The
weather in the Southern hemisphere is surely (and hopefully) about to cool down,
as the weather in the north is just as surely and hopefully going to warm up. I
like to think, as March and April approach, that the style of food we seek in our
two halves of the world will be more similar. I hope at this time of the year that
a post about suet pudding or thick soup will not be out of kilter with any of
us, unlike the same topic in December, say, when the mere thought of such
robust and sustaining food is exhausting to those of us near the tropics.
My
post yesterday on the mid-nineteenth century dinner in Russia mentioned cold
soup, and I had intended to explore that topic today, but in the meanwhile came
across a lovely food article applicable to most of us in most seasons of the
year in Cassell’s Household Guide
(London, 1869.) A cold dinner in which
hot foods are also allowed – a dinner which has “more than a sufficiency of
dishes for the hospitable entertainer to choose from” seems to fit the bill, don’t
you think?
DISHES
SUITED FOR A COLD DINNER OR ANY REPAST
TO
BE PARTAKEN OF AT AN UNCERTAIN HOUR.
Very
agreeable entertainment is the unceremonious repast which, whether called a
breakfast, a déjeûner, a collation, a
luncheon, a meat-tea, or an early cold dinner, is the same in principle and
composition. We will speak of it by the last of those names; because, practically,
it is a dinner; no one thinks of
dining after it.
A
cold dinner is something of a very elastic nature. It may be partaken of at any
hour, from eleven in the morning till six in the evening. It may contain as few
things as you please, provided there be plenty to eat and drink, or it may be a
collection of rarities got together from the uttermost ends of the world. And
here, again, is the convenience of a principle which consists in the absence of
rule Although the meal is essentially a cold one, a few hot things may be
interspersed, when season and opportunity invite their presence, not as the
basis, but as the interludes, the entremets,
in the general course of the banquet, of which there is no exact beginning and
no defined end.
As
with the eatables, so with the drinkables. Nothing is excluded ; there may be
anything and everything. In a cold dinner there are no set courses; all is
placed on the table at once, with the exception of the few agreeable surprises
that may appear in the shape of fried Epping sausages, kidneys, omelettes, and
other dishes. Nothing is removed but empty dishes, which may or may not be
replaced by dishes of the same size containing something else. But little
waiting is required, and that little can be diminished by a couple of roomy
dumb-waiters, placed at opposite corners of the table.
The meat-tea is often
found to increase the comfort and convenience of family life—Why should not the
unpretending cold dinner more frequently play a similar part in social
intercourse?
As
a cold collation is particularly suited to a large party, all of whom we
suppose to be accommodated with seats round the board and not to stand up, let
the table be of corresponding length and breadth. The fact of the decorations
being permanent and the arrangements fixed allows you to cover the table with
one, two, three, or more white table-cloths. To economise space and avoid
removes, ornament as little as possible with things that do not contain or
garnish eatables. Edifices of spun sugar and nougat or candied almonds are
expensive, and the palate, at least, scarcely gets from them money's worth in
return for what they cost. The same sum, it appears to us, may be more
satisfactorily expended in other ways; for instance, on the fines: and most
beautiful fruit of the season. A welcome though old-fashioned centre-piece is a
pyramid of glass salvers, laden with jellies, creams, syllabubs, custards,
&c., and crowned with a trifle or tipsy cake. For each end of the table
there are few better ornaments than large dishes of fruit of different kinds,
artistically grouped and piled together, combined with flowers, foliage, and
fern fronds. An inverted bowl makes a good support. Each group will be more
effective for containing some one or two of the larger fruits, as melons,
cocoa-nuts, specimen bunches of grapes, Duchesse d'Angoulème pears, &c. To
succeed well in this requires both taste and practice. If you are rich in
garden produce, you can make a trophy of your centre-piece, in Great Exhibition
style, and place your piles of little toothsome articles at either end.
That
done, your plates, knives and forks, spoons, and glasses, must take their
places round the table. All the remaining space is claimed by the viands which
constitute the meal. In giving a hot dinner, an important point is to
proportion the quantity to the number of guests. A mountain of victuals is the
height of vulgarity and bad taste. There is only one thing worse than putting
too much upon a table—if it be worse—and that is too little. But in a cold dinner,
the whole of it, or very nearly so, being presented at once, the weakness of
making a show may be indulged in without incurring the blame of ostentatious
profusion. Of course it increases the beauty and interest of the display, when
there are the means of using articles of plate, china, and glass, which are in
themselves curiosities or objects of art. We now proceed to note more than a
sufficiency of dishes for the hospitable entertainer to choose from.
Fish.—Pickled
or soused salmon. Potted mackerel, herring, eels, and sprats. Collared eel.
Eels in savoury jelly, or with Tartar sauce. Dressed crab. Lobster opened,
cracked, and divided. Shrimps and prawns. Pickled mussels and cockles. Cold
fried smelts. Potted char or other fish. River trout boiled in vinegar and
water. Carp or pike, au bleu—i.e.,
boiled in court-bouillon, left in it till cold, and then served whole. Eel
patties. Oyster patties. Eel pie. Oyster pie. Cods' sounds and tongues pie.
Mackerel pat, Mayonnaise of lobster, salmon, or turbot. Lamprey or lampern pie.
Conger pie. Caviare. Sardines, anchovies, or tunny, in oil.
Sweets
and Sundries.—Baked custard. Lemon pudding.
Blanc-mange. All sorts of jellies and syllabubs. Raspberry and currant,
gooseberry, cherry, greengage, apricot, apple and quince pies—one Irishman
wished his apple pie to be all quince. Boiled custards. Whipped
cream and sponge cake. Marmalades and preserves, as preserved ginger. Mince
pies. Open fruit tarts. Gaufres or wafers. Macaroons. Cocoa-nut cakes. Fruits
crystallised in sugar. Cracker sweetmeats. Gruyere, or other choice cheese,
under a bell-glass. Virgin honeycomb. Nuts of various kinds. Foreign fruits, as
West India pines, dates, oranges, French plums, figs. Stewed prunes, pears,
Normandy pippins, apples, and rice. Bullace or damson Cheese. Cherry brandy.
Plums in brandy.
Small
Things.—Brawn. Potted meats. Mayonnaise of cold fowl.
Sandwiches of various kinds; pâté deoie
gras sandwiches are the most distingués,
to be offered at the close of the repast. Pickles; sliced cucumber; olives;
radishes. Salmagundi; various salads ; cold kidney-beans or artichoke bottoms
with oil and vinegar. Cream cheese. Sliced smoked Bologna, or other sausage.
Terrines of truffled goose or duck's liver. Calf's head, pork, calf s liver,
and other meat cheeses. Galantine of turkey or fowl, in slices. Hare pate.
Large
Joints.— Rolled ribs of beef boned. Roast sirloin. Quarter
of lamb. Boiled leg of pork stuffed. Ham. Tongue. Hunters' beef. Salted round
of beef. Yorkshire pie, containing turkey, goose, fowl, &c., boned. Roast
turkey or fowl, carved, divided into portions, and covered with savoury jelly gravy. Turkey, goose, or
fowl, en daube, served whole,
surrounded with the jelly in which they were stewed tender. Roast sucking-pig.
Giblet pie. Wild fowl pie. Roast quarter of kid. Pickled boar's head.
In
summer time cold soup is eaten in Russia; but English palates require further
training to render them capable of appreciating it. Hot soup may be served from
the sideboard; or, instead of soup, oysters can be given, handed round from the
sideboard, and followed by plates of bread and butter; or there may be both
soup and oysters; in which case the oysters are served the first of the two.
The sideboard is also the place for all the varieties of malt liquor; for
champagne until it is opened; and also for liqueurs to be placed on the table
when coffee is brought in, which is usually served in the dining-room, at
table, and not in the drawing-room—as at a cold dinner the ladies seldom
retire, but all quit the table together at the close of the entertainment,
announced by the coffee and liqueurs. The presence of black bottles on the
table is a matter of local custom. Port, sherry, Madeira, and the white wines
which replace or supplement the latter, are here always presented in decanters.
On the Continent, although the lighter ordinary wines, often drawn from the
cask, are allowed to appear in decanters, it would be utter heresy to decant
fine wines or curious old samples with which the host regales his guests. These
must be presented in the state in which they are taken from the bin, and not
wiped or dusted in any way. The more mouldy and grimy they are, the more their
appearance is usually admired. Old Burgundy, and other wines which deposit a
crust or lees and must not be shaken, are slipped, in the cellar, into a flat
basket or cradle, without changing their horizontal position, uncorked, sent
round, and never set upright till they are emptied. To decant such wines would
be considered an act of barbarism; the cradle is a warrant of their age and
excellence. Many hotel-keepers will not accord the honours of the cradle to
wine below a certain price.
The
recipe for the day is a for an elegant dish of duck en daube, which may be served hot or cold, and may be adapted for
goose or any other fowl.
Canard en Daube.
Prepare your duck as if
for roasting, lard it with bacon, season with salt, pepper, parsley, chives,
thyme, bay-leaf, and basilic, chopped fine; tie up the duck tightly, and put it
into a stewpan, with slices of bacon, half a calf 's foot, pepper, salt,
onions, bunch of sweet herbs, carrots, thyme, cloves, bay-leaf, cloves of
garlic; moisten with stock; add a glass of brandy; cover the pan closely, and
let it stew very slowly, stirring and turning it occasionally whilst stewing,
to prevent the duck sticking to the bottom, and that it might take the same
colour equally. It will take four or five hours. Skim it carefully. You serve
hot with .the sauce, or cold with the sauce, in jelly, as it will be quite
stiff. You can dress geese the same way.
French Cookery Adapted for English
Families (1853) by Frances Crawford.
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