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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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.

The history of

--by no means an unmixed blessing--has changed all this; and the working-classes, with their wives and families, can, when out of the workhouse, in the intervals between "strikes," enjoy the same quality of bread, that "cheap loaf" which appears on the table of the wicked squire and the all-devouring parson. In Yorkshire, at the present day, almost the worst thing that can be urged against a woman is that she "canna mak' a bit o' bread."

"Just look," wrote an enthusiastic Free Trader, a quarter of a century ago, "at the immense change that has latterly taken place in the food of the English peasantry. Rye bread and pease-pudding exchanged for wheaten loaves. A startling change, but not greatly different from what has occurred in France, where, with the abuses of the Bourbon rule, an end was put to the semi-starvation of French tillers of the soil. Black bread is now almost as much a rarity in France as on our side of the Channel; while barley in Wales, oats in Scotland, and the potato in Ireland, are no longer the food-staples that they were."

I have no wish for anything of a contentious nature to appear in this volume; but may deliver, with regard to the above, the opinion that pease-pudding is by no means despicable fare, when associated with a boiled leg of pork; and I may add that too many of the English peasantry, nowadays, have been reduced, by this same Free Trade, to a diet of no bread at all, in place of wheaten, or any other loaves.

Wedding breakfasts, with the formal speeches, and cutting of the cake, have gone out of fashion, and the subject of the British breakfast of to-day demands a new chapter.

BREAKFAST

"Sit down and feed, and welcome to our table."

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.

Yes, 'tis a pleasant function, breakfast at the Castle, the Park, or the Grange. But, as observed in the last chapter, there must be no undue punctuality, no black looks at late arrivals, no sarcastic allusions to late hours, nor inane chaff from the other guests about the wine cup or the whisky cup, which may have been drained in the smoking-room, during the small hours.

"The English," said an eminent alien, "have only one sauce." This is a scandalous libel; but as it was said a long time ago it doesn't matter. It would be much truer to say that the English have only one breakfast-dish, and its name is

The great question of what to eat at the first meal depends greatly upon whether you sit down to it directly you emerge from your bedroom, or whether you have indulged in any sort of exercise in the interim. After two or three hours "amateur touting" on such a place as Newmarket Heath, the sportsman is ready for any sort of food, from a dish of liver and bacon to a good, thick fat chop, or an underdone steak. I have even attacked cold stewed eels upon an occasion when the pangs of hunger would have justified my eating the tom-cat, and the landlady as well. But chops and steaks are not to be commended to furnish forth the ordinary breakfast-table. I am coming to the hotel breakfast presently, so will say nothing about fried fish just yet. But here follows a list of a few of what may be called

Mushrooms , sausages , scrambled eggs on toast, curried eggs, fish balls, kidneys, savoury omelette. Porridge may be useful for growing boys and briefless barristers, but this chapter is not written solely in their interests. Above all, do not, oh! do not, forget the grill, or broil. This should be the feature of the breakfast. Such simple recipes as those for the manufacture of fish balls or omelettes or curried eggs--though I shall have plenty to say about curries later on--need not be given here; but the following, for a grill-sauce, will be found invaluable, especially for the "sluggard."

Melt on the plate a lump of butter the size of a large walnut. Stir into it, when melted, two teaspoonfuls of made mustard, then a dessert-spoonful of vinegar, half that quantity of tarragon vinegar, and a tablespoonful of cream--Devonshire or English. Season with salt, black pepper, and cayenne, according to the tastes and requirements of the breakfasters.

Let your sideboard--it is assumed that you have a sideboard--sigh and lament its hard lot, under its load of cold joints, game, and pies,--I am still harping on the country-house; and if you have a York ham in cut, it should be flanked by a Westphalian ditto. For the blend is a good one. And remember that no York ham under 20 lb. in weight is worth cutting. You need not put it all on the board at once. A capital adjunct to the breakfast-table, too, is a reindeer's tongue, which, as you see it hung up in the shops, looks more like a policeman's truncheon in active employment than anything else; but when well soaked and then properly treated in the boiling, is very tasty, and will melt like marrow in the mouth.

But what of the wretched bachelor, as he enters his one sitting-room, in his humble lodging? He may have heard the chimes at midnight, in some gay and festive quarter, or, like some other wretched bachelors, he may have been engaged in the composition of romances for some exacting editor, until the smallish hours. Poor outcast! what sort of appetite will he have for the rusty rasher, or the shop egg, the smoked haddock, or the "Billingsgate pheasant," which his landlady will presently send up, together with her little account, for his refection? Well, here is a much more tasty dish than any of the above; and if he be "square" with Mrs. Bangham, that lady will possibly not object to her "gal" cooking the different ingredients before she starts at the wash-tub. But let not the wretched bachelor suffer the "gal" to mix them.

I first met this dish in Calcutta during the two months of cold weather which prevail during the year.

"Another way:"

Mix with the rice the following ingredients:--

How many cooks in this England of ours can cook rice properly? Without pausing for a reply, I append the recipe, which should be pasted on the wall of every kitchen. The many cookery books which I have read give elaborate directions for the performance, of what is a very simple duty. Here it is, in a few lines--

Here is another most appetising breakfast dish for the springtime--

Cut up two dozen heads of cooked asparagus into small pieces, and mix in a stewpan with the well-beaten yolks of two raw eggs. Flavour with pepper and salt, and stir freely. Add a piece of butter the size of a walnut , and keep on stirring for a couple of minutes or so. Serve on delicately-toasted bread.

Heigho! we, or they, have changed all that. The poet who found his "warmest welcome in an inn" was, naturally enough, writing of his own time. I don't like fault-finding, but must needs declare that the "warmest" part of an inn welcome to be found nowadays is the bill. As long as you pay it , and make yourself agreeable to the fair and haughty bookkeeper who allots you your bedroom, and bullies the page-boy, nobody in the modern inn cares particularly what becomes of you. You lose your individuality, and become "Number 325." Instead of welcome, distrust lurks, large, on the very threshold.

is frequently the first announcement to catch the eye of the incoming guest; and although you cannot help admiring the marble pillars, the oak carving, the gilding, the mirrors, and the electric light, an uncomfortable feeling comes over you at meal times, to the effect that the cost of the decorations, or much of it, is taken out of the food.

"Waiter," you ask, as soon as your eyes and ears get accustomed to the incessant bustle of the coffee-room, and your nostrils to the savour of last night's soup, "what can I have for breakfast?"

"What would you like, sir?"

"I should like a grilled sole, to begin with."

"Very sorry, sir, soles is hoff--get you a nice chop or steak."

"Can't manage either so early in the day. Got any whitings?"

"Afraid we're out of whitings, sir, but I'll see."

Eventually, after suggesting sundry delicacies, all of which are either "hoff," or unknown to the waiter, you settle down to the consumption of two fried and shrivelled shop eggs, on an island of Chicago ham, floating in an AEgean Sea of grease and hot water; whilst a half quartern loaf, a cruet-stand the size of a cathedral, a rackful of toast of the "Zebra" brand, and about two gallons of coffee, are dumped down in succession in front of you.

There are, of course, some hostelries where they "do" you better than this, but my experience of hotel breakfasts at this end of the nineteenth century has not been encouraging, either to appetite or temper; and I do vow and protest that the above picture is not too highly coloured.

Do not forget to order sausages for breakfast if you are staying at Newmarket; there is less bread in them than in the Metropolitan brand. And when in Lincoln attempt a

If you wish to preserve an even mind, and be at peace with the world, a visit to

is not to be recommended. The Irish stew at dinner is not bad in its way, though coarse, and too liberally endowed with fat. But the breakfasts! Boiled oatmeal and water, with salt in the mess, and a chunk of stale brown bread to eat therewith, do not constitute an altogether satisfactory meal, the first thing in the morning; and it is hardly calculated to inspire him with much pride in his work, when the guest is placed subsequently before his "task" of unbroken flints or tarred rope.

BREAKFAST

"There's nought in the Highlands but syboes and leeks, And lang-leggit callants gaun wanting the breeks."

For a "warm welcome" commend me to Bonnie Scotland. Though hard of head and "sae fu' o' learning" that they are "owre deeficult to conveence, ye ken," these rugged Caledonians be tender of heart, and philanthropic to a degree. Hech, sirs! but 'tis the braw time ye'll hae, gin ye trapese the Highlands, an' the Lowlands as well for the matter o' that--in search o' guid refreshment for body an' soul.

"He found Miss Bradwardine presiding over the tea and coffee, the table loaded with warm bread, both of flour, oatmeal, and barley meal, in the shape of loaves, cakes, biscuits, and other varieties, together with eggs, reindeer ham, mutton and beef ditto, smoked salmon, and many other delicacies. A mess of oatmeal porridge, flanked by a silver jug which held an equal mixture of cream and buttermilk, was placed for the Baron's share of the repast."

"And," as Mr. Samuel Weller would have observed, "a wery good idea of a breakfast, too."

A beef-ham sounds like a "large order" for breakfast, even when we come to consider that the Scotch "beastie," in Sir Walter Scott's time, was wanting in "beam" and stature. I have seen and partaken of a ham cut from a Yorkshire pig, and weighing 52 lbs.; but even a Scotch beef-ham must have topped that weight considerably. Fortunately the sideboards of those times were substantial of build.

Missing from the above bill-of-fare is the haddock,

Salmon is naturally a welcome guest at the table of the land of his birth, served fresh when in season, and smoked or kippered at all times.

Those that go down to the sea in ships, and can summon up sufficient presence of mind to go down to the saloon at meal times, have far from a bad time of it. Living was certainly better on the ocean wave in the days when livestock was kept on board, and slaughtered as required; for the effect of keeping beef, pork, and mutton in a refrigerating chamber for any length of time is to destroy the flavour, and to render beef indistinguishable from the flesh of the hog, and mutton as tasteless as infantine pap. But the ship's galley does its little utmost; and the saloon passenger, on his way to the other side of the equator, may regale himself with such a breakfast as the following, which is taken from the steward's book of a vessel belonging to the Union Line:--

Porridge, fillets of haddock with fine herbs, mutton chops and chip potatoes, savoury omelet, bacon on toast, minced collops, curry and rice, fruit, rolls, toast, etc., tea and coffee.

And the lot of the third-class passenger who is conveyed from his native land to the Cape of Good Hope, for what Mr. Montague Tigg would have called "the ridiculous sum of" ?16: 16s., is no such hard one, seeing that he is allotted a "bunk" in a compact, though comfortable cabin, and may break his fast on the following substantial meal:--

Porridge, Yarmouth bloaters, potatoes, American hash, grilled mutton, bread and butter, tea or coffee.

An American breakfast is as variegated as a Scotch one; and included in the bill of fare are as many, or more, varieties of bread and cake as are to be found in the land o' shortbread. The writer has, in New York, started the morning meal with oysters, run the gamut of fish, flesh, and fowl, and wound up with buckwheat cakes, which are brought on in relays, buttered and smoking hot, and can be eaten with or without golden syrup. But, as business begins early in New York and other large cities, scant attention is paid to the first meal by the merchant and the speculator, who are wont to "gallop" through breakfast and luncheon, and to put in their "best work" at dinner.

"Who's there?"

And 'tis also most important That you should not spare the tea.

At the University, breakfast with "the Head" or any other "Don" was a rather solemn function. The table well and plentifully laid, and the host hospitality itself, but occasionally, nay, frequently, occupied with other thoughts. A departed friend used to tell a story of a breakfast of this description. He was shaken warmly by the hand by his host, who afterwards lapsed into silence. My friend, to "force the running," ventured on the observation--

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