In households where the chief meal of the day is at one or two o'clock there is afternoon tea or coffee. It used invariably to be coffee, good hot coffee and fresh rusks and dainty little Hörnchen and Radankuchen, an excellent light cake baked in a twisty tin. German cakes want a whole chapter to themselves to do them justice, and they should have it if it were not for a dialogue that frequently takes place in a family well known to me. The wife is of German origin, but as she has an English husband and English servants she keeps house in the English way. Therefore mutton cold or hashed is her frequent portion.
"How I hate hashed mutton," she sometimes says.
"Why do you have it, then?" says the husband, who has a genius for asking apparently innocent but really provoking questions.
"What else can I have?" says the wife.
"Eel in jelly," says the husband. He once tasted it in Berlin, and it must have given him a mental shock; for whenever his wife approaches him with a domestic difficulty, asks him, for instance, what he would like for breakfast, he suggests this inaccessible and uninviting dish.
"There is never anything to eat in England except mutton and apple-tart," says the wife. "Your plain cooks can't cook anything else. They can't cook those really. Think of a German apple-tart—"
"Why should I? I don't want one."
"That's the hopeless part of it. You are all content with what Daudet called your abominable cuisine. I thank him for the phrase. It is descriptive."
"Oh, well," says the husband, "we're not a greedy nation."
So if this is the English point of view the less said about cakes the better. And anyhow, it is in this country that afternoon tea is an engaging meal. Berlin offers you tea nowadays, but it is never good, and instead of freshly cut bread and butter they have horrid little chokey biscuits flavoured with vanilla. Old-fashioned Germans used to put a bit of vanilla in the tea-pot when they had guests they delighted to honour, but they all know better than that nowadays. The milk is often boiled milk, but even that scarcely explains why tea is so seldom fit to drink in Germany. Supper is a light meal in most houses. The English mutton bone is never seen, for when cold meat is eaten it is cut in neat slices and put on a long narrow dish. But there is nearly always something from the nearest Delikatessen shop with it,—slices of ham or tongue, or slices of one or two of the various sausages of Germany: Blutwurst, Mettwurst, Schinkenwurst, Leberwurst, all different and all good. When a hot dish is served it is usually a light one, often an omelette or some other preparation of eggs; and in spring eggs and bits of asparagus are a great deal cooked together in various ways: not asparagus heads so often as short lengths of the stalk sold separately in the market, and quite tender when cooked. There is nearly always a salad with the cold meat or a dish of the salted cucumbers that make such a good pickle. The big loaves of light brown rye bread appear at this meal instead of the little white rolls eaten at breakfast. Beer or wine is drunk, and very often of late years tea as well. Sweets are not usually served at supper, unless guests are present. They are eaten at the midday dinner, and each part of Germany has its own favourite dishes.