Edward Spencer

Origin—Early dinners—The noble Romans—“Vitellius the Glutton”—Origin of haggis—The Saxons—Highland hospitality—The French invasion—Waterloo avenged—The bad fairy “Ala”—Comparisons—The English cook or the foreign food torturer?—Plain or flowery—Fresh fish and the flavour wrapped up—George Augustus Sala—Doctor Johnson again.

It is somewhat humiliating to reflect that we Britons owe the art of dining to our first conquerors the Romans—a smooth-faced race of voluptuaries whose idea of a bonne bouche took the form of a dormouse stewed in honey and sprinkled with poppy-seed. But it was not until the Normans had fairly established themselves and their cookery, that the sturdy Saxon submitted himself to be educated by the foreign food-spoiler; and at a later period the frequent invasions of France by Britain—when money was “tight” in the little island—were undoubtedly responsible for the commencement of the system of “decorating” food which so largely obtains to-day.

The name “dinner” is said—although it seems incredible that words should have become so corrupted—to be a corruption of dix heures, the time at which (A.M.), in the old Norman days, the meal was usually partaken of; and the time at which (P.M.), in later years, when none of the guests ever knew the hour, in that loose-and-careless period, the meal was occasionally partaken of at Limmer’s and at Lane’s, in London town. Froissart, in one of his works, mentions having waited upon the Duke of Lancaster at 5 P.M., “after his Grace had supped”; and it is certain that during the reigns of Francis I. and Louis XII. of France, the world of fashion was accustomed to dine long before the sun had arrived at the meridian, and to sup at what we now call “afternoon tea time.” Louis XIV. did not dine till twelve; and his contemporaries, Oliver Cromwell and the Merry Monarch, sat down to the principal meal at one. In 1700, two was the fashionable time; and in 1751 we read that the Duchess of Somerset’s hour for dinner was three. The hour for putting the soup on the table kept on advancing, until, after Waterloo, it became almost a penal offence to dine before six; and so to the end of the century, when we sit down to a sumptuous repast at a time when farm-labourers and artisans are either snug between the blankets, or engaged in their final wrangle at the “Blue Pig.”

The Romans in the time of Cicero had a light breakfast at 3.30 A.M., lunched at noon, and attacked the coena at periods varying between 3 and 7 P.M.—according to the season of the year. They commenced the first course with eggs, and each noble Roman was supposed to clear his palate with an apple at the conclusion of the third course. “A banquet with Vitellius,” we read, “was no light and simple repast. Leagues of sea and miles of forest had been swept to furnish the mere groundwork of the entertainment. Hardy fishermen had spent their nights on the heaving wave, that the giant turbot might flap its snowy flakes on the Emperor’s table, broader than its broad dish of gold. Many a swelling hill, clad in the dark oak coppice, had echoed to ringing shout of hunter and deep-mouthed bay of hound, ere the wild boar yielded his grim life, by the morass, and the dark grisly carcase was drawn off to provide a standing dish that was only meant to gratify the eye. Even the peacock roasted in its feathers was too gross a dainty”—especially the feather part, we should think—“for epicures who studied the art of gastronomy under Caesar; and that taste would have been considered rustic in the extreme which could partake of more than the mere fumes and savour of so substantial a dish. A thousand nightingales had been trapped and killed, indeed, for this one supper, but brains and tongues were all they contributed to the banquet; while even the wing of a roasted hare would have been considered far too coarse and common food for the imperial table.” Talk about a bean-feast!

According to Suetonius (whose name suggests “duff”) the villain Nero was accustomed to dine in a superb apartment, surrounded with mechanical scenery, which could be “shifted” with every course. The suppers of “Vitellius the Glutton” cost, on the average, more than £4000 a-piece—which reads like a “Kaffir Circus” dinner at the Savoy—and the celebrated feast to which he invited his brother was down in the bill for £40,350. Now a-nights we don’t spend as much on a dinner, even when we invite other people’s wives. “It consisted”—I always think of Little Dombey and the dinner at Doctor Blimber’s, on reading these facts—“of two thousand different dishes of fish, and seven thousand of fowls, with other equally numerous meats.”

“Sharp-biting salads,” salted herrings, and pickled anchovies, were served, as hors d’oeuvres during the first course of a Roman banquet, to stimulate the hunger which the rest of the meal would satisfy; but although Vitellius was, according to history, “a whale on” oysters, they do not appear to have been eaten as a whet to appetite. And it was the duty of one, or more, of the Emperor’s “freedmen” to taste every dish before his imperial master, in case poison might lurk therein. A garland of flowers around the brows was the regular wear for a guest at a “swagger” dinner party in ancient Rome, and, the eating part over, said garland was usually tilted back on the head, the while he who had dined disposed himself in an easy attitude on his ivory couch, and proffered his cup to be filled by the solicitous slave. Then commenced the “big drink.” But it must be remembered that although the subsequent display of fireworks was provided from lively Early Christians, in tar overcoats, these Romans drank the pure, unadulterated juice of the grape, freely mixed with water; so that headaches i’ th’ morn were not de rigueur, nor did the subsequent massacres and other diversions in the Amphitheatre cause any feelings of “jumpiness.”

The Roman bill-of-fare, however, does not commend itself to all British epicures, one of whom wrote, in a convivial song—

My pen loves to linger long over the gastronomies of those shaven voluptuaries, the ancient Italians; and my Caledonian readers will forgive the old tales when it is further set forth that the Romans introduced, amongst other things,

Haggis

into Bonnie Scotland. Yes, the poet’s “great chieftain o’ the puddin’ race” is but an Italian dish after all. The Apician pork haggis[3] was a boiled pig’s stomach filled with fry and brains, raw eggs, and pine-apples beaten to a pulp, and seasoned with liquamen. For although some of the Romans’ tastes savoured of refinement, many of them were “absolutely beastly.” The idea of pig’s fry and pine-apples mixed is horrible enough; but take a look into the constitution of this liquamen, and wonder no longer that Gibbons wrote his Decline and Fall with so much feeling and gusto. This sauce was obtained from the intestines, gills, and blood of fishes, great and small, stirred together with salt, and exposed in an open vat in the sun, until the compound became putrid. When putrefaction had done its work, wine and spices were added to the hell-broth, which was subsequently strained and sent into the Roman market. This liquamen was manufactured in Greece, and not one of all the poets of sunny Italy seems to have satirised the “made-in-Greece” custom, which in those days must have been almost as obnoxious as the “made-in-Germany” or the “made-in-Whitechapel” scare of to-day.

The usual farinaceous ingredient of the Roman haggis was frumenty, but frequently no grain whatever was applied; and instead of mincing the ingredients, as do the Scots, the ancients pounded them in a mortar, well moistened with liquamen, until reduced to pulp. We are further told in history that a Roman gladiator was capable, after playing with eggs, fish, nightingales’ tongues, dormice, and haggis, of finishing a wild boar at a sitting. But as the old lady remarked of the great tragedy, this happened a long time ago, so let’s hope it isn’t true.

The Saxon dining-table was oblong, and rounded at the ends. The cloth was crimson, with broad gilt edgings hanging low beneath the table, and, it is to be feared, often soiled by the dirty boots of the guests, who sat on chairs with covered backs, the counterfeit presentments of which are still to be seen in the Tottenham Court Road. The food consisted of fish, fowls, beef, mutton, venison, and pork—wild and domestic—either boiled, baked, or broiled, and handed to the company by the attendants on small sples. A favourite “fish joint” of the old Saxon was a cut out of the middle of a porpoise; and bread of the finest wheaten flour reposed in two silver baskets at each end of the table, above the salt, the retainers having to content themselves with coarser “household” out of a wooden cradle. Almost the only vegetable in use amongst the Saxons was colewort, although the Romans had brought over many others, years before; but hatred of anything foreign was more rampant in early Saxon days than at present. Forks were not introduced into England until during the reign of King “Jamie”: so that our ancestors had perforce to “thumb” their victuals. The fair Queen Elizabeth (like much more modern monarchs) was accustomed to raise to her mouth with her virgin fingers a turkey leg and gnaw it. But even in the earliest days of the thirteenth century, each person was provided with a small silver basin and two flowered napkins of the finest linen, for finger-washing and wiping purposes. Grapes, figs, nuts, apples, pears, and almonds, constituted a Saxon dessert; and in the reign of Edward III. an Act of Parliament was passed, forbidding any man or woman to be served with more than two courses, unless on high days and holidays, when each was entitled to three.

Here is the bill for the ingredients of a big dinner provided by a City Company in the fifteenth century: “Two loins of veal and two loins of mutton, 1s. 4d.; one loin of beef, 4d.; one dozen pigeons and 12 rabbits, 9d.; one pig and one capon, 1s.; one goose and 100 eggs, 1s. 0½d.; one leg of mutton, 2½d.; two gallons of sack, 1s. 4d.; eight gallons of strong ale, 1s. 6d.; total, 7s. 6d.” Alas! In these advanced days the goose alone would cost more than the “demmed total.”

Cedric the Saxon’s dining table, described in Ivanhoe, was of a much simpler description than the one noted above; and the fare also. But there was no lack of assorted liquors—old wine and ale, good mead and cider, rich morat (a mixture of honey and mulberry juice, a somewhat gouty beverage, probably), and odoriferous pigment—which was composed of highly-spiced wine, sweetened with honey. The Virgin Queen, at a later epoch, was catered for more delicately; and we read that she detested all coarse meats, evil smells, and strong wines. During the Georgian era coarse meats and strong wines were by no means out of favour; and Highland banquets especially were Gargantuan feasts, to be read of with awe. The dinner given by Fergus MacIvor, in honour of Captain Waverley, consisted of dishes of fish and game, carefully dressed, at the upper end of the table, immediately under the eye of the English stranger. “Lower down stood immense clumsy joints of beef,” says the gifted author, “which, but for the absence of pork, abhorred in the Highlands, resembled the rude festivity of the banquet of Penelope’s suitors. But the central dish was a yearling lamb, called a “hog in har’st,” roasted whole. It was set upon its legs, with a bunch of parsley in its mouth, and was probably exhibited in that form to gratify the pride of the cook, who piqued himself more on the plenty than the elegance of his master’s table. The sides of this poor animal”—the lamb, not the cook, we suppose is meant—“were fiercely attacked by the clansmen, some with dirks, others with the knives worn in the same sheath as the dagger, so that it was soon rendered a mangled and rueful spectacle.”

A spectacle which reminds the writer of a dinner table at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, in the early sixties.

“Lower down,” continues Sir Walter, “the victuals seemed of yet coarser quality, though sufficiently abundant. Broth, onions, cheese, and the fragments of the feast, regaled the sons of Ivor, who feasted in the open air.”

The funeral baked meats used after the interment of the chief of the Clan Quhele (described in The Fair Maid of Perth) were also on a very extensive scale, and were, like the other meal, “digested” with pailfuls of usquebaugh, for which no Highland head that supported a bonnet was ever “the waur i’ th’ morn.” And the custom of placing bagpipers behind the chairs of the guests, after they have well drunk, which is still observed in Highland regiments, was probably introduced by the aforesaid Fergus MacIvor, who really ought to have known better.

And so the years rolled on; and at the commencement of the nineteenth century, old England, instead of enjoying the blessings of universal peace, such as the spread of the Gospel of Christianity might have taught us to expect, found herself involved in rather more warfare than was good for trade, or anything else. The first “innings” of the Corsican usurper was a short but merry one; the second saw him finally “stumped.” And from that period dates the “avenging of Waterloo” which we have suffered in silence for so long. The immigration of aliens commenced, and in the tight little island were deposited a large assortment of the poisonous seeds of alien cookery which had never exactly flourished before. The combat between the Roast Beef of old England and the bad fairy “Ala,” with her attendant sprites Grease, Vinegar, and Garlic, commenced; a combat which at the end of the nineteenth century looked excessively like terminating in favour of the fairy.

It has been repeatedly urged against my former gastronomic writings that they are unjustly severe on French cookery; that far greater minds than mine own have expressed unqualified approval thereof; that I know absolutely nothing about the subject; and that my avowed hatred of our lively neighbours and their works is so ferocious as to become ridiculous. These statements are not altogether fair to myself. I have no “avowed hatred” of our lively neighbours; in fact, upon one occasion on returning from the celebration of the Grand Prix, I saw a vision of——but that is a different anecdote. My lash has never embraced the entire batterie de cuisine of the chef, and there be many French plats which are agreeable to the palate, as long as we are satisfied that the matÉriel of which they are composed is sound, wholesome, and of the best quality. It is the cheap restaurateur who should be improved out of England. I was years ago inveigled into visiting the kitchen of one of these grease-and-garlic shops, and——but the memory is too terrible for language. And will anybody advance the statement that a basin of the tortue claire of the average chef deserves to be mentioned in the same breath with a plate of clear turtle at Birch’s or Painter’s? or that good genuine English soup, whether ox-tail, mock-turtle, pea, oyster, or Palestine, is not to be preferred to the French purÉe, or to their teakettle broth flavoured with carrots, cabbages, and onions, and dignified by the name of consommÉ?

Then let us tackle the subject of fish. Would you treat a salmon in the British way, or smother him with thick brown gravy, fried onions, garlic, mushrooms, inferior claret, oysters, sugar, pepper, salt, and nutmeg, en Matelote, or mince him fine to make a ridiculous mousse? Similarly with the honest, manly sole; would you fry or grill him plain, or bake him in a coat of rich white sauce, onion juice, mussel ditto, and white wine, or cider, À la Normande; or cover him with toasted cheese À la Cardinal?

The fairy “Ala” is likewise responsible for the clothing of purely English food in French disguises. Thus a leg of mutton becomes a gigot, a pheasant (for its transgressions in eating the poor farmer’s barley) a faisan, and is charged for at special rates in the bill; whilst the nearest to a beef-steak our lively neighbours can get is a portion of beef with the fibre smashed by a wooden mallet, surmounted by an exceedingly bilious-looking compound like axle-grease, and called a ChÂteaubriand; and curry becomes under the new rÉgime, kari.

Undoubtedly, the principal reason for serving food smothered in made-gravies lies in the inferiority of the food. Few judges will credit France with the possession of better butcher’s-meat—with the exception of veal—than the perfidious island, which is so near in the matter of distance, and yet so far in the matter of custom. And it is an established fact that the fish of Paris is not as fresh as the fish of London. Hence the sole Normande, the sole au gratin, and the sole smothered in toasted cheese. But when we islanders are charged at least four times as much for the inferior article, in its foreign cloak, as for the home article in its native majesty, I think the time has come to protest. It is possible to get an excellent dinner at any of the “Gordon” hotels, at the “Savoy,” the “Cecil,” and at some other noted food-houses—more especially at Romano’s—by paying a stiff price for it; but it is due to a shameful lack of enterprise on the part of English caterers that a well-cooked English dinner is becoming more difficult to procure, year after year. There be three purely British dishes which are always “hoff” before all others on the programme of club, hotel, or eating-house; and these are, Irish stew, liver-and-bacon, and tripe-and-onions. Yet hardly a week passes without a new dÎner Parisien making its appearance in the advertisement columns of the newspapers; whilst the cheap-and-nasty table d’hÔte, with its six or seven courses and its Spanish claret, has simply throttled the Roast Beef of Old England.

“Sir,” said Dr. Johnson, after examining a French menu, “my brain is obfuscated after the perusal of this heterogeneous conglomeration of bastard English ill-spelt, and a foreign tongue. I prithee bid thy knaves bring me a dish of hog’s puddings, a slice or two from the upper cut of a well-roasted sirloin, and two apple-dumplings.”

“William,” said George Augustus Sala to the old waiter at the “Cheshire Cheese,” “I’ve had nothing fit to eat for three months; get me a point steak, for God’s sake!”

The great lauder of foreign cookery had only that day returned from a special mission to France, to “write up” the works of the cordon bleu for the benefit of us benighted Englishmen. No man in the wide wide world knew so much, or could write so much, on the subject of and in praise of the fairy “Ala,” as George Sala; and probably no man in the wide wide world so little appreciated her efforts.

But how has it come about that the fairy “Ala” has gained such headway in this island of ours? The answer must commence another chapter.