Son gilet n’avait qu’un bouton,
Son nez en avait plus de trente!”
An ex-chef to whom I told this story of Béquet was profoundly moved, and said simply: “It must have been a beautiful death!”
CHAPTER·IX·SWEETS·AND·ODDMENTS·
“And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.”
Shakespeare (Sonnet cii.).
The warm glow of virtuous satisfaction induced by the knowledge that one has done what was expected of one is my sole excuse for the contents of this chapter. I have no sweet tooth, and my experience in the cooking of sweets has been limited to the few recipes which come later on. Even these I would rather have omitted, because it is so easy to buy éclairs, petits fours, and other “dulceties” wherewith to finish off a Chafing-Dish meal, but it is just on the confines of possibility that this book may be read by a lady—or, if I am lucky, by two or even three—and I should be indeed accounted a poor instructor if I omitted sweets from my curriculum. “I humbly beg pardon of heaven, and the lady,” as Mr. Pepys said when he kissed the cook.
“Give the bairns pudding in plenty, again say I”—so wrote Sir Walter Scott, and I am heartily at one with him, but Chaffinda does not accommodate herself to the fabrication of pudding—and, besides, children ought to be in bed when supper-time brings the Chafing Dish on the table. Baking is of course impossible, and boiling in a cloth equally so. I have already said that Chaffinda—being so nearly human—has her limitations, and these are two of them, which I, for one, in no wise regret. Nevertheless, pudding is a great institution—in its proper place—which is childhood.