Eating in Two or Three Languages

by Irvin S. Cobb

Furthermore, I was informed that prior to nine-thirty I could have no meat of any sort, the only exceptions to this cruel rule being kippered herrings and bloaters; and in strict confidence the waiter warned me that, for some mysterious reason, neither the kippers nor the bloaters seemed to be up to their oldtime mark of excellence just now. From the same source I gathered that it would be highly inadvisable to order fried eggs, because of the lack of sufficient fat in which to cook them. So, as a last resort, I ordered two eggs, soft-boiled. They were served upended, English-fashion, in little individual cups, the theory being that in turn I should neatly scalp the top off of each egg with my spoon and then scoop out the contents from Nature's own container.

Now Englishmen are born with the faculty to perform this difficult achievement; they inherit it. But I have known only one American who could perform the feat with neatness and despatch; and, as he had devoted practically all his energies to mastering this difficult alien art, he couldn't do much of anything else, and, except when eggs were being served in the original packages, he was practically a total loss in society. He was a variation of the breed who devote their lives to producing a perfect salad dressing; and you must know what sad affairs those persons are when not engaged in following their lone talent. Take them off of salad dressings and they are just naturally null and void.

In my crude and amateurish way I attacked those eggs, breaking into them, not with the finesse the finished egg burglar would display, but more like a yeggman attacking a safe. I spilt a good deal of the insides of those eggs down over their outsides, producing a most untidy effect; and when I did succeed in excavating a spoonful I generally forgot to season it, or else it was full of bits of shell. Altogether, the results were unsatisfactory and mussy. Rarely have I eaten a breakfast which put so slight a subsequent strain upon my digestive processes.

Until noon I hung about, preoccupied and surcharged with inner yearnings. There were plenty of things—important things, too, they were—that I should have been doing; but I couldn't seem to fix my mind upon any subject except food. The stroke of midday found me briskly walking into a certain restaurant on the Strand that for many decades has been internationally famous for the quality and the unlimited quantity of its foods, and more particularly for its beef and its mutton. If ever you visited London in peacetime you must remember the place I mean.

The carvers were middle-aged full-ported men, with fine ruddy complexions, and moustaches of the Japanese weeping mulberry or mammoth droop variety. On signal one of them would come promptly to you where you sat, he shoving ahead of him a great trencher on wheels, with a spirit lamp blazing beneath the platter to keep its delectable burden properly hot. It might be that he brought to you a noble haunch of venison or a splendid roast of pork or a vast leg of boiled mutton; or, more likely yet, a huge joint of beef uprearing like a delectable island from a sea of bubbling gravy, with an edging of mashed potatoes creaming up upon its outer reefs.

If, then, you enriched this person with a shilling, or even if you didn't, he would take in his brawny right hand a knife with a blade a foot long, and with this knife he would cut off from the joint a slice about the size and general dimensions of a horseshoer's apron. And if you cared for a second slice, after finishing the first one, the carver felt complimented and there was no extra charge for it. It was his delight to minister to you.

But, alas, on this day when I came with my appetite whetted by my sea voyage, and with an additional edge put upon it by the privations I had undergone since landing, there was to be had no beef at all! Of a sudden this establishment, lacking its roast beef, became to me as the tragedy of Hamlet, the melancholy Dane, would be with Hamlet and Ophelia and her pa and the ghost and the wicked queen, and both the gravediggers, all left out.

When I had seated myself one of the carvers came to me and, with an abased and apologetic air, very different from his jaunty manner of yore, explained in a husky half whisper that I might have jugged hare or I might have boiled codfish, or I might have one of the awful dishes. Anyhow, that was what I understood him to say.

This last had an especially daunting sound, but I suppose I was in a morbid state, anyhow, by now; and so I made further inquiry and ascertained from him that the restrictions applying to the sale of meat did not apply to the more intimate organs of the butchered animal, such as the liver and the heart, and, in the case of a cow, the tripe. But the English, with characteristic bluntness, choose to call one of these in its cooked state an offal dish—pronounced as spelled and frequently tasting as pronounced.

As one who had primed himself for a pound or so of the rib-roast section of a grass-fed steer, I was not to be put off with one of the critter's spare parts, as it were. Nor did the thought of codfish, and especially boiled codfish, appeal to me greatly. I have no settled antipathy to the desiccated tissues of this worthy deep-sea voyager when made up into fish cakes. Moreover that young and adolescent creature, commonly called a Boston scrod, which is a codfish whose voice is just changing, is not without its attractions; but the full-grown species is not a favourite of mine.