Part 30

To prepare Brussels sprouts, demi-glacé: Trim and wash the sprouts, soak them in boiling salted water about thirty minutes, cool them in cold water, and drain them. Put six ounces of butter in a large frying-pan, melt it and put the sprouts in it, season with salt and pepper, fry on a brisk fire until thoroughly hot, serve in a dish with a rich drawn-butter sauce with chopped parsley.

A diplomatic supper was once served at the White House, of which the following menu is an accurate report:--

Salmon with green sauce. Cold boned turkey, with truffles. Pâtés of game, truffled. Ham cooked in Madeira sauce. Aspic of chicken. Pâté de foie gras. Salads of chicken and lobster in forms, surrounded by jelly. Pickled oysters. Sandwiches. Scalloped oysters. Stewed terrapin. Chicken and lobster croquettes. Chocolat à la crème. Coffee. Dessert: Ices. Fancy meringue baskets filled with cream. Pancakes. Large cakes. Fancy jellies. Charlotte Russe. Fruits. Cake. Wafers. Nougat.

One could have satisfied an appetite with all this.

General Grant was probably the most fêted American who ever visited Europe. He was entertained by every monarch and by many most distinguished citizens. The Duke of Wellington opened the famous Waterloo Room in Apsley House in his honour, and toasted him as the first soldier of the age. But it is improbable that he ever had a better dinner than the following:--

It was given to him in New York, in 1880, at the Hotel Brunswick. It was for ten people only, in a private parlour, arranged as a dining-room en suite with the Venetian parlour. The room was in rich olive and bronze tints. The buffet glittered with crystal, and Venetian glass. On the side tables were arranged the coffee service and other accessories. The whole room was filled with flowers, the chandelier hung with smilax, dotted with carnations. The table was arranged with roses, heliotrope, and carnations, the deep purple and green grapes hanging over gold dishes. The dinner service was of white porcelain with heliotrope border, the glass of iridescent crystal. The furnishing of the Venetian parlour, the rich carvings, the suits of armour, the antique chairs were all mediæval; the dinner was modern and American:--

Oysters. Soup, Consommé Royale. Fish: Fried smelts, sauce Tartare. Releves: Boned capon. Entrées: Sweetbreads, braisé, Quails, à la Perigord. Sorbet au kirsch. Game. Broiled woodcock, Canvas-back duck. Terrapin. Vegetables: Cauliflower, Spinach, Artichokes, French peas. Dessert: Biscuits Diplomatiques, Frozen pudding, Meringue Chantilly, Assorted cakes. Fruit. Coffee. Cigars. Liqueurs.

Probably the last item interested and amused the General, who was no gourmet, much more than even the terrapin.

This menu for a November dinner cannot be surpassed.

COOKERY AND WINES OF THE SOUTH OF EUROPE.

Aufidius for his morning beverage used Honey in strong Falernian wine infused; But here methinks he showed his want of brains: Drink less austere best suits the empty veins.

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Shell fish afford a lubricating slime! But then you must observe both place and time. They're caught the finest when the moon is new; The Lucrine far excel the Baian too. Misenum shines in cray fish; Circe most In oysters; scollops let Tarentum boast. The culinary critic first should learn Each nicer shade of flavour to discern: To sweep the fish stalls is mere show at best

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Unless you know how each thing should be drest. Let boars of Umbrian game replete with mast, If game delights you, crown the rich repast. SATIRES OF HORACE.

Italian cookery is excellent at its best. The same drift of talent, the same due sense of proportion which showed itself in all their art, which built St. Mark's and the Duomo, the Ducal Palace, the Rialto, and the churches of Palladio, comes out in their cookery. Their cooks are Michel Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci in a humbler sphere.

They mingle cheese in cookery, with great effect; nothing can be better than their cauliflower covered with Parmesan cheese, and baked. Macaroni in all its forms is of course admirable. They have mastered the use of sweet oil, which in their cookery never tastes oily; it is simply a lambent richness.

The great dish, wild boar, treated with a sweet and a sour sauce, with pine cones, is an excellent dish. Wild boar is a lean pork with a game flavour. All sorts of birds, especially becafico, are well cooked, they lose no juice or flavour over the fire.

They make a dozen preparations of Indian meal, which are very good for breakfast. One little round cake, like a muffin, tastes almost of cocoanut; this is fried in oil, and is most delicious.

The frittala is another well-known dish, and is composed of liver, bacon, and birds, all pinned on a long stick, or iron pin.

In an Italian palace, if you have the good luck to be asked, the dinner is handsome. It is served in twelve courses in the Russian manner, and if national dishes are offered they are disguised as inelegant. But at an ordinary farmhouse in the hills near Florence, or at the ordinary hotels, there will be a good soup, trout fresh from the brooks, fresh butter, macaroni with cheese, a fat capon, and a delicious omelette, enriched with morsels of kidney or fat bacon, a frittala, a bunch of grapes, a bottle of Pogio secco, or the sweet Italian straw wine.

The Italians are very frugal, and would consider the luxurious overflow of American munificent hospitality as vulgar. At parties in Rome, Naples, and Florence it is not considered proper to offer much refreshment. At Mr. Story's delightful receptions American hospitality reigned at afternoon tea, as it did in all houses where the hostess was American, but at the houses of the Princes nothing was offered but weak wine and water and little cakes.

Many travellers have urged that the cookery of the common Italian dinner is too much flavoured with garlic, but in a winter spent in travelling through Italy I did not find it so. I remember a certain leg of lamb with beans which had a slight taste of onions, but that is all. They have learned, as the French have, that the onion is to cookery what accent is to speech. It should not be trop prononcée. The lamb and pistachio nuts of the Arabian Nights is often served and is delicious.

They give you in an Italian country house for breakfast, at twelve o'clock, a sort of thick soup, very savoury, probably made of chicken with an herb like okra, one dish of meat smothered in beans or tomatoes, followed by a huge dish of macaroni with cheese, or with morsels of ham through it. Then a white curd with powdered cinnamon, sugar, and wine, a bottle of vino santo, a cup of coffee or chocolate, and bread of phenomenal whiteness and lightness.

Alas, for the poor people! They live on the chestnuts, the frogs, or nothing. The porter at the door of some great house is seen eating a dish of frogs, which are, however, so well cooked that they send up an appetizing fragrance more like a stew of crabs than anything else. One sees sometimes a massive ancient house, towering up in mediæval grandeur, with shafts of marble, and columns of porphyry, lonely, desolate, and beautiful, infinitely impressive, infinitely grand. Some member of a once illustrious family lives within these ruined walls, on almost nothing. He would have to kill his pet falcon to give you a dinner, while around his time-honoured house cluster his tenants shaking with malaria,--pale, unhappy, starved people. It is not a cheerful sight, but it can be seen in southern Italy.

The prosperous Italians will give you a well-cooked meal, an immense quantity of bonbons, and the most exquisite candied fruits. Their confetti are wonderful, their cakes and ices, their candied fruit, their tutti frutti, are beyond all others. They crown every feast with a Paradise in spun sugar.

But they despise and fear a fire, and foreigners are apt to find the old Italian palaces dreary, and very cold. A recent traveller writes from Florence: "I have been within the walls of five Italian houses at evening parties, at three of them, music and no conversation; all except one held in cold rooms, the floors black, imperfectly covered with drugget, and no fire; conversation, to me at least, very dull; the topics, music, personal slander,--for religion, government, and literature, were generally excluded from polite society. In only one house, of which the mistress was a German, was tea handed around; sometimes not even a cup of water was passed." We learn from the novels of Marion Crawford that the Italians do not often eat in each others' houses.

Victor Emmanuel, the mighty hunter, had a mighty appetite. He used to dine alone, before the hour for the State dinner. Then with sword in hand, leaning on its jewelled hilt, in full uniform, his breast covered with orders, the King sat at the head of his table, and talked with his guests while the really splendid dinner was served.