Mr. Lowell, in one of his delightful, witty papers in the Atlantic Monthly years ago, regretted that he could not find a gridiron near the St. Lawrence, although its patron saint suffered martyrdom on that excellent kitchen utensil. It is a lamentable fact that wood fires and gridirons are giving out. They contain within themselves the merits of all the kitchen ranges, all the lost juices of that early American cookery, which one who has tasted it can never forget. Where are the broils of our childhood?
Codfish is a family stand-by, but a tasteless fish unless covered with oysters or something very good; but salt-codfish balls are a great luxury.
Brook trout, boiled, baked, and broiled, are all inferior to the fry. The frying-pan has to answer for a multitude of sins, but nothing so base can be found as to deprive it of its great glory in sending us a fried brook-trout. "Clean and rinse a quarter-of-a-pound trout in cold water," says one recipe.
Why not a pound-and-a-quarter trout? The recipe begins later on: after some pork has been fried in the pan, throw in your carefully cleaned fish, no matter what their weight may be, turn them three times most carefully. Send to table without adding or detracting from their flavour.
This is for the sportsman who cooks his trout himself by a wood fire in the woods; and no other man ever arrives at just that perfect way of cooking a trout. When the trout has come down from cooling springs to the hot city, it requires a seasoning of salt, pepper, and lemon-juice.
Frogs—frogs as cooked in France, grenouilles à la poulette—are a most luxurious delicacy. They are very expensive and are to be bought at the marché St. Honoré. As only the hind legs are eaten, and the price is fifteen francs a dozen, they are not often seen. We might have them in this country for the catching. Of their tenderness, succulence, and delicacy of flavour there can be no question. They are clean feeders, and undoubtedly wholesome.
Sala, writing in "Breakfasts in Bed" does not praise bouillabaisse. He declares that the cooks plunge a rolling-pin in tallow and then with it stir that pot pourri of red mullet, tomatoes, red pepper, red Burgundy, oil, and garlic to which Thackeray has written so delightful a lyric. "Against fish soups, turtle, terrapin, oyster, and bisque," he says, "I can offer no objection." The Italians again have their good zuppa marinara, which is not all like the bouillabaisse, and the Russians make a very appetizing fish pottage which is called batwina, the stock of which is composed of kraus, or half-brewed barley beer, and oil. Into this is put the fish known as the sterlet of the Volga, or the sassina of the Gulf of Finland, together with bay leaves, pepper, and lumps of ice. Batwina is better than bouillabaisse.
THE SALAD.
"Epicurean cooks shall sharpen with cloyless sauce the appetite."
Of all the vegetables of which a salad can be made, lettuce is the greatest favourite. That lettuce which is panachée, says the Almanach des Gourmands, that is, when it has streaked or variegated leaves, is truly une salade de distinction. We prefer in this country the fine, crisp, solid little heads, of which the leaves are bright green. The milky juices of the lettuce are soporific, like opium seeds, and predispose the eater to sleep, or to repose of temper and to philosophic thought.