I Old English Fare
When a foreigner or one of our American cousins, or a man from one of the Colonies, comes to England, the first question he generally asks is: “Where can I get a typical good old English dinner?” Good old English fare is by no means too abundant in London—and old English fare I would define as being the very best native material, cooked in the plainest possible manner. We talk of English cookery, though it should really be termed British cookery, for Irish stew and Welsh lamb, Scotch beef and cock-a-leekie soup, and even a haggis, can fairly be included in the comprehensive term.
When men on short commons on an exploring expedition, or on a sporting trip, or on active service, talk of the good things they will eat when they get home to England, the first idea that occurs to most of them is how delightful it will be to eat a good fried sole once again; and with fried sole may be coupled English bacon, for no bacon anywhere else in the world is as good as that which the kitchenmaids fry in thousands of British kitchens. Perhaps the Channel sole and the bacon of the Southern Counties, Oxford marmalade and Cambridge sausages belong to the home breakfast-table more than to meals in the haunts of the gourmet, though the sole plays a most important part in many dinners, and the Christmas dinner turkey would be unhappy without its accompanying sausages. It is, however, at lunch-time, the time of pasties, puddings and pies, that old English cookery is seen at its best.
I do not know of any eating-house that makes a speciality of the mutton-chop pudding with oysters, that Abraham Hayward praises so unrestrictedly, but now and again I meet in restaurants such good English dishes as Lancashire hot-pot and gipsy pie, which is an admirable stew of chicken and cabbage; shepherd’s pie, in which the minced meat is covered with a well-browned layer of mashed potato, I am given sometimes at shooting luncheons. Toad-in-the-hole and bubble-and-squeak are pleasant memories of my schoolboy days, but if some Frenchman, who has studied Dickens, asked me where he could eat the stew described in “The Old Curiosity Shop,” which consisted of tripe, and cow-heel, and bacon, and steak, and peas and cauliflower, new potatoes and asparagus “all worked up together in one delicious gravy,” I should have to admit my inability to direct him. A fish pie is excellent at any meal, but a woodcock pie or a snipe pudding, I think, should be reserved for the dinner-table. The pork-pie now seems sacred to railway refreshment-rooms, picnics and race-courses. Oysters are real British fare, though other countries have learned from us to appreciate them; but I fancy that the old Romans first taught the gentlemen who clothed themselves in woad tattooings what delicacies they had waiting for them in their shallow waters. Oysters are admirable creatures when eaten out of their deep shell, and they play their part well in oyster soup and scalloped oysters and oyster fries. And there are many puddings and “made dishes” that would be incomplete without the presence of oysters in them. Jugged duck and oysters is a good old British dish, and there are oysters in the majestic pudding of the Cheshire Cheese. I may perhaps be allowed to suggest to some cooks who put the oysters into puddings and pies with the other raw materials that a better way is to cook the dish, then remove the crust or paste, slip in the oysters, fix the crust again and cook till the oysters are warmed through.
The typical British dinner most often quoted is that which the Lord Dudley of the thirties, a noted epicure, declared was a dinner “fit for an emperor,” and it runs thus: “A good soup, a small turbot, a neck of venison, duckling with green peas, or chicken with asparagus, and an apricot tart.” Of British soups turtle always takes precedence in the list of honour, but as the turtle comes from Ascension or the West Indies, it can hardly claim to be a denizen of these islands. Hare soup and mock turtle, mulligatawny, mutton broth and pea soup are distinctively British, though the curry powder in the mulligatawny—a soup which takes its name from two Tamil words: Mŭllĭgă = pepper, and Tunni = water—comes, of course, from India. Oxtail soup has a good British sound, but I fancy that French housewives first discovered the virtue that there is in the tail of an ox.
Lord Dudley loved a turbot, but other judges of good British dinners sometimes give the preference to cod. Walker, of “Original” fame, gave a Christmas Day dinner to two friends, and the fare he provided for them was: crimped cod, a woodcock a man, and plum pudding. One of the most typical British dinners I have eaten was that which a gallant colonel, who very worthily filled the mayoral chair at Westminster, used to give annually at the Cavour Restaurant. It consisted of a large turbot, a sucking-pig nicely roasted, and apple pudding. Roast sucking-pig is a dinner dish better understood in England than anywhere else in the world, except, perhaps, in China. When the Duke of Cambridge, brother of George the Fourth, was entertained in princely fashion at Belvoir, and was shown the menu of a dinner on which a great French chef had exhausted all his inventiveness, and was asked if there were any dishes not included in the feast for which he had a fancy, answered that he would like some roast pig and an apple dumpling, both good British dishes. His son, the Commander-in-Chief of our days, also had a liking for pork, and, at one time, word went round the British army that at inspection lunches it was wise to give his Royal Highness pork chops. Of course, the British army overdid it, and the old Duke had so many pork chops put before him in the course of a year that at last their presence on the menu was far more likely to assist in the securing of an unfavourable report on a regiment than was their absence. Gravy soup, a grilled sole, a boiled hen pheasant stuffed with oysters, and an open tart formed the favourite dinner of a renowned gourmet of my acquaintance.
Of the made dishes that belong to British cookery, jugged hare, I think, has the leading place. Yorkshire pudding is as British as Stonehenge is, and mince pies can claim to be to-day exactly what they were when the Puritans used to preach against them. Marrow bones and Welsh rarebits, buck rarebits, and stewed tripe and onions are old British supper dishes, but the early closing laws have killed the old-fashioned British supper in eating-houses.
Good British cookery in London has not fared well in its battle against the invasion of good French cookery, and the number of houses which made a speciality of British fare has decreased woefully in the last twenty years. The old Blanchard’s and its half-a-crown British dinner is a memory of the past (for the new Blanchard’s turned towards the goddess A la), and the “Blue Posts” in Cork Street has been converted into a club. It was curious that the prosperity of this typical old English house depended to a great extent on a German head waiter; for Frank, who had all the best traditions of British cookery at heart, had served under the old Emperor Wilhelm in the great war, and had been wounded by a French bayonet thrust. There were certain rules of the house that were excellent. One was that, no matter what orders you might give beforehand, no fish was ever put near the fire until the man who had ordered it was inside the building, which ensured it going to table cooked to the second; and another was that the steaks, which were a great stand-by of the house, were cut from the mass of beef just in time to be transferred at once to the grill, thus making sure that none of the juices should drain away.
But there are still some temples of British cookery left in Cockaigne, and to some of them presently I will direct your steps.