To this I may add, that if a closed oven be used, Rumford’s device of a false bottom, shown in [Fig. 3], p. 72 (see next chapter), should be adopted, which may be easily done by simply standing the above-described fish-dish, on any kind of support to raise it a little, in a larger tin tray or baking-dish, containing some water. The evaporation of the water will prevent the drying up of the fish or of its natural gravy; and if the oven ventilation is treated with the contempt I shall presently recommend, the fish, if thick, will be better cooked and more juicy than in an open-faced oven in front of the fire.
This reminds me of a method of cooking fish which, in the course of my pedestrian travels in Italy, I have seen practised in the rudest of osterias, where my fellow-guests were carbonari (charcoal burners), waggoners, road-making navvies, &c. Their staple ‘magro,’ or fast-day material, is split and dried codfish imported from Norway, which in appearance resembles the hides that are imported to the Bermondsey tanneries. A piece is hacked out from one of these, soaked for awhile in water, and carefully rolled in a piece of paper saturated with olive oil. A hole is then made in the white embers of the charcoal fire, the paper parcel of fish inserted and carefully buried in ashes of selected temperature. It comes out wonderfully well cooked considering the nature of the raw material. Luxurious cookery en papillote is conducted on the same principle and especially applied to red mullets, the paper being buttered and the sauce enveloped with the fish. In all these cases the retention of the natural juices is the primary object.
I should add that Sir Henry Thompson directs, as a matter of course, that the roasted fish should be served in the dish wherein it was cooked. He suggests that ‘portions of fish, such as fillets, may be treated as well as entire fish; garnishes of all kinds, as shell-fish, &c., may be added, flavouring also with fine herbs and condiments according to taste.’ ‘Fillets of plaice or skate with a slice or two of bacon; the dish to be filled or garnished with some previously-boiled haricots,’ is wisely recommended as a savoury meal for a poor man, and one that is highly nutritious. A chemical analysis of six-pennyworth of such a combination would prove its nutritive value to be equal to fully eighteen-pennyworth of beefsteak.
Some people may be inclined to smile at what I am about to say, viz. that such savoury dishes, serving to vary the monotony of the poor hard-working man’s ordinary fare, afford considerable moral, as well as physical, advantage.
An instructive experience of my own will illustrate this. When wandering alone through Norway in 1856, I lost the track in crossing the Kjolen fjeld, struggled on for twenty-three hours without food or rest, and arrived in sorry plight at Lom, a very wild region. After a few hours’ rest I pushed on to a still wilder region and still rougher quarters, and continued thus to the great Jostedal table-land, an unbroken glacier of 500 square miles; then descended the Jostedal itself to its opening on the Sogne fjord—five days of extreme hardship with no other food than flatbrod (very coarse oatcake), and bilberries gathered on the way, varied on one occasion with the luxury of two raw turnips. Then I reached a comparatively luxurious station (Ronnei), where ham and eggs and claret were obtainable. The first glass of claret produced an effect that alarmed me—a craving for more and for stronger drink, that was almost irresistible. I finished a bottle of St. Julien, and nothing but a violent effort of will prevented me from then ordering brandy.
I attribute this to the exhaustion consequent upon the excessive work and insufficient unsavoury food of the previous five days; have made many subsequent observations on the victims of alcohol, and have no doubt that overwork and scanty, tasteless food is the primary source of the craving for strong drink that so largely prevails with such deplorable results among the class that is the most exposed to such privation. I do not say that this is the only source of such depraved appetite. It may also be engendered by the opposite extreme of excessive luxurious pandering to general sensuality.
The practical inference suggested by this experience and these observations is, that speech-making, pledge-signing, and blue-ribbon missions can only effect temporary results unless supplemented by satisfying the natural appetite of hungry people by supplies of food that are not only nutritious, but savoury and varied. Such food need be no more expensive than that which is commonly eaten by the poorest of Englishmen, but it must be far better cooked.
Comparing the domestic economy of the poorer classes of our countrymen with that of the corresponding classes in France and Italy (with both of which I am well acquainted), I find that the raw material of the dietary of the French and Italians is inferior to that of the English, but a far better result is obtained by better cookery. The Italian peasantry are better fed than the French. In the poor osterias above referred to, not only the Friday salt fish, but all the other viands, were incomparably better cooked than in corresponding places in England, and the variety was greater than is common in many middle-class houses. The ordinary supper of the ‘roughs’ above-named was of three courses: first, a ‘minestra,’ i.e. a soup of some kind, continually varied, or a savoury dish of macaroni; then a ragoût or savoury stew of vegetables and meat, followed by an excellent salad; the beverage, a flask of thin but genuine wine. When I come to the subject of cheese, I will describe their mode of cooking and using it.
My first walk through Italy extended from the Alps to Naples, and from Messina to Syracuse. I thus spent nearly a year in Italy during a season of great abundance, and never saw a drunken Italian. A few years after this I walked through a part of Lombardy, and found the little osterias as bad as English beershops or low public-houses. It was a period of scarcity and trouble, ‘the three plagues,’ as they called them—the potato disease, the silkworm fungus, and the grape disease—had brought about general privation. There was no wine at all; potato spirit and coarse beer had taken its place. Monotonous ‘polenta,’ a sort of paste or porridge made from Indian corn meal, to which they give the contemptuous name of ‘miserabile,’ was then the general food, and much drunkenness was the natural consequence.