“Flirtez toujours, ma belle, si tu oses,
Je me vengerai ainsi, ma chère:
Je lui dirai d’quoi on compose
Vol-au-vent à la Financière!”
Make your crust—light as air, and flaky as snow, an you value your situation—and fill with button mushrooms, truffles, cock’s-combs, quenelles of chicken, and sweetbread, all chopped, seasoned, and moistened with a butter sauce. Brown gravy is objectionable. Garnish the Vol with fried parsley, which goes well with most luxuries of this sort.
There are some words which occur frequently in French cookery which, to the ordinary perfidious Briton, are cruelly misleading. For years I was under the impression that Brillat Savarin was a species of filleted fish (brill) in a rich gravy, instead of a French magistrate, who treated gastronomy poetically, and always ate his food too fast. And only within the last decade have I discovered what a
Pré Salé
really means. Literally, it is “salt meadow, or marsh.” It is said that sheep fed on a salt marsh make excellent mutton; but is it not about time for Britannia, the alleged pride of the ocean, and ruler of its billows, to put her foot down and protest against a leg of “prime Down”—but recently landed from the Antipodes—being described on the card as a Gigot de pré salé?
The meals, like the ways, of the “Heathen Chinee” are peculiar. Some of his food, to quote poor Corney Grain, is “absolutely beastly.”
Li Hung Chang
was welcomed to Carlton House Terrace, London, with a dinner, in twelve courses, the following being the principal items:—Roast duck, roast pork and raspberry jam, followed by dressed cucumber. Shrimps were devoured, armour and all, with leeks, gherkins, and mushrooms. A couple of young chickens preserved in wine and vinegar, with green peas, a purée of pigeon’s legs followed by an assortment of sour jellies. The banquet concluded with sponge cakes and tea.
In his own land the