But the kitchen must not be forgotten. Its most striking contents are the large earthenware vases, similar in shape and size to the orcis of Italy, in which the top-knotted native keeps his wine, water, barley and rice. Then there are numberless shining brass cups, saucers, and bowls of various sizes. The latter forms the Corean dinner-service. Every piece of this is made of brass. The largest bowls are used, one for soup, and the other for rice; the next in size, for wine and water respectively; while the smaller ones are for bits of vegetables and sauces—which latter are used by the natives in profusion. Curiously enough, in the Land of the Morning Calm they manufacture a sauce which is, so far as I could judge, identical in taste and colour with our well-known Worcester sauce.
The Coreans eat their food with chopsticks, but contrary to the habits of their neighbours, the Chinese and the Japanese, spoons also are used. The chopsticks are of very cheap wood, and fresh ones are used at nearly every meal. The diet also is much more varied than in either of the neighbouring countries, and game, venison, raw fish, beef, pork, fowls, eggs, and sea-weed are much appreciated. As for fruits, the Coreans get simply mad over them, the most favourite being the persimmons, of which they eat large quantities both fresh and dried. Apples, pears and plums are also plentifully used.
The Cho-sen people have three meals a day. The first is partaken of early in the morning, and is only a light one; then comes lunch in the middle of the day, a good square meal; and finally the Tai-sek, a great meal, in the evening, at which Corean voracity is exhibited to the best advantage. The climate being so much colder than that of Japan, it is only natural that the Cho-senese should use more animal food and fat than do the landsman of the Mikado. Pork and beef, barely roasted and copiously condimented with pepper and vinegar, are devoured in large quantities. The Coreans also have a dish much resembling the Italian maccaroni or vermicelli. Of this large bowls may be seen at all the eating-shops in Seoul, and it is as a food apparently more cherished by members of the lower than by those of the upper classes. Previous to being eaten, it is dipped in a very flavoury sauce, and, although they are not quite so graceful in the art of eating as are the Neapolitan Lazzaroni, still with the help of a spoon and as many fingers as are available, the Corean natives seem to manage to swallow large quantities of this in a very short time.
Among the lower classes in Corea tea is almost unknown as a beverage. In its stead they delight in drinking the whitish stuff produced by the rice when it has been boiled in water, or as an alternative, infusions of ginsang. They also brew at home two or three different kinds of liquor of different strengths and tastes, by fermenting barley, rice and millet. The beer of fermented rice is not at all disagreeable, and their light wine also is, so far as wines go, even palatable. However, I may as well state once for all that I am no judge of these matters, and, as my time is chiefly employed in the art of oil-painting, and not in that of drinking, I hope to be excused if I think myself better up in "oils" than in wines!!
Presuming that my reader has survived this pun, I will now go on to state that it is a common thing in Corea to begin a dinner with sweets, and that another curious custom is for all present to drink out of the same bowl of wine passed round and of course re-filled when empty. The dinner is served on tiny tables rising only a few inches above the ground, and similar to those of Japan. Fish, as is the case with most Easterners, are eaten raw; first, however, being dipped in the liquid which resembles Worcestershire sauce. To cook a fish is simply looked upon as a shameful way of, spoiling it, unless it has gone bad, when, of course, cooking becomes necessary. Fish are, however, most prized by the Coreans when just taken out of the water.
Hard-boiled eggs form another favourite dish in the land of Cho-sen, and turnips, potatoes, and a large radish similar to the daikon of Japan, are also partaken of at Corean dinners. The poorer classes seem to relish highly a dreadful-looking salad, of a small fish much resembling whitebait, highly flavoured with quantities of pepper, black sauce and vinegar, with bits of pork-meat frequently thrown in. The whole thing has an unpleasant brownish colour, and the smell of it reminded me much of a photographer's dark room when collodion is in use, except that the smell of the fish-salad is considerably stronger.
The Coreans excel and even surpass themselves in cooking rice. This is almost an art with them, and the laurels for high achievements in it belong to the women, for it is to them that work of this kind is entrusted. Sometimes the Cho-senese make a kind of pastry, but they have nothing at all resembling our bread. Rice takes the place of the last mentioned, and though, so far as I could see, the fair ladies of Cho-sen were somewhat casual in the exercise of the culinary art, they really took enormous trouble to boil the rice properly. It is first well washed in a large pail, and properly cleaned; then it undergoes a process of slow boiling in plenty of water in such a way that, while quite soft and delicious to the taste, each grain retains its shape and remains separate, instead of making the kind of paste produced by our method of boiling it. The whitish water left behind after the rice has been removed is, as we have seen, used as a cooling beverage. In some respects the Corean diet approaches the Chinese and the Indian, rather than the Japanese; for many a time have I seen men in Corea eat their rice mixed with meat and fish, well covered with strong sauce, in the shape of a curry; whereas in Japan the boiled rice is always in a bowl apart and eaten separately.
The Corean mind seems to lay great stress upon the quantity of food that the digestive organs will bear. Nothing gives more satisfaction to a Corean than to be able to pat his tightly-stretched stomach, and, with a deep sigh of relief, say: "Oh, how much I have eaten!" Life, according to them, would not be worth living if it were not for eating. Brought up under a régime of this kind, it is not astonishing that their capacity for food is really amazing. I have seen a Corean devour a luncheon of a size that would satisfy three average Europeans, and yet after that, when I was anxiously expecting to see him burst, fall upon a large dish of dried persimmons, the heaviest and most indigestible things in existence. "They look very good," said he, as he quickly swallowed one, and with his supple fingers undid the beautiful bow of his girdle and loosened it, thus apparently providing for more space inside. "I shall eat one or two," he murmured, as he was in the act of swallowing the second; and, in less than no time the whole of the fruit had passed from the dish into his digestive organs, and he was intently gathering up, with the tips of his licked fingers, the few grains of sugar left at the bottom of the dish.
"I was unwell and had no appetite to-day," he then innocently remarked, as he lifted up his head.
"Oh, I hope you will come again when you are quite well," said I, "but you must promise not to eat the table, because it does not belong to me."