A pleasant dining-room and a well-appointed kitchen, therefore, become among the most important factors in the happiness of the household—the best means of defeating that ennui which, according to Schopenhauer, fills the moiety of a man’s life. The Savarins, the La Reynières, and the Baron Brisses can never be too many. “I regard the discovery of a new dish,” said the late Henrion de Pensey, the magistrate (according to M. Royer Collard), of whom regenerated France has most reason to be proud, “as a far more interesting event than the discovery of a star, for we always have stars enough, but we can never have too many dishes; and I shall not regard the sciences as sufficiently honored or adequately represented among us until I see a cook in the first class of the Institute.”
They manage these things better in France, though the art of gastronomy of late years has advanced as rapidly in this country, perhaps, as any of its sister arts. It is no longer a burden to approach the dinner-table; and while we may not have transposed the maxim that Harpagon deemed so noble, nevertheless, it may be affirmed, in the strict sense of the expression, that we no longer “eat to live.” For is not this among the highest of arts—a sauce “that, when properly prepared, will enable one to eat an elephant?” as Grimod de la Reynière observes in the Almanach des Gourmands. With an abundant supply of herbs and flavorings, a hygienic appreciation of their virtues, and a refined, discriminating taste, all is possible. The “palate is flattered” and the stomach is not fatigued. If the cook or the person who employs him would only carry out the advice the Almanach prescribes, in order that the cook’s palate may retain its exquisite sensibility, and the trained papillæ of his tongue forever command their cunning!
These fine savors, these subtle aromas of a delicious dish, delicate as the fragrance of a wild flower, and companions of the liquid essences of the Gironde, the Côte d’Or, the Marne, and the Rheingau—when conceived and executed by a true priest or priestess of the range, how they refresh the jaded spirits and turn the lowering winter sky into couleur de rose! It remained for a woman, the late Mrs. Mary Booth, to give to posterity the most delicious epigram that has yet been uttered regarding dinners and dinner-giving: “A successful dinner is the best thing which the world can do in the pursuit of pleasure. It is the apotheosis of the present, and the present moment is all we can call our own.” Neither let us forget for a single instant, where dinner-giving is concerned, the golden maxim of Baron Brisse: “A host whose guest has had to ask for anything is a dishonored man!”
Let the dinner be served in a well-lighted, spacious, and pleasantly furnished room; let the chairs be easy, the guests not less than eight nor more than ten (les dîners fins se font en petit comité), the linen spotless, the service faultless. Let the wines not exceed four—a light hock, redolent of the fruit of the Riesling; a glass or two of Montepulciano or of Pichon-Longueville, two flûtes of half dry champagne (cider rather than “brût”) or sparkling dry Saint-Péray; and for the after-taste—the last taste of sweets—the perfumed sunshine of Sauternes, Lafaurie, or La Tour Blanche of a well-succeeded year, iced to snow. “A glass of wine,” Richard Sheridan used to say, “would encourage the bright thought to come; and then it was right to take another to reward it for coming.” Let the courses not exceed seven, including the salad; let the room be well ventilated; the flowers mildly stimulating rather than cloying in their fragrance; let the repast not exceed two and a half hours in duration—and, for the present at least, we are—
Notes in that great symphony
Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres.
The senseless practice of decanting wine can not be too strongly condemned. A delicate wine seems never the same as when poured from the bottle in which it has ripened and in which it has concentrated its odors. The practice, moreover, is incongruous; for even he who decants his “claret” would not think of needlessly dissipating the bouquet of his hock. As for the matter of sediment being avoided by decanting, decanted wines are invariably seen in a clouded condition, their bloom having been brushed off by the very process of decanting. By laying all bottles on their side, with the label uppermost, while they remain in the repose of the cellar, and then placing them upright a day or a few hours before they are required, the question of sediment is at once disposed of. Then, if the wine be carefully poured, label upward, it wells forth as limpid as a woodland spring.
Equally to be censured is the increasing custom of serving wine in colored glasses—a fashion inaugurated by the gentler sex in order to add a supposititious life to the table. Apart from the great mistake of thus masking the color of the wine itself, and thereby impairing its attractiveness to the eye, there is no color produced by the most cunning artificer in glass which approaches the colors extracted from the skin of the grapes themselves.
What green Bohemian glass may equal in hue this golden green of Liebfrauenmilch that so enhances the flavor of these speckled trout which but yesterday were swimming amid the waving water-cresses of the stream?
Or shall I obliterate the lovely color of Bordeaux which, captivating the sense of seeing, thus additionally heightens through the imagination the exquisite bouquet and flavor of the grand growths of the Médoc? Disguised in an opaque receptacle, how may I enjoy the liquid gold of Sauternes or the deep violets and purples which dance and gleam in a glass of Côte Rôtie? Yet more than clear crystal is required in the ideal wine-glass. The most delicious nectar loses half its virtues if drunk from a thick glass or a sharp, rough rim, as the foaming juice of Champagne is deprived of its greatest charm—its bewitching, mantling life—when served in the flat tumbler that deadens its sparkle and its bead.