A few years ago a noted French gourmet was taunted with the alleged fact that it was quite impossible to order a really expensive maigre dinner; he retorted, as any sane gourmet naturally would, that it was the easiest thing in the world. He was given carte blanche, and the following was the result:—
Caviar frais.
Huîtres (Natives).
Œufs Grand-Duc.
Bouchées Joinville.
Truite saumonée au Chambertin.
Sarcelles rôties.
Salade Espérance.
Aspic de homard en Bellevue.
Asperges sauce Mousseline.
Soufflé au kirsch.
Corbeilles de fruits.
Café.
VINS.
Eau-de-vie russe.
Chablis, 1890.
Johannisberg, 1886.
Château-Léoville Poyferré, 1878.
Romanée-Conti, 1865.
Champagne frappé Baïkal (extra-dry), ’84.
Château-Yquem, 1869.
Grande fine-champagne Napoléon, 1800.
The dinner for four was exquisite, and the wines extraordinary. The total cost was just over twenty-five pounds.
In that delightful book, “Mrs. Brookfield and Her Circle,” by Charles and Frances Brookfield, there is this postscript to a letter written by the husband to his wife: “On the carte of the Carlton Club the day before yesterday (the General Fast) was to be seen these words: ‘The Committee, taking into consideration that the observance of a General Fast has been ordained, have directed that the coffee-room dinner shall be confined strictly to—Two Soups. Fish. Plain Joints. Spring Tarts. Omelettes. Cheese.’”
Another story from the same book, which although it has nothing whatever to do with Lent, has, perhaps, with food and feeding, runs as follows: “The new bishop of New Zealand, in a farewell and pathetic interview with his mother, after his appointment, was thus addressed by her in such sequence as sobs and tears would permit: ‘I suppose they will eat you, my dear—I try to think otherwise, but I suppose they will. Well!—We must leave it in the hands of Providence. But if they do—mind, my dear, and disagree with them.’”
That some at least of the less abstinent monks made very hearty meals and were quite valiant trenchermen, whether it were fast day or no, is a matter of history. At a splendid dinner given by the Legate of Avignon to the Prior of Chartreux, a superb fish, cooked to perfection and likely to have tempted the Pope himself had he been present, was handed to the Prior. He helped himself and was on the eve of eating, when one of the brothers said to him: “My father, do not touch that, it is not maigre. I went into the kitchen, and I saw things that would make you shudder; the sauce that you fancy is made from carrots and onions is made from ham and rabbits.” “My brother, you talk too much and are too curious,” replied the father; “the kitchen is not your place, and curiosity is a grievous sin.”
Beckford of “Vathek” fame gives a glowing account of the monastery of Alcobaça, and particularly of the kitchen thereof: “Through the centre of the immense and groined hall, not less than sixty feet in diameter, ran a brisk rivulet of the clearest water, flowing through pierced wooden reservoirs, containing every sort and size of the finest river fish. On one side loads of game and venison were heaped up; on the other vegetables and fruit in endless variety. Beyond a long line of stores, extended a row of ovens, and close to them hillocks of wheaten flour, whiter than snow, rocks of sugar, jars of the purest oil, and pastry in vast abundance, which a numerous tribe of lay-brothers and their attendants were rolling out and puffing up into a hundred different shapes, singing all the while as blithely as larks in a cornfield.” After describing the elaborate composition of the daily banquet of the monks, the author describes “a certain truffle cream which was so exquisite that the Lord Abbot piously gave thanks for it.”
A famous London character in the time of “Frazer’s Magazine” was Serjeant Murphy, M.P. for Cork. An acquaintance of Murphy’s was constantly addicted to boasting of his aristocratic friends. At a dinner-party where there were several Roman Catholics present, conversation centred round the subject of fasting, when the serjeant’s friend struck in: “It is very strange how little the highest ranks regard fast days. I was dining at the Duke of Norfolk’s on a fast day three weeks ago, and there was not a bit of fish at dinner.” “I suppose,” said Murphy, in the midst of the deep silence that followed, “that they had eaten it all in the dining-room.”
Chaucer writes of a man who