The Feasts of Autolycus Part 3

But supper does not mean, necessarily, veal and ham pie, above which British imagination dares not soar. It is not limited to the half-demolished joint--sad wreck of midday's meal. It may be as fair and harmonious as dinner itself, as n.o.ble a tribute to the artist, as superb a creation. Only the thoughtless and prosaic will dismiss it carelessly in the ordering, believing that any odds and ends will answer. Whatever is left over is to many the one possible conception of the late evening meal. But the _gourmand_, exulting in his gluttony, makes of it a work of art, good in the eating, good in the remembrance thereof.

Summer allows wide scope for his fertile fancy. He may begin with salmon, refres.h.i.+ng to the eye in its arrangement of pale silver and rose, cold as the glaciers of Greenland after its long hours of repose on voluptuous bed of ice. A _mayonnaise_ sauce, creamy and rich, turning the silver to gold, like a fairy G.o.dmother of legend, is the cherished accompaniment. The feeling of wonder, aroused in the hours of watching under the trees, being still upper-most, it will seem as if the soft hues of the afterglow had been embodied in this exquisite prologue, with its rose and citron, its gold and soft grey tints.

Tender spring chickens may then give greeting to the summer-time. They also will have spent hours in close communion with solid blocks of ice, and will be as cool as the breezes that blow over the high snow fields of Switzerland. For, be it noted in pa.s.sing, without a refrigerator the perfect supper is sheer impossibility. Success depends largely upon temperature. Lukewarm supper would be as detestable as a lukewarm dinner. With the innocent chickens, chilling and chaste, a green salad will be as appropriate as edelweiss on Alpine slopes. It should be made of the hearts of the youngest of young cabbage lettuces, touched with onions, and fatigued with the one most admirable salad dressing that man ever devised. Linger as long as may be, for this surely is one of the beautiful moments that repay the artist for his toiling and his intervals of despair.

Asparagus will prove most seemly successor. Let it also be cold beyond suspicion. A sauce of vinegar and oil, pepper and salt, force it to yield its most subtle sweetness. It will prove another course to call for lingering. Unless happiness be realised, of what use is it to be happy? He who is not conscious of pleasure when he eats is not worthy to sit at table with the elect. Like the animals, he is content to feed, and the art of the cook is, alas! lost upon him.

A savoury at this banquet would be superfluous. The presence of cheese would be but deference to convention, and faithfulness to tradition does not demand as its price sacrifice of all freedom in detail. The asparagus would be dishonoured were it to give place to aught more substantial than strawberries. Sometimes in the day's _menu_, as in a decorative scheme, loveliness is enhanced by repet.i.tion. As a second curve emphasises the grace of the first, so strawberries at supper carry out with great elegance the strawberry scheme of afternoon tea.

Pretty hillocks of sugar, and deep pools of cream, make a rich setting for this jewel among fruits.

The wine, clearly, should be white, and it, too, should be iced--remember the month is June. Few Rhine wines could consistently refuse to be pressed into service. But French vineyards have greater charm than German, though the Lorelei may sing in near waters, and to Graves, or Barsac, preference will be wisely proffered.

Be fearful of striking a false note. See that the coffee, black and strong though it be, is as cold as wine and salmon, chicken and salad.

And pour the green Chartreuse into gla.s.ses that have been first filled with crushed ice. And as you smoke your cigarette, ask yourself if the Sunday evening supper tradition be not one crying for preservation at all costs.

When another week has rolled by and disappeared into the _Ewigkeit_, vary the _menu_. An element of the _bizarre_, the strange, the unaccustomed, often lends irresistible piquancy. Be faithful to the refrigerator, however fickle to other loves. Open the banquet with a stirring salad fas.h.i.+oned of red herring and potatoes, and, perhaps, a few leaves of lettuce. It savours of the sensational, and stimulates appet.i.te.

That disappointment may not ensue, desert well-trodden paths, and, borrowing from Germany, serve a dish of meat, amusing in its quaint variety. Slices of lamb may provide a pretty centre, surrounding them, scatter slices of the sausage of Brunswick and Bologna, here and there set in relief against a piece of grey _Leberwurst_. As garniture, encircle the dish with a garland of anchovies, curled up into enchanting little b.a.l.l.s, and gherkins, and hard-boiled eggs cut in delicate rounds. Memories will crowd fast upon you as you eat; memories of the little German towns and their forgotten hilltops, visited in summers long since gone, of the little German inn, and the friendly land-lord, eager to please; of the foaming mugs of beer, and the tall, slender goblets of white wine. Before supper is done, you will have travelled leagues upon leagues into the playtime of the past.

Cheese now is as essential as it would have been intrusive in the other _menu_. Gruyere should be your choice, and if you would have it of fine flavour, seek it not at the English cheesemonger's, but at the little German _delicatessen_ shop. Brown bread would best enter into the spirit of the feast.

As epilogue, fruit can never be discordant, and what fruit in early June insists upon being eaten with such sweet persistency as the strawberry. But, on your German evening, fatigue it with Kirsch, leave it on its icy couch until the very last minute, and memories of the Laperouse will mingle with those of the smoky inn of the Fatherland.

Is there any question that Hock is the wine, when sausage and red herring and Gruyere cheese figure so prominently in the _menu's_ composition? Drink it from tall slender gla.s.s, that it may take you fully into its confidence. Coffee need not be iced. In fact, it should positively be hot--can you doubt it? And Cognac now will prove more responsive to your mood than Chartreuse. There is no written law to regulate these matters. But the true artist needs no code to guide him. He knows instinctively what is right and what is wrong, and doubts can never a.s.sail him.

ON SOUP

"When all around the wind doth blow," draw close the curtains, build up a roaring fire, light lamp and candles, and begin your dinner with a good--_good_, mind you--dish of soup. Words of wisdom are these, to be pondered over by the woman who would make her evening dinner a joyful antic.i.p.ation, a cherished memory.

Soup, with so much else good and great, is misunderstood in an England merrier than dainty in her feasting. Better is this matter ordered across the Border. For the healthy-minded, Scotch mists have their compensation in Scotch broth; odoriferous and appetising is its very name. But in England, soup long since became synonymous with turtle, and the guzzling alderman of legend. Richness is held its one essential quality--richness, not strength. Too often, a thick, greasy mess, that could appeal but to the coa.r.s.est hunger, will be set before you, instead of the dish that can be comforting and sustaining both, and yet meddles not with the appet.i.te. It should be but a prelude to the meal--the prologue, as it were, to the play--its excellence, a welcome forecast of delights to follow, a welcome stimulus to light talk and lighter laughter. Over _Julienne_ or _bisque_ frowns are smoothed away, and guests who sat down to table in monosyllabic gloom will plunge boldly into epigrammatic or anecdotic gaiety ere ever the fish be served.

Magical, indeed, is the spell good soup can cast. Of its services as medicine or tonic, why speak? Beef tea gives courage to battle with pain and suffering; _consomme_ cheers the hours of convalescence. Let all honour be done to it for its virtues in the sick-room; but with so cheerful a subject, it is pleasanter to dwell on its more cheerful aspects.

More legitimate is it to consider the happy part it plays in the traveller's programme. And for this--it must be repeated, as for all the best things in the _gourmand's_ life--one journeys to France. But first remember--that contrast may add piquancy to the French _menu_--the fare that awaits the weary, disconsolate traveller at English railway station: the stodgy bun, Bath and penny varieties both, and the triangular sandwich; the tea drawn overnight, and the lukewarm bovril, hopelessly inadequate subst.i.tute for soup freshly made from beef or stock. At a luncheon bar thus wickedly equipped, eating becomes what it never should be!--a sad, terrible necessity, a pleasureless safeguard against pangs of hunger, a mere animal function, and therefore a degradation to the human being educated to look upon food and drink--even so might the painter regard his colours, the sculptor his clay and marble--as means only to a perfect artistic end.

Or, consider also, to make the contrast stronger, the choicest banquet American railways, for all the famed American enterprise, provide. To journey by the "Pullman vestibuled train" from New York to Chicago is luxury, if you will. Upon your point of view depends the exact amount of enjoyment yielded by meals eaten while you dash through the world at the rate of eighty miles an hour, more or less, and generally less. There is charm in the coloured waiters, each with gay flower in his b.u.t.tonhole, and gayer smile on his jolly, black face; there is pretence in the cheap, heavy, clumsy Limoges off which you eat, out of which you drink, in the sham silver case in which your Champagne bottle is brought, if for Champagne you are foolish enough to call.

But bitterness is in your wine cup, for the wine is flat; heaviness is in your breakfast or dinner, for bread is underdone and sodden, and b.u.t.ter is bad, and the endless array of little plates discourages with its suggestion of vulgar plenty and artless selection; and all is vanity and vexation, save the corn bread--the beautiful golden corn bread, which deserves a chapter to itself--and the fruit: the bananas and grapes, and peaches and oranges, luscious and ravis.h.i.+ng as they seldom are on any but American soil. Nor will you mend matters by bestowing your patronage upon the railway restaurants of the big towns where you stop: the dirty, fly-bitten lunch counters. Pretentious, gorgeous, magnificent, they maybe; but good, no! All, even the privilege of journeying at the rate of eighty miles an hour, would you give for one bowl of good soup at the Amiens _buffet_.

For, when everything is said, it is the soup which makes travelling so easy and luxurious in France. A breakfast, or a dinner, of courses, well-cooked, and well-served into the bargain, you may eat at many a wayside station. Wine, ordinary as its name, perhaps, but still good and honest, is to be had for a paltry sum whenever the train may stop.

Crisp rolls, light _brioches_ tempt you to unwise excesses. Not a province, scarce a town, but has its own special dainty; nougat at Montelimart, sausages at Arles, _pate de foie gras_ at Perigueux; and so you might go on mapping out the country according to, not its departments, but its dishes. These, however, the experienced traveller would gladly sacrifice for the delicate, strong, refres.h.i.+ng, inspiriting _bouillon_, served at every _buffet_. This it is which helps one to forget fatigue and dust and cinders, and the odious Frenchman who will have all the windows shut. _Bouillon_, and not wine, gives one new heart to face the long night and the longer miles.

With it the day's journey is well begun and well ended. It sustains and nourishes; and, better still, it has its own aesthetic value; perfect in itself, it is the one perfect dish for the place and purpose. No wonder, then, that it has kindled even Mr Henry James into at least a show of enthusiasm; his bowls of _bouillon_ ever remain in the reader's memory, the most prominent pleasures of his "Little Tour in France."

Equally desirable in illness and in health, during one's journeys abroad and one's days at home, why is it then that soup has never yet been praised and glorified as it should? How is it that its greatness has inspired neither ode nor epic; that it has been left to a parody--clever, to be sure, but cleverness alone is not tribute sufficient--in a child's book to sing its perfections. It should be extolled, and it has been vilified; insults have been heaped upon it; ingrat.i.tude from man has been its portion. The soup tureen is as poetic as the loving cup; why should it suggest but the baldest prose to its most ardent wors.h.i.+ppers?

"Thick or clear?" whispers the restaurant waiter in your ear, as he points to the soups on the bill of fare. "Thick or clear,"--there you have the two all-important divisions. In that simple phrase is expressed the whole science of soupmaking; face to face with first principles it brings you. But whether you elect for the one or the other, this great fundamental truth there is, ever to be borne in mind: let fresh meat be the basis of your _consomme_ as of your _bisque_, of your _gumbo_ as of your _pates d'Italie_. True, in an emergency, Liebig, and all its many offshoots, may serve you--and serve you well. But if you be a woman of feeling, of fancy, of imagination, for this emergency alone will you reserve your Liebig.

Who would eat tinned pineapple when the fresh fruit is to be had?

Would you give bottled tomatoes preference when the gay _pommes d'amour_, just picked, ornament every stall in the market? Beef extract in skilful hands may work wonders; the soup made from it may deceive the connoisseur of great repute. But what then? Have you no conscience, no respect for your art, that you would thus deceive?

Tinned soups also there be in infinite variety, ox-tail, and mock-turtle, and _Julienne_, and gravy, and chicken broth, and many more than one likes to think of. But dire indeed must be your need before you have recourse to them. They, too, will answer in the hour of want. But at the best, they prove but make-s.h.i.+fts, but paltry make-believes to be avoided, even as you steer clear of the soup vegetables and herbs--bits of carrot and onion and turnip and who knows what?--bottled ingeniously, pretty to the eye, without flavour to the palate. One does not eat to please the sense of sight alone!

When, heroically, you have forsworn the ensnaring tin and the insinuating bottle, the horizon widens before you. "Thick and clear": the phrase suggests but narrow compa.s.s; broad beyond measure is the sphere it really opens.

Of all the Doges of Bobbio, but one--if tradition be true--sickened of his hundred soups. Three hundred and sixty-five might have been their number with results no more disastrous. Given a cook of good instincts and gay imagination, and from one year's end to the other never need the same soup be served a second time.

A word, first, as to its proper place on the _menu_. The conservative Briton might think this a subject upon which the last word long since had been spoken. If soup at all, then must it appear between _hors d'oeuvre_ and fish: as well for Catholic to question the doctrine of infallibility as for self-respecting man to doubt the propriety of this arrangement. But they don't know everything down in Great Britain, and other men there be of other minds. Order a dinner in the American West, and a procession of smiling, white-robed blacks--talking, alas! no more the good old darkey, but pure American--swoop down upon you, bringing at once, in disheartening medley, your blue-points, your gumbo, your terrapin, your reed birds, and your apple pie. What sacrilege! In the pleasantest little restaurant in all Rome, close to the Piazza Colonna, within sound of the Corso, was once to be seen any evening in the week--may be still, for that matter--a bemedalled major finis.h.i.+ng his dinner with his _minestra_ instead of his _dolce_. But if a fat, little grey-haired man once consent to wear a coat scarce longer than an Eton jacket, may not, in reason, worse enormities be expected of him? Truth to tell, the British convention, borrowed from France, is the best. If, in good earnest, you would profit by your _potage_, give it place of honour at the top of the _menu_. Leave light and frivolous sweets to lighter, more frivolous moments, when, hunger appeased, man may unbend to trifles.

What the great Alexandre calls the _grand consomme_ is the basis of all soup--and sauce making. Study his very word with reverence; carry out his every suggestion with devotion. Among the ingredients of this consummate _bouillon_ his mighty mind runs riot. Not even the adventures of the immortal Musketeers stimulated his fancy to wilder flights. His directions, large and lavish as himself, would the economical housewife read with awe and something of terror. Veal and beef and fowl--a venerable c.o.c.k will answer--and rabbit and partridges of yester-year; these be no more than the foundation. Thrown into the _marmite_ in fair and fitting proportions, then must they be watched, anxiously and intelligently, as they boil; spoonfuls of the common _bouillon_ should be poured upon them from time to time; there must be added onions and carrots, and celery and parsley, and whatever aromatic herbs may be handy, and oil, if you have it; and after four hours of boiling slowly and demurely over a gentle fire, and, next, straining through coa.r.s.e linen, you may really begin to prepare your soup.

If to these heights the ordinary man--or woman--may not soar, then will the good, substantial, everyday _bouillon_, or _pot-au-feu_--made of beef alone, but ever flavoured with vegetables--fulfil the same purpose, not so deliciously, but still fairly well. In households where soup is, as it should be, a daily necessity, stock may be made and kept for convenience. But if you would have your _pot-au-feu_ in perfection, let the saucepan, or _marmite_--the English word is commonplace, the French term charms--be not of iron, but of earthenware: rich tawny brown or golden green in colour, as you see it in many a French market-place, if the least feeling for artistic fitness dwells within your soul. Seven hours are needed _pour faire sourire le pot-au-feu_--the expression is not to be translated. Where soups are concerned the English language is poor, and cold, and halting; the speech of France alone can honour them aright.

With good _bouillon_ there is naught the genius may not do. Into it the French _chef_ puts a few small slices of bread, and, as you eat, you wonder if terrapin or turtle ever tasted better. With the addition of neatly-chopped carrots and onions, and turnips and celery, you have _Julienne_; or, with dainty asparagus tops, sweet fresh peas, tiny stinging radishes, delicate young onions, _printanier_, with its suggestions of spring and blossoms in every mouthful. This last, surely, is the lyric among soups. Decide upon cheese instead, and you will set a Daudet singing you a poem in prose: "_Oh! la bonne odeur de soupe au fromage!_" _Pates d'Italie_, _vermicelli_, _macaroni_, each will prove a separate ecstasy, if you but remember the grated Parmesan that must be sprinkled over it without stint--as in Italy. Days there be when nothing seems so in keeping as rice: others, when cabbage hath charm, that is, if first in your simmering _bouillon_ a piece of ham--whether of York, of Strasbourg, or of Virginia--be left for three hours or more; again, to thicken the golden liquid with tapioca may seem of all devices the most adorable. And so may you ring the changes day after day, week after week, month after month.

If of these lighter soups you tire, then turn with new hope and longing to the stimulating list of _purees_ and _cremes_. Let tomatoes, or peas, or beans, or lentils, as you will, be the keynote, always you may count upon a harmony inspiriting and divine; a rapture tenfold greater if it be enjoyed in some favourite corner at Marguery's or Voisin's, where the masterpiece awaits the chosen few.

Or if, when London fogs are heavy and life proves burdensome, comfort is in the very name of broth, then put it to the test in its mutton, Scotch, chicken, or dozen and more varieties, and may it give you new courage to face the worst!

But if for pleasure solely you eat your soup, as you should, unless illness or the blue devils have you firm in their grasp, a few varieties there be which to all the rest are even as is the rose to lesser flowers, as is the onion to vegetables of more prosaic virtue.

Clams are a joy if you add to them but salt and pepper--cayenne by preference--and a dash of lemon juice: as a chowder, they are a substantial dream to linger over; but made into soup they reach the very topmost bent of their being: it is the end for which they were created. Of oysters this is no less true. Veal stock or mutton broth may pa.s.s as prosaic basis of the delicacy; but better depend upon milk and cream, and of the latter be not sparing. Mace, in discreet measure, left flowing in the liquid will give the finis.h.i.+ng, the indispensable touch. Oh, the inexhaustible resources of the sea! With these delights rank _bisque_, that priceless _puree_, made of crayfish--in this case a pinch of allspice instead of mace--and if in its fullest glory you would know it, go eat it at the Laperouse on the Quai des Grands Augustins; eat it, as from the window of the low room in the _entresol_, you look over toward the towers of Notre Dame.

Be a good Catholic on Fridays, that, with _potages maigres_--their name, too, is legion--your soups may be increased and multiplied, and thus infinity become your portion.

THE SIMPLE SOLE

Have you ever considered the sole: the simple, una.s.suming sole, in Quaker-like garb, striking a quiet grey note in every fishmonger's window, a constant rebuke to the mackerel that makes such vain parade of its green audacity, of the lobster that flaunts its scarlet boldness in the face of the pa.s.ser-by? By its own merits the sole appeals; upon no meretricious charm does it base its claim for notice.

Flat and elusive, it seems to seek retirement, to beg to be forgotten.

And yet, year by year, it goes on, unostentatiously and surely increasing in price; year by year, it establishes, with firm hold, its preeminence upon the _menu_ of every well-regulated _table d'hote_.

But here pause a moment, and reflect. For it is this very _table d'hote_ which bids fair to be the sole's undoing. If it has been maligned and misunderstood, it is because, swaddled in bread-crumbs, fried in indifferent b.u.t.ter, it has come to be the symbol of hotel or _pension_ dinner, until the frivolous and heedless begin to believe that it cannot exist otherwise, that in its irrepressible bread-crumbs it must swim through the silent sea.

The conscientious _gourmand_ knows better, however. He knows that bread-crumbs and frying-pan are but mere child's play compared to its diviner devices. It has been said that the number and various shapes of fishes are not "more strange or more fit for contemplation than their different natures, inclinations, and actions." But fitter subject still for the contemplative, and still more strange, is their marvellous, well-nigh limitless, culinary ambition. Triumph after triumph the most modest of them all yearns to achieve, and if this sublime yearning be ever and always suppressed and thwarted and mis...o...b..ed, the fault lies with dull, plodding, unenterprising humans.

Not one yearns to such infinite purpose as the sole; not one is so snubbed and enslaved. A very Nora among fish, how often must it long to escape and to live its own life--or, to be more accurate, to die its own death!

Not that bread-crumbs and frying-pan are not all very well in their way. Given a discreet cook, pure virginal b.u.t.ter, a swift fire, and a slice of fresh juicy lemon, something not far short of perfection may be reached. But other ways there are, more suggestive, more inspiring, more G.o.dlike. Turn to the French _chef_ and learn wisdom from him.

First and foremost in this glorious repertory comes _sole a la Normande_, which, under another name, is the special distinction and pride of the Restaurant Marguery. Take your sole--from the waters of Dieppe would you have the best--and place it, with endearing, lover-like caress, in a pretty earthenware dish, with b.u.t.ter for only companion. At the same time, in sympathetic saucepan, lay mussels to the number of two dozen, opened and well cleaned, as a matter of course; and let each rejoice in the society of a stimulating mushroom; when almost done, but not quite, make of them a garland round the expectant sole; cover their too seductive beauty with a rich white sauce; re-kindle their pa.s.sion in the oven for a few minutes; and serve immediately and hot. Joy is the result; pure, uncontaminated joy. If this be too simple for your taste, then court elaboration and more complex sensation after this fas.h.i.+on: from the first, unite the sole to two of its most devoted admirers, the oyster and the mussel--twelve, say, of each--and let thyme and fragrant herbs and onion and white wine and truffles be close witnesses of their union.

Seize the sole when it is yet but half cooked; stretch it out gently in another dish, to which oysters and mussels must follow in hot, precipitate flight. And now the veiling sauce, again white, must have calf's kidney and salt pork for foundation, and the first gravy of the fish for fragrance and seasoning. Mushrooms and lemon in slices may be added to the garniture. And if at the first mouthful you do not thrill with rapture, the Thames will prove scarce deep and muddy enough to hide your shame.

Put to severest test, the love of the sole for the oyster is never betrayed. Would you be convinced--and it is worth the trouble--experiment with _sole farcie aux huitres_, a dish so perfect that surely, like manna, it must have come straight from Heaven. In prosaic practical language, it is thus composed: you stuff your sole with forcemeat of oysters and truffles, you season with salt and carrot and lemon, you steep it in white wine--not sweet, or the sole is dishonoured--you cook it in the oven, and you serve the happy fish on a rich _ragout_ of the oysters and truffles. Or, another tender conceit that you may make yours to your own great profit and enlightenment, is _sole farcie aux crevettes_. In this case it is wise to fillet the sole and wrap each fillet about the shrimps, which have been well mixed and pounded with b.u.t.ter. A rich _Bechamel_ sauce and garniture of lemons complete a composition so masterly that, before it, as before a fine Velasquez, criticism is silenced.

_Sole au gratin_, though simpler, is none the less desirable. Let your first care be the sauce, elegantly fas.h.i.+oned of b.u.t.ter and mushrooms and shallots and parsley; pour a little--on your own judgment you have best rely for exact quant.i.ty--into a baking-dish; lay the sole upon this liquid couch; deluge it with the remainder of the sauce, exhilarating white wine, and lemon juice; bury it under bread-crumbs, and bake it until it rivals a Rembrandt in richness and splendour.