And there you are.
The second occasion came some months later. We had been on safari for several weeks and had returned to Nairobi for two or three days. It was the "psychological moment" for something new in the way of food. The stage was all set for it, and it came in the form of a pudding that would have delighted all the gastronomes and epicures of history. We called it the Newland-Tarlton pudding, because it was the joint creation of Mrs. Newland and Mrs. Tarlton. One wrote the poetry in it and the other set it to music. We ate it so thoroughly that the plates looked as clean as new. Cuninghame was there, dressed up for the first time in months, and the way that pudding disappeared behind his burly beard was suggestive of the magic of Kellar or Herrmann.
The recipe of this pudding is worthy of export to the United States, so here it is. It really is a combination of two puddings, served together and eaten at the same time.
THE NEWLAND BANANA CUSTARD Boil three large cupfuls of milk. Mix a tablespoonful of corn flour with a little cold milk just to make it into a paste. Add four eggs well beaten and mix together with three tablespoonfuls of sugar. Put into the boiled milk and stir until it thickens, but don't let it boil. When taken off add one teaspoonful of vanilla essence. Cut up ten bananas and put in a dish. Pour custard on when cool.
PRUNE SHAPE (A LA TARLTON) Stew one-half pound prunes until quite soft. Remove stones and cut prunes small. Dissolve one-half ounce gelatin and add to one-quarter pound sugar, prunes, and kernels. Pour into wetted mold to cool, first adding one-half glass of sherry. Must be served with banana cream (the Newland).
The third occasion made memorable by a delicious epoch-making dish I shall not specify, as we have dined with many friends during the last nine months. Let it be sufficient if I say that it was at one of these dinners or luncheons.
In our varied gastronomical experiences we found that the cooking on the English ships was usually bad, while that on the German ships was good, excepting the ship that took us from Naples to Mombasa. The Dutch ships were the best of all and the Dutch hotels in Java were the best we struck outside of Paris and London. In comparison with the Hotel des Indes, in Batavia, all the rest of the hotels of the Orient can be mentioned only in a furtive way. It was a revelation of excellence, in perfect keeping with the charm and beauty of Java as a whole.
But we were speaking of things to eat.
At the Hotel des Indes they served us a modest little dish called rice tafel, or "rijs-tafel." You have to go to luncheon early in order to eat it before dinner time. It was served by twenty-four waiters, marching in single file, the line extending from the kitchen to the table and then returning by a different line of march to the kitchen. It was fifteen minutes passing a given point. Each waiter carried a dish containing one of the fifty-seven ingredients of the grand total of the rice tafel. You helped yourself with one arm until that got tired, then used the other. When you were all ready to begin your plate looked like a rice-covered bunker on a golf course.
