"From salted, red, or smoked herrings, libera nos, Domine;
From cold water as a beverage, libera nos, Domine.
A- a- a- amen!"
It is most unfortunate that La Reynière omitted to bequeath to posterity a certain monastic recipe of marvellous merit used in connection with wild fowl and all manner of game-birds, which is thus described in the brilliant opening essay of the first year of the "Almanach," the author's reference being to the wild duck, which he advises to be cooked à la broche, as it thus preserves all its fumet without losing any of its other qualities:
"After it has been roasted and carved" [he proceeds to say] "a sort of poignant salmis may be prepared on the table, the recipe for which we have been in possession of for a long time, and which was given to us by the procureur of a Bernardin abbey—the sole riches that the Revolution could not confiscate from him; this formula, however, we must reserve for our most intimate friends. The recipe is not to be found in any nutritive dispensary, and it becomes all the more precious inasmuch as, not being applicable to the duck alone, it may be utilized with all kinds of dark-fleshed feathered game, and especially with partridges and woodcock—which renders it inappreciable."
Far less can be said of the Protestant clergy on the score of cookery or with respect to the improvement of the vine and the invention of beverages. Nearly all clerical roads lead through Rome, it would seem, in so far as relates to gastronomy. Moreover, in Protestant countries—at least among the lesser lights of the church—it is rather the rector who is fêted than who does the fêting, and who, even were he inclined to asceticism, would scarcely be allowed to practise it by his parishioners. In one of his essays, "The Country Sunday," Richard Jefferies tells how the chapel pastor is entertained at table in Wiltshire:
"There is no man so feasted as the chapel pastor. He dines every Sunday, and at least once a week besides, at the house of one of his stoutest upholders.... After dinner the cognac bottle is produced, and the pastor fills his tumbler half full of spirit, and but lightly dashes it with water. It is cognac, and not brandy, for your chapel minister thinks it an affront if anything more common than the best French liquor is put before him: he likes it strong, and with it his long clay pipe. Very frequently another minister, sometimes two or three, come in at the same time, and take the same dinner, and afterwards form a genial circle with cognac and tobacco, when the room speedily becomes full of smoke and the bottle of brandy soon disappears. In these family parties there is not the least approach to over-conviviality; it is merely the custom, no one thinks anything of a glass and a pipe; it is perfectly innocent; it is not a local thing, but common and understood. The consumption of brandy and tobacco and the good things of dinner, tea, and supper (for the party generally sit out the three meals) must in a month cost the host a good deal of money, but all things are cheerfully borne for the good of the church. Never were men feasted with such honest good-will as these pastors; and if a budding Paul or Silas happens to come along who has scarce yet passed his ordination, the youthful divine may stay a week if he likes, and lick the platter clean."
One also remembers the curates' dinner as described in "The Professor" by that keen observer, Charlotte Brontë:
"The curates had good appetites, and though the beef was tough, they ate a great deal of it. They swallowed, too, a tolerable allowance of the 'flat beer,' while a dish of Yorkshire pudding and two tureens of vegetables disappeared like leaves before locusts. The cheese, too, received distinguished marks of their attention; and a 'spice-cake,' which followed by way of dessert, vanished like a vision and was no more found."