Read Ebook: Cakes & Ale A Dissertation on Banquets Interspersed with Various Recipes More or Less Original and anecdotes mainly veracious by Spencer Edward

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Ebook has 879 lines and 89101 words, and 18 pages

BREAKFAST

Formal or informal?--An eccentric old gentleman--The ancient Britons--Breakfast in the days of Good Queen Bess--A few tea statistics--Garraway's--Something about coffee--Brandy for breakfast--The evolution of the staff of life--Free Trade--The cheap loaf, and no cash to buy it Pages 1-9

BREAKFAST

Country-house life--An Englishwoman at her best--Guests' comforts--What to eat at the first meal--A few choice recipes--A noble grill-sauce--The poor outcast--Appetising dishes--Hotel "worries"--The old regime and the new--"No cheques"; no soles, and "whitings is hoff"--A halibut steak--Skilly and oakum--Breakfast out of the rates 10-21

BREAKFAST

LUNCHEON

Why lunch?--Sir Henry Thompson on overdoing it--The children's dinner--City lunches--"Ye Olde Cheshyre Cheese"--Doctor Johnson--Ye pudding--A great fall in food--A snipe pudding--Skirt, not rump steak--Lancashire hot-pot--A Cape "brady" 34-43

LUNCHEON

Shooting luncheons--Cold tea and a crust--Clear turtle--Such larks!--Jugged duck and oysters--Woodcock pie--Hunting luncheons--Pie crusts--The true Yorkshire pie--Race-course luncheons--Suggestions to caterers--The "Jolly Sandboys" stew--Various recipes--A race-course sandwich--Angels' pie--"Suffolk pride"--Devilled larks--A light lunch in the Himalayas 44-58

DINNER

DINNER

Imitation--Dear Lady Thistlebrain--Try it on the dog--Criminality of the English caterer--The stove, the stink, the steamer--Roasting v. baking--False economy--Dirty ovens--Frills and fingers--Time over dinner--A long-winded Bishop--Corned beef 73-81

DINNER

DINNER

VEGETABLES

VEGETABLES

CURRIES

SALADS

SALADS AND CONDIMENTS

SUPPER

SUPPER

Old supper-houses--The Early Closing Act--Evans's--Cremorne Gardens--"The Albion"--Parlour cookery--Kidneys fried in the fire-shovel--The true way to grill a bone--"Cannie Carle"--My lady's bower--Kidney dumplings--A Middleham supper--Steaks cut from a colt by brother to "Strafford" out of sister to "Bird on the Wing" 181-191

"CAMPING OUT"

COMPOUND DRINKS

Derivation of punch--"Five"--The "milk" brand--The best materials--Various other punches--Bischoff or Bishop--"Halo" punch--Toddy--The toddy tree of India--Flip--A "peg"--John Collins--Out of the guard-room 206-218

CUPS AND CORDIALS

Five recipes for claret cup--Balaclava cup--Orgeat--Ascot cup--Stout and champagne--Shandy-gaff for millionaires--Ale cup--Cobblers which will stick to the last--Home Ruler--Cherry brandy--Sloe gin--Home-made, if possible--A new industry--Apricot brandy--Highland cordial--Bitters--Jumping-powder-- Orange brandy--"Mandragora"--"Sleep rock thy brain!" 219-231

THE DAYLIGHT DRINK

Evil effects of dram-drinking--The "Gin-crawl"--Abstinence in H.M. service--City manners and customs--Useless to argue with the soaker--Cocktails--Pet names for drams--The free lunch system--Fancy mixtures--Why no cassis?--Good advice like water on a duck's back 232-245

GASTRONOMY IN FICTION AND DRAMA

RESTORATIVES

BREAKFAST

"The day breaks slow, but e'en must man break-fast."

Formal or informal?--An eccentric old gentleman--The ancient Britons--Breakfast in the days of Good Queen Bess--A few tea statistics--"Garraway's"--Something about coffee--Brandy for breakfast--The evolution of the staff of life--Free Trade--The cheap loaf, and no cash to buy it.

This is a very serious subject. The first meal of the day has exercised more influence over history than many people may be aware of. It is not easy to preserve an equal mind or keep a stiff upper lip upon an empty stomach; and indigestible food-stuffs have probably lost more battles than sore feet and bad ammunition. It is an incontestable fact that the great Napoleon lost the battles of Borodino and Leipsic through eating too fast.

When good digestion waits on appetite, great men are less liable to commit mistakes--and a mistake in a great man is a crime--than when dyspepsia has marked them for her own; and this rule applies to all men.

There should be no hurry or formality about breakfast. Your punctual host and hostess may be all very well from their own point of view; but black looks and sarcastic welcomings are an abomination to the guest who may have overslept himself or herself, and who fails to say, "Good-morning" just on the stroke of nine o'clock. Far be it from the author's wish to decry the system of family prayers, although the spectacle of the full strength of the domestic company, from the stern-featured housekeeper, or the chief lady's-maid , to the diminutive page-boy, standing all in a row, facing the cups and saucers, is occasionally more provocative of mirth than reverence. But too much law and order about fast-breaking is to be deplored.

"I'm not very punctual, I'm afraid, Sir John," I once heard a very charming lady observe to her host, as she took her seat at the table, exactly ten minutes after the line of menials had filed out.

In the long ago I was favoured with the acquaintance of an elderly gentleman of property, a most estimable, though eccentric, man. And he invariably breakfasted with his hat on. It did not matter if ladies were present or not. Down he would sit, opposite the ham and eggs--or whatever dish it might chance to be--with a white hat, with mourning band attached, surmounting his fine head. We used to think the presence of the hat was owing to partial baldness; but, as he never wore it at luncheon or dinner, that idea was abandoned. In fact, he pleaded that the hat kept his thoughts in; and as after breakfast he was closeted with his steward, or agent, or stud-groom, or keeper, for several hours, he doubtless let loose some of those thoughts to one or the other. At all events we never saw him again till luncheon, unless there was any hunting or shooting to be done.

This same old gentleman once rehearsed his own funeral on the carriage drive outside, and stage-managed the solemn ceremony from his study window. An under-gardener pushed a wheelbarrow, containing a box of choice cuttings, to represent the body; and the butler posed as chief mourner. And when anybody went wrong, or the pall-bearers--six grooms--failed to keep in step, the master would throw up the window-sash, and roar--

"Begin again!"

But this is wandering from the subject. Let us try back.

The hardy, independent Saxon, had a much better time of it, in the way of meat and drink. But with supper forming the chief meal of the day, his breakfast was a simple, though plentiful one, and consisted chiefly of venison pasty and the flesh of goats, washed down with ale, or mead.

of west country pears. There was hot bread, too, and sundry 'cates' which would now be strange to our eyes. But to wash down these substantial viands there was little save ale. The most delicate lady could procure no more suitable beverage than the blood of John Barleycorn. The most fretful invalid had to be content with a mug of small beer, stirred up with a sprig of rosemary. Wine, hippocras, and metheglin were potations for supper-time, not for breakfast, and beer reigned supreme. None but home productions figured on the board of our ancestors. Not for them were seas traversed, or tropical shores visited, as for us. Yemen and Ceylon, Assam and Cathay, Cuba and Peru, did not send daily tribute to their tables, and the very names of tea and coffee, of cocoa and chocolate, were to them unknown. The dethronement of ale, subsequent on the introduction of these eastern products, is one of the most marked events which have severed the social life of the present day from that of the past."

With the exception of the Wardon pie and the "cates," the above bill-of-fare would probably satisfy the cravings of the ordinary "Johnny" of to-day, who has heard the chimes at midnight, and would sooner face a charging tiger than drink tea or coffee with his first meal, which, alas! but too often consists of a hot-pickle sandwich and a "brandy and soda," with not quite all the soda in. But just imagine the fine lady of to-day with a large tankard of Burton ale facing her at the breakfast-table.

which is said to have been introduced into China by Djarma, a native of India, about A.D. 500, was not familiar in Europe until the end of the sixteenth century. And it was not until 1657, when Garraway opened a tea-house in Exchange Alley, that Londoners began tea-drinking as an experiment. In 1662 Pepys writes--

"Home, and there find my wife making of tea"--two years before, he called it "tee "--"a drink which Mr. Pelling the Pothicary tells her is good for her cold and defluxions."

In 1740 the price of tea ranged from 7s. to 24s. per lb. In 1725, 370,323 lbs. were drunk in England, and in 1890, 194,008,000. In 1840 the duty was 2s. 2 1/4 d. per lb.; in 1858 1s. 5d. per lb.; and in 1890 4d. per lb.

The seed of

which, when roasted, ground, and mixed with water, and unmixed with horse-beans, dandelion-root, or road-scrapings, forms a most agreeable beverage to those who can digest it, was not known to the Greeks or Romans, but has been used in Abyssinia and along the north-east coast of Africa almost as long as those parts have been populated. Here, in merry England, where coffee was not introduced until the eighteenth century, it was at first used but sparingly, until it almost entirely took the place of chocolate, which was the favoured beverage of the duchesses and fine madams who minced and flirted, and plotted, during the reign of the Merry Monarch, fifty years or so before. The march of knowledge has taught the thrifty housewife of to-day to roast her own coffee, instead of purchasing it in that form from the retail shopkeeper, who, as a rule, under-roasts the berry, in order to "keep the weight in." But do not blame him too freely, for he is occasionally a Poor Law Guardian, and has to "keep pace with the Stores."

During the Georgian era, the hard-drinking epoch, breakfast far too often consisted chiefly of French brandy; and the first meal was, in consequence, not altogether a happy or wholesome one, nor conducive to the close study of serious subjects.

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