wash-tub. But let not the wretched bachelor suffer the “gal” to mix them.

I first met this dish in Calcutta during the two months of (alleged) cold weather which prevail during the year.

Calcutta Jumble.

A few fried fillets of white fish (sole, or plaice—sole for choice), placed on the top of some boiled rice, in a soup plate. Pour over them the yolks of two boiled eggs, and mix in one green chili, chopped fine. Salt to taste.

“Another way:”

Mix with the rice the following ingredients:—

The yolks of two raw eggs, one tablespoonful anchovy sauce, one small teaspoonful curry powder (raw), a sprinkling of cayenne, a little salt, and one green chili chopped fine. Each ingredient to be[Pg 17] added separately, and the eggs and curry powder to be stirred into the rice with a fork. Fillets of sole to be served atop.

How many cooks in this England of ours can cook rice properly? Without pausing for a reply, I append the recipe, which should be pasted on the wall of every kitchen. The many cookery books which I have read give elaborate directions for the performance, of what is a very simple duty. Here it is, in a few lines—

To cook Rice for Curry, etc.

Soak a sufficiency of rice in cold water for two hours. Strain through a sieve, and pop the rice into boiling water. Let it boil—“gallop” is, I believe, the word used in most kitchens—for not quite ten minutes (or until the rice is tender), then strain off the water through a sieve, and dash a little cold water over the rice, to separate the grains.

Here is another most appetising breakfast dish for the springtime—

Asparagus with Eggs.

Cut up two dozen (or so) heads of cooked asparagus into small pieces, and mix in a stewpan with the well-beaten yolks of two raw eggs. Flavour with pepper and salt, and stir freely. Add a piece of butter the size of a walnut (one of these should be kept in every kitchen as a pattern), and keep on stirring for a couple of minutes or so. Serve on delicately-toasted bread.

An Hotel Breakfast.

What memories do these words conjure up of a snug coffee-room, hung with hunting prints, and portraits of Derby winners, and churches, and well-hung game; with its oak panellings, easy arm-chairs, blazing fire, snowy naperies, and bright silver. The cheery host, with well-lined paunch, and fat, wheezy voice, which wishes you good-morning, and hopes you have passed a comfortable night between the lavender-scented sheets. The fatherly interest which “William,” the grey-headed waiter, takes in you—stranger or habitué—and the more than fatherly interest which you take in the good cheer, from home-made “sassingers” to new-laid eggs, and heather honey, not forgetting a slice out of the mammoth York ham, beneath whose weight the old sideboard absolutely grunts.

Heigho! we, or they, have changed all that. The poet who found his “warmest welcome in an inn” was, naturally enough, writing of his own time. I don’t like fault-finding, but must needs declare that the “warmest” part of an inn welcome to be found nowadays is the bill. As long as you pay it (or have plenty of luggage to leave behind in default), and make yourself agreeable to the fair and haughty bookkeeper (if it’s a “she”) who allots you your bedroom, and bullies the page-boy, nobody in the modern inn cares particularly what becomes of you. You lose your individuality, and become “Number 325.” Instead of welcome, distrust lurks, large, on the very threshold.

“No Cheques Accepted”

is frequently the first announcement to catch the eye of the incoming guest; and although you cannot help admiring the marble pillars, the oak carving, the gilding, the mirrors, and the electric light, an uncomfortable feeling comes over you at meal times, to the effect that the cost of the decorations, or much of it, is taken out of the food.

“Waiter,” you ask, as soon as your eyes and ears get accustomed to the incessant bustle of the coffee-room, and your nostrils to the savour of last night’s soup, “what can I have for breakfast?”

“What would you like, sir?”

“I should like a grilled sole, to begin with.”

“Very sorry, sir, soles is hoff—get you a nice chop or steak.”

“Can’t manage either so early in the day. Got any whitings?”

“Afraid we’re out of whitings, sir, but I’ll see.”

Eventually, after suggesting sundry delicacies, all of which are either “hoff,” or unknown to the waiter, you settle down to the consumption of two fried and shrivelled shop eggs, on an island of Chicago ham, floating in an Ægean Sea of grease and hot water; whilst a half quartern loaf, a cruet-stand the size of a cathedral, a rackful of toast of the “Zebra” brand, and about two gallons of (alleged) coffee, are dumped down in succession in front of you.

There are, of course, some hostelries where they “do” you better than this, but my experience of hotel breakfasts at this end of the nineteenth century has not been encouraging, either to appetite or temper; and I do vow and protest that the above picture is not too highly coloured.

The toothsome, necessary bloater is not often to be met with on the hotel’s bill-of-fare; but, if soft roed—use no other—it will repay perusal. Toast it in a Dutch oven in front of a clear fire, and just before done split it up the back, and put a piece of butter on it. The roe should be well plumped, and of the consistency of Devonshire cream. A grilled sole for breakfast is preferable to a fried one, principally because it is by no means impossible that the fried sole be second-hand, or as the French call it réchauffé. And why, unless directions to the contrary be given, is the modest whiting invariably placed, tail in mouth, on the frying pan? A grilled whiting—assassinate your cook if she (or he) scorches it—is one of the noblest works of the kitchen, and its exterior should be of a golden brown colour.

Do not forget to order sausages for breakfast if you are staying at Newmarket; there is less bread in them than in the Metropolitan brand. And when in Lincoln attempt a

Halibut Steak,

of which you may not have previously heard. The halibut should, previous to grilling or frying in salad oil, be placed on a shallow dish and sprinkled with salt. Then the dish should be half filled with water, which must not cover the salt. Leave the fish to soak for an hour, then cut into slices, nearly an inch thick, without removing the skin. Sprinkle some lemon juice and cayenne over the steaks before serving.

If you wish to preserve an even mind, and be at peace with the world, a visit to

The Hotel Parish

is not to be recommended. The Irish stew at dinner is not bad in its way, though coarse, and too liberally endowed with fat. But the breakfasts! Boiled oatmeal and water, with salt in the mess, and a chunk of stale brown bread to eat therewith, do not constitute an altogether satisfactory meal, the first thing in the morning; and it is hardly calculated to inspire him with much pride in his work, when the guest is placed subsequently before his “task” of unbroken flints or tarred rope.

[CHAPTER III]

BREAKFAST (continued)

“There’s nought in the Highlands but syboes and leeks,
And lang-leggit callants gaun wanting the breeks.”

Bonnie Scotland—Parritch an’ cream—Fin’an haddies—A knife on the ocean wave—À la Français—In the gorgeous East—Chota hazri—English as she is spoke—Dâk bungalow fare—Some quaint dishes—Breakfast with “my tutor”—A Don’s absence of mind.

For a “warm welcome” commend me to Bonnie Scotland. Though hard of head and “sae fu’ o’ learning” that they are “owre deeficult to conveence, ye ken,” these rugged Caledonians be tender of heart, and philanthropic to a degree. Hech, sirs! but ’tis the braw time ye’ll hae, gin ye trapese the Highlands, an’ the Lowlands as well for the matter o’ that—in search o’ guid refreshment for body an’ soul.

Even that surly lexicographer, Doctor Samuel Johnson (who, by the way, claimed the same city for his birthplace as does the writer), who could not be induced to recognise the merits of Scotch scenery, and preferred Fleet Street to the Trossachs, extolled the luxury of a Scotch breakfast above that of all other countries. And Sir Walter Scott, who never enthused much about meat and drink, is responsible in Waverley for a passage calculated to make the mouths of most people water:

“He found Miss Bradwardine presiding over the tea and coffee, the table loaded with warm bread, both of flour, oatmeal, and barley meal, in the shape of loaves, cakes, biscuits, and other varieties, together with eggs, reindeer ham, mutton and beef ditto, smoked salmon, and many other delicacies. A mess of oatmeal porridge, flanked by a silver jug which held an equal mixture of cream and buttermilk, was placed for the Baron’s share of the repast.”

“And,” as Mr. Samuel Weller would have observed, “a wery good idea of a breakfast, too.”

A beef-ham sounds like a “large order” for breakfast, even when we come to consider that the Scotch “beastie,” in Sir Walter Scott’s time, was wanting in “beam” and stature. I have seen and partaken of a ham cut from a Yorkshire pig, and weighing 52 lbs.; but even a Scotch beef-ham must have topped that weight considerably. Fortunately the sideboards of those times were substantial of build.

Missing from the above bill-of-fare is the haddock,

The Fin’an Haddie,

a bird which at that period had probably not been invented. But the modern Scottish breakfast-table is not properly furnished without it. The genuine “Fin’an” is known by its appetising savour and by its colour—a creamy yellow, which is totally distinct from the Vandyke browny hue of the haddock which is creosoted in the neighbourhood of the Blackfriars Road, London, S.E. “Strip off the skin,” says the recipe in one cookery book, “and broil before the fire or over a quick clear one.” Another way—my way—is not to strip off the skin and to steam your haddies. Place them in a dish which has been previously heated. Throw boiling water on them, and cover closely with a plate; place on a hot stove, and in from 10 to 15 minutes the Fin’ans will be accomplished. Drain, and serve hot as hot, buttered, with a sprinkling of cayenne, and, maybe, a dash of Worcester sauce.

Salmon is naturally a welcome guest at the table of the land of his birth, served fresh when in season, and smoked or kippered at all times.

A Salmon Steak

with the “curd” between the flakes, placed within a coat of virgin-white paper (oiled) and grilled for 15 minutes or so, is an excellent breakfast dish. A fry of small troutlets, a ditto of the deer’s interior economy—Mem. When up at the death of a hunted stag, always beg or annex a portion of his liver—are also common dishes at the first meal served by the “gudewife”; and I once met a cold haggis at 9.30 A.M. But this, I rather fancy, was “a wee bit joke” at my expense. Anyhow I shall have plenty to say about the “great chieftain o’ the puddin’ race” in a later chapter.

Off to Gold-land!

Those that go down to the sea in ships, and can summon up sufficient presence of mind to go down to the saloon at meal times, have far from a bad time of it. Living was certainly better on the ocean wave in the days when livestock was kept on board, and slaughtered as required; for the effect of keeping beef, pork, and mutton in a refrigerating chamber for any length of time is to destroy the flavour, and to render beef indistinguishable from the flesh of the hog, and mutton as tasteless as infantine pap. But the ship’s galley does its little utmost; and the saloon passenger, on his way to the other side of the equator, may regale himself with such a breakfast as the following, which is taken from the steward’s book of a vessel belonging to the Union Line:—

Porridge, fillets of haddock with fine herbs, mutton chops and chip potatoes, savoury omelet, bacon on toast, minced collops, curry and rice, fruit, rolls, toast, etc., tea and coffee.

Cannot my readers imagine a steward entering the state-room of the voyager who has succumbed to the wiles and eccentricities of the Bay of Biscay, with the observation: “Won’t you get up to breakfast, sir?—I’ve reserved a beautiful fat chop, with chips, o’ purpose for you, sir.”

And the lot of the third-class passenger who is conveyed from his native land to the Cape of Good Hope, for what Mr. Montague Tigg would have called “the ridiculous sum of” £16: 16s., is no such hard one, seeing that he is allotted a “bunk” in a compact, though comfortable cabin, and may break his fast on the following substantial meal:—

Porridge, Yarmouth bloaters, potatoes, American hash, grilled mutton, bread and butter, tea or coffee.

An American breakfast is as variegated (and I fear I must add, as indigestible) as a Scotch one; and included in the bill of fare are as many, or more, varieties of bread and cake as are to be found in the land o’ shortbread. The writer has, in New York, started the morning meal with oysters, run the gamut of fish, flesh, and fowl, and wound up with buckwheat cakes, which are brought on in relays, buttered and smoking hot, and can be eaten with or without golden syrup. But, as business begins early in New York and other large cities, scant attention is paid to the first meal by the merchant and the speculator, who are wont to “gallop” through breakfast and luncheon, and to put in their “best work” at dinner.

A Mediterranean Breakfast

is not lacking in poetry; and the jaded denizen of Malta can enjoy red mullet (the “woodcock of the sea”) freshly taken from the tideless ocean, and strawberries in perfection, at his first meal, whilst seated, maybe, next to some dreamy-eyed houri, who coos soft nothings into his ear, at intervals. The wines of Italy go best with this sort of repast, which is generally eaten with “spoons.”

In fair France, breakfast, or the déjeûner à la fourchette, is not served until noon, or thereabouts. Coffee or chocolate, with fancy bread and butter, is on hand as soon as you wake; and I have heard that for the roisterer and the p’tit crevé there be such liquors as cognac, curaçoa, and chartreuse verte provided at the first meal, so that nerves can be strung together and headaches alleviated before the “associated” breakfast at midday. In the country, at the château of Monsieur et Madame, the groom-of-the-chambers, or maître d’hôtel, as he is designated, knocks at your bedroom door at about 8.30.

“Who’s there?”

“Good-morning, M’sieu. Will M’sieu partake of the chocolat, or of the café-au-lait, or of the tea?”

Upon ordinary occasions, M’sieu will partake of the chocolat—if he be of French extraction; whilst the English visitor will partake of the café-au-lait—tea-making in France being still in its infancy. And if M’sieu has gazed too long on the wine of the country, overnight, he will occasionally—reprobate that he is—partake instead of the vieux cognac, diluted from the syphon. And M’sieu never sees his host or hostess till the “assembly” sounds for the midday meal.

I have alluded, just above, to French tea-making. There was a time when tea, with our lively neighbours, was as scarce a commodity as snakes in Iceland or rum punch in Holloway Castle. Then the thin end of the wedge was introduced, and the English visitor was invited to partake of a cup of what was called (by courtesy) thé, which had been concocted expressly for her or him. And tea à la Française used to be made somewhat after this fashion. The cup was half-filled with milk, sugar à discrétion being added. A little silver sieve was next placed over the cup, and from a jug sufficient hot water, in which had been previously left to soak some half-dozen leaf-fragments of green tea, to fill the cup, was poured forth. In fact the visitor was invited to drink a very nasty compound indeed, something like the “wish” tea with which the school-mistress used to regale her victims—milk and water, and “wish-you-may-get” tea! But they have changed all that across the Channel, and five o’clock tea is one of the most fashionable functions of the day, with the beau monde; a favourite invitation of the society belle of the fin de siècle being: “Voulex-vous fivoclocquer avec moi?”

The déjeûner usually begins with a consommé, a thin, clear, soup, not quite adapted to stave off the pangs of hunger by itself, but grateful enough by way of a commencement. Then follows an array of dishes containing fish and fowl of sorts, with the inevitable côtelettes à la somebody-or-other, not forgetting an omelette—a mess which the French cook alone knows how to concoct to perfection. The meal is usually washed down with some sort of claret; and a subsequent café, with the accustomed chasse; whilst the welcome cigarette is not “defended,” even in the mansions of the great.

There is more than one way of making coffee, that of the lodging-house “general,” and of the street-stall dispenser, during the small hours, being amongst the least commendable. Without posing as an infallible manufacturer of the refreshing (though indigestible, to many people) beverage, I would urge that it be made from freshly-roasted seed, ground just before wanted. Then heat the ground coffee in the oven, and place upon the perforated bottom of the upper compartment of a cafetière, put the strainer on it, and pour in boiling water, gradually. “The Duke” in Geneviève de Brabant used to warble as part of a song in praise of tea—

And ’tis also most important
That you should not spare the tea.

So is it of equal importance that you should not spare the coffee. There are more elaborate ways of making coffee; but none that the writer has tried are in front of the old cafetière, if the simple directions given above be carried out in their entirety.

As in France, sojourners (for their sins) in the burning plains of Ind have their first breakfast, or chota hazri, at an early hour, whilst the breakfast proper—usually described in Lower Bengal, Madras, and Bombay as “tiffin”—comes later on. For

Chota Hazri

(literally “little breakfast”)—which is served either at the Mess-house, the public Bath, or in one’s own bungalow, beneath the verandah—poached eggs on toast are de rigueur, whilst I have met such additions as unda ishcamble (scrambled eggs), potato cake, and (naughty, naughty!) anchovy toast. Tea or coffee are always drunk with this meal. “Always,” have I written? Alas! In my mind’s eye I can see the poor Indian vainly trying to stop the too-free flow of the Belati pani (literally “Europe water”) by thrusting a dusky thumb into the neck of the just-opened bottle, and in my mind’s ear can I catch the blasphemous observation of the subaltern as he remarks to his slave that he does not require, in his morning’s “livener,” the additional flavour of Mahommedan flesh, and the “hubble-bubble” pipe, the tobacco in which may have been stirred by the same thumb that morning.

“Coffee shop” is a favourite function, during the march of a regiment in India, at least it used to be in the olden time, before troops were conveyed by railway. Dhoolies (roughly made palanquins) laden with meat and drink were sent on half way, overnight; and grateful indeed was the cup of tea, or coffee, or the “peg” which was poured forth for the weary warrior who had been “tramping it” or in the saddle since 2 A.M. or some such unearthly hour, in order that the column might reach the new camping-ground before the sun was high in the heavens. It was at “coffee-shop” that “chaff” reigned supreme, and speculations as to what the shooting would be like at the next place were indulged in. And when that shooting was likely to take the form of long men, armed with long guns, and long knives, the viands, which consisted for the most part of toast, biscuits, poached eggs, and unda bakum (eggs and bacon), were devoured with appetites all the keener for the prospect in view. It is in troublous times, be it further observed, that the Hindustan khit is seen at his best. On the field of battle itself I have known coffee and boiled eggs—or even a grilled fowl—produced by the fearless and devoted nokhur, from, apparently, nowhere at all.

At the Indian breakfast proper, all sorts of viands are consumed; from the curried prawns and Europe provisions (which arrive in an hermetically sealed condition per s.s. Nomattawot), to the rooster who heralds your arrival at the dak bungalow, with much crowing, and who within half an hour of your advent has been successively chased into a corner, beheaded, plucked, and served up for your refection in a scorched state. I have breakfasted off such assorted food as curried locusts, boiled leg of mutton, fried snipe, Europe sausages, Iron ishtoo (Irish stew), vilolif (veal olives, and more correctly a dinner dish), kidney toast—chopped sheep’s kidneys, highly seasoned with pepper, lime-juice, and Worcester sauce, very appetising—parrot pie, eggs and bacon, omelette (which might also have been used to patch ammunition boots with), sardines, fried fish (mind the bones of the Asiatic fish), bifishtake (beef steak), goat chops, curries of all sorts, hashed venison, and roast peafowl, ditto quail, ditto pretty nearly everything that flies, cold buffalo hump, grilled sheep’s tail (a bit bilious), hermetically-sealed herring, turtle fins, Guava jelly, preserved mango, home-made cake, and many other things which have escaped memory. I am coming to the “curry” part of the entertainment later on in the volume, but may remark that it is preferable when eaten in the middle of the day. My own experience was that few people touched curry when served in its normal place at dinner—as a course of itself—just before the sweets.

“Breakfast with my tutor!” What happy memories of boyhood do not the words conjure up, of the usually stern, unbending preceptor pouring out the coffee, and helping the sausages and mashed potatoes—we always had what is now known as “saus and mash” at my tutor’s—and the fatherly air with which he would remind the juvenile glutton, who had seated himself just opposite the apricot jam, and was improving the occasion, that eleven o’clock school would be in full swing in half an hour, and that the brain (and, by process of reasoning, the stomach) could not be in too good working-order for the fervid young student of Herodotus. The ordinary breakfast of the “lower boy” at Eton used to be of a very uncertain pattern. Indeed, what with “fagging,” the preparation of his lord-and-master’s breakfast, the preparation of “pupil-room” work, and agile and acute scouts ever on the alert to pilfer his roll and pat of butter, that boy was lucky if he got any breakfast at all. If he possessed capital, or credit, he might certainly stave off starvation at “Brown’s,” with buttered buns and pickled salmon; or at “Webber’s,” or “the Wall,” with three-cornered jam tarts, or a “strawberry mess”; but Smith minor, and Jones minimus as often as not, went breakfastless to second school.

At the University, breakfast with “the Head” or any other “Don” was a rather solemn function. The table well and plentifully laid, and the host hospitality itself, but occasionally, nay, frequently, occupied with other thoughts. A departed friend used to tell a story of a breakfast of this description. He was shaken warmly by the hand by his host, who afterwards lapsed into silence. My friend, to “force the running,” ventured on the observation—

“It’s a remarkably fine morning, sir, is it not?”

No reply came. In fact, the great man’s thoughts were so preoccupied with Greek roots, and other defunct horrors, that he spoke not a word during breakfast. But when, an hour or so afterwards, the time came for his guest to take leave, the “Head” shook him by the hand warmly once more, and remarked abstractedly—

“D’you know, Mr. Johnson, I don’t think that was a particularly original remark of yours?”

[CHAPTER IV]

LUNCHEON

“’Tis a custom
More honoured in the breach than the observance.”

Why lunch?—Sir Henry Thompson on overdoing it—The children’s dinner—City lunches—Ye Olde Cheshyre Cheese—Doctor Johnson—Ye pudding—A great fall in food—A snipe pudding—Skirt, not rump steak—Lancashire hot pot—A Cape “brady.”

“‘More honoured in the breach,’ do you say, Mr. Author?” I fancy I hear some reader inquire. “Are these your sentiments? Do you really mean them?” Well, perhaps, they ought to be qualified. Unless a man breakfast very early, and dine very late, he cannot do himself much good by eating a square meal at 1.30 or 2.0 P.M. There can be no question but that whilst thousands of the lieges—despite soup-kitchens, workhouses, and gaols—perish of absolute starvation, as many of their more fortunate brethren perish, in the course of time, from gluttony, from falling down (sometimes literally) and worshipping the Belly-god.

Years ago Sir Henry Thompson observed to a friend of the writer’s:

“Most men who seek my advice are suffering under one of two great evils—eating too much good food, or drinking too much bad liquor; and occasionally they suffer under both evils.”

“This luncheon,” writes Oliver Wendell Holmes, “is a very convenient affair; it does not require any special dress; it is informal; and can be light or heavy as one chooses.”

The American—the male American at all events—takes far more count of luncheon than of breakfast.

But in many cases luncheon and early dinner are synonymous terms. Take the family luncheon, for instance, of the middle classes, where mother, governess, and little ones all assemble in front of the roast and boiled, at the principal meal of the day, and the more or less snowy tablecloth is duly anointed with gravy by “poor baby,” in her high chair, and the youngest but one is slapped at intervals by his instructress, for using his knife for the peas—at the risk of enlarging his mouth—or for swallowing the stones of the cherries which have been dealt him, or her, from the tart. This is not the sort of meal for the male friend of the family to “drop in” at, if he value the lapels of his new frock-coat, and be given to blushing. For children have not only an evil habit of “pawing” the visitor with jammy fingers, but occasionally narrate somewhat “risky” anecdotes. And a child’s ideas of the Christian religion, nay, of the Creator himself, are occasionally more quaint than reverent.

“Ma, dear,” once lisped a sweet little thing of six, “what doth God have for hith dinner?”

“S-sh-sh, my child!” replied the horrified mother, “you must not ask such dreadful questions. God doesn’t want any dinner, remember that.”

“Oh-h-h!” continued the unabashed and dissatisfied enfant terrible. And, after a pause, “then I thuppose he hath an egg with hith tea.”

In a country-house, of course, but few of the male guests turn up at the domestic luncheon, being otherwise engaged in killing something, or in trying to kill something, or in that sport which is but partially understood out of Great Britain—the pursuit of an evil-savoured animal who is practically worthless to civilisation after his capture and death.

It is in “the City” that vile man, perhaps, puts in his best work as an eater of luncheons. Some city men there be, of course—poor, wretched, half-starved clerks, whose state nobody ever seems to attempt to ameliorate—whose midday refections are not such as would have earned a meed of commendation from the late Vitellius, or from the late Colonel North. For said refections but seldom consist of more important items than a thick slice of bread and a stale bloater; or possibly a home-made sandwich of bread and Dutch cheese—the whole washed down with a tumbler of milk, or more often a tumbler of the fluid supplied by the New River Company. During the winter months a pennyworth of roasted chestnuts supplies a filling, though indigestible meal to many a man whose employer is swilling turtle at Birch’s or at the big house in Leadenhall Street, and who is compelled, by the exigencies of custom, to wear a decent black coat and some sort of tall hat when on his way to and from “business.”

But the more fortunate citizens—how do they “do themselves” at luncheon? For some there is the cheap soup-house, or the chop-and-steak house reviled of Dickens, and but little changed since the time of the great novelist. Then, for the “gilt-edged” division there is

Birch’s,

the little green house which, although now “run” by those eminent caterers, Messrs. Ring and Brymer, is still known by the name of the old Alderman who deserved so well of his fellow citizens, and who, whilst a cordon bleu of some celebrity, had also a pretty taste as a playwright. The old house has not changed one jot, either in appearance, customs, or fare. At the little counter on the ground floor may be obtained the same cheesecakes, tartlets, baked custards, and calf’s-foot jellies which delighted our grandfathers, and the same brand of Scottish whisky. Upstairs, in the soup-rooms, some of the tables are covered with damask tablecloths, whilst at others a small square of napery but partially obscures the view of the well-polished mahogany.

Turtle Soup

is still served on silver plates, whilst the cheaper juices of the bullock, the calf, and the pea, “with the usual trimmings,” repose temporarily on china or earthenware. Pâtés, whether of oyster, lobster, chicken, or veal-and-ham, are still in favour with habitué and chance customer alike, and no wonder, for these are something like pâtés. The “filling” is kept hot like the soups, in huge stewpans, on the range, and when required is ladled out into a plate, and furnished with top and bottom crust—and such crust, flaky and light to a degree; and how different to the confectioner’s or railway-refreshment pâté, which, when an orifice be made in the covering with a pickaxe, reveals nothing more appetising than what appear to be four small cubes of frost-bitten india-rubber, with a portion or two of candle end.

A more advanced meal is served in Leadenhall Street, at

“The Ship and Turtle,”

said to be the oldest tavern in London, and which has been more than once swept and garnished, and reformed altogether, since its establishment during the reign of King Richard II. But they could have known but little about the superior advantages offered by the turtle as a life-sustainer, in those days; whereas at the present day some hundreds of the succulent reptiles die the death on the premises, within a month, in order that city companies, and stockbrokers, and merchants of sorts, and mining millionaires, and bicycle makers, and other estimable people, may dine and lunch.

Then there are the numerous clubs, not forgetting one almost at the very door of “The House,” where the 2000 odd (some of them very odd) members are regaled on the fat of the land in general, and of the turtle in particular, day by day; and that mammoth underground palace the “Palmerston,” where any kind of banquet can be served up at a few minutes’ notice, and where “special Greek dishes” are provided for the gamblers in wheat and other cereals, at the adjacent “Baltic.” There be also other eating-houses, far too numerous to mention, but most of them worth a visit.

A “filling” sort of luncheon is a portion of a

Cheshire Cheese Pudding.

A little way up a gloomy court on the north side of Fleet Street—a neighbourhood which reeks of printers’ ink, bookmakers’ “runners,” tipsters, habitual borrowers of small pieces of silver, and that “warm” smell of burning paste and molten lead which indicates the “foundry” in a printing works—is situated this ancient hostelry. It is claimed for the “Cheese” that it was the tavern most frequented by Dr. Samuel Johnson. Mr. C. Redding, in his Fifty Years’ Recollections, Literary and Personal, published in 1858, says: “I often dined at the

“Cheshire Cheese.”

Johnson and his friends, I was informed, used to do the same, and I was told I should see individuals who had met them there. This I found to be correct. The company was more select than in later times, but there are Fleet Street tradesmen who well remembered both Johnson and Goldsmith in this place of entertainment.”

Few Americans who visit our metropolis go away without making a pilgrimage to this ancient hostelry, where, upstairs, “Doctor Johnson’s Chair” is on view; and many visitors carry away mementoes of the house, in the shape of pewter measures, the oaken platters upon which these are placed, and even samples of the long “churchwarden” pipes, smoked by habitués after their evening chops or steaks.

Ye Pudding,

which is served on Wednesdays and Saturdays, at 1.30 and 6.0, is a formidable-looking object, and its savour reaches even into the uttermost parts of Great Grub Street. As large, more or less, as the dome of St. Paul’s, that pudding is stuffed with steak, kidney, oysters, mushrooms, and larks. The irreverent call these last named sparrows, but we know better. This pudding takes (on dit) 17½ hours in the boiling, and the “bottom crust” would have delighted the hearts of Johnson, Boswell, and Co., in whose days the savoury dish was not. The writer once witnessed a catastrophe at the “Cheshire Cheese,” compared to which the burning of Moscow or the bombardment of Alexandria were mere trifles. 1.30 on Saturday afternoon had arrived, and the oaken benches in the refectory were filled to repletion with expectant pudding-eaters. Burgesses of the City of London were there—good, “warm,” round-bellied men, with plough-boys’ appetites—and journalists, and advertising agents, and “resting” actors, and magistrates’ clerks, and barristers from the Temple, and well-to-do tradesmen. Sherry and gin and bitters and other adventitious aids (?) to appetite had been done justice to, and the arrival of the “procession”—it takes three men and a boy to carry the pièce de résistance from the kitchen to the dining-room—was anxiously awaited. And then, of a sudden we heard a loud crash! followed by a feminine shriek, and an unwhispered Saxon oath. “Tom” the waiter had slipped, released his hold, and the pudding had fallen downstairs! It was a sight ever to be remembered—steak, larks, oysters, “delicious gravy,” running in a torrent into Wine Office Court. The expectant diners (many of them lunchers) stood up and gazed upon the wreck of their hopes, and then filed, silently and sadly, outside. Such a catastrophe had not been known in Brainland since the Great Fire.

Puddings of all sorts are, in fact, favourite autumn and winter luncheon dishes in London, and the man who can “come twice” at such a “dream” as the following, between the hours of one and three, can hardly be in devouring trim for his evening meal till very late. It is a

Snipe Pudding.

A thin slice of beef-skirt,[2] seasoned with pepper and salt, at the bottom of the basin; then three snipes beheaded and befooted, and with gizzards extracted. Leave the liver and heart in, an you value your life. Cover up with paste, and boil (or steam) for two-and-a-half hours. For stockbrokers and bookmakers, mushrooms and truffles are sometimes placed within this pudding; but it is better without—according to the writer’s notion.

Most of the fowls of the air may be treated in the same way. And when eating cold grouse for luncheon try (if you can get it) a fruit salad therewith. You will find preserved peaches, apricots, and cherries in syrup, harmonise well with cold brown game.

Lancashire Hot-Pot

is a savoury dish indeed; but I know of but one eating-house in London where you can get anything like it. Here is the recipe—

Place a layer of mutton cutlets, with most of the fat and tails trimmed off, at the bottom of a deep earthenware stewpan. Then a layer of chopped sheep’s kidneys, an onion cut into thin slices, half-a-dozen oysters, and some sliced potatoes. Sprinkle over these a little salt and pepper and a teaspoonful of curry powder. Then start again with cutlets, and keep on adding layers of the different ingredients until the dish be full. Whole potatoes atop of all, and pour in the oyster liquor and some good gravy. More gravy just before the dish is ready to serve. Not too fierce an oven, just fierce enough to brown the top potatoes.

In making this succulent concoction you can add to, or substitute for, the mutton cutlets pretty nearly any sort of flesh or fowl. I have met rabbit, goose, larks, turkey, and (frequently) beef therein; but, believe me, the simple, harmless, necessary, toothsome cutlet makes the best lining.

In the Cape Colony, and even as high up as Rhodesia, I have met with a dish called a Brady, which is worthy of mention here. It is made in the same way as the familiar Irish stew; but instead of potatoes tomatoes are used.

[CHAPTER V]

LUNCHEON (continued)

“He couldn’t hit a haystack!”

Shooting luncheons—Cold tea and a crust—Clear turtle—Such larks!—Jugged duck and oysters—Woodcock pie—Hunting luncheons—Pie crusts—The true Yorkshire pie—Race-course luncheons—Suggestions to caterers—The “Jolly Sand boys” stew—Various recipes—A race-course sandwich—Angels’ pie—“Suffolk pride”—Devilled larks—A light lunch in the Himalayas.

There is no meal which has become more “expanded” than a shooting luncheon. A crust of bread with cheese, or a few biscuits, and a flask of sherry sufficed for our forebears, who, despite inferior weapons and ammunition, managed to “bring ’em down” quite as effectually as do the shootists of this period. Most certainly and decidedly, a heavy luncheon is a mistake if you want to “shoot clean” afterwards. And bear this in mind, all ye “Johnnies” who rail at your host’s champagne and turtle, after luncheon, in a comfortable pavilion in the midst of a pheasant battue, and whose very beaters would turn up their noses at a pork pie and a glass of old ale, that there is nothing so good to shoot upon as cold tea, unless it be cold coffee. I have tried both, and for a shooting luncheon par excellence commend me to a crust and a pint of cold tea, eaten whilst sitting beneath the shelter of an unpleached hedge, against the formal spread which commences with a consommé, and finishes with guinea peaches, and liqueurs of rare curaçoa. Of course, it is assumed that the shooter wishes to make a bag.

But as, fortunately for trade, everybody does not share my views, it will be as well to append a few dishes suitable to a scratch meal of this sort.

First of all let it be said that a

Roast Loin of Pork,

washed down with sweet champagne, is not altogether to be commended. I have nothing to urge against roast pork, on ordinary occasions, or champagne either; but a woodcock takes a lot of hitting.

Such a pudding as was sketched in the preceding chapter is allowable, as is also the Lancashire Hot-Pot.

Shepherd’s Pie,

i.e. minced meat beneath a mattress of mashed potatoes, with lots of gravy in the dish, baked, is an economical dish, but a tasty one; and I have never known much left for the beaters. Rabbit Pie, or Pudding, will stop a gap most effectually, and

Plover Pudding

—the very name brings water to the lips—is entitled to the highest commendation.

This is the favourite dish at the shooting luncheons of a well-known Royal Duke, and when upon one occasion the discovery was made that through some misunderstanding said pudding had been devoured to the very bones, by the loaders, the—well, “the band played,” as they say out West. And a stirring tune did that band play too.

Such Larks!

Stuff a dozen larks with a force-meat made from their own livers chopped, a little shallot, parsley, yolk of egg, salt, bread crumbs, and one green chili chopped and divided amongst the twelve. Brown in a stewpan, and then stew gently in a good gravy to which has been added a glass of burgundy.

This is a plât fit for an emperor, and there will be no subsequent danger of his hitting a beater or a dog. Another dainty of home invention is

Jugged Duck with Oysters.

Cut the fleshy parts of your waddler into neat joints, and having browned them place in a jar with nine oysters and some good gravy partly made from the giblets. Close the mouth of the jar, and stand it in boiling water for rather more than an hour. Add the strained liquor of the oysters and a little more gravy, and turn the concoction into a deep silver dish with a spirit lamp beneath. Wild duck can be jugged in the same way, but without the addition of the bivalves; and a mixture of port wine and Worcester sauce should be poured in, with a squeeze of lemon juice and cayenne, just before serving.

Another dish which will be found “grateful and comforting” is an old grouse—the older the tastier. Stuff him with a Spanish onion, add a little gravy and seasoning, and stew him till the flesh leaves the bones. All these stews, or “jugs” should be served on dishes kept hot by lighted spirit beneath them. This is most important.

A Woodcock Pie

will be found extremely palatable at any shooting luncheon, although more frequently to be met with on the sideboards of the great and wealthy. In fact, at Christmas time, ’tis a pie which is specially concocted in the royal kitchen at Windsor Castle, to adorn Her Most Gracious Majesty’s board at Osborne, together with the time-honoured baron of specially fed beef. This last named joint hardly meets my views as part of a breakfast menu; but here is the recipe for the woodcock pie.

Bone four woodcocks—I don’t mean take them off the hooks when the gentleman is not in his shop, but tell your cook to take the bones out of one you’ve shot yourself—put bones and trimmings into a saucepan with one shallot, one small onion, and a sprig of thyme, cover them with some good stock, and let this gravy simmer awhile. Take the gizzards away from the heart and liver, pound, and mix these with some good veal force-meat. Place the woodcocks, skin downwards, on a board; spread over each two layers of force-meat, with a layer of sliced truffles in between the two. Make your crust, either in a mould, or with the hands, put a layer of force-meat at the bottom, then two woodcocks, then a layer of truffles, then the other two woodcocks, another layer of truffles, and a top layer of force-meat, and some thin slices of fat bacon. Cover the pie, leaving a hole for the gravy, and bake in a moderate oven. After taking out pour in the gravy, then close the orifice and let the pie get cold before serving.

N.B.—It will stimulate the digging industry if one or two whole truffles have been hidden away in the recesses of the pie.

Another good pie I have met with—in the north country—was lined with portions of grouse and black game (no bones), with here and there half a hard-boiled egg. Nothing else except the necessary seasoning.

With regard to

Hunting Luncheons

it cannot be said that your Nimrod is nearly as well catered for as is the “Gun.” For, as a rule, the first-named, if he be really keen on the sport of kings has to content himself, during the interval of a “check,” with the contents of a sandwich-case, and a flask, which may contain either brown sherry or brandy and water—or possibly something still more seductive. I have heard of flasks which held milk punch, but the experience is by no means a familiar one. If your Nimrod be given to “macadamising,” instead of riding the line, or if he sicken of the business altogether before hounds throw off, he can usually “cadge” a lunch at some house in the neighbourhood, even though it may only “run to” bread and cheese—or, possibly, a wedge of a home-made pork-pie—with a glass, or mug, of nut brown ale. Not that all ale is “nut brown,” but ’tis an epithet which likes me well. Would it were possible to give practical hints here as to the true way to manufacture a pork-pie! To make the attempt would, I fear, only serve to invite disaster; for the art of pork-pie making, like that of the poet, or the play-actor, should be born within us. In large households in the midland counties (wherein doth flourish the pig tart) there is, as a rule, but one qualified pie-maker—who is incapable of any other culinary feat whatever. I have even been told that it requires “special hands” to make the crust of the proper consistency; and having tasted crusts and crusts, I can implicitly believe this statement. Here is a recipe for a veritable savoury

Yorkshire Pie.

Bone a goose and a large fowl. Fill the latter with the following stuffing:—minced ham, veal, suet, onion, sweet herbs, lemon peel, mixed spices, goose-liver, cayenne, and salt, worked into a paste with the yolks of two eggs. Sew up the fowl, truss it, and stew it with the goose for twenty minutes in some good beef and giblet stock, with a small glass of sherry, in a close stewpan. Then put the fowl inside the goose, and place the goose within a pie-mould which has been lined with good hot-water paste. Let the goose rest on a cushion of stuffing, and in the middle of the liquor in which he has been stewed. Surround him in the pie with slices of parboiled tongue and chunks of semi-cooked pheasant, partridge, and hare, filling in the vacancies with more stuffing, put a layer of butter atop, roof in the pie with paste, bake for three hours, and eat either hot or cold—the latter for choice.

For a skating luncheon

Irish Stew

is the recognised entrée, served in soup-plates, and washed down with hot spiced ale.

In the way of

Race-course Luncheons

our caterers have made giant strides in the last dozen years. A member of a large firm once told me that it was “out of the question” to supply joints, chops, and steaks in the dining-rooms of a grand stand, distant far from his base of operations, London. “Impossible, my dear sir! we couldn’t do it without incurring a ruinous loss.” But the whirligig of time has proved this feat to be not only possible, but one which has led to the best results for all concerned. In the matter of chops and steaks I hope to see further reforms introduced. These succulent dainties, it cannot be too widely known, are not at their best unless cut fresh from loin or rump, just before being placed on the gridiron. The longer a cut chop (raw) is kept the more of its virtue is lost. It might, possibly, cause a little extra delay, and a little extra expense, to send off loins and rumps from the butcher’s shop, instead of ready-cut portions, but the experiment would answer, in the long run. The same rule, of course, should apply to restaurants and grill-rooms all over the world.

During the autumn and winter months, race-course caterers seem to have but one idea of warm comforting food for their customers, and the name of that idea is Irish stew. This is no doubt an appetising dish, but might be varied occasionally for the benefit of the habitual follower of the sport of kings. Why not pea-soup, jugged hare (hares are cheap enough), hot-pot, Scotch broth, mullagatawny, hotch-potch, stewed or curried rabbit, with rice, shepherd’s pie, haricot ox-tails, sheep’s head broth (Scotch fashion), and hare soup! What is the matter with the world-renowned stew of which we read in The Old Curiosity Shop—the supper provided by the landlord of the “Jolly Sandboys” for the itinerant showmen? Here it is again:

“‘It’s a stew of tripe,’ said the landlord, smacking his lips, ‘and cowheel,’ smacking them again, ‘and bacon,’ smacking them once more, ‘and steak,’ smacking them for the fourth time, ‘and peas, cauliflowers, new potatoes, and sparrowgrass, all working up together in one delicious gravy.’ Having come to the climax, he smacked his lips a great many times, and taking a long hearty sniff of the fragrance that was hovering about, put on the cover again with the air of one whose toils on earth were over.

“‘At what time will it be ready?’ asked Mr. Codlin faintly. ‘It’ll be done to a turn,’ said the landlord, looking up at the clock, ‘at twenty-two minutes before eleven.’

“‘Then,’ said Mr. Codlin, ‘fetch me a pint of warm ale, and don’t let nobody bring into the room even so much as a biscuit till the time arrives.’”

And I do vow and protest that the above passage has caused much more smacking of lips than the most expensive, savoury menu ever thought out. True, sparrowgrass and new potatoes, and any peas but dried or tinned ones are not as a rule at their best in the same season as tripe; but why not dried peas, and old potatoes, and rice, and curry powder, and onions—Charles Dickens forgot the onions—with, maybe, a modicum of old ale added, for “body”—in this stew, on a cold day at Sandown or Kempton? Toujours Irish stew, like toujours mother-in-law, is apt to pall upon the palate; especially if not fresh made. And frost occasionally interferes with the best-laid plans of a race-course caterer.

“I don’t mind a postponed meeting,” once observed one of the “readiest” of bookmakers; “but what I cannot stand is postponed Irish stew.”

Than a good bowl of

Scotch Broth,

what could be more grateful, or less expensive?

Shin of beef, pearl barley, cabbages, leeks, turnips, carrots, dried peas (of course soaked overnight), and water—“all working up together in one delicious gravy.”

Also

Hotch Potch.

With the addition of cutlets from the best end of a neck of mutton, the same recipe as the above will serve for this dish, which it must be remembered should be more of a “stodge” than a broth.

There are more ways than one of making a “hot-pot.” The recipe given above would hardly suit the views of any caterer who wishes to make a living for himself; but it can be done on the cheap. The old lady whose dying husband was ordered by the doctor oysters and champagne, procured whelks and ginger beer for the patient, instead, on the score of economy. Then why not make your hot-pot with mussels instead of oysters? Or why add any sort of mollusc? In the certain knowledge that these be invaluable hints to race-course caterers, I offer them with all consideration and respect.

The writer well remembers the time when the refreshments on Newmarket Heath at race-time were dispensed from a booth, which stood almost adjoining the “Birdcage.” Said refreshments were rough, but satisfying, and consisted of thick sandwiches, cheese, and bread, with “thumb-pieces” (or “thumbers”) of beef, mutton, and pork, which the luncher was privileged to cut with his own clasp-knife. Said “thumbers” seem to have gone out of favour with the aristocracy of the Turf; but the true racing or coursing sandwich still forms part of the impedimenta of many a cash-bookmaker, of his clerk, and of many a “little” backer. ’Tis a solid, satisfying sandwich, and is just the sort of nourishment for a hard worker on a bitter November day. Let your steak be grilling, whilst you are enjoying your breakfast—some prefer the ox-portion fried, for these simple speculators have strange tastes—then take the steak off the fire and place it, all hot, between two thick slices of bread. The sandwich will require several paper wrappings, if you value the purity of your pocket-linings. And when eaten cold, the juices of the meat will be found to have irrigated the bread, with more or less “delicious gravy.” And, as Sam Weller ought to have said, “it’s the gravy as does it.”

“But what about the swells?” I fancy I hear somebody asking, “Is my Lord Tomnoddy, or the Duke of Earlswood to be compelled to satisfy his hunger, on a race-course, with tripe and fat bacon? Are you really advising those dapper-looking, tailor-made ladies on yonder drag to insert their delicate teeth in a sandwich which would have puzzled Gargantua to masticate?” Not at all, my good sir, or madam. The well-appointed coach should be well-appointed within and without. Of course the luncheon it contains will differ materially according to the season of the year. This is the sort of meal I will provide, an you will deign to visit the Arabian tent behind my coach, at Ascot:

Lobster mayonnaise, salmon cutlets with Tartar sauce (iced), curried prawns (iced), lobster cutlets, chaud-froid of quails, foie gras in aspic, prawns in ditto, plovers’ eggs in ditto, galantine of chicken, York ham, sweets various, including iced gooseberry fool; and, as the pièce de résistance, an

Angel’s Pie.

Many people would call this a pigeon pie, for in good sooth there be pigeons in it; but ’tis a pie worthy of a brighter sphere than this.

Six plump young pigeons, trimmed of all superfluous matter, including pinions and below the thighs. Season with pepper and salt, and stuff these pigeons with foie gras, and quartered truffles, and fill up the pie with plovers’ eggs and some good force-meat. Make a good gravy from the superfluous parts of the birds, and some calf’s head stock to which has been added about half a wine-glassful of old Madeira, with some lemon-juice and cayenne. See that your paste be light and flaky, and bake in a moderate oven for three hours. Pour in more gravy just before taking out, and let the pie get cold.

This is a concoction which will make you back all the winners; whilst no heiress who nibbles at it would refuse you her hand and heart afterwards.

This is another sort of