The Art of Entertaining Part 20

Mr. Ledyard has excavated extensive cells in this rock, in which extreme evenness of temperature is ensured,--a condition most necessary for the proper manufacture of wine.

Mr. Eyre Ledyard's vineyards and cellars of the Chateau Hydra estate are now farmed by the _Societe Anonyme Viticole et Vinicole d'Hydra_, of which Mr. Ledyard is chairman. These wines have been so successfully shipped to England and other countries that the company now buys grapes largely from the best vineyards, in order to make sufficient wines to meet the demand. The Hydra Company supplies wine to all vessels of the Ocean Company going to India and China. A very carefully prepared quinine white wine is made for invalids, and for use in countries where there is fever. I especially recommend a trial of this last excellent wine to Americans, as it is most agreeable as well as healthful. The postal address is M. Le Gerant, Hydra Caves, Birmandreis, Algiers.

All the stories of Algiers read like tales of the Arabian Nights, and none is more poetic than the names and the story of these delicious wines.

The Greek wines are well spoken of in Europe: Santorin, and Zante, and St. Elie, and Corinth, and Mount Hymettus, Vino Santo, and Cyprus, while from Magyar vineyards come Visontae, Badescony, Dioszeg, Bakator, Rust, Szamorodni, Oedenburger, Ofner, and Tokay.

The Hungarian wines are very heady. He must be a swashbuckler who drinks them. They are said to make the drinker grow fat. To this unhappy cla.s.s Brillat Savarin gives the following precepts:--

"Drink every summer thirty bottles of seltzer water, a large tumbler the first thing in the morning, another before lunch, and the same at bedtime.

"Drink white wines, especially those which are light and acid, and avoid beer as you would the plague. Ask frequently for radishes, artichokes with hot sauce, asparagus, celery; choose veal and fowl rather than beef and mutton, and eat as little of the crumb of bread as possible.

"Avoid macaroni and pea soup, avoid farinaceous food under whatever form it a.s.sumes, and dispense with all sweets. At breakfast take brown bread, and chocolate rather than coffee."

Indeed Brillat Savarin seems to have inspired this later poet:--

"Talk of the nectar that flowed for celestials Richer in headaches it was than hilarity!

Well for us animals, frequently b.e.s.t.i.a.ls, Hebe destroyed the recipe as a charity!

Once I could empty my gla.s.s with the best of 'em, Somehow my system has suffered a shock o' late; Now I shun spirits, wine, beer, and the rest of 'em, Fill me, then fill me, a b.u.mper of chocolate.

"Once I drank logwood, and qua.s.sia and turpentine, Liqueurs with c.o.xcubes, aloes, and gentian in, Sure, 't is no wonder my path became serpentine, Getting a state I should blush now to mention in.

Farewell to Burgundy, farewell to Sillery, I have not tasted a drop e'en of Hock o' late, Long live the kettle, my dear old distillery, Fill me, oh fill me, a b.u.mper of chocolate."

As we cannot all drink chocolate, I recommend the carefully prepared white wine, with quinine in it, which comes from Chateau Hydra in Algiers, or some of the Italian wines, Barolo for instance, or the excellent native wines which are produced in Savoy.

About Aix les Bains, where the cuisine is the best in Europe, many wines are manufactured which are honest wines with no headaches in them.

SOME ODDITIES IN THE ART OF ENTERTAINING.

"Comparisons are odorous."

I prithee let me bring thee where crabs grow; And I with my long nails will dig thee pig nuts; Show thee a jay's nest, and instruct thee how To snare the nimble marmozet; I'll bring thee To cl.u.s.tering filberds, and sometimes I'll get thee Young staniels from the rocks. Wilt thou go with me?

THE TEMPEST.

In the lamb roasted whole we have one of the earliest dishes on record in the history of cookery. Stuffed with pistachio nuts, and served with pilaf, it ill.u.s.trates the antiquity of the art, and at the same time gives an example of the food upon which millions of our fellow creatures are sustained.

At a dinner of the Acclimatization Society in London, all manner of strange and new dishes were offered, even the meat of the horse. A roast monkey filled with chestnuts was declared to be delicious; the fawn of fallow deer was described as good; buffalo meat was not so highly commended; a red-deer ham was considered very succulent; a sirloin of bear was "tough, glutinous, and had, besides, a dreadful, half-aromatic, half-putrescent flavour, as though it had been rubbed with a.s.safoetida and then hung for a month in a musk shop."

We will not try bear unless we are put to it. However, at this same dinner--we read on--haunch of venison, saddle of mutton, roast beef of old England, which is really the roast beef which is of old Normandy now, all gave way to a Chinese lamb roasted whole, stuffed with pistachio nuts, and served with _consousson_, a preparation of wheat used among the Moors, Africans, and other natives of the north of Africa littoral, in place of rice. The Moorish young ladies are, it is said, fattened into beauty by an enforced meal of this strengthening compound. The _consousson_ is made into b.a.l.l.s and stuffed into the mouths of the marriageable young lady, until she grows as tired of b.a.l.l.s as a young belle of three seasons.

In Spain, in those damp swamps near Valencia, where the poor are old before forty and die before forty-five, the best rice sells at eleven farthings, the poorest at eight farthings per pound. This, cooked with the ground dust of _pimientos_, or capsic.u.ms, is the foundation of every stew in the south of Spain. It is of a rich brick-dust hue, and is full of fire and flavour. Into this stew the cook puts the "reptiles of the sea" known as "spotted cats," "toads" and other oily fish, sold at two pence a pound, or the _vogar_, a silvery fish, or the _gallina_, a coa.r.s.e fish, chick peas, garlic, pork, and sausages.

If rich she will make an _olla podrida_ with bacon, fresh meat, potatoes, cabbages, and she will pour off the soup, calling it _caldo_, then the lumps of meat and bacon, called _cocida_, will be served next. Then the cigarette is smoked. If you are a king she will add a quince and an apple to the stew.

Of puddings and pies they know nothing; but what fruit they have!--watermelons weighing fifteen pounds apiece; lemon pippins called _perillons_; crimson, yellow, and purple plums; purple and green figs; tomatoes by the million; carob beans, on which half the nation lives; small cuc.u.mbers and gourds; large black grapes, very sweet; white grapes and quinces; peaches in abundance; and all the chestnuts and filberts in the world. In the summer they eat goat's flesh; and on All Saints' Day they eat pork and chestnuts and sweet _babatas_ of Malaga. In exile, in Mexico and Florida, the Spaniard eats alligator, which could scarcely be called a game bird; but the flesh of young alligators' tails is very fair, and tastes like chicken if the tail is cut off immediately after death, and stewed.

The frost fish of the Adirondacks is seldom tasted, except by those who have spent a winter in the North Woods. They are delicious when fried. There is a European fish as little known as this, the _Marena_, caught in Lake Moris in the province of Pomerania, also in one lake in southern Italy, which is very good.

There are two birds known in Prussia, the bustard, and the kammel, the former a species of small ostrich, once considered very fine eating, the latter very tough, except under unusual conditions.

The Chinese enjoy themselves by night. All their feasts and festivals are kept then, generally by moonlight. When a Chinaman is poor he can live on a farthing's worth of rice a day; when he gets rich he becomes the most luxurious of sybarites, indulges freely in the most _recherche_ delicacies of the table, and becomes, like any Roman voluptuary, corpulent and phlegmatic. A lady thus describes a Chinese dinner:--

"The hour was eleven A. M., the _locale_ a boat. Having heard much of the obnoxious stuff I was to eat, I adopted the prescription of a friend. 'Eat very little of any dish, and be a long time about it.'

"We commenced with tea, and finished with soup. Some of the intermediate dishes were shark's-fin; birds' nests brought from Borneo, costing nearly a guinea a mouthful, frica.s.see of poodle, a little dog almost a pig; the fish of the conch-sh.e.l.l, a substance like wax or india rubber, which you might masticate but never mash; peac.o.c.k's liver, very fine and _recherche_; putrid eggs, nevertheless very good; rice, of course, salted shrimps, baked almonds, cabbage in a variety of forms, green ginger, stewed fungi, fresh fish of a dozen kinds, onions _ad libitum_, salt duck cured like ham, and pig in every form, roast, boiled, and fried, Foo-Chow ham which seemed to me equal to Wiltshire. In fact, the Chinese excel in pork, though the English there never touch it, under the supposition that the pigs are fed on little babies.

"But this is a libel. Of course a pig would eat a baby, as it would a rattlesnake if it came across one; but the Chinese are very particular about their swine and keep them penned up, rivalling the Dutch in their scrubbing and washing. They grow whole fields of taro and herbs for their pigs. And I do not believe that one porker in a million ever tastes a baby."

This traveller's sympathies appear to be with the pig.

"About two o'clock we arose from the table, walked about, looked out of the window. Large bra.s.s bowls were brought with water and towels.

Each one proceeded to perform ablutions, the Chinese washing their heads; after which refreshing operation we resumed our seats and re-commenced with another description of tea.

"Seven different sorts of Samchou we partook of, made from rice, from peas, from mangoes, cocoa-nut, all fermented liquors, and the mystery remained,--I was not inebriated. The Samchou was drunk warm in tiny cups, during the whole course of the dinner.

"The whole was cooked without salt and tasted very insipid to me. The bird's-nest seemed like glue or isingla.s.s, but the c.o.xcombs were palatable. The dog-meat was like some very delicate gizzards well-stewed, and of a short, close fibre. The dish which I most fancied turned out to be rat. Upon taking a second help, after the first taste I got the head, which made me rather sick; but I consoled myself that when in California we ate ground squirrels which are first cousins to the flat-tailed rats; and travellers who would know the world must go in for manners and customs. We had tortoise and frogs,--a curry of the latter was superior to chicken; we had fowls'

hearts, and the brains of some birds, snipe, I think. We had a chow-chow of mangoes, rambustan preserved, salted cuc.u.mber, sweet potatoes, yams, taro, all sorts of sweets made of rice sugar, and cocoa-nuts; and the soup which terminated the entertainment was certainly boiled tripe or some other internal arrangement; and I wished I had halted some little time before. The whole was eaten with chop-sticks or a spoon like a small spade or shovel. The sticks are made into a kind of fork, being held crosswise between the fingers. It is not the custom for the s.e.xes to meet at meals; I dined with the ladies."

This dinner has one suggestion for our hostesses,--it was in a boat, on a river, by torchlight. We can, however, give a better one on a yacht at Newport, or at New London, or down on the Florida coast; but it would be a pretty fancy to give it on our river. It is curious to see what varieties there are in the art of entertaining; and it is useful to remember, when in Florida, "that alligators' tails are as good, when stewed, as chicken."

The eating of the past included, under the Romans, the a.s.s, the dog, the snail, hedge-hogs, oysters, asparagus, venison, wild-boar, sea-nettles. In England, in 1272, the hostess offered strange dishes: mallards, herons, swans, crane, and peac.o.c.k. The peac.o.c.k was, of old, a right royal bird which figured splendidly at the banquets of the great, and this is how the mediaeval cooks dished up the dainty:--

"Flay off the skin, with the feathers, tail, neck, and head thereon.

Then take the skin and all the feathers and lay it on the table, strewing thereon ground c.u.min; then take the peac.o.c.k and roast him, and baste him with raw yolks of eggs, and when he is roasted take him off and let him cool awhile. Then sew him in his skin, and gild his comb, and so send him forth for the last course."

Our Saxon ancestors were very fond, like the Spaniards, of putting everything into the same pot; and we read of stews that make the blood boil. Travellers tell us of dining with the Esquimaux, on a field of ice, when tallow candles were considered delicious, or they found their plates loaded with liver of the walrus. They vary their dinners by helping themselves to a lump of whale-meat, red and coa.r.s.e and rancid, but very toothsome to an Esquimau, notwithstanding.

If they should sit down to a Greenlander's table they would find it groaning under a dish of half-putrid whale's tail, which has been lauded as a savoury matter, not unlike cream cheese; and the liver of a porpoise makes the mouth water. They may finish their repast with a slice of reindeer, or roasted rat, and drink to their host in a b.u.mper of train oil.

In South America the tongue of a sea-lion is esteemed a great delicacy. Fashion in Siam prescribes a curry of ants' eggs as necessary to every well-ordered banquet. The eggs are not larger than grains of pepper, and to an unaccustomed palate have no particular flavour. Besides being curried, they are brought to table rolled in green leaves mingled with shreds or very fine slices of pork.

The Mexicans make a species of bread of the eggs of insects which frequent the fresh water of the lagoons. The natives cultivate in the lagoon of Chalco a sort of carex called _tonte_, on which the insects deposit their eggs very freely. This carex is made into bundles and is soon covered. The eggs are disengaged, beaten, dried, and pounded into flour.

Penguins' eggs, cormorants' eggs, gulls' eggs, the eggs of the albatross, turtles' eggs are all made subservient to the table. The mother turtle deposits her eggs, about a hundred at a time, in the dry sand, and leaves them to be hatched by the genial sun. The Indian tribes who live on the banks of the Orinoco procure from them a sweet and limpid oil which is their subst.i.tute for b.u.t.ter. Lizards' eggs are regarded as a _bonne bouche_ in the South Sea Islands, and the eggs of the _guana_, a species of lizard, are much favoured by West Indians.

Alligators' eggs are eaten in the Antilles and resemble hens' eggs in size and shape.

We have spoken of horse-flesh as introduced at the dinner of the Acclimatization Society, but it is hardly known that the Frenchmen have tried to make it as common as beef. Isidore St. Helain says of it, that it has long been regarded as of a sweetish, disagreeable taste, very tough, and not to be eaten without difficulty; but so many different facts are opposed to this prejudice that it is impossible not to perceive the slightness of the foundation. The free or wild horse is hunted as game in all parts of the world where it exists,--Asia, Africa, and America, and perhaps even now in Europe.

The domestic horse is itself made use of for alimentary purposes in all those countries.

"Its flesh is relished by races the most diverse,--Negro, Mongol, Malay, American, Caucasian. It was much esteemed until the eighth century amongst the ancestors of some of the greatest nations of Western Europe, who had it in general use and gave it up with regret.

Soldiers to whom it has been served out and people who have bought it in markets, have taken it for beef; and many people buy it daily in Paris for venison."

During the commune many people were glad enough to get horse-flesh for the roast.