Why, then, great artist, transgress this noble resolution? Why commit a desecration which, indeed, is no desecration, save to your own pre-eminent and too fastidious judgment? Ah, shall we confess it? It is the old story, familiar to the playgoing public, and to the printers of playbills. “The particular desire of several persons of distinction,” and especially of the ladies, to whose appeals M. Soyer Informs us he could never turn a deaf ear, has dragged the sage from his retirement, and compelled him to do violence to a settled conviction and a holy purpose. Some idea of the sacrifice which M. Soyer was called upon to make by the entreaties of the ladies and the distinguished individuals adverted to, may be gathered from the history of the hero during the composition of his work. For ten months he laboured at the pyramid which the remotest posterity shall applaud; and during the whole of that period he was intent upon providing the countless meals which a living generation have already approved and fully digested. Talk of the labours of a Prime Minister or Lord Chancellor! Sir R. Peel was not an idle man. Lord Brougham is a tolerably busy one. Could either, we ask, in the short space of ten months—ten “little months”—have written ‘The Gastronomic Regenerator,’ and furnished 25,000 dinners, 38 banquets of importance, comprising above 70,000 dishes, besides providing daily for 60 servants, and receiving the visits of 15,000 strangers, all too eager to inspect the renowned altar of a great Apician temple? All this did M. Soyer, and we back him for industry against even the indefatigable Brougham.
That more than one of the 38 banquets were of the highest moment, and must at the time have engrossed the mind of their accomplished author, to the serious derangement of his literary avocations, admits of no question the moment we peruse one bill of fare which M. Soyer places before our dazzled and admiring eyes. A memorable dinner was given at the Reform Club, upon the 9th day of May of the present year, to a select party of ten highly-gifted connoisseurs; none of your gobble-and-gulp people, who, in their melancholy ignorance, swallow a potage à la Comte de Paris, or a rissolette à la Pompadour, with the same frightful nonchalance as a sailor will devour his pea-soup, or a rustic bolt his bacon; but creatures of ethereal natures, devotees of what the painters call “high art;” men who feed their bodies only to give elasticity and vigour to their souls. The Diner Lucullusian à la Sampayo was ordered with a magnificent contempt of expense. No money was to be spared in obtaining the most novel, luxurious, and rare compounds that ingenuity could discover or gold procure. Stimulated by the anxious and repeated visits of a noble-spirited, and judicious guide, a Grove and a Jay, a Townsend and a Morel, a Slater and a Solomon, surpassed themselves in the quality of the viands they purveyed. One dish, the “Buisson d’Ecrévisses Pagodatique au vin de Champagne à la Sampayo” cost something more than seven guineas—a trifle! Two large bottles of Perigord truffles, value four guineas, were stewed with the écrévisses in champagne. We have no heart to proceed, for “the author regrets that, in fulfilment of an agreement between him and M. Sampayo, he is restricted from giving the receipt of crawfish à la Sampayo.” Why was the dish mentioned at all, if the world is still to be deprived of the receipt? The loss is a national one. Doubtless it would have been very popular at the small clubs, and in great request with gentlemen of limited incomes! But to return to the incomparable dinner. There were dotrelles aux feuilles de vignes, and there was miroton de homard aux œufs de pluvier, and there were many other dishes, too, enough as you would think to crown the happiness of a cook, and to satisfy the ambition of the proudest caterer in Christendom. You know not cooks. At page 608 of ‘The Regenerator,’ the soft sigh of a Soyer falls painfully upon the reader’s ear; and no wonder! A brilliant thought—one of those superb inspirations, the property of great minds—had occurred to our author during the procreation of this matchless banquet. Mentioned by him to the mysterious and too exclusive Sampayo and his friends, they caught with joy the idea. Two dozen of ortolans and twelve of the largest and finest truffles were to be procured, and in each of the latter a hole was to be dug, wherein one of the unctuous and semi-transparent little volatiles was to be buried. Yes, the delicate native of Provence gloriously interred in the choicest production of Perigord; then must a piece of calf or lamb’s caul (exquisite minuteness of description!) cover the aperture and shelter the imprisoned bird; then was there to be braising in a gravy of fowls and Lachrymæ Christi, poached forcemeat upon the dish, the truffles in pyramid. Upon that, a purée with the truffle that bad been dug out of the graves, and a garniture of roasted ortolans. Stupendous thought! we have read of superior minds overcoming obstacles long deemed insurmountable, and have gathered from the perusal strength for the difficult struggle of life. Such strength find we here. “An ortolan,” said Alexis Soyer, pondering on the difficult and self-appointed task, “an ortolan can hardly be truffled, but I will undertake that a truffle shall be ortolaned!” He might have added, “‘Tis not in mortals to command success; we’ll do more, Sampayo, we’ll deserve it;” for great as the Regenerator’s conception was, it was not destined to be realized. The elements were unpropitious, and the ortolans did not arrive in time from Paris, whence they had been ordered. This, however, was the only failure. Everything else was to the turn, the minute. At seven o’clock the Severn salmon arrived alive, and by express from Gloucester. Ten minutes later it smoked upon the board. Happy Sampayo!—happier guests!—immortal Soyer!
We turn to the pictorial portion of this notable book. After the agreeable portrait of the author, which faces the title-page, the first of the woodcuts that attracts attention is “The Table of the Wealthy,” with the motto, “Rien ne dispose mieux l’esprit humain à des transactions amicales qu’un dîner bien conçu et artistement préparé.” A great maxim of diplomacy! How many treaties of peace and commerce have owed their conclusion to the mollifying effects of a series of good dinners! What numerous misunderstandings have been arranged and thorny points happily settled, less by the wisdom of the ambassador than by the ability of the ambassador’s cook! On a judiciously-compounded sauce, or a rôti cuit à point, or the seasoning of a salmi, or the twirl of a casserole, may depend the fate of a crowned head,—the marriage of a prince,—the weal or woe of a nation. Is cookery, then, no art? Truly is it—the highest, the noblest!
A second plate, “My Table at Home,” represents M. Soyer, in his foyers, presiding over a select party assembled round his hospitable and well-furnished board. Behold again the unrivalled gallantry of the country, and the individual finding a vent in a poetic and touching smile. “A gastronomical réunion, without ladies,” says the chief cook of the Reform Club,” is a parterre without flowers, the ocean without waves, a fleet without sails.”
Talking of fleets, let us pass on at once to the Turkey à la Nelson, which deceased but much honoured bird is placed with its tail in the prow of a Roman galley, duly provided with anchor, sail, and all fitting appurtenances, and surmounted by fictitious ducklings, manufactured, as we are informed, but should never have divined, of the legs of fowls. Further on we have the Gateau Britannique à l’Amiral, a comely corvette of cake, coppered with chocolate, displaying wafer sails and sugar rigging, tossing upon waves of gelée à la Bacchante,—her canvas swelling to a favouring breeze,—her sides dripping with wine and marmalade,—her interior, even to the hatchways, filled with such a freight as none but Soyer could provide, and perfect gourmets thoroughly appreciate. It is whispered that upon this gallant ship Commodore Napier did fearful execution in the presence of his quondam foe and present friend, Ibrahim Pacha, when that illustrious individual dined with the Commodore at his club. Assaulting the craft with the fierce impetuosity for which the hero of Acre is so renowned, and thrusting his boarding-pike—his spoon we would say—deep into the hold of the luscious craft, he destroyed in an instant Soyer’s labour of a day. Timbers were stove in or out,—sails came down by the run,—masts went by the board,—and all was wreck, where a second before all had been symmetry and perfection.
Nothing that relates to the kitchen or the table has been neglected or overlooked by the Regenerator. We have plans and drawings of kitchens of every description, from the matchless establishments of the Reform Club, with its ice drawers, slate wells, steam closets, bains marie, and fifty other modern refinements, to the unpretending cooking-places of the cottage or the bachelor. But perhaps the section of the book to be chiefly prized by the general reader and indifferent gastronome, is the short one relating to carving. Good carvers are almost as rare as good tenor singers. The proper dissection of flesh and fowl is a matter of high importance, rarely excelled in, but should be always studied. It is an accomplishment almost as indispensable as reading and writing, and quite as graceful. “If you should, unhappily,” says Launcelot Sturgeon, in his Essays, Moral, Philosophical, and Stomachic, “be forced to carve at table, neither labour at the joint till you put yourself in a heat, nor make such a desperate effort to dissect it as may put your neighbours in fear of their lives; however, if an accident should happen, make no excuses, for they are only an acknowledgment of[Pg xv] awkwardness. We remember to have seen a man of high fashion deposit a turkey in this way in the lap of a lady, but with admirable composure, and without offering the slightest apology, he finished a story which he was telling at the same time, and then quietly turning to her, merely said, ‘Madam, I’ll thank you for that turkey.’” To those who may not possess similar coolness, and the same stoical indifference to the fate of ladies’ dresses and the results of ladies’ indignation, M. Soyer’s improvements in carving are valuable indeed.
“Nature, says I to myself, compels us to dine more or less once a day; each of those days you are, honorable reader, subject to meet en tête-à-tête with a fowl, poularde, duck, pheasant, or other volatile species; is it not bad enough to have sacrificed the lives of those amimaus bienfaisans to satisfy our indefatigable appetites, without pulling and tearing to atoms the remains of our benefactors? it is high time for the credit of humanity and the comfort of quiet families, to put an end to the massacre of those innocents.”
Incomparable benevolence! Tenderest commiseration! Perfect humanity! “We will be sacrificers, not butchers, Caius Cassius.” The philanthropic progress of the century has reached the kitchen, and animal love is most intense in the vicinity of the stockpot. What would the kitchen of the Reform Club be without humanity and the liberal sentiments? No more will barbarous cooks be haunted by horrid visons of the night! Incipient porkers shall no longer pine away their sweetness, and strive to toughen their crackling in anticipation of a final flagellation. Eels shall no longer be required to give up their skins before their ghosts, and some humaner process than a surfeit of food, a deprivation of drink, and a gradual roasting near a scorching fire, will, let us hope, be discovered, to give to the livers of ducks that glorious expansion and pinguid richness so much appreciated by the epicure. We will not despair of witnessing, under the dominion of M. Soyer, the introduction and use of some instrument analogous to the guillotine, which by a stroke shall do its deadly necessary work: nay, might not advances lately made in Mesmerism be turned to good account in procuring painless death to those whom the feeling Soyer so beautifully calls our “benefactors?” A goose, in a state of coma, would be uncognizant of the penknife that divides its jugular; calves and sheep properly subjected to the action of the magnetic fluid would pass from life into the larder without a struggle or a groan. But to carving! For joints, our author gives most lucid directions, which, if properly studied, cannot fail to convert the merest tyro into an admirable carver. For game and poultry he has done more. He has invented an instrument, to be had at Bramah’s, in Piccadilly, and with which printed directions are given, by the aid of which the joints of birds are severed without the smallest detriment to their good looks. “Formerly,” he says, “nothing was more difficult to carve than wild fowl, the continual motion (when alive) of the wings and legs making the sinews almost as tough as wires, puzzling the best of carvers to separate them; my new method has quite abolished such a domestic tribulation.” For which, as well as for the many other benefits conferred by him upon the human race and the brute creation, we beg to reiterate our humble hearty thanks to the talented author of ‘The Gastronomic Regenerator.’
THE MORNING CHRONICLE.
Alexis Soyer, the Gastronomic Regenerator.—Everybody who knows him, everybody who has sat before his dishes, everybody interested in the promotion of the Reform cause, or who likes to have a good dinner at home, has long since said in his heart “Why does not Soyer write a book about cookery?” When Reform was flagging, when Peel had it all his own way, before a country party was thought of, or a revolt seemed possible, when the idea of the Whigs coming in was hopeless, and the party therefore needed consolation, what did Soyer do? At that moment of general depression Alexis Soyer invented cutlets à la réforme. He didn’t despair, he knew the avenir that was before the party. He rallied them round the invigorating table, from which they rose cheered and courageous; flushed with victuals, their attack upon the enemy was irresistible (as under such circumstances the charge of Britons always is), and Downing-street may be said to be the dessert of the dinners in Pall-mall. He is one of the greatest politicians and pacificators in the world. If they had him in Conciliation-hall, even there they would leave off quarrelling. Look at his influence upon the diplomacy of our country! In this very day’s paper appears an account of a dinner at that very Reform Club which Soyer loves, and which has stood as sponsor to the great cutlets which he invented—of a dinner at which Lord Palmerston and Ibrahim Pacha had their hands in the same dish of pilaff, and the maker of that dish was Alexis Soyer. To such a noble and magnanimous spirit as Soyer’s evidently is, such a meeting will cause pride and thankfulness indeed. It is a happy omen. They have eaten salt together, and the peace of the world is assured.