The Art of Entertaining

by M. E. W. Sherwood

The young hostess, to strike the juste milieu, must travel, reflect, and go to a cooking-school. She must buy and read a library of cooking-books. And when all is done and said, she must realize that a cookery-book is not a dinner. There are some natures which can absorb nothing from a cookery-book. As Lady Galway said that she had put all her wits into Bradshaw's "Railway Guide" and had never got them out again, so some amateur cook remarked that she had tested her recipes with the "cook-book in one hand and the cooking-stove in the other," yet the wit had stayed away. All young housekeepers must go through the discipline—in a land where cooks are as yet scarce—of trying and failing, of trying and at length succeeding. They must go to La Belle France to learn how to make a soup, for instance. That is to say, they must study the best French authorities.

The mere question of sustenance is easy of solution. We can stand by a cow and drink her milk, or we can put some bread in our pockets and nibble it as we go along; but dinner as represented by our complicated civilization is a matter of interest which must always stand high amongst the questions which belong to social life. It is a very strange attendant circumstance that having been a matter of profound concern to mankind for so many years, it is now almost as easy to find a bad dinner as a good one, even in Paris, that headquarters of cookery.

There would be no sense in telling a young American housekeeper to learn to make sauces and to cook like a French chef, for it is a profession requiring years of study and great natural taste and aptitude. A French chef commands a higher salary than a secretary of state or than a civil engineer. As well tell a young lady that she could suddenly be inspired with a knowledge of the art of war or of navigation. She would only perhaps learn to do very badly what they in ten years learn to do so well. She would say in her heart, "For my part I am surfeited with cookery. I cry, something raw if you please for me,—something that has never been touched by hand except the one that pulled it off the blooming tree or uprooted it from the honest ground. Let me be a Timon if you will, and eat green radishes and cabbages, or a Beau Brummel, asphyxiated in the consumption of a green pea; but no ragoût, côtelette, compote, crème, or any hint or cooking till the remembrance of all that I have seen has faded and the smell of it has passed away!"

Thus said one who attended a cooking-school, had gone through the mysteries of soup-making, had learned what sauté means; had mastered entremets, and entrées, and plats, and hors d'œuvres; had learned that boudins de veau are simply veal puddings, something a little better than a veal croquette made into a little pie; and had found that all meats if badly cooked are much alike. There is a great deal of nonsense talked about making good dishes out of nothing. A French cook is very economical, he uses up odds and ends, but he must have something to cook with.

Stone broth does not go down with a hungry man, nor bad food, however disguised with learned sauces. A little learning is a dangerous thing, and one who attempts too much will fail. But one can read, and reflect, and get the general outlines of cultivated cookery. As to cultivated cookery being necessarily extravagant, that is a mistake. A great, heavy, ill-considered dinner is no doubt costly. Almost all American housekeeping is wasteful in the extreme, but the modern vanities which depend on the skill of the cook and the arranging mind of the housekeeper, all these are the triumphs of the present age, and worthy of deep thought and consideration. Let the young housekeeper remember that the pretty entrées made out of yesterday's roast chicken or turkey will be a great saving as well as a great luxury, and she will learn to make them.

Amongst a busy people like ourselves, from poorest to the richest, dinners are intended to be recreations, and recreations of inestimable value. The delightful contrast which they offer to the labours of the day, the pleasant, innocent triumph they afford to the hostess, in which all may partake without jealousy, the holiday air of guests and of the dining-room, which should be fresh, well aired, filled with flowers, made bright with glass and silver,—all this refreshes the tired man of affairs and invigorates every creature. As far as possible, the discussion of all disagreeable subjects should be kept from the dinner-table. All that is unpleasant lowers the pulse and retards digestion. All that is cheerful invigorates the pulse and helps the human being to live a more brave and useful life. No one should bring an unbecoming grumpiness to the dinner-table. Be grumpy next day if you choose, when the terrapin may have disagreed with you, but not at the feast. Bring the best bit of news and gossip, not scandal, the choicest critique of the last novel, the cream of your correspondence. Be sympathetic, amiable, and agreeable at a feast, else it were better you had stayed away. The last lesson of luxury is the advice to contribute of our very best to the dinners of our friends, while we form our own dinners on the plane of the highest luxury which we can afford, and avoid the great too much. Remember that in all countries the American lavish prodigality of feasting, and the expensive garniture of hothouse flowers, are always spoken of as vulgar. How well it will be for us when our splendid array of fish, flesh, and fowl shall have reached the benediction of good cookery; when we know how to serve it, not with barbaric magnificence and repletion, but with a delicate sense of fitness.

Mr. Webster, himself an admirable dinner giver, said of a codfish salad that it was "fit to eat." He afterwards remarked, more gravely,—and it made him unpopular,—that a certain nomination was "not fit to be made."

That led to a discussion of the word "fit." The fitness of things, the right amount, the thing in the right place, whether it be the condiment of a salad or the nomination to the presidency,—this is the thing to consult, to think of in a dinner; let it be "fit to be made."

An American dinner resolves itself into the following formula:—

The oyster is offered first. What can equal the American oyster in all his salt-sea freshness, raw, on the half-shell, a perpetual stimulant to appetite,—with a slice of lemon, and a bit of salt and pepper, added to his own luscious juices, his perfect flavor? The jaded palate, worn with much abuse, revives, and stands, like Oliver, asking for more.