The Cook's Decameron Part 4

"It will not," Sir John replied reflectively. "The last words of many a so-called genius have been enshrined in literature: probably no one will ever know the parting objurgation of Narcisse. I will endeavour, however, to give you some notion as to what occurred, from the budget I have just read. I fear the tragedy was a squalid one. Madame, the victim, was elderly, unattractive in person, exacting in temper, and the owner of considerable wealth--at least, this is what came out at the trial. It was one of those tangles in which a fatal denouement is inevitable; and, if this had not come through Mademoiselle Sidonie, it would have come through somebody else. The lovers plotted to remove madame by first drugging her, then breaking her skull with the wood chopper, and then pitching her downstairs so as to produce the impression that she had met her death in this fas.h.i.+on. But either the arm of Mademoiselle Sidonie--who was told off to do the hammering--was unskilled in such work, or the opiate was too weak, for the victim began to shriek before she gave up the ghost. Detection seemed imminent, so Narcisse, in whom the quality of discretion was evidently predominant, bolted at once and got out of the country. But the facts were absolutely clear. The victim lived long enough to depose that Mademoiselle Sidonie attacked her with the wood chopper, while Narcisse watched the door.

The advocate of Narcisse did his work like a man. He shed the regulation measure of tears; he drew graphic pictures of the innocent youth of Narcisse, of his rise to eminence, and of his filial piety as evidenced by the frequent despatch of money and comestibles to his venerable mother, who was still living near Bourges. Once a year, too, this incomparable artist found time to renew his youth by a sojourn in the simple cottage which saw his birth, and by embracing the giver of his life. Was it possible that a man who treated one woman with such devotion and reverence could take the life of another? He adduced various and picturesque reasons to show that such an event must be impossible, but the jury took the opposite view. Some one had to be guillotined, and the intelligent jury decided that Paris could spare Narcisse better than it could spare Mademoiselle Sidonie. I fear the fact that he had deigned to sell his services to a brutal islander may have helped them to come to this conclusion, but there were other and more weighty reasons. Of the supreme excellence of Narcisse as an artist the jury knew nothing, so they let him go hang--or worse--but of Mademoiselle Sidonie they knew a good deal, and their knowledge, I believe, is shared by certain English visitors to Paris. She is one of the attractions of the Fantasies d'Arcadie, and her latest song, Bonjour Coco, is sung and whistled in every capital of Europe; so the jury, thrusting aside as mere pedantry the evidence of facts, set to work to find some verdict which would not eclipse the gaiety of La Ville Lumiere by cutting short the career of Mademoiselle Sidonie. The art of the chef appealed to only a few, and he dies a mute, but by no means inglorious martyr: the art of the chanteuse appeals to the million, the voice of the many carries the day, and Narcisse must die."

"It is a revolting story," said Mrs. Gradinger, "and one possible only in a corrupted and corrupting society. It is wonderful, as Sir John remarks, how the conquering streams of tendency manifest themselves even in an affair like this. Ours is a democratic age, and the wants and desires of the many, who find delight in this woman's singing, override the whims of the pampered few, the employers of such costly luxuries as men cooks."

"You see you are a mere worm, Sir John," laughed Miss Macdonnell, "and you had better lay out your length to be trampled on."

"Yes, I have long foreseen our fate, we who happen to possess what our poor brother hankers after. Well, perhaps I may take up the worm's role at once and 'turn', that is, burn the recipe of Narcisse."

"O Sir John, Sir John," cried Mrs. Sinclair "any such burning would remind me irresistibly of Mr. Mantalini's attempts at suicide. There would be an accurate copy in your pocket-book, and besides this you would probably have learnt off the recipe by heart."

"Yes, we know our Sir John better than that, don't we?" said the Marchesa; "but, joking apart, Sir John, you might let me have the recipe at once. It would go admirably with one of our lunch dishes for to-morrow."

But on the subject of the sauce, Sir John--like the younger Mr.

Smallweed on the subject of gravy--was adamant. The wound caused by the loss of Narcisse was, he declared, yet too recent: the very odour of the sauce would provoke a thousand agonising regrets. And then the hideous injustice of it all: Narcisse the artist, comparatively innocent (for to artists a certain lat.i.tude must be allowed), to moulder in quicklime, and this greedy, sordid murderess to go on ogling and posturing with superadded popularity before an idiot crowd unable to distinguish a Remoulade from a Ravigotte! "No, my dear Marchesa," he said, "the secret of Narcisse must be kept a little longer, for, to tell the truth, I have an idea. I remember that ere this fortunes have been made out of sauces, and if this sauce be properly handled and put before the public, it may counteract my falling, or rather disappearing rents. If only I could hit upon a fetching name, and find twenty thousand pounds to spend in advertising, I might be able once more to live on my acres."

"Oh, surely we shall be able to find you a name between us," said Mrs.

Wilding; "money, and things of that sort are to be procured in the city, I believe; and I daresay Mr. Van der Roet will design a pretty label for the sauce bottles."

Menu--Lunch.

Pollo all'olive. Fowl with olives.

Scaloppine di rive. Veal cutlets with rice.

Sedani alla parmigiana. Stewed celery.

Menu--Dinner.

Zuppa primaverile. Spring soup Sote di Salmone al funghi. Salmon with mushrooms.

Tenerumi d'Agnello alla veneziana. Breast of lamb alla Veneziana.

Testa di Vitello alla sorrentina. Calf's head alla Sorrentina.

f.a.giano alla perigo. Pheasant with truffles.

Torta alla cremonese. Cremona tart.

Uova alla fiorentina. Egg savoury.

The Seventh Day

"It seems invidious to give special praise where everything is so good,"

said Mrs. Sinclair next day at lunch, "but I must say a word about that clear soup we had at dinner last night. I have never ceased to regret that my regard for manners forbade me ask for a second helping."

"See what it is to have no manners," said Van der Roet. "I plunged boldly for another portion of that admirable preparation of calf's head at dinner. If I hadn't, I should have regretted it for ever after.

Now, I'm sure you are just as curious about the construction of these masterpieces as I am, Mrs. Sinclair, so we'll beg the Marchesa to let us into the secret."

"Mrs. Sinclair herself had a hand in the calf's-head dish, 'Testa di Vitello alla sorrentina,' so perhaps I may hand over that part of the question to her. I am very proud that one of my pupils should have won praise from such a distinguished expert as Mr. Van der Roet, and I leave her to expound the mystery of its charm. I think I may without presumption claim the clear soup as a triumph, and it is a discovery of my own. The same calf's head which Mrs. Sinclair has treated with such consummate skill, served also as the foundation for the stock of the clear soup. This stock certainly derived its distinction from the addition of the liquor in which the head was boiled. A good consomme can no doubt be made with stock-meat alone, but the best soup thus made will be inferior to that we had for dinner last night. Without the calf's head you will never get such softness, combined with full roundness on the tongue, and the great merit of calf's head is that it lets you attain this excellence without any sacrifice of transparency."

"I have marvelled often at the clearness of your soups, Marchesa,"

said the Colonel. "What clearing do you use to make them look like pale sherry?"

"No one has any claim to be called a cook who cannot make soup without artificial clearing," said the Marchesa. "Like the poet, the consomme is born, not made. It must be clear from the beginning, an achievement which needs care and trouble like every other artistic effort, but one nevertheless well within the reach of any student who means to succeed.

To clear a soup by the ordinary medium of white of egg or minced beef is to destroy all flavour and individuality. If the stock be kept from boiling until it has been strained, it will develop into a perfectly clear soup under the hands of a careful and intelligent cook. The fleeting delicate aroma which, as every gourmet will admit, gives such grateful aid to the palate, is the breath of garden herbs and of herbs alone, and here I have a charge to bring against contemporary cookery. I mean the neglect of natural in favour of manufactured flavourings. With regard to herbs, this could not always have been the rule, for I never go into an old English garden without finding there a border with all the good old-fas.h.i.+oned pot herbs growing l.u.s.tily. I do not say that the use of herbs is unknown, for of course the best cookery is impossible without them, but I fear that sage mixed with onion is about the only one which ever tickles the palate of the great English middle-cla.s.s. And simultaneously with the use of herb flavouring in soup has arisen the practice of adding wine, which to me seems a very questionable one. If wine is put in soup at all, it must be used so sparingly as to render its presence imperceptible. Why then use it at all? In some sauces wine is necessary, but in all cases it is as difficult to regulate as garlic, and requires the utmost vigilance on the part of the cook."

"My last cook, who was very stout and a little middle-aged, would always use flavouring sauces from the grocer's rather than walk up to the garden, where we have a most seductive herb bed," said Mrs. Wilding; "and then, again, the love of the English for pungent-made sauces is another reason for this makes.h.i.+ft practice. 'Oh, a table-spoonful of somebody's sauce will do for the flavouring,' and in goes the sauce, and the flavouring is supposed to be complete. People who eat their chops, and steaks, and fish, and game, after having smothered the natural flavour with the same harsh condiment, may be satisfied with a cuisine of this sort, but to an unvitiated palate the result is nauseous."

"Yet as a Churchwoman, Mrs. Wilding, you ought to speak with respect of English sauces. I think I have heard how a libation of one of them, which was poured over a certain cathedral, has made it look as good as new," said Miss Macdonnell, "and we have lately learned that one of the most distinguished of our party is ambitious to enter the same career."

"I would suggest that Sir John should devote all that money he proposes to make by the aid of his familiar spirit--the ghost of Narcisse--to the building of a temple in honour of the tenth muse, the muse of cookery,"

said Mrs. Sinclair; "and what do you think, Sir John, of a name I dreamt of last night for your sauce, 'The New Century Sauce'? How will that do?"

"Admirably," said Sir John after a moment's pause; "admirably enough to allow me to offer you a royalty on every bottle sold. 'The New Century Sauce', that's the name for me; and now to set to work to build the factory, and to order plans for the temple of the tenth muse."

Menu--Lunch.

Maccheroni al pomidoro. Macaroni with tomatoes, Vitello alla pellegrina. Veal cutlets alla pellegrina.

Animelle al sapor di targone. Sweetbread with tarragon sauce.

Menu--Dinner.

Zuppa alla Canavese. Soup alla Canavese Naselli con piselli. Whiting with peas.

Coscia di manzo al forno. Braized ribs of beef.

Lingua alla Visconti. Tongue with grapes.

Anitra selvatica. Wild duck.

Zabajone ghiacciato. Iced syllabub.

Crostatini alla capucina. Savoury of rice, truffles, &c.

The Eighth Day

"We are getting unpleasantly near the end of our time," said the Colonel, "but I am sure not one of us has learnt one t.i.the of what the Marchesa has to teach."

"My dear Colonel Trestrail," said the Marchesa, "an education in cookery does not mean the teaching of a certain number of recipes. Education, I maintain, is something far higher than the mere imparting of facts; my notion of it is the teaching of people to teach themselves, and this is what I have tried to do in the kitchen. With some of you I am sure I have succeeded, and a book containing the recipe of every dish we have tried will be given to every pupil when we break up."

"I think the most valuable lesson I have learnt is that cookery is a matter for serious study," said Mrs. Sinclair. "The popular English view seems to be that it is one of those things which gets itself done. The food is subjected to the action of heat, a little b.u.t.ter, or pepper, or onion, being added by way of flavouring, and the process is complete. To put it bluntly, it requires at least as much mental application to roast a fowl as to cut a bodice; but it does not strike the average Englishwoman in this way, for she will spend hours in thinking and talking about dressmaking (which is generally as ill done as her cooking), while she will be reluctant to give ten minutes to the consideration as to how a luncheon or supper dish shall be prepared. The English middle cla.s.ses are most culpably negligent about the food they eat, and as a consequence they get exactly the sort of cooks they deserve to get. I do not blame the cooks; if they can get paid for cooking ill, why should they trouble to learn to cook well?"

"I agree entirely," said Mrs. Wilding. "That saying, 'What I like is good plain roast and boiled, and none of your foreign kickshaws,' is, as every one knows, the stock utterance of John Bull on the stage or in the novel; and, though John Bull is not in the least like his fict.i.tious presentment, this form of words is largely responsible for the waste and want of variety in the English kitchen. The plain roast and boiled means a joint every day, and this arrangement the good plain cook finds an admirable one for several reasons: it means little trouble, and it means also lots of sc.r.a.ps and bones and waste pieces. The good plain cook brings all the forces of obstruction to bear whenever the mistress suggests made dishes; and, should this suggestion ever be carried out, she takes care that the achievement shall be of a character not likely to invite repet.i.tion. Not long ago a friend of mine was questioning a cook as to soups, whereupon the cook answered that she had never been required to make such things where she had lived; all soups were bought in tins or bottles, and had simply to be warmed up. Cakes, too, were outside her repertoire, having always been 'had in' from the confectioner's, while 'entrys' were in her opinion, and in the opinion of her various mistresses, 'un'ealthy' and not worth making."

"My experience is that, if a mistress takes an interest in cooking, she will generally have a fairly efficient cook," said Mrs. Fothergill. "I agree with Mrs. Sinclair that our English cooks are spoilt by neglect; and I think it is hard upon them, as a cla.s.s, that so many inefficient women should be able to pose as cooks while they are unable to boil a potato properly."

"And the so-called schools of cookery are quite useless in what they teach," said Miss Macdonnell. "I once sent a cook of mine to one to learn how to make a clear soup, and when she came back, she sent up, as an evidence of her progress, a potato pie coloured pink and green, a most poisonous-looking dish--and her clear soups were as bad as ever."

Said the Colonel, "I will beg leave to enter a protest against the imperfections of that repast which is supposed to be the peculiar delight of the ladies, I allude to afternoon tea. I want to know why it is that unless I happen to call just when the tea is brought up--I grant, I know of a few houses which are honourable exceptions--I am fated to drink that most abominable of all decoctions, stewed lukewarm tea. 'Will you have some tea? I'm afraid it isn't quite fresh,' the hostess will remark without a blush. What would she think if her husband at dinner were to say, 'Colonel, take a gla.s.s of that champagne. It was opened the day before yesterday, and I daresay the fizz has gone off a little'? Tea is cheap enough, and yet the hostess seldom or never thinks of ordering up a fresh pot. I believe it is because she is afraid of the butler."