What amateur cook has not had these moments of depression and exaltation as she has weighed the flour and sugar, stoned the raisins, and mixed the cake, or, even worse in her young novitiate, has attempted to make a soup and has begun with the formula which so often turns out badly:—

"Take a shin of beef and put it in a pot with three dozen carrots, a dozen onions, two dozen pieces of celery, twelve turnips, a fowl, and two partridges. It must simmer six hours, etc." Yes, and last week and the week before her husband said, "it was miserable." How willingly would she allow the claim of that glorious old coxcomb, Louis Eustache Ude, who had been cook to two French kings and never forgave the world for not permitting him to call himself an artist.

"Scrapers of catgut," he says, "call themselves artists, and fellows who jump like a kangaroo claim the title; yet the man who has under his sole direction the great feasts given by the nobility of England to the allied sovereigns, and who superintended the grand banquet at Crockford's on the occasion of the coronation of Victoria, was denied the title prodigally showered on singers, dancers, and comedians, whose only quality, not requiring the microscope to discern, is vanity."

Ude was the most eccentric of cooks. He was maÎtre d'hÔtel to the Duke of York, who delighted in his anecdotes and mimicry. In his book, which he claims is the only work which gives due dignity to the great art, he says: "The chief fault in all great peoples' cooks is that they are too profuse in their preparations. Suppers are after all only ridiculous proofs of the extravagance and bad taste of the givers." He mentions great wastes which have seared his already seared conscience thus:

"I have known balls where the next day, in spite of the pillage of a pack of footmen, which was enormous, I have seen thirty hams, one hundred and fifty to two hundred carved fowls, and forty or fifty tongues given away. Jellies melt on all the tables; pastries, patties, aspics, and lobster salads are heaped up in the kitchen and strewed about in the passages; and all this an utter waste, for not even the footmen would eat this; they do not consider it a legitimate repast to dine off the remnants of a last night's feast. Footmen are like cats; they only like what they steal, but are indifferent to what is given them."

This was written by the cook of the bankrupt Duke of York, noted for his extravagance; but how well it would apply to-day to the banquet of many a nouveau riche, to how many a hotel, to how much of our American housekeeping. Ude was a poet and an enthusiast. Colonel Damer met him walking up and down at Crockford's in a great rage, and asked what was the matter. "Matter! Ma foi!" answered he; "you saw that man just gone out? Well he ordered red mullet for his dinner. I made him a delicious little sauce with my own hand. The mullet was marked on the carte two shillings. I added sixpence for the sauce. He refuses to pay sixpence for the sauce. The imbecile! He seems to think red mullets come out of the sea with my sauce in their pockets."

CarÊme, one of the greatest of French cooks, became eminent by inventing a sauce for fast-days. He then devoted several years to the science of roasting in all its branches. He studied design and elegance under Robert LainÉ. His career was one of victory after victory. He nurtured the Emperor Alexander, kept alive Talleyrand through "that long disease, his life," fostered Lord Londonderry, and delighted the Princess Belgratine. A salary of a thousand pounds a year induced him to become chef to the Regent; but he left Carlton House, he would return to France. The Regent was inconsolable, but CarÊme was implacable. "No," said the true patriot, "my soul is French, and I can only exist in France." CarÊme, therefore, overcome by his feelings, accepted an unprecedented salary from Baron Rothschild and settled in Paris.

Lady Morgan, dining at the Baron's villa in 1830, has left us a sketch of a dinner by CarÊme which is so well done that, although I have already alluded to it, I will copy verbatim: "It was a very sultry evening, but the Baron's dining-room stood apart from the house and was shaded by orange trees. In the oblong pavilion of Grecian marble refreshed by fountains, no gold or silver heated or dazzled the eye, but porcelain beyond the price of all precious metals. There was no high-spiced sauce in the dinner, no dark-brown gravy, no flavour of cayenne and allspice, no tincture of catsup and walnut pickle, no visible agency of those vulgar elements of cooking of the good old times, fire and water. Distillations of the most delicate viands had been extracted in silver, with chemical precision. Every meat presented its own aroma,"—it was not cooked in a gas stove,—"every vegetable its own shade of verdure. The mayonnaise was fixed in ice, like Ninon's description of SevignÉ's heart, 'une citronille fritÉ À la neige.' The tempered chill of the plombiÈre which held the place of the eternal fondus and soufflets of our English tables, anticipated and broke the stronger shock of the exquisite avalanche, which, with the hue and odour of fresh-gathered nectarines, satisfied every sense and dissipated every coarser flavour. With less genius than went to the composition of that dinner, men have written epic poems."

Comparing CarÊme with the great Beauvilliers, the greatest restaurant cook in Paris from 1782 to 1815, a great authority in the matter says: "There was more aplomb in the touch of Beauvilliers, more curious felicity in CarÊme's. Beauvilliers was great in an entrÉe, CarÊme sublime in an entremet; we should put Beauvilliers against the world for a rÔti, but should wish CarÊme to prepare the sauce were we under the necessity of eating an elephant or our great grandfather."

Vatel was the great CondÉ's cook who killed himself because the turbot did not arrive. Madame de SevignÉ relates the event with her usual clearness. Louis XIV. had long promised a visit to the great CondÉ at Chantilly, the very estate which the Duc d'Aumale has so recently given back to France, but postponed it from time to time fearing to cause CondÉ trouble by the sudden influx of a gay and numerous retinue. The old chÂteau had become a trifle dull and a trifle mouldy, but it got itself brushed up. Vatel was cook, and his first mortification was that the roast was wanting at several tables. It seemed to him that his great master the captain would be dishonoured, but the king had brought a larger retinue than he had promised. "He had thought of nothing but to make this visit a great success." Gourville, one of the prince's household, finding Vatel so excited, asked the prince to reassure him, which he did very kindly, telling him that the king was delighted with his supper. But Vatel mournfully answered: "Monseigneur, your kindness overpowers me, but the roast was wanting at two tables." The next morning he arose at five to superintend the king's dinner. The purveyor of fish was at the door with only two baskets. "And is this all?" asked Vatel. "Yes," said the sleepy man. Vatel waited at the gates an hour; no more fish. Two or three hundred guests, and only two packages. He whispered to himself, "The joke in Paris will be that Vatel tried to save the prince the price of two red mullets a month." His hand fell on his rapier hilt, he rushed up-stairs, fell on the blade; as he expired the cart loaded with turbot came into the yard. Voila!

Times have changed. Cooks now prefer living on their masters to dying for them.

The Prince de Loubise, inventor of a sauce the discovery of which has made him more glorious than twenty victories, asked his cook to draw him up a bill of fare, a sort of rough estimate for a supper. Bertrand's first estimate was fifty hams. "What, Bertrand! Are you going to feast the whole army of the Rhine? Your brains are surely turning." Bertrand was blandly contemptuous. "My brains are surely turning? No, Monseigneur, only one ham will appear on the table, but the rest are indispensable for my espagnoles, my garnishing."

"Bertrand, you are plundering me," stormed the prince. "This article shall not pass." The blood of the cook was up. "My lord," said he, sternly, "you do not understand the resources of our art. Give the word and I will so melt down these hams that they will go into a little glass bottle no bigger than my thumb." The prince was abashed by the genius of the spit, and the fifty hams were purchased.

The Duke of Wellington liked a good dinner, and employed an artist named Felix. Lord Seaforth, finding Felix too expensive, allowed him to go to the Iron Duke, but Felix came back with tears in his eyes.

"What is the matter," said Lord Seaforth; "has the Duke turned rusty?"

"No, no, my lord! but I serve him a dinner which would make Francatelli or Ude die of envy, and he say nothing. I go to the country and leave him to try a dinner cooked by a stupid, dirty cook-maid, and he say nothing; that is what hurt my feelings."

Felix lived on approbation; he would have been capable of dying like Vatel.

Going last winter to see le Bourgeoise Gentilhomme at the ComÉdie FranÇaise, I was struck with the novelty of the dinner served by this hero of MoliÈre's who is so anxious to get rid of his money. All the dishes were brought in by little fellows dressed as cooks, who danced to the minuet.

In a later faithful chronicle I learn that a certain marquis of the days of Louis XVI. invented a musical spit which caused all the snowy-garbed cooks to move in rhythmical steps. All was melody and order. "The fish simmered in six-eight time, the ponderous roasts circled gravely, the stews blended their essences to solemn anthems. The ears were gratified as the nose was regaled; this was an idea worthy of Apecius."

So MoliÈre, true to the spirit of his time, paid this compliment to the Marquis.

BÉchamel was cook to Louis XIV., and invented a famous sauce.

Durand, who was cook to the great Napoleon, has left a curious record of his tempestuous eating. Francatelli succeeded Ude in England, was the chef at Chesterfield House, at Lord Kinnaird's, and at the Melton Club. He held the post of maÎtre d'hÔtel for a while but was dismissed by a cabal.

The gay writer from whose pages we have gathered these desultory facts winds up with an advice to all who keep French cooks. "Make your chef your friend. Take care of him. Watch over the health of this man of genius. Send for the physician when he is ill."

Imagine the descent from these poets to the good plain cook,—you can depend upon the truth of this description,—with a six weeks' reference from her last place. Imagine the greasy soups, the mutton cutlets hard as a board, the few hard green peas, the soggy potatoes. How awful the recollections of one who came in "a week on trial!" Whose trial? Those who had to eat her food. It is bad to be without a cook, but ten times worse to have a bad one.

But if Louis Eustache Ude, the cook par excellence of all this little study, lamented over the waste in great kitchens, how much more should he revolt at that wholesale destruction of food which might go to feed the hungry, nourish and sustain the sick, and perhaps save many a child's life. What should be done with the broken meats of a great household? The cook is too apt to toss all into a tub or basket, to swell her own iniquitous profits. The half-tongues, ends of ham, roast beef, chicken-legs, the real honest relics of a generous kitchen would feed four or five poor families a week. What gifts of mercy to hospitals would be the half of a form of jelly, the pudding, the blanc mange, which are thrown away by the careless!

In France the Little Sisters of the Poor go about with clean dishes and clean baskets, to collect these morsels which fall from the rich man's table. It is a worthy custom.

While studying the names of these great men like Ude and CarÊme, Vatel and Francatelli, what shades of dead pÂtissiers, spirits of extinct confiseurs, rise around us in savoury streams and revive for us the past of gastronomic pleasure! Many a Frenchman will tell you of the iced meringues of the Palais Royal and the salades de fraises au marasquin of the Grand Seize as if they were things of the past. The French, gayer and lighter handed at the moulding of pastry, are apt to exceed all nations in this delicate, delicious entremet. The vol au vent de volaille, or chicken pie, with its delicate filling of chicken, mushroom, truffles, and its enveloping pastry, is never better than at the Grand HÔtel at Aix les Bains, where one finds the perfection of good eating. "Aix les Bains," says a resident physician, "lies half-way between Paris and Rome, with its famous curative baths to correct the good dinners of the one, and the good wines of the other." Aix adds a temptation of its own.

The French have ever been fond of the playthings of the kitchen,—the tarts, custards, the frothy nothings which are fashioned out of the evanescent union of whipped cream and spun sugar. Their politeness, their brag, their accomplishments, their love of the external, all lead to such dainties. It was observed even so long ago as 1815, when the allies were in Paris, that the fifteen thousand pÂtÉs which Madame Felix sold daily in the Passage des Panoramas were beginning to affect the foreign bayonets; and no doubt the German invasion may have been checked by the same dulcet influence.

There is romance and history even about pastry. The baba, a species of savoury biscuit coloured with saffron, was introduced into France by Stanislaus, the first king of Poland, when that unlucky country was alternately the scourge and the victim of Russia. The dish was perhaps oriental in origin. It is made with brioche paste, mixed with madeira, currants, raisins, and potted cream.

French jellies are rather monotonous as to flavour, but they look very handsome on a supper-table. A macÉdoine is a delicious variety of dainty, and worthy of the French nation. It is wine jelly frozen in a mould with grapes, strawberries, green-gages, cherries, apricots, or pineapple, or more economically with slices of pears and apples boiled in syrup coloured with carmine, saffron, or cochineal, the flavour aided by angelica or brandied cherries. An invention of Ude and one which we could copy here is jelly au miroton de pÊche:—

Get half a dozen peaches, peel them carefully and boil them, with their kernels, a short time in a fine syrup, squeeze six lemons into it, and pass it through a bag. Add some clarified isinglass and put some of it into a mould in ice; then fill up with the jelly and peaches alternately and freeze it.