Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 150.djvu/184

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176

Cookery.

[Aug.

a finer flavour, and requiring no adjuncts in the way of sauce, provided that it was properly cooked; and they might have added that, owing to the distance of Paris from the sea-coast, fresh fish, especially salmon, is rarely procurable, and still more rarely served up, even in the first-class restaurants. Certainly there are some standard English dishes which in their own way are difficult to beat; and Lord Dudley (the grandfather of the present earl) used to declare that “turtle-soup, a small turbot, a neck of venison, ducklings and green peas, and apricot tart, formed a dinner fit for an emperor.” All these are distinctly national dishes, and so far we may pride ourselves upon having material which (unless it is deliberately spoiled in the cooking) is of the highest merit in the eyes of a gastronomist, and adds strength and dignity to the most elaborate menu. But when it comes to a question of entrées, and réchauffés, and petits plats, the case is different; and this is just where an English cook breaks down and a French cook excels; and the lower we go in the social scale the more evident does this difference become. A French labourer’s wife will make a capital croûte au pot from a little stock, a few vegetables, and a crust or two of bread—from materials, in fact, which an Englishwoman would probably consign to the dust-bin. With a few eggs, some flour, butter, and a slice or two of bacon, she will turn out a very fair omelette au jambon; she will convert a few morsels of coarse fish, stewed with herbs, onions, and a little rough wine, into an appetising matelotte; and she will probably complete the repast with a salade de légumes, made of some cold cooked vegetables, with oil and vinegar. Nowhere was this difference in the culinary talent of the two nations in making use of poor materials more clearly shown than in the Crimean war, when the French and English were encamped side by side. The English troops had, if anything, the better rations of the two; but while our men were content to toast their slices of pork or beef at the end of their ramrods, the Zouaves and Chasseurs made excellent soups and bouillis in their camp kettles.

“In cooking I need not say our neighbours beat us hollow. I partook of a sumptuous banquet in the tent of an officer of the Guards the other night, the staple of which was a goose, purchased for a golden egg in Balaclava, but which assumed so many forms, and was so good and strange in all—now coming upon you as a pièce de résistance, again assuming the shape of a gibelotte that would do credit to Philippe, and again turning up as a delicate little plat with the flavour of woodcocks—that the name of the artist was at once demanded. He was a grisly-headed Zouave who stood at the door of the tent, prouder of the compliments that were paid him than of the few francs he was to get for his services, ‘lent’ as he was by the captain of his company for the day. “A few days after—these were Christmas times, or were meant to be so—there was a dinner in another friendly tent. A Samaritan sea-captain had presented a mess with a leg of English mutton, a case of preserved turnips, and a wild duck. Hungry as hunters, the little party assembled at the appointed hour, full of anticipated pleasure and good fare from the Fatherland. ‘Banks, bring in dinner,” said the host proudly to his chef de cuisine. The guests were set, the cover was placed on the table, it was removed with enthusiasm, and lo! there lay the duck, burnt black, and dry as charcoal, in the centre of a mound of turnips. ‘I thowt vowls were allays ate vurst,” was the sole defence of the wretched criminal as he removed the sacrifice for the