"Take a sound fresh cabbage, hash up all the remains of fowl and game that may be on hand, and have a good yesterday's bouillon, which pour in place of ordinary water on the beef intended for the day's bouillon. Then cover the bottom of the stewpan with a slice of fine ham, remove the leaves of the cabbage, and introduce the forcemeat, tying up the leaves afterwards so it will not be perceptible. Boil two hours, filling with the bouillon of the pot-au-feu as the bouillon of the boiling diminishes. After removing the bouillon from the fire, let the bouillon, cabbage, forcemeat, and ham simmer together for three quarters of an hour in the stewpan, give a last turn to the bouillon, serve your cabbage in the soup-tureen, allow it to cool a minute, and serve. Then you may have the choice of eating your cabbage in the soup, or of soaking some bread in the bouillon and making of your cabbage a relevé of the soup. Cooked in this manner, the cabbage, the bouillon, and the meat, each lending a part of its properties to the other, attain the greatest sapidity it is possible for them to attain."
This is the potage aux choux. The soupe aux choux is another matter that sounds equally appetising and has the advantage to the eye of puffing up the cabbage to far larger dimensions.
The extended remarks on the pot-au-feu itself are well worth the careful attention of the housewife; the author declaring that the French cuisine owes its superiority to that of other nations to the excellence of its bouillon. Seven hours of slow and continuous boiling, he maintains, are necessary for it to acquire all the requisite qualities, i. e., to faire sourire the soup. The term, "smile," is happily chosen. Every piece of bread in a good croûte-au-pot wears a smile, and every dancing globule that remains after the skimmer has performed its office is a dimple on its face.
Of the basting of meats—and herein the average cook stands in need of constant advice and still more constant watching—he has this to say (he is speaking of a truffled turkey after the recipe of the Marquis de Cussy, which he suggests might be called Dinde des Artistes): "Above all, never moisten your roasts, of whatever nature they may be, except with butter mixed with salt and pepper. A cook who allows a single drop of bouillon in the dripping-pan should be instantly discharged and banished from France."
One of the brightest chapters of the volume is an essay which appears in the appendix—a eulogium of a certain mustard, in which Dumas out-Reynières Reynière. But one may overlook the subtle puffery that sheds a halo over the product of "M. Bornibus," in view of the vast erudition the writer displays and the grace with which the topic is invested. The essay first appeared in Monselet's entertaining "Almanach Gourmand" of 1869, the etymology of the word having been the subject of a wager between the writer and some of his friends. Of Dumas it may be said, as it has been said of the truffle, he "embellishes everything he touches"; or, to paraphrase Savarin's definition, "Qui dit Dumas, prononce un grand mot."
Among the most distinguished of modern professional cooks was Jules Gouffé, former officier de bouche of the Jockey Club of Paris, whose "Livre de Cuisine" and "Livre de Pâtisserie" are unexcelled as guides to the greatest triumphs of the art of which they treat. The "Livre de Cuisine," which first appeared in 1865, is not a manual that can be utilised in the ordinary establishment, however; but a volume on a grand scale, written by a great chef for chefs. Francatelli, though very elaborate, is much more simple. At any rate, it is possible to simplify his recipes, or to derive many new ideas from them, even where his formulas may not be executed in the average household. But to follow Gouffé calls for the very highest professional skill and the most lavish expenditure,—the hand of a master, a larder of cockscombs, crawfish, truffles, plover and pheasants' eggs, not to mention a cellar of Château Margaux, champagne, and Chablis Moutonne. His recipe for quails à la financière, one of his nine elaborate ways of preparing the bird, will serve as well as any for illustration:
"Truss eight quails as for braising, put them in a stewpan, cover them with thin slices of fat bacon, pour in one gill of Madeira and one half pint of mirepoix, and let simmer until the quails are cooked. Fill a plain border-mould one and a quarter inches high with chicken forcemeat, poach it au bain-marie, and turn the border out of the mould into a dish and fill the centre with a financière ragoût made of foies gras, truffles, cockscombs, cocks'-kernels, and chicken forcemeat quenelles mixed in financière sauce. Drain the quails, untie them, and place them half on the border, half on the ragoût, the leg towards the centre, put a cockscomb between each quail, and a large truffle in the centre; glaze the border, the quails, and truffle with a brush dipped in glaze, and serve with financière sauce."
With Jules Gouffé, Urbain-Dubois, a chef of the highest order, and author of six important works on cookery, will be known to posterity as one of the greatest masters of the range of the second half of the nineteenth century.
In marked contrast to those of Gouffé and Dubois are the numerous culinary works of Ildefonse-Léon Brisse, more familiarly known as Baron Brisse, and who was sometimes termed the Baron Falstaff. Two of his manuals, moulded on somewhat similar lines, are excellent mentors for the modest household—"The 366 Menus" (1868) and "La Petite Cuisine" (1870), of which many editions have appeared. In these a large number of good, uncommon, and simple dishes are presented, and both works may be comprehended by all who have a fair practical knowledge of cookery at command. According to Théodore de Banville, Baron Brisse was "at once an accomplished cook, a fine and delicate gourmet, and a gourmand always tormented with an insatiable hunger." It may therefore be assumed that all his recipes have been personally tested, and that those he particularly recommends are well worthy of trial, bearing out the sentiment he expresses in the preface to "La Petite Cuisine,"—"This book is a good action for which I will be duly credited in this world or the other." Besides his numerous volumes on cookery, he founded and contributed to several culinary journals. He laughed and ate. He was of enormous stature, and always was obliged to secure two places in the diligence between Paris and his home at Fontenay-aux-Roses, where he resided previous to his death in 1876. With Jules Gouffé he instituted a series of dinners where the guests were expected to dine in white frocks and round white caps, like the fat old cooks that Roland has painted—dinners presided over by the baron, whose bonhomie was proverbial, and executed under the directions of Gouffé himself. But apart from his excellent cookery-books, Baron Brisse should be held in abiding reverence by all entertainers that are worthy of the name, if only for his splendid axiom,—"The host whose guest has been obliged to ask him for anything is a dishonoured man!"