Host and Guest

by A. V. Kirwan

It may be thought that my condemnation of German cookery is too sweeping. It is not without full experience I speak of it, for I have lived in every capital town of Germany. At Dresden, many years ago, I rented a house in the Neu Markt, of the cook of Madame de Stael, and he furnished the best-dressed dinners I saw in Germany. At Vienna, among the Ambassadors of the five Great Powers, and among some of the Hungarian and Bohemian nobility, first-rate dinners are given, dressed by French cooks; but this is not the cookery of the nation at large, nor even of the well-to-do and easy portion of it. Carème was a considerable time at Vienna, as cook of the late Marquis of Londonderry, and he liked Vienna very well; but he says that the beef, mutton, and veal are very indifferent, badly bled, and disagreeable to dress. “There are wanting at Vienna,” says Carème, “the truffles of France, and the fish of the sea.” But, though these wants are now speedily supplied by rail, the general cookery is not good.

The best and truest account of German cookery is given in the “Bubbles from the Brunnens of Nassau.” “During the fashionable season,” says the author, the dinner at Langenschwalbach is at one o’clock. Seated at the table of the Allee Saal, I counted one hundred and eighty people at dinner in one room. To say in a single word whether the fare was bad or good would be quite impossible, it being so completely different from anything ever met with in England. To my simple taste, the cookery is most horrid; still there were now and then some dishes, particularly sweet ones, which I thought excellent. With respect to the made-dishes, of which there were a great variety, I beg to record a formula which is infallible; the simple rule is this—let the stranger taste the dish, and if it be not sour, he may be quite certain that it is greasy: again, if it be not greasy, let him not eat thereof, for then it is sure to be sour. With regard to the order of the dishes, that too is unlike anything Mrs. Glasse ever thought of: after soup, which all over the world is the alpha of the gourmand’s alphabet, the barren meat from which the said soup has been extracted is produced; of course it is dry, tasteless, withered-looking stuff, which a Grosvenor Square cat would not touch with its whiskers; but this dish is always attended by a couple of satellites—the one, a quantity of cucumber stewed in vinegar; the other, a black greasy sauce; and if you dare accept a piece of this flaccid beef, you are instantly thrown between Scylla and Charybdis, for so sure as you decline the indigestible cucumber, souse comes into your plate a deluge of the sickening grease. After the company have eaten heavily of messes, which it would be impossible to describe, in comes some nice salmon—then fowls—then puddings—then meat again—then stewed fruit; and after the English stranger has fallen back in his chair quite beaten, a leg of mutton majestically makes its appearance! The pig who lives in his sty would have some excuse, but it is really quite shocking to see any other animal overpowering himself at mid-day with such a mixture and superabundance of food. “Yet only think,” says our author, “what a compliment all this is to the mineral waters of Langenschwalbach, if the Naiads of the Pauline can be of real service to a stomach full of vinegar and grease, how much more effectually ought they to tinker up the inside of him who has sense enough to sue them in formâ pauperis.”

The quantity of fat and lard used in German cookery, more especially in cooking vegetables, renders it unpalatable to English tastes.

We may borrow from the Dutch kitchen something in fish soups. The Dutch eel soup is rich, full of flavour, and very nourishing; and the soup of herring roes, called Erasmus’s soup, prepared with twelve soft roes of herrings generally, and a quart of young peas, is by no means despicable.

I have also, after tossing on the German Ocean, enjoyed in Holland a Flushing soup made of flakes of cod and salmon. Our own modes of dressing cod, whether fresh or salted, is good, but something may be adopted from the Dutch in sauces for fish, and in the various ways of dressing herrings.

I have, in another part of this work, expressed an opinion as to the Russian mode of laying out a table. I will here merely say that almost everything good in the Russian cookery has been adopted from the English, French, and Dutch kitchens.

There is a fish soup in Russia, the chief ingredient in which is the sterlet, but as the fish is not obtainable here, it is useless to speak of it. Few of our peasantry would eat the Russian national soup—the tschy; and the barch, the Polish soup, which is fermented, is little likely to please an English or a French palate.

While Carème admits that the Russians have a few national dishes, he properly says these do not constitute a system of cookery. Their butcher’s meat, he adds, is very indifferent, their pullets are poor and small. The mutton consumed in St. Petersburgh comes from the interior, and is often, like the salmon, frozen.

From the Turkish and Indian cookery we may adopt much more than from the Russian. The pilau and kalobs of Turkey are very relishing, and so are the fish and vegetable curries of India—the pish poshes, pepper pots, and cutcharees and country captains. The Indian mulligatawney soup is excellent in the damp and cold weather, from the beginning of November to the end of February.

For ordinary dinners, English gentlemen should prefer simplicity and excellence to variety. Simplicity and convenience have triumphed in dress, and will sooner or later in dinners.