The cuisine of the country, the food the people of the country eat, is not recommended to the experimenting gourmet; for the favourite dish is a sort of Kedjeree, in which dried stock-fish, rice, potatoes, butter, and anchovies all play their part. Sauerkraut and sausages, soused herrings and milk puddings also have claims to be considered the national dishes.
CHAPTER VI
GERMAN TOWNS
The cookery of the country—Rathskeller and beer-cellars—Dresden—Münich—Nüremburg—Hanover— Leipsic—Frankfurt—Düsseldorf—The Rhine valley—"Cure" places—Kiel—Hamburg.
A German housewife who is a good cook can do marvels with a goose, having half-a-dozen stuffings for it, and she knows many other ways of treating a hare than roasting it or "jugging" it. She also is cunning in the making of the bitter-sweet salads and purées which are eaten with the more tasteless kinds of meat; but, unfortunately, the good German housewife does not as a rule control the hotel or restaurant that the travelling gourmet is likely to visit, but rules in her own comfortable home. The German Delikatessen, which form the "snacks" a Teuton eats at any time to encourage his thirst, are excellent; and the smoked sprats, and smoked and soused herrings, the various sausages and innumerable pickles, are the best edible products of the Fatherland. The German meat is as a rule poor. The best beef and mutton in the north has generally been imported from Holland. The German is a great eater of fresh-water fish,—pike, carp, perch, salmon, and trout all being found on his menus, the trout being cooked au bleu. Zander, a fish which is partly of the pike, partly of the trout species, is considered a great dainty. The vegetables are generally spoiled in the cooking, being converted into a purée which might well earn the adjective "eternal." Even the asparagus is spoilt by the native cook, being cut into inch cubes and set afloat in melted butter. Compotes sweet and sour, are served at strange times during the repast, and lastly, as a sort of "old guard," the much-beloved but deadly Sauerkraut, made from both red and white cabbage, is always brought up to complete the cook's victory. The potatoes in Germany are generally excellent, the sandy soil being suitable for their cultivation.
The cookery in the big hotels on much-frequented routes in Germany is now almost universally a rather heavy version of the French art, with perhaps a compote with the veal to give local colour. In the small hotels in little provincial towns the meals are served at the times that the middle-class German of the north usually eats them, and are an inferior copy of what he gets in his own home. As a warning I give what any enterprising traveller looking for the food of the country from the kitchen of a little inn may expect:—
Coffee at 8 a.m. with rolls, Kaffee Brödchen, and butter, and this meal he will be expected to descend to the dining-room to eat.
A slight lunch at 11 a.m., at which the German equivalent for a sandwich, a Brödchen cut and buttered, with a slice of uncooked ham, lachs, or cheese between the halves, makes its appearance, and a glass of beer or wine is drunk.
Dinner (Mittagessen) is announced between 1 and 2 o'clock, and is a long meal consisting of soup, which is the water in which the beef has been boiled; fish; a messy entrée, probably of Frankfurt sausage; the beef boiled to rags with a compote of plums or wortleberries and mashed apples; and, as the sweet, pancakes.