The Art of Entertaining Part 17

"So runs the story,--'_Garcon_, bring the _carte_, Soup, cutlets--stay--and mind, a _matelotte_.'

And 'Charles,--a pint of Burgundy's best Beanne; In our deep gla.s.ses every joy shall float!'

"And '_Garcon_, bring me from the woven frail That turbaned merchants from fair Smyrna sent, The figs with golden seeds, the honeyed fruit, That feast the stranger in the Syrian tent.

"'Go fetch us grapes from all the vintage rows Where the brave Spaniards gaily quaff the wine, What time the azure ripple of the waves Laughs bright beneath the green leaves of the vine!

"'Nor yet, unmindful of the fabled scrip, Forget the nuts from Barcelona's sh.o.r.e, Soaked in Iberian oil from olives pressed, To the crisp kernels adding one charm more.

"'The almonds last, plucked from a sunny tree, Half way up Lyba.n.u.s, blanched as snowy white As Leila's teeth, and they will fitly crown The beggars' four-fold dish for us to-night.

"'Beggars are happy! then let us be so; We've buried care in wine's red-glowing sea.

There let him soaking lie--he was our foe; Joy laughs above his grave--and so will we!'"

It was from that love of contrast, then, was it, which is a part of all luxury, that the fable of the _Quatre Mendiants_ was made to serve like the olives at dessert. Perhaps the fillip which walnuts give to wine suggested it. It was a modern French rendering of the skull made to do duty as a drinking-cup. It is a part of the five kernels of corn at a Pilgrim dinner, without that high conscientiousness of New England. It is a part, perhaps, of the more melancholy refrain, "Be merry, be merry, for to-morrow ye die!" It is that warmth is warmer when we remember cold; it is that food is good when we remember the starving; it is that _bringing in_ of the pleasant vision of the four beggars under the tree, as a picture perhaps; at any rate there it is, moral at your pleasure.

The desserts of the middle ages were heavy and c.u.mbrous affairs, and had no special character. There would be a good deal of Cellini cup and Limoges plate, and Palissy dish, and golden chased goblet about it, no doubt. How glad the collectors of to-day would be to get them!

And we picture the heavy indigestible cakes, and poisonous bonbons.

The taste must have been questionable if we can believe Ben Jonson, who tells of the beribboned dwarf jester who, at a Lord Mayor's dinner, took a flying header into a dish of custard, to the infinite sorrow of ladies' dresses; he followed, probably, that dish in which the dwarf Sir Geoffrey Hudson was concealed, and they both are after Tom Thumb, who was fishing about in a cup of posset a thousand years ago.

The dessert is allowed by all French writers to be of Italian origin; and we read of the _maitres d'hotel_, before the Italian dessert arrived, probably introduced by Catherine de Medici and the Guises, that they gloried in mountains of fruit, and sticky hills of sweetmeats. The elegance was clumsy and ostentatious; there was no poetry in it. Paul Veronese's picture of the "Marriage of Cana" will give some idea of the primeval French dessert. The later fashion was of those trees and gardens and puppets abused by Horace Walpole; but Frenchmen delighted in seas of gla.s.s, flower-beds formed of coloured sand, and little sugar men and women promenading in enamelled bowling-greens. We get some idea of the magnificent fetes of Louis XIV. at Versailles from the glowing descriptions of Moliere.

Dufoy in 1805 introduced "frizzled muslin into a slice of fairyland;"

that is, he made extraordinary pictures of temples and trees, for the centre of his dessert. And these palaces and temples were said to have been of perfect proportions; his trees of frizzled muslin were admirable. It sounds very much like children's toys just now.

He went further, Dufoy; having ransacked heaven and earth, air and water, he thrust his hand into the fire, and made harmless rockets shoot from his sugar temples. Sugar rocks were strewn about with precipices of nougat, glaciers of vanilla candy, and waterfalls of spun sugar. A confectioner in 1805 had to keep his wits about him, for after every victory of Napoleon he was expected to do the whole thing in sugar. He was decorator, painter, architect, sculptor, and florist--icer, yes, until after the Russian campaign, and then--they had had enough of ice. Thus we see that the dessert has always been more for the eye than for the stomach.

The good things which have been said over the walnuts and the wine!

The pretty books written about claret and olives! One author says that if all the good things which have been said about the gay and smiling dessert could be printed, it would make a pleasant anecdotic little pamphlet of four thousand odd pages!

We must not forget all the absurdities of the dessert. The Prince Regent, whose tastes inclined to a vulgar and spurious Orientalism, at one of his costly feasts at Carleton House had a channel of real water running around the table, and in this swam gold and silver fish. The water was only let on at dessert.

These fancies may be sometimes parodied in our own time, as the bonbon makers of Paris now devote their talents to the paper absurdities of harlequins, Turks, Chinamen, and all the vagaries of a fancy-dress ball with which the pa.s.sengers of steamships amuse themselves after the Captain's dinner. This is not that legitimate dessert at which we now find ices disguised as natural fruits, or copying a rose. All the most beautiful forms in the world are now reproduced in the frozen water or cream, as healthful as it is delicious, in the famous jelly with maraschino, or the delicate bonbon with the priceless liqueur, or, better still, that _eau de menthe_ cordial, our own green peppermint, which, after all, saves as by one mouthful from the horrors of indigestion and adds that "thing more exquisite still" to the perfect dessert,--a good night's sleep.

FAMOUS MENUS AND RECIPES.

Gather up the fragments that remain that nothing be lost.

JOHN vi. 12.

This is not intended to be a cookery book; but in order to help the young housekeeper we shall give some hints as to _menus_ and a few rare recipes.

The great line of seacoast from New York to Florida presents us with some unrivalled delicacies, and the negroes of the State of Maryland, which was founded by a rich and luxurious Lord Baltimore, knew how to cook the terrapin, the canvas-back duck, oysters, and the superb wild turkey,--not to speak of the well-fattened poultry of that rich and luxurious Lorraine of America, "Maryland, my Maryland," which Oliver Wendell Holmes calls the "gastronomical centre of the universe."

Here is an old Virginia recipe for cooking terrapin, which is rare and excellent:--

Take three large, live, diamond-backed terrapin, plunge them in boiling water for three minutes, to take off the skin, wipe them clean, cook them in water slightly salted, drain them, let them get cold, open and take out everything from the sh.e.l.l. In removing the entrails care must be taken not to break the gall. Cut off the head, tail, nails, gall, and bladder. Cut the meat in even-size pieces, put them in a sauce-pan with four ounces of b.u.t.ter, add the terrapin eggs, and moisten them with a half pint of Madeira wine. Let the mixture cook until the moisture is reduced one-half. Then add two spoonfuls of cream sauce. After five minutes add the yolks of four raw eggs diluted with a half-cup of cream. Season with salt and a pinch of red pepper. The mixture should not boil after the yolk of egg is added. Toss in two ounces of b.u.t.ter before serving. The heat of the mess will cook egg and b.u.t.ter enough. Serve with quartered lemon.

This is, perhaps, if well-cooked, the most excellent of all American dishes.

A chicken gumbo soup is next:--

Cut up one chicken, wash and dry it, dip it in flour, salt and pepper it, then fry it in hot lard to a delicate brown.

In a soup kettle place five quarts of water and your chicken, let it boil hard for two hours, cut up twenty-four okra pods, add them to the soup, and boil the whole another hour. One large onion should be put in with the chicken. Add red pepper to taste, also salt, not too much, and serve with rice. Dried okra can be used, but must be soaked over night.

Another Maryland success was the tomato catsup:--

Boil one bushel of tomatoes until soft, squeeze through a sieve, add to the juice half a gallon of vinegar, 1 pints salt, 3 ounces of whole cloves, 1 ounce of allspice, 2 ounces of cayenne pepper, 3 tablespoonfuls of black pepper, 3 heads of garlic, skinned and separated; boil three hours or until the quant.i.ty is reduced one-half, bottle without skimming. The spices should be put in a muslin bag, which must be taken out, of course, before bottling. If desired 1 peck of onions can be boiled, pa.s.sed through a sieve, and the juice added to the tomatoes.

_Green pepper pickles_: Half a pound of mustard seed soaked over night, 1 quart of green pepper chopped, 2 quarts of onions chopped, 4 quarts of cuc.u.mbers also chopped, 8 quarts of green tomatoes chopped, 6 quarts of cabbage chopped; mix and measure. To every gallon of this mixture add one teacup of salt, let it stand until morning, then squeeze perfectly dry with the hands. Then add 8 pounds of sugar, and cover with good vinegar and boil five minutes. After boiling, and while still hot, squeeze perfectly dry, then add 2 ounces of cloves, 2 ounces of allspice, 3 ounces of cinnamon and the mustard seed.

The peppers should be soaked in brine thirty-six or forty-eight hours. After soaking, wipe dry and stuff, place them in gla.s.s jars, and cover with fresh vinegar.

This was considered the triumph of the Southern housekeeper.

_Chicken with spaghetti_: Stir four sliced onions in two ounces of b.u.t.ter till very soft, add one quart of peeled tomatoes; stew chicken in water until tender, and pick to pieces. Add enough of the gravy to make a quart, put with the onions and tomatoes. Let it stew fifteen minutes gently. Put into boiling water 2 pounds of spaghetti and a handful of salt, boil twenty minutes or until tender; drain this and put in a layer on a platter sprinkled with grated cheese, and pour the stew on it. Fill the platter with these layers, reserving the best of the chicken to lay on top.

The old negro cooks made a delicious confection known as confection cake. Those who lived to tell of having eaten it declared that it was a dream. It certainly leads to dreams, and bad ones, but it is worth a nightmare:--

1 cups of sugar, 2 cups of flour, cup of b.u.t.ter, cup of sweet milk, whites of six eggs, 3 small teaspoons of baking powder. Bake in two or three layers on a griddle.

_Filling_: 1 small cocoanut grated, 1 pound almonds blanched, and cut up not too fine, 1 teacup of raisins chopped, 1 teacup of citron chopped, 4 eggs, whites only, 7 tablespoonfuls of pulverized sugar to each egg.

Mix this destructive substance well in the froth of egg, and spread between the layers of cake when they are hot; set it a few minutes in the oven, but do not burn it, and you have a delicious and profoundly indigestible dessert. You will be able to write Sartor Resartus, after eating of it freely.

_Walnut Cake_: 1 cup of b.u.t.ter, 2 cups of sugar, 6 eggs, 4 cups of flour, 1 cup of milk, 2 teaspoonfuls of yeast powder.

This is also baked in layers, and awaits the dynamite filling which is to blow you up:--

_Walnut Filling_: 2 cups of brown sugar, 1 cup of cream, a piece of b.u.t.ter the size of an egg. Cook twenty minutes, stirring all the time; when ready to take off the stove put in one cup of walnut meats. After this has cooked a few minutes longer, spread between the layers, and while both cake and filling are hot.

Perhaps a few _menus_ may be added here to a.s.sist the memory of her "who does not know what to have for dinner:"--

Tomato Soup.

Golden Sherry. Whitefish broiled. Claret.

Mashed potatoes.

Round of beef _braise_, Madeira.

with glazed onions.

Champagne. Roast plover with cress. Chateau Yquem.

Chiccory Salad.

Custard flavoured with vanilla.

Cheese. Cordials.

Chambertin. Fruit.

Coffee.

Or a plain dinner:--