Six of us started with clear turtle, followed by a thick wedge out of the middle of a patriarchal codfish, with plenty of liver. And here a pause must be made. In not one cookery-book known to mankind can be found a recipe for cooking the
Liver of a Cod.
Of course it should not be cooked with the fish, but in a separate vessel. The writer once went the rounds of the kitchens to obtain information on this point.
“’Bout half-an-hour,” said one cook, a “hard-bitten” looking food-spoiler.
“Ma foi! I cook not at all the liver of the cod,” said an unshorn son of Normandy. “He is for the malade only.”
After asking a number of questions, and a journey literally “round the town,” the deduction made from the various answers was that a piece of liver enough for six people would take eighteen minutes, after being placed in boiling water.
To continue with our dinner. No sauce with the oysters, but these simply scalded in their own liquor. Then came on a monster steak, an inch thick, cut from the rump immediately before being placed on the gridiron. And here a word on the grilling of a steak. We English place it nearer the fire than do our lively neighbours, whose grills do not, in consequence, present that firm surface which is the charm of an English steak. The late Mr. Godfrey Turner of the Daily Telegraph (who was almost as great an authority as Mr. Sala on gastronomies) once observed to the writer, “Never turn your steak, or chop, more than once.” Though by no means a disciple of Ala, he was evidently a believer in the French method of grilling, which leaves a sodden, flabby surface on the meat. The French cook only turns a steak once; but if he had his gridiron as close to the fire as his English rival, the chef would inevitably cremate his morçeau d’bœuf. I take it that in grilling, as in roasting, the meat should, in the first instance, almost touch the glowing embers.
We had nothing but horse-radish with our steak, which was succeeded by golden plovers (about the best bird that flies) and marrow bones. And a dig into a ripe Stilton concluded a banquet which we would not have exchanged for the best efforts of Francatelli himself.
Yes—despite the efforts of the bad fairy Ala, the English method of cooking good food—if deftly and properly employed—is a long way the better method. Unfortunately, through the fault of the English themselves, this method is but seldom employed deftly or properly. And at a cheap English eating-house the kitchen is usually as dirty and malodorous as at an inexpensive foreign restaurant. As both invariably serve as sleeping apartments during the silent watches of the night, this is, perhaps, not altogether to be wondered at.
But there is one plât in the French cookery book which is not to be sneered at, or even condemned with faint praise. A properly-dressed fricandeau is a dainty morsel indeed. In fact the word fricand means, in English, “dainty.” Here is the recipe of the celebrated Gouffé for the Fricandeau: