The typical British dinner most often quoted is that which the Lord Dudley of the thirties, a noted epicure, declared was a dinner "fit for an emperor," and it runs thus: "A good soup, a small turbot, a neck of venison, duckling with green peas, or chicken with asparagus, and an apricot tart." Of British soups turtle always takes precedence in the list of honour, but as the turtle comes from Ascension or the West Indies, it can hardly claim to be a denizen of these islands. Hare soup and mock turtle, mulligatawny, mutton broth and pea soup are distinctively British, though the curry powder in the mulligatawny—a soup which takes its name from two Tamil words: Mŭllĭgă = pepper, and Tunni = water—comes, of course, from India. Oxtail soup has a good British sound, but I fancy that French housewives first discovered the virtue that there is in the tail of an ox.
Lord Dudley loved a turbot, but other judges of good British dinners sometimes give the preference to cod. Walker, of "Original" fame, gave a Christmas Day dinner to two friends, and the fare he provided for them was: crimped cod, a woodcock a man, and plum pudding. One of the most typical British dinners I have eaten was that which a gallant colonel, who very worthily filled the mayoral chair at Westminster, used to give annually at the Cavour Restaurant. It consisted of a large turbot, a sucking-pig nicely roasted, and apple pudding. Roast sucking-pig is a dinner dish better understood in England than anywhere else in the world, except, perhaps, in China. When the Duke of Cambridge, brother of George the Fourth, was entertained in princely fashion at Belvoir, and was shown the menu of a dinner on which a great French chef had exhausted all his inventiveness, and was asked if there were any dishes not included in the feast for which he had a fancy, answered that he would like some roast pig and an apple dumpling, both good British dishes. His son, the Commander-in-Chief of our days, also had a liking for pork, and, at one time, word went round the British army that at inspection lunches it was wise to give his Royal Highness pork chops. Of course, the British army overdid it, and the old Duke had so many pork chops put before him in the course of a year that at last their presence on the menu was far more likely to assist in the securing of an unfavourable report on a regiment than was their absence. Gravy soup, a grilled sole, a boiled hen pheasant stuffed with oysters, and an open tart formed the favourite dinner of a renowned gourmet of my acquaintance.
Of the made dishes that belong to British cookery, jugged hare, I think, has the leading place. Yorkshire pudding is as British as Stonehenge is, and mince pies can claim to be to-day exactly what they were when the Puritans used to preach against them. Marrow bones and Welsh rarebits, buck rarebits, and stewed tripe and onions are old British supper dishes, but the early closing laws have killed the old-fashioned British supper in eating-houses.
Good British cookery in London has not fared well in its battle against the invasion of good French cookery, and the number of houses which made a speciality of British fare has decreased woefully in the last twenty years. The old Blanchard's and its half-a-crown British dinner is a memory of the past (for the new Blanchard's turned towards the goddess A la), and the "Blue Posts" in Cork Street has been converted into a club. It was curious that the prosperity of this typical old English house depended to a great extent on a German head waiter; for Frank, who had all the best traditions of British cookery at heart, had served under the old Emperor Wilhelm in the great war, and had been wounded by a French bayonet thrust. There were certain rules of the house that were excellent. One was that, no matter what orders you might give beforehand, no fish was ever put near the fire until the man who had ordered it was inside the building, which ensured it going to table cooked to the second; and another was that the steaks, which were a great stand-by of the house, were cut from the mass of beef just in time to be transferred at once to the grill, thus making sure that none of the juices should drain away.
But there are still some temples of British cookery left in Cockaigne, and to some of them presently I will direct your steps.
[II]
SIMPSON'S IN THE STRAND
A wide entrance glowing with light, with Simpson's plain to see, on a wrought-iron sign above it, is in the great block of the Savoy Hotel building in the Strand, for the new Simpson's, though it retains all its old associations and its old manager and its old head cook—Mr Davey, the polite, white-haired little ruler of the roast, who wears a velvet cap, and who for forty-six years has seen the joints turn before the vast open fire in the kitchen—is now under the rule of the great organisation that controls the Savoy.