To revert to the preciousness and rarity of the really good female cook, to the artist in pots and pans. It was in 1833 that the Prince de Ligne, who had just lost his second wife, came to Paris to seek consolation. He lived temporarily in the Rue Richelieu. One evening in passing the lodge he became aware of a peculiarly alluring odour of cooking. He saw the concierge, an old woman of sixty, bending eagerly over a battered stewpan on a small charcoal fire, stirring some mess which evidently was exhaling this delicious odour. The Prince was one of the affable kind. He asked the poor old lady for a taste of her dish, which he liked so much that he gave her a double louis, and asked her how it happened that with such eminent culinary genius she was reduced to the porter’s lodge. She told him that she had once been head cook to a cardinal-archbishop. She had married a bad man who had spent all her savings. Although very poor, she added with conscious pride, and no longer disposing of the full batterie of an archiepiscopal kitchen, she flattered herself she could manage with a few bits of charcoal and a méchante casserole to cook with the best of them. Next day the lodge was vacant, the old concierge being on her way to Belœil, the Prince de Ligne’s residence, near Mons, in Belgium, where she presided for fifteen years over one of the best-appointed kitchens in the world.
Less fortunate than the Prince de Ligne was a middle-aged bachelor in Paris, a few years ago, who gave away an odd lottery ticket to his cook, a worthy and unprepossessing spinster. Shortly afterwards, to his amazement, he saw that this particular ticket had drawn the gros lot. He could not afford to part with such a valuable and valued servant, so he proposed marriage, was accepted, and duly became one with his cook before the maire with as little delay as possible. Directly after the marriage he asked his wife for the lottery ticket. “Oh, I gave that away,” she said, “to Jean, the coachman, to compensate him for our broken engagement.”
It has been the ambition of many highly placed men to become cooks. According to Miss Hill’s interesting book on Juniper Hall, and its colony of refugees, M. de Jaucourt is recorded to have said: “It seems to me that I have something of a vocation for cookery. I will take up that business. Do you know what our cook said to me this morning? He had been consulting me respecting his risking the danger of a return to France. ‘But you know, monsieur,’ he said, ‘an exception is made in favour of all artists.’ ‘Very well then,’ concluded M. de Jaucourt, ‘I will be an artist-cook also.’”
A notable instance of the chef who took a pride in his art and could not understand any one referring to him as “a mere cook” is the delightful hero of Mr. H. G. Wells’s story of “A Misunderstood Artist” in his “Select Conversations with an Uncle.” “They are always trying to pull me to earth. ‘Is it wholesome?’ they say;—‘Nutritious?’ I say to them: ‘I do not know. I am an artist. I do not care. It is beautiful.’—‘You rhyme?’ said the Poet. ‘No. My work is—more plastic. I cook.’”
There was a famous cook too, Laurens by name, who was chef for a long time to George III, and who combined with his culinary skill a wonderful flair for objects of art, so that the King bought a large number of the beautiful things which are even now at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle on the advice of this same Laurens. It has been said of him that he rarely made a mistake in buying, and that he attended the principal picture and art sales on the Continent on behalf of his royal master.
Some cheerful noodles have had much to say anent the want of imagination of the modern chef. This is the most arrant blatherumskite. The chef, who is only, after all, a superior servant, paid (and well, too) to carry out the gastronomic ideas of his master, or, if he lack such ideas, to pander to his ignorance, too frequently arrogates to himself a culinary wisdom which is not justified by results. The chef need only be a thoroughly good cook. The ideas, the suggestions, the genius behind the pots and pans, come from the gastronomic student. Neither Brillat-Savarin nor Grimod de la Reynière was a cook—nor was Thomas Walker, G. A. Sala, or E. S. Dallas, but they were all notable authorities. And they inspired the culinary art of their times by their knowledge, invention, and discrimination.
As a matter of fact, our chefs are unimaginative—and a good job too; because when a chef, be he never so clever, begins to launch out on novelties of his own invention, he almost invariably comes to grief. A really good maître d’hôtel may occasionally suggest a new dish, but in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it is merely a slight variation of something perfectly well known and appreciated. There may be a new garnishing, a trifling alteration in the manner of serving, and there is invariably a brand-new (and usually inappropriate) name, but the dish remains practically the same, despite its new christening-robe.
A fine joint of Southdown mutton has been recently renamed Béhague, but it remains sheep, and nothing is gained by the alteration save a further insight into the ignorance of the average chef. This is only a simple example, but it might be multiplied indefinitely. I have been served at a well-known restaurant with cutlets à la Trianon, which turned out to be our old and tried friend cutlets à la Réforme under a new title. In a like manner, but at another restaurant, an ordinary and excellent mousse de jambon paraded as jambon à la Véfour; Heavens and the chef only know why; and the one won’t tell, and the other doesn’t know.
Béhague, by the way, is, so to say, chefs’ French, which has much in common with dog Latin, if one may be allowed the comparison. Béhague will not be found in a French dictionary, but it is the new nom de cuisine for fine-quality mutton (such as Southdown); it has only lately come into use, and there seems no particular reason for it. Probably it was invented in “a moment of enthusiasm,” as the barber-artist remarked when he made a wig that just fitted a hazel-nut.
There are several different kinds of bad language. That used by chefs and maîtres d’hôtel on their menus is one of the worst. They are incorrigibly ignorant—and glory in it. It is an undeniable fact that the average menu, whether at a club or restaurant, contains usually at least a brace of orthographic howlers, while at the private house, an it boast a chef who writes the dinner programmes, the average is distinctly higher. I have encountered on an otherwise quite reputable card the extraordinary item Soufflet de fromage. The kind hostess had no intention of inflicting a box on the ears to the cheese, but had mistaken soufflet for soufflé. By such obvious errors are social friendships imperilled.