It is astonishing how cheap cookery books are held by practical cooks: when I applied to an experienced artist to recommend me some books that would give me a notion of the rudiments of cookery, he replied, with a smile, “You may read Don Quixote, or Peregrine Pickle, they are both very good books.”
Careless expressions in cookery are the more surprising, as the confectioner is regularly attentive, in the description of his preparations, to give the exact quantities, though his business, compared to cookery, is as unimportant as the ornamental is inferior to the useful.
The maker of blanc-mange, custards, &c. and the endless and useless collection of puerile playthings for the palate (of first and second childhood, for the vigour of manhood seeketh not to be sucking sugar, or sipping turtle), is scrupulously exact, even to a grain, in his ingredients; while cooks are unintelligibly indefinite, although they are intrusted with the administration of our FOOD, upon the proper quality and preparation of which, all our powers of body and mind depend; their energy being invariably in the ratio of the performance of the restorative process, i. e. the quantity, quality, and perfect digestion of what we eat and drink.
Unless the stomach be in good humour, every part of the machinery of life must vibrate with languor: can we then be too attentive to its adjustment?!!
CULINARY CURIOSITIES.
The following specimen of the unaccountably whimsical harlequinade of foreign kitchens is from “La Chapelle” Nouveau Cuisinier, Paris, 1748.
“A turkey,” in the shape of “football,” or “a hedge-hog.” A “shoulder of mutton,” in the shape of a “bee-hive.”—“Entrée of pigeons,” in the form of a “spider,” or sun-fashion, or “in the form of a frog,” or, in “the form of the moon.”—Or, “to make a pig taste like a wild boar;” take a living pig, and let him swallow the following drink, viz. boil together in vinegar and water, some rosemary, thyme, sweet basil, bay leaves, and sage; when you have let him swallow this, immediately whip him to death, and roast him forthwith. How “to still a cocke for a weak bodie that is consumed,—take a red cocke that is not too olde, and beat him to death.”—See THE BOOKE OF COOKRYE, very necessary for all such as delight therein. Gathered by A. W., 1591, p. 12. How to ROAST a pound of BUTTER, curiously and well; and to farce (the culinary technical for to stuff) a boiled leg of lamb with red herrings and garlic; with many other receipts of as high a relish, and of as easy digestion as the devil’s venison, i. e. a roasted tiger stuffed with tenpenny nails, or the “Bonne Bouche,” the rareskin Rowskimowmowsky offered to Baron Munchausen, “a fricassee of pistols, with gunpowder and alcohol sauce.”—See the Adventures of Baron Munchausen, 12mo. 1792, p. 200; and the horrible but authentic account of Ardesoif, in Moubray’s Treatise on Poultry, 8vo. 1816, p. 18.
But the most extraordinary of all the culinary receipts that have been under my eye, is the following diabolically cruel directions of Mizald, “how to roast and eat a goose alive.” “Take a GOOSE or a DUCK, or some such lively creature, (but a goose is best of all for this purpose,) pull off all her feathers, only the head and neck must be spared: then make a fire round about her, not too close to her, that the smoke do not choke her, and that the fire may not burn her too soon; nor too far off, that she may not escape free: within the circle of the fire let there be set small cups and pots full of water, wherein salt and honey are mingled: and let there be set also chargers full of sodden apples, cut into small pieces in the dish. The goose must be all larded, and basted over with butter, to make her the more fit to be eaten, and may roast the better: put then fire about her, but do not make too much haste, when as you see her begin to roast; for by walking about, and flying here and there, being cooped in by the fire that stops her way out, the unwearied goose is kept in; she will fall to drink the water to quench her thirst and cool her heart, and all her body, and the apple-sauce will make her dung, and cleanse and empty her. And when she roasteth, and consumes inwardly, always wet her head and heart with a wet sponge; and when you see her giddy with running, and begin to stumble, her heart wants moisture, and she is roasted enough. Take her up, set her before your guests, and she will cry as you cut off any part from her, and will be almost eaten up before she be dead; it is mighty pleasant to behold!!”—See Wecker’s Secrets of Nature, in folio, London, 1660, p. 148. 309.[33-*]
“We suppose Mr. Mizald stole this receipt from the kitchen of his infernal majesty; probably it might have been one of the dishes the devil ordered when he invited Nero and Caligula to a feast.”—A. C., Jun.