“Alas! how simple to these cates compared
Was that crude apple that diverted Eve?”
Milton (“Paradise Regained”).
It has always been a puzzle to me why folks take flesh and fowl so much more seriously than fish and vegetables. Your fair neighbour at a dinner-party will prattle gaily through soup and fish, of polo or pantomime, according to the season, but as soon as meat or bird makes its appearance she, all unconsciously, dives into deeper topics, and talks of palæontology or premature burial. Why? Of course, if this had only happened to myself, I should know that I was a sepulchral bore, but I find, on inquiry, that it is the experience of nine men out of ten.
In W. H. Mallock’s “New Republic,” some quite nice people find before them at dinner a menu of the conversation expected of them, as well as of the food to be eaten. It was arranged something after the fashion of the bill of fare of a great dinner where the wines are indicated against each course. Thus instead of Tortue Claire—Amontillado, something like this, Crême d’Asperges—Our Foreign Policy, was printed on the card. Mr. Mallock relates that the scheme was not found practicable, but the idea, in itself, seems alluring and full of possibilities. Anyhow, it is obvious to the most casual diner-out that there is a direct, if indefinable, link between cates and conversation, and that the tide of talk ebbs and flows through the menu according to a certain unascertained but more or less fixed law.
The great question of Sauce has broken up many Damon-Pythias friendships, and brought havoc into sundry happy homes. No two people think exactly alike on Sauces. There are so many schools. The Flamboyant, the Renaissance, the Simplicists, the Natural Flavourites, the Neo-Soho, and many others. The only way to gastronomic salvation is to steer a careful course between extremes, and to take that which is best and most expedient from each and every school.
A very refined and intelligent cannibal once had the politeness to ask the future ornament of his stock-pot, “With what sauce would you like to be eaten?” “But I don’t want to be eaten at all,” was the reply. “That is entirely beside the question,” said the cannibal. This rather suggests the famous Green Sauce which La Coste offered to Sir Thomas Dundas, at the Duke of York’s table, with the whispered advice, “With this sauce you would enjoy eating your grandfather.”
Do what we will, we cannot get away from Sauce. It is a necessary if unobtrusive concomitant of the plainest meats. But it can be mitigated, assuaged; and from a loathly disguise it can be transformed into a dulcet accompaniment. “Les animaux se repaissent; l’homme mange: l’homme d’esprit seul sait manger,” said Brillat-Savarin, who achieved much of his literary success by gross flattery of the palates of his friends. Charles de Monselet, the author of “La Cuisinière Poétique,” and a very earnest advocate of simplicity, as against rioting in the stewpans, wrote: “The man who pays no attention to the food he consumes can only be likened to a pig in whose trough the trotters of his own son, a pair of braces, and a box of dominoes are equally welcome.”
At the same time the affectation of simplicity is often grossly overdone. When Lord Byron first met Tom Moore at Samuel Rogers’ rooms in St. James’s Place, the noble lord affected a lack of appetite for anything except potatoes and vinegar, biscuits and soda water; but he made a very hearty meal at his club afterwards. Again, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was certainly not affected, but probably absent-minded, when he felt hungry would dash into the first baker’s shop, buy a loaf, and rush out again, breaking off pieces as he walked, and eating them there and then, his scanty meal being eked out by common raisins, a small stock of which he kept in his waistcoat pocket.
By way of contrast, it is related of George Frederick Handel, the great composer, a man of voracious appetite and exaggerated capacity, that he ordered dinner for three at a tavern, and, being hungry, asked, “Is de tinner retty?” The waiter replied that he was waiting for the company to come. “I am de gompany,” said Handel, “bring up de tinner prestissimo.” This anecdote, probably unveracious, is often attributed to Papa Haydn—which is ridiculous.