And now, leaving the fish, we come to the pièce de resistance of the dinner, called the relévé. No Frenchman will ever willingly cook a ladies’ dinner and give anything coarser or heavier than a filet de bœuf. He will do it, if he has to, of course, but he will think you a barbarian if you order him to do it. I eschew the mushroom and confine myself to the truffle in the treatment of the filet. I oftentimes have a filet à la mœlle de bœuf, or à la jardinière. In the fall of the year, turkey poults à la Bordelaise, or à la Toulouse, or a saddle of Southdown mutton or lamb, are a good substitute. Let me here say that the American turkey, as found on Newport Island, all its feathers being jet black and its diet grasshoppers, is exceptionally fine.
Now for the entrées. In a dinner of twelve or fourteen, one or two hot entrées and one cold is sufficient. If you use the truffle with the filet, making a black sauce, you must follow it with a white sauce, as a riz de veau à la Toulouse, or a suprême de volaille; then a chaud-froid, say of pâté de foie gras en Bellevue, which simply means pâté de foie gras incased in jelly. Then a hot vegetable, as artichokes, sauce Barigoule, or Italienne, or asparagus, sauce Hollandaise. Then your sorbet, known in France as la surprise, as it is an ice, and produces on the mind the effect that the dinner is finished, when the grandest dish of the dinner makes its appearance in the shape of the roast canvasbacks, woodcock, snipe, or truffled capons, with salad.
I must be permitted a few words of and about this sorbet. It should never be flavored with rum. A true Parisian sorbet is simply “punch à la Toscane,” flavored with Maraschino or bitter almonds; in other words, a homœopathic dose of prussic acid. Then the sorbet is a digestive, and is intended as such. Granit, or water ice, flavored with rum, is universally given here. Instead of aiding digestion, it impedes it, and may be dangerous.
A Russian salad is a pleasing novelty at times, and is more attractive if it comes in the shape of a Macedoine de legumes, Camembert cheese, with a biscuit, with which you serve your Burgundy, your old Port, or your Johannisberg, the only place in the dinner where you can introduce this latter wine. A genuine Johannisberg, I may say here, by way of parenthesis, is rare in this country, for if obtained at the Chateau, it is comparatively a dry wine; if it is, as I have often seen it, still lusciously sweet after having been here twenty years or more, you may be sure it is not a genuine Chateau wine.
The French always give a hot pudding, as pudding suedoise, or a croute au Madère, or ananas, but I always omit this dish to shorten the dinner. Then come your ices. The fashion now is to make them very ornamental, a cornucopia for instance, but I prefer a pouding Nesselrode, the best of all the ices if good cream is used.
MADEIRAS.
CHAPTER XX.
Madeira the King of Wines—It took its Name from the Ship it came in—Daniel Webster and “Butler 16”—How Philadelphians “fine” their Wines—A Southern Wine Party—An Expert’s shrewd Guess—The Newton Gordons—Prejudice against Malmsey—Madeira should be kept in the Garret—Some famous Brands.