The cookery of Germany is, on the whole, both appetising and wholesome. In the better class of restaurants and hotels it has absorbed many modes of preparation from France, combining these with its own. Where cookery has stood still in the latter country, it has advanced in the former; and one may dine as well, perhaps, in many of its smaller towns as in most provincial hostelries beyond its borders. Its private cookery remains more distinct and preserves its local flavour. If the French are more successful with the chicken, the Germans may be relied upon to do full justice to the goose and duck. Nowhere does the fowl which saved Rome rise to the sublime heights that it does in the district of the Vosges, not only as a roast with "Compot," but in its more ethereal perfection—the goose-liver "Pastete," or pâté de foie gras.
If one desires a roast goose after the German mode, let him proceed after the following manner: Rub a young dressed goose overnight with salt, pepper, sage, thyme, and sweet marjoram inside and out; in the morning prepare a dressing as follows—a large handful of stoned raisins and Zante currants, bread crumbs, a couple of sour apples chopped fine, and one mealy potato, with butter mixed in, and all well rolled together, but put no spices in the dressing. For the gravy, boil the giblets in a little water and mash the liver in a spoonful of flour, chop the gizzard, stir these in the liquid they were boiled in, add it to the gravy in the dripping-pan, sprinkle in a little thyme, sage, and sweet marjoram, and it is done. Serve the gravy separately. When cooked and served, garnish with sliced lemons and parsley. A "Compot" of some kind, like Hagenmark, cherries with Kirsch, or even applesauce, if not too tart, should complete the dish.
The duck may be similarly treated; but a goose or duck à l'Allemande would scarcely meet with favour in France, where the rules are laid down so strictly that even a slight deviation from accepted canons would be met by a hiss from parquet and gallery alike. Thus the "Almanach des Gourmands," in speaking of the young wild duck, or albran, which in October becomes a canardeau and in November a canard, mentions, among various ways of preparing it, that of serving it with turnips, adding that this honour belongs more strictly to monsieur son père. This gastronomic slip—that of serving turnips with a wild duck—on the part of La Reynière, who is rarely caught napping in anything relating to foods or food preparations, aroused the ire of Savarin, who protests against it in these vigorous words: "The adjunction of such a vegetable as this to this noble game would be for a young wild duck an improper and even injurious proceeding, a monstrous alliance, a dishonourable degradation." On the other hand, Savarin himself was roundly denounced by M. de Courchamps for assigning a truffled turkey a place among the roasts instead of among the large pieces of the first service. This culinary heresy, he states, has lessened the esteem in which M. Brillat-Savarin has been held in other respects, and seriously hurt the reputation of his book. The ethics of gastronomy, it will be seen, are as marked as those of society, and the arrangement of a bill of fare calls for as much finesse as do the functions of a chaperon.
While the pâté de foie gras is a dish of modern times, the ancients nevertheless knew the secret of enlarging the liver of the goose; but with the relapse into barbarism the secret became lost, to remain undiscovered until the beginning of the seventeenth century. Alsace is the chosen home of the goose, and this fowl has rendered its capital more celebrated than the siege of 1870 or the marvellous façade and clock of its Münster. "My idea of heaven," said the Rev. Sydney Smith, referring to the Strassburg product, "is eating foies gras to the sound of trumpets!" For although the pâté is produced in numerous localities on the Continent, in no other place does it attain the superlative bloom and delicacy that it does in the more important manufactories of the historic city on the Ill. To think of Strassburg is to think of Doyen and his confrères and their incomparable productions, around which rise the Gothic glories of the mediæval fane, the quaintly gabled houses embellished by the craft of the wood-carver, the statues of Gutenberg and Kleber, and the town's great girdles of fortifications and inner ramparts.
It is said the pâté de foie gras is the invention of a Norman cook named Close, who was in the employ of the Maréchal de Contades, military commandant of the province from 1762 to 1788. On the retirement of the maréchal, his cook remained in Strassburg, and began the manufacture of the dish which had rendered the table of his employer famous. There were truffles in the Wasgenwald, with trained dogs to hunt them; the goose everywhere stood ready for sacrifice; while the near-by vineyards of Neuwiller, Morsbrunn, and Westhausen contributed their wines in abundance as its fluid concomitant. But the pâté did not reach its highest excellence until some time afterwards, when Doyen, a pastry-cook of great genius, already celebrated for his chaussons of veal and inimitable apple-puffs, substituted the blacker, larger, and more fragrant truffle of Périgord, adding a bouquet-garni composed of numerous spices. Upon the proper blending of these depends to a large extent the success of the dish, just as the special flavour of a brand of champagne results from the precise adjustment of its liqueur.
All through Alsace, wherever ponds or streams exist, may be seen daily vast flocks of geese during the summer and autumn, screaming, splashing, and diving in the water. The landscape is white with them, and the plain resounds with their clamour. Each flock, which often numbers a thousand, has its goose-herd and goose-dog. At dawn the herder sounds his reveille, beginning to assemble his charges from the most remote part of the village or hamlet. These take their place in the procession of their own accord, until the ranks are complete, and they eagerly wend their way to the coveted goal. Here they remain until evening, when, at a summons from the herder, the return journey is accomplished, each individual flock leaving the phalanx on arriving near its home. Less idyllic is the life of the town goose, when large ponds and succulent herbage are not readily accessible, the birds being confined in yards where, in place of a daily round of bathing and gossiping, they are compelled to watch the flight of the storks overhead and mark the monotonous passing of the hours as they are tolled from the Rathhaus tower. Nearly every other house or yard of the poorer classes has its geese, the young fowls alone being utilised for their livers. In late October or early November the fattening begins, a process lasting usually from two to three weeks, the prized livers—the true "golden egg" of the bird of St. Michael—then weighing from two to three pounds.
THE BIRD OF ST. MICHAEL
From the etching by Birket-Foster, R.A.
The humanitarian will protest against the cruelty of gorging the fowl to repletion, depriving it of drink, and imprisoning it in close cages to gratify the voracity of man. Yet it must be admitted that hitherto everything possible to the maintenance of the health and pleasure of the subject has been lavishly supplied, and that a brief span at most would elapse ere time must claim its victim. The fox and the goose have always been closely associated, and what applies to one may well apply to the other. "Certainly," reasons Bulwer, "in the chase itself all my sympathies are on the side of the fox. But if all individuals are to give way to the happiness of the greatest number, we must set off against the painful fate of the fox the pleasurable sensation in the breasts of numbers which his fate has the honourable privilege to excite." Without the inconveniences that the Strassburg goose is compelled to undergo in behalf of the metamorphosis of its liver, the list of plats de prédilection were shorn of one of its greatest attractions, and a city now of world-wide fame must soon drag out a monotonous existence and be forgotten unless by the student of architecture—a fact duly set forth in the following stanza: