Omelette and a Glass of Wine (30 page)

The style of Mrs Praga’s book,
Dainty Dinner Tables and How to Decorate Them
(published in 1907), may be archaic, but something about the tone and even the context is curiously familiar. ‘Have you ever tried a great bunch of ruddy brown-red wallflowers in an old majolica vase? Blue larkspur against a table-slip of faded mauve velvet, oh! how unutterably delicious it is to tired eyes … For half-a-crown, one of those gigantic glazed brown earthenware jugs (filled with cream) and for 5½d. each half a dozen tiny ones to match. When the cream has gone fill them with daffodils, set them on a table centre of tawny orange silk with a bordering of asparagus fern. Hey! how one’s pen flies!…’

Keeping up with that galloping pen of hers, Mrs Praga one day devised ‘a scheme based on deep orange-hued carnations’, the
table-slip to be of deep sunset yellow satin edged with écru lace (sunset yellow, she tells us elsewhere, was a Liberty colour – in fact most of her inspiration came from Liberty’s). At each corner, satin ribbon bows. A squat Nuremberg bowl for the centrepiece and eight or ten specimen glasses of the same ware to be filled with orange carnations and silver grasses, each guest’s place was to have a boutonnière to match and each finger bowl a floating full-blown orange carnation plus a few drops of orange flower water. Menu cards of sunset yellow lettering on deep orange, salt-sticks tied with ribbons to match, table glass of brown Nuremberg throughout, liqueurs to be yellow Chartreuse and old cognac. Candles deep yellow, shades orange silk, place cards written in orange on a yellow background, ices coloured yellow with saffron or turmeric and served in paper baskets of a deep orange colour. The sweets to be deep orange and the coffee served in deep brown and orange Wedgwood cups. ‘If the hostess happens to be a brunette she can wear an orange gown … to heighten and complete the illusion.’

Really, it’s too bad of her, that last line. Is it all illusion, then? Is that what the decorator-hosts and hostesses are trying to tell us? The cool, fresh fish, the fragile dessert, the gold lamé, the gigantic brown earthenware cream jugs, the tawny orange silk? Didn’t any of it ever exist? Not even the turmeric-flavoured ices?

The Spectator
, 22 December 1961

Whisky in the Kitchen

Two or three years ago a friend of mine who is a publisher applied to me for help in dealing with a complaint from a man who had bought one of his cookery books. The recipe which was causing a minor commotion was for a lobster set ablaze with whisky. What, the gentleman would like to know, did a reputable publisher mean by allowing his author to suggest such a preposterous concoction? Whisky! Merciful heavens, what next? Surely everybody knew that cognac was the correct, and the only correct, spirit to use in conjunction with lobster. Do let us have some regard for the classic recipes … not mislead the public … irresponsible chatter … a
French cook would never … barbaric mixture … I shudder to think … the great Escoffier said …

As it happens, the offence on this occasion was not mine, but I am familiar – what cookery writer is not? – with the tone of voice and with the gale force of the feelings expressed. Quite often something one had thought perfectly uncontroversial or even almost too insultingly obvious to include in one’s cooking instructions arouses readers to a pitch of rage and scorn which strikes one as very much out of proportion to the offence committed.

The truth, I fancy – and the discovery that letters of this kind tend to be written in oddly similar terms (the writer invariably shudders to think, the mixtures are always revolting or barbaric) does something to bear out my theory – is simply that reference to some particular ingredient has, subconsciously, touched off a painful nerve in the reader. (Unworkable or downright fatuous recipes and real howlers often get by unchallenged. Once, owing to a printer’s understandable failure to decipher my proof corrections, a book of mine appeared with a recipe which called for the whisked whites of 123 eggs … no reader has ever written to me demanding an explanation of this recipe.)

The clue to the whisky affair is not entirely obvious. Had the complainant been a woman it would have been easier to spot. Whisky is still, to many Englishwomen, a man’s drink, tough masculine tipple. Advice to splash it into the sauté pan strikes a rough rude note. Cognac, being foreign and French, is altogether more glamorous and elegant-sounding, therefore more appropriate to the refinements of good cooking. I wonder if deep down that peppery gentleman’s irritation might perhaps have been due to fear that once the gaff about whisky not being suitable for the kitchen was blown the master’s bottle would no longer be quite sacrosanct. The little woman, instead of having to explain the spending of twenty-five shillings of the housekeeping money on a half bottle of ‘cooking’ brandy, would be at liberty to raid the Scotch for a few tablespoonsful at any time, and nobody the wiser.

In France, whisky was once a very smart and snob drink; it is now astonishingly popular. In 1961, it is estimated, 682,000 gallons of whisky were consumed by the French, and that was twice as much as in 1960. How many hundreds or thousands of those gallons were tipped into the saucepans the report does not reveal, but certain it is that in these days it is not at all uncommon to find dishes of chicken,
langouste or lobster
flambé au whisky
on the menus of French provincial and Parisian restaurants. (For chapter and verse without going to France look at the lists of specialities given by the starred restaurants in the guide books.) An establishment at Arras even serves a speciality of
andouillettes flambées au whisky
– a faint echo of the haggis ritual…?

I find the French development encouraging, for I have myself for years been experimenting with whisky in the cooking pots. One of the circumstances which drove me to these experiments will be familiar to most home cooks. It was simply that a bottle of brandy, even of the kind intended only for the kitchen (by which I don’t mean something not fit to drink, I mean something one
prefers
not to drink), somehow always turns out in fact to have been drunk by somebody just when it is needed for cooking and hasn’t been replaced, while whisky is a supply which is more or less automatically re-ordered as soon as it runs out. And not only have I found whisky successful as an alternative to cognac and armagnac in many fish and poultry dishes, but it has frequently had to do duty instead of Calvados in Norman dishes of veal, pork, pheasant and apples. Calvados isn’t always easy to come by in this country and such as we can get is usually one or other of the commercial brands which in spite of their high prices are pretty crude. So, for that matter, are all too many three-star-quality cognacs.

Obviously, the flavour which whisky gives to a sauce differs from that produced by cognac, armagnac or Calvados; certainly the aromas coming from the pot while the whisky is cooking are also very different; but by the time the alcohol has been burned and cooked away I wonder how many people would spot what precisely the difference is.

Not that that is quite the point. There should be no attempt to deceive. To take the simplest example,
faisan à la normande
would be understood, by anybody who knew a little about French regional cooking, to imply a dish of pheasant with a cream sauce and apples, blazed with Calvados. If the dish is blazed with whisky instead it is possible that nobody will know the difference; but a point of principle is involved; once the wedge is in how long before the apples have been replaced with carrots and peas, and the cream with tomato purée or pineapple juice? So all the restaurateur has to do (in the privacy of one’s own kitchen one can, after all, call one’s inventions what one pleases; until they leave the house one’s guests
are in no position to pass remarks) is to follow the French example and describe his dish as
faisan flambé au whisky
or alternatively pheasant
au Scotch.
And if he feels that the French have an unfair advantage in that to them the words ‘whisky’ and ‘scotch’ are good selling points whereas to us they are just rather blunt or evocative in the wrong way then he can invent some totally new name.

The whisky hurdle cleared, one quickly finds the way open to the successful use of all kinds of supposedly unorthodox spirits and wines in the kitchen. Not only have I used whisky instead of the brandy usually specified in pork and liver pâté recipes, which is a question of only about two, but two important, tablespoons to 1½ lb. of the mixture, but I have resorted also to rum (white rum is especially useful in the kitchen) and to gin for the same purpose, and the results have been excellent. Gin, we are told, is one of the purest spirits made, and juniper berries, the
baies de genièvre
or
ginepro
from which Geneva or gin derived its name, provide the characteristic flavouring which everyone who ever drank a glass of gin in their lives would recognize when he tastes the juniper-berry flavour in Provençal game terrines and certain Northern Italian sauces and stuffings for partridge and pheasant; and
eau de vie de genièvre
is a spirit used in French and Belgian Ardennais regional cooking, so it seems extraordinary that people blanch at the suggestion that gin should go into the casseroles. At least, before shuddering or crying ‘barbarism!’ and ‘Escoffier never said …’ look up – and cook – the delicious recipe for veal kidneys
à la liégeoise
given by Mr Ambrose Heath in his
Good Food
(Faber & Faber). The kidneys are cooked whole in butter and just before serving them you ‘throw in a wineglassful of burnt gin and a few crushed juniper berries. This is quite wonderful…’

Then there is that recipe for a sauce for lobster which I came across in a French dictionary of cooking of the 1830s. Among the collection of outlandish ingredients called for were anisette liqueur and soy sauce. In those days cookery writers weren’t just filling out their recipes with ingredients they were being paid to sell. There must be some basis in reason for that sauce. Why not try it? I did, and came to the conclusion that it was the best sauce for lobster ever invented; and it is extraordinary that it has remained for so long buried in the cookery books. In a moment I will produce the recipe – and please, will readers do their best to suspend disbelief until they have tried it? – but one of the main points about this recipe is that it taught me (for after all, one does not buy lobsters all that often) that
anisette is, improbably but incontrovertibly, a quite magical ingredient in fish dishes and sauces. You rarely need more than a teaspoonful, you add it at the absolute final moment of cooking, you do not blaze it (at least I do not), you treat it simply as a seasoning. To a creamy sauce for white fish such as John Dory, brill, and sole, to dishes of molluscs such as mussels and scallops, its concentrated, pungent-sweet and aromatic qualities give a lift such as could hardly be achieved with a mountain of fennel stalks or seeds used in the preparation of the initial stock (anise is a close relation of fennel, caraway and dill), and this in turn gives one ideas as to the use of many other liqueurs, aromatic vermouths, country wines, even drinks such as Pernod and Pastis in the cooking of fish and white meat and poultry dishes.

LOBSTER COURCHAMPS

For one freshly boiled, medium large (about 1½ lb.) hen lobster or langouste (if you are boiling the creature at home, you can always add the large goblet of Madeira called for in the original recipe), the ingredients for the sauce are 2 small shallots, a heaped teaspoon of tarragon leaves, 2 tablespoons of chopped parsley, salt, pepper, a scant teaspoon of strong yellow French mustard, 24 to 30 drops of soy sauce, approximately 6 tablespoons of mildly fruity Provence olive oil, the juice of half a rather small lemon, 1 teaspoon of anisette de Bordeaux.

From the split lobster extract all the red and creamy parts. Pound them in a mortar. Mix with the finely chopped shallots, tarragon and parsley. Add the seasonings and the soy sauce, then gradually stir in the olive oil; add lemon juice. Finally, the anisette. Divide the sauce into two portions, and serve it in little bowls or squat glasses placed on each person’s plate, so that the lobster can be dipped into it. The lobster meat can be cut into scallops and piled neatly back into the shells.

Apart from its sheer deliciousness (most cold lobster sauces, including mayonnaise, are on the heavy side for what is already rich and solid food) this sauce has other points to recommend it. Anisette is not a liqueur which, speaking at least for myself, one has a great compulsion to swig down in quantity; in my cupboard a bottle lasts for years. A half-crown’s worth of soy sauce also tends – unless you are keen on Chinese cooking – to remain an old faithful among the stores; and although nothing can quite compare with
fresh tarragon, it is perfectly possible to use the excellent Chiltern Herb Farm dried version. The makings of your sauce, then, are always with you. All you need is the freshly boiled hen lobster … And, as it is not a classic regional or other recognized traditional dish, you can call it what you please. It has no name of its own. I have named it after the Comte de Courchamps, author of the first of the three books
¹
in which I found the recipe. The others were by Dumas the Elder
²
and the Baron Brisse.
³
Highly imaginative as they were, all three gentlemen called it Sauce for Boiled Lobster.

The Compleat Imbiber
4, 1963

1.
Néo-Physiologie du Goût par Ordre Alphabétique: Dictionnaire Général de la Cuisine Française Ancienne et Moderne ainsi que de l’Office et de la Pharmacie domestique
, Paris, Henri Plon. Published anonymously in 1839, reprinted 1853 and 1866. Vicaire asserts that the book was the work of Maurice Cousin, Comte de Courchamps. In the preface to the book it is claimed that a number of the recipes came from unpublished papers of Grimod de la Reynière, The recipe in question might well be from his hand.