The Physiology of Taste (55 page)

Madame R … had been especially impressed by its height and its plump shapeliness, and from all that she told us about it, we agreed unanimously that it must have been a masterpiece. Each one of us after his own fashion contributed to make a kind of sensuous equation in the discussion.

The subject of conversation finally exhausted, we went on to others and thought no more about it. As for myself, spreader of useful truths, I felt it my duty to bring out from its obscurity the recipe for a dish which I believe to be as healthful as it is pleasant. I instructed my cook to outline it for me down to the tiniest details, and I give it here with even more eagerness to those who will enjoy it, since I have not been able to find it in any cookery book.

Take, for six people, two well-cleaned carp roes which you will blanch by plunging them for five minutes into water already boiling and lightly salted.

Have to hand a piece of fresh tuna the size of a hen’s egg, to which you will add a small shallot finely minced.

Chop together the roes and the tuna so that they are well blended, toss the mixture into a casserole with an adequate lump of very good butter, and heat just until the butter is melted. This last is what gives the omelet its special savor.

Take a second good lump of butter, blend it with parsley and chives, and put it in a fish-shaped platter destined to hold the omelet; sprinkle it with the juice of a lemon, and put it over a gentle heat.

Then beat twelve eggs (the freshest are the best), and add the hot mixture of roe and tuna and mix all together thoroughly.

Make the omelet in the usual way, and take care that it is long in shape, thick enough, and soft. Slide it skilfully onto the platter which you have prepared for it, and serve it, to be eaten at once.

This dish should be reserved for especially good luncheons, and for those reunions of enthusiasts who appreciate what is served to them and eat it thoughtfully and slowly. Let it be floated downward on a fine old wine, and miracles will happen.
⁶

(1) The roes and tuna must be thoroughly heated in the butter, but not allowed to bubble in it, so that they do not become hard; this would keep them from blending thoroughly with the eggs.

(2) The platter must be deep, so that the sauce will collect in it and be easy to serve with a spoon.

(3) The platter must also be lightly warmed: if it were cold, the porcelain would absorb the heat of the omelet and would not leave enough in it to melt the herb butter on which the mixture rests.

One time I was traveling with two ladies to Melun.

We left none too early in the morning, and arrived at Montgeron with raging appetites.

They raged in vain: the inn at which we stopped, although it looked promising enough, was out of provisions, thanks to three coaches and two mail carriages which had already stopped there, whose passengers had gone through the cupboards like Egyptian locusts.

At least, so the cook told us.

Nevertheless I sighted a spit turning over the fire, laden with a very handsome leg of mutton upon which my two companions, as was natural, turned their most yearning looks.

Alas, they were wasted! The roast belonged to three Englishmen who had brought it with them, and who waited for it without impatience over their glasses of champagne (
PRATING OVER A BOTTLE OF CHAMPAIN
).

“But,” I said to the cook with an air half-angered and half-begging, “at least could you not scramble these eggs for us in the juice from the roast? With the eggs and a cup of coffee and cream we might manage to get by.”

“Gladly,” he replied. “The juice of the meat is ours by public right, and I’ll take care of your little suggestion this very minute.” Upon which he began to break the eggs with great care.

When I saw that he was well occupied, I drew near to the hearth, and pulling from my pocket a traveling knife, I made in the forbidden roast a dozen or so deep cuts, from which the juice must drain to its last drop.

I also watched with care the concoction of the eggs, to be sure that we were cheated of nothing, and when they were perfectly cooked I myself took them to the room which had been made ready for us.

There we feasted indeed, and laughed hysterically at the realization that we were swallowing the very essence of the roast, and leaving nothing to our English friends but the bother of chewing its worthless residue.
⁷

While I was living in New York I used to go now and then to spend an evening in a kind of café-tavern run by a certain
M. Little, where one could always find turtle soup in the morning, and all the traditional American drinks at night.

I went there most often with the Viscount de la Massue and Jean-Rodolphe Fehr, formerly a broker in Marseilles; both of them were, like myself, political exiles. I would treat them to a
WELSH RABBET
*
which we washed down with ale or cider, and the evening would pass very pleasantly in talk of our past misfortunes, of our present pleasures, and of the hopes we had for the future.

At Little’s I made the acquaintance of M. Wilkinson, a planter from Jamaica, with a man who must have been one of his friends, since he never left the other’s side. This man, whose name I never knew, was one of the most extraordinary people I have ever met: he had a square face, with lively eyes which seemed to watch everything with great attention, and yet he never spoke, and his countenance stayed as expressionless as if he were blind. It was only when he heard a witty sally or a comical remark that his face would awaken, his eyes would shut, and opening a mouth as wide as the bell of a trumpet he would let out a prolonged noise which had something of real laughter about it and more of that whinnying which in England is called the
HORSE LAUGH
. Then he would come to order, and fall back into his usual taciturnity. The whole thing lasted about as long as a flash of lightning as it rips through the clouds. As for M. Wilkinson, who seemed to be about fifty years old, he had the manners and outward appearance of a well-bred person (
OF A GENTLEMAN
).

These two Englishmen were apparently very fond of our company, and had already shared cheerfully with us, on several occasions, the frugal supper which I offered to my friends, when one night M. Wilkinson took me to one side, and told me that he would like to make arrangements to invite the three of us to dine.

I thanked him, and believing myself to have the right, as I was obviously to be the principal guest, I accepted for my friends, and
the invitation was agreed to be set for two days later at three in the afternoon.

The evening passed off as usual, but just as I was leaving the tavern, the serving man (
WAITER
) signaled me apart from the others and informed me that the Jamaicans had ordered a fine meal; that they had given special orders about what was to be drunk, since they regarded their invitation as a challenge to see who could drink the best; and that the man with the big mouth had said that he was confident that he alone could put the three Frenchmen under the table.

This information would have made me refuse the invitation, if I could have done so honorably, for I have always fled from such orgies; but this time it was impossible. The Englishmen would have spread the news everywhere that we had not dared present ourselves for the contest, and that their very presence had been enough to make us retreat. Therefore, in spite of being well aware of our danger, we must follow the maxim of Marshal Saxe: since the wine is drawn, we are prepared to drink it.

I was not without some anxiety, but to tell the truth, it did not have myself for its object.

I felt certain that, since I was at one and the same time younger, taller, and more active than our hosts, my constitution which had kept innocent of bacchic excess would easily triumph over those of the Englishmen, who were both of them most probably weakened by too much drinking of strong spirits.

Without doubt, I could have been proclaimed winner as I stood, over the other four contestants, but this victory, which would have been a personal one for me, would have lost much of its glory by the defeat of my two companions, who would have been carried from the field with the other losers in the ugly condition which must always follow such a failure. I wanted to spare them this affront. In a word, I wanted it to be a national rather than an individual victory. Therefore I summoned Fehr and La Massue to my rooms, and made a stern and formal speech to them to inform them of my fears. I cautioned them to drink in small mouthfuls as often as they could, to pretend to be drinking whenever I could draw the attention of my antagonists away from them, and above all to eat slowly and to stay somewhat hungry
during the whole affair, for when food is mixed with drink it tempers the alcoholic heat and keeps it from mounting with all its strength into the brain; finally we divided among us a plate of bitter almonds, which I had heard were very valuable against the headiness of wine.

Thus armed, both physically and morally, we headed for Little’s, where we found the Jamaicans, and soon after that dinner was served. It consisted of an enormous piece of
ROST-BEEF
, a turkey cooked in its own juices, boiled root vegetables, a salad of raw cabbage,
⁸
and a jam tart.

We drank à
là française
, which is to say that wine was served from the very beginning: it was a really good claret which was at that time even cheaper than in France, since several boatloads of it had arrived in succession and the last had not sold well.

M. Wilkinson did his honors nobly, inviting us to set to, and giving us a good example; as for his friend, he seemed to plunge into the plate before him, said not a word, and looked sideways about him with a faint smile.

As for me, I was proud of my two acolytes. La Massue, in spite of being endowed by Nature with a fairly formidable appetite, nibbled at his little bites like a proper schoolmiss; Fehr from time to time juggled several glasses of wine skilfully enough to slip them into a beer pot at the end of the table. On my side I stood toe to toe with the Englishmen, and the longer the meal lasted the more confident of victory I felt.

After the claret came port, and after port madeira, to which we confined ourselves for some time.

Then came the dessert, composed of butter, cheese, and hickory
⁹
and coconuts. It was the moment for the toasts: we drank deeply to the power of kings, the liberty of the common people, and the beauty of the ladies. We lifted our glasses, with M. Wilkinson, to the health of his daughter Mariah, who he assured us was the loveliest creature in all the island of Jamaica.

After the wines came the
SPIRITS
, which is to say the rum and brandies, the grain liquors and the raspberry liqueurs. With the spirits came the songs. I saw that we were being hard-pressed. I was afraid of these liquors, and escaped them by demanding punch, and Little himself brought us a bowl of it,
doubtless ready and waiting for us, which would have held enough for forty people. In all of France we do not have containers as big as that one.
¹⁰

This sight gave me new courage. I ate five or six slices of toast spread with delightfully fresh butter, and felt all my forces take on more life. Then I looked carefully about me, for I began to have some worries as to how this affair would end. My two friends appeared to be lasting fairly well: they drank as they cracked hickory nuts and ate them. M. Wilkinson’s face was flaming red; his eyes were glazed, and he seemed stunned. His friend was as silent as ever, but his head seemed like a boiling cauldron, and his monstrous mouth protruded like a hen’s behind. I saw that the dreadful climax was upon us.

Sure enough, M. Wilkinson, awakening with a shocking jump, stood up and began to thunder out the national air of
Rule Britannia
. He could go no further. His strength left him, and he fell back into his chair, and from there sagged onto the floor. His friend, seeing him in such a state, gave one of his most startling horse laughs, leaned over to help him, and fell prone.

It is impossible to express the satisfaction that this brusque dénouement brought to me, and the weight it lifted from my mind. I rushed to sound the service bell. Little came at once, and after I said the conventional phrase to him, “Please see that these gentlemen are properly taken care of,” we all joined him in one last glass of punch to their health. Soon the
WAITER
arrived, flanked by his subordinates, and they took possession of our vanquished foes and carried them out according to the rule
THE FEET FOREMOST
,
*
the friend still maintaining his complete impassivity, and M. Wilkinson trying ceaselessly to sing the tune of
Rule Britannia
.

The next day the New York papers, which were copied successively by all those in the Union, recounted with approximate truth what had happened, and since they added that the two Englishmen were sent to bed as a result of the adventure, I went to see them. I found the friend quite undone from the effects of violent indigestion, and M. Wilkinson chained to his chair by an
attack of gout which our bacchic battle had probably stirred up. He seemed appreciative of my thoughtfulness, and said to me among other things,
“OH! DEAR SIR
,
YOU ARE VERY GOOD COMPANY INDEED
,
BUT TOO A DRINKER FOR US
.”
*
¹¹

I have written that the Roman vomitoria were repellent, according to our ideas of behavior; I fear that I may have been rash in this, and must sing a recantation. I shall explain myself:

Some forty years ago various people in high society, almost always the ladies, followed the custom of rinsing their mouths after meals.

To do this they turned their backs upon the other diners, as they were about to leave the table; a footman handed them a glass of water; they took a mouthful which they immediately spat out upon the saucer; the servant disappeared with the whole apparatus, and the operation passed almost unnoticed because of the way it was performed.