A LITTLE DINNER OF THE FUTURE
A Forecast by Mr. Punch's Own Clairvoyant
According to the Daily Chronicle, "an American professor is looking forward to the time when cooking and dining shall become lost arts, and we shall take our sustenance in the form of tablets of concentrated things." Our esteemed contemporary appears to think that such a system would necessarily do away with all conviviality and social intercourse; but, unless Mr. Punch's clairvoyant is liable to error (which is absurd), we need not take quite so gloomy a view of the future. People will still entertain, only the dinner of the next century will be a more economical and less tedious function, and, instead of having to go through a trying interview with her cook, the coming hostess will merely look in at the nearest food chemist's, when some such conversation as the following will settle the whole business.
Hostess. We've some people coming in to take a few tablets with us this evening; what do you think I'd better have?
The Food Chemist. You will require soup, of course, madam. I could send you one of these patent soup-sprinklers, exceedingly simple to work, and quite the fashion in the highest circles: the butler sprays each guest before showing them upstairs. We supply the machine, charged with the very best soup, at ninepence a night.
Hostess. No, I don't want anything fussy, it's quite an informal little gathering. An ounce of those mock-turtle jujubes at fourpence I had last time will do very well.
The F. C. Very good, madam. Then, with regard to fish? I can strongly recommend these bi-carbonate of cod and oyster sauce lozenges, or I have some sulphate of salmon and cucumber pastilles, that I think you would like, ninepence the quarter-of-a-pound.
Hostess. I'm afraid I mustn't be extravagant. I'll take a small bottle of condensed smelt tabloids (the sixpenny size), and what are left will come in nicely for the children's dinner next day.
The F. C. Precisely so, madam. And as to entrées—will you have cockscomb cachous or sweetbread pilules?