And so the years rolled on; and at the commencement of the nineteenth century, old England, instead of enjoying the blessings of universal peace, such as the spread of the Gospel of Christianity might have taught us to expect, found herself involved in rather more warfare than was good for trade, or anything else. The first “innings” of the Corsican usurper was a short but merry one; the second saw him finally “stumped.” And from that period dates the “avenging of Waterloo” which we have suffered in silence for so long. The immigration of aliens commenced, and in the tight little island were deposited a large assortment of the poisonous seeds of alien cookery which had never exactly flourished before. The combat between the Roast Beef of old England and the bad fairy “Ala,” with her attendant sprites Grease, Vinegar, and Garlic, commenced; a combat which at the end of the nineteenth century looked excessively like terminating in favour of the fairy.
It has been repeatedly urged against my former gastronomic writings that they are unjustly severe on French cookery; that far greater minds than mine own have expressed unqualified approval thereof; that I know absolutely nothing about the subject; and that my avowed hatred of our lively neighbours and their works is so ferocious as to become ridiculous. These statements are not altogether fair to myself. I have no “avowed hatred” of our lively neighbours; in fact, upon one occasion on returning from the celebration of the Grand Prix, I saw a vision of——but that is a different anecdote. My lash has never embraced the entire batterie de cuisine of the chef, and there be many French plats which are agreeable to the palate, as long as we are satisfied that the matériel of which they are composed is sound, wholesome, and of the best quality. It is the cheap restaurateur who should be improved out of England. I was years ago inveigled into visiting the kitchen of one of these grease-and-garlic shops, and——but the memory is too terrible for language. And will anybody advance the statement that a basin of the tortue claire of the average chef deserves to be mentioned in the same breath with a plate of clear turtle at Birch’s or Painter’s? or that good genuine English soup, whether ox-tail, mock-turtle, pea, oyster, or Palestine, is not to be preferred to the French purée, or to their teakettle broth flavoured with carrots, cabbages, and onions, and dignified by the name of consommé?
Then let us tackle the subject of fish. Would you treat a salmon in the British way, or smother him with thick brown gravy, fried onions, garlic, mushrooms, inferior claret, oysters, sugar, pepper, salt, and nutmeg, en Matelote, or mince him fine to make a ridiculous mousse? Similarly with the honest, manly sole; would you fry or grill him plain, or bake him in a coat of rich white sauce, onion juice, mussel ditto, and white wine, or cider, à la Normande; or cover him with toasted cheese à la Cardinal?
The fairy “Ala” is likewise responsible for the clothing of purely English food in French disguises. Thus a leg of mutton becomes a gigot, a pheasant (for its transgressions in eating the poor farmer’s barley) a faisan, and is charged for at special rates in the bill; whilst the nearest to a beef-steak our lively neighbours can get is a portion of beef with the fibre smashed by a wooden mallet, surmounted by an exceedingly bilious-looking compound like axle-grease, and called a Châteaubriand; and curry becomes under the new régime, kari.
Undoubtedly, the principal reason for serving food smothered in made-gravies lies in the inferiority of the food. Few judges will credit France with the possession of better butcher’s-meat—with the exception of veal—than the perfidious island, which is so near in the matter of distance, and yet so far in the matter of custom. And it is an established fact that the fish of Paris is not as fresh as the fish of London. Hence the sole Normande, the sole au gratin, and the sole smothered in toasted cheese. But when we islanders are charged at least four times as much for the inferior article, in its foreign cloak, as for the home article in its native majesty, I think the time has come to protest. It is possible to get an excellent dinner at any of the “Gordon” hotels, at the “Savoy,” the “Cecil,” and at some other noted food-houses—more especially at Romano’s—by paying a stiff price for it; but it is due to a shameful lack of enterprise on the part of English caterers that a well-cooked English dinner is becoming more difficult to procure, year after year. There be three purely British dishes which are always “hoff” before all others on the programme of club, hotel, or eating-house; and these are, Irish stew, liver-and-bacon, and tripe-and-onions. Yet hardly a week passes without a new dîner Parisien making its appearance in the advertisement columns of the newspapers; whilst the cheap-and-nasty table d’hôte, with its six or seven courses and its Spanish claret, has simply throttled the Roast Beef of Old England.
“Sir,” said Dr. Johnson, after examining a French menu, “my brain is obfuscated after the perusal of this heterogeneous conglomeration of bastard English ill-spelt, and a foreign tongue. I prithee bid thy knaves bring me a dish of hog’s puddings, a slice or two from the upper cut of a well-roasted sirloin, and two apple-dumplings.”
“William,” said George Augustus Sala to the old waiter at the “Cheshire Cheese,” “I’ve had nothing fit to eat for three months; get me a point steak, for God’s sake!”
The great lauder of foreign cookery had only that day returned from a special mission to France, to “write up” the works of the cordon bleu for the benefit of us benighted Englishmen. No man in the wide wide world knew so much, or could write so much, on the subject of and in praise of the fairy “Ala,” as George Sala; and probably no man in the wide wide world so little appreciated her efforts.