The Decadent Cookbook (10 page)

1
TEASPOON
EACH
THYME,
ALLSPICE

2
BAY
LEAVES

ROSEMARY

WALNUT
HALVES

1
BLACK
OLIVE

Chop the mushrooms and chicken livers very finely and fry them softly for 5 minutes. Leave to cool. Combine the minced meat in a bowl with the onion, garlic, juniper berries, thyme, allspice, salt & pepper, egg, mushrooms and chicken livers. Mix. Transfer to a roasting tin, adding a little oil if the mince is very lean. Sculpt the mixture to look like a hedgehog. Stripe the beast with bacon and bay leaves, and stud with nuts. Use pieces of olive for eyes and nose. Scatter some rosemary over its back. Roast in a hot oven for 15 minutes, then in a medium oven for another 75 minutes. Serve in its own gravy.

This is a more ambitious dish, which we first encountered in
Venus in the Kitchen
by Norman Douglas, who says he took it from A T Raimbault’s
Le Parfait Cuisinier
. The recipe was also found among the papers of Grimod de la Reynière, who added comparisons of the birds’ tender flesh to the complexions of famous actresses. It requires a special combination of dexterity and brute strength - but no ‘sculpting’ as such.

Make a paste of the anchovy and caper, and stuff the olive with it. Then, proceeding in order down the list, stuff each ingredient into the one below. Put the assembled ‘thing’ into a big pot with a clove-studded onion, some pieces of ham, bacon, celery, carrots, coriander seeds, garlic, salt and pepper. Seal down the lid with pastry and cook in a slow oven for ten hours. Serve with chips and frozen peas.

Cyril Connolly, in
Shade Those Laurels,
gives a similar recipe, but says it should be cooked for 24 hours, not 10. He adds this serving suggestion:

‘Now listen carefully - we’re getting to the holy of holies of cooking! We have here the quintessence of forest, marsh, plain and farmyard, all these juices and emanations are being stealthily volatilised and united and blended into the most exquisite whole, a unique gastronomic experience - but meanwhile this quintessence has penetrated to the very heart of the whole matter, that is to the olive. So you carve open the bustard very carefully and throw it out of the window or give it to the dogs if you have any; same treatment for the turkey, the goose,… the chicken, the guinea-fowl, the teal, the woodcock, the partridge, the plover, the quail, the ortolan, the poor little beccafico, until finally in a spirit of true gratitude and admiration we serve … the olive.’

This is a trick recipe, guaranteed to please. Make some éclair cases with choux pastry. Cook some liver of game, then mash and mix with bechamel and cream. Inject this purée into the éclairs and cover them with bitter chocolate sauce.

This is a variation on Newfoundland Pork Cake. Excellent with vodka, sherry, or plum brandy
c
2am.

24
OZ
SALT
OR
PICKLED
PORK,
MINCED

3
CUPS
FLOUR

1
TEASPOON
EACH
OF
GROUND
CLOVES,
GINGER,
CINNAMON,

NUTMEG

GRATED
RIND
OF
A
LEMON

1
LB
CURRANTS

1
LB
SEEDLESS
RAISINS

8
OZ
CHOPPED
WALNUTS

8
OZ
CANDIED
PEEL

2
CUPS
BLACK
TREACLE

½
CUP
RUM

2
TEASPOONS
BAKING
POWDER

3
EGGS

Stand the pork in a warm place for 30 minutes, then mix it with the rest of the ingredients except the eggs. Separate the egg yolks from the whites. Stir in the yolks. Beat the whites to a stiff foam and fold them in to the mixture. Bake in a cool to moderate oven for 3 hours.

by Théophile Gautier

One evening in December, obeying a mysterious invitation couched in enigmatic terms intelligible only to initiates, I travelled to a distant part of the city, a kind of oasis of solitude in the centre of Paris, which the river seems to defend with its encircling arms from the molestations of civilization. It was an old house in the Ile Saint-Louis, Hôtel Pimodan, built by Lauzun, where a bizarre club that I had recently joined held its monthly meetings, which I was about to attend for the first time.

Although it was only six o’clock, the night was already dark. The fog, made thicker by the proximity to the Seine, blurred every detail with its ragged veils, punctured at various distances by the reddish glow of lanterns and bars of light escaping from illuminated windows. The road was soaked with rain, and glittered under the street-lamps like a lake reflecting strings of lights. A bitter wind, heavy with icy particles, whipped at my face, its howling forming the high notes of a symphony whose bass was played by the swollen waves crashing into the piers of the bridges below. The evening lacked none of winter’s rough poetry.

It was hard to pick out the house from the mass of sombre buildings along that deserted quay; but my coachman, standing in his seat, managed to read the faded gilt lettering on a marble plaque. This was the place where the adepts met…

I rang the bell. The door was opened with the usual precautions, and I found myself in a large room lit at the far end by a few lamps. Walking in was like stepping back two centuries. Time, which passes so quickly, seemed to have stood still in that house; like a clock which someone has forgotten to wind, it was stuck perpetually at the same date.

The walls were lined in white-painted wood, half-panelled with cloth stained brown with age; on the gigantic stove stood a statue which might once have belonged in a garden alley at Versailles. On the domed ceiling was a painted allegory in the overblown style of Lemoine; indeed it may well have been one of his works.

I moved towards the lighted end of the room, where a number of human forms stood excitedly round a table. As I entered the circle of light, a cheer of recognition burst from them, stirring the sonorous depths of the ancient building.

“Here he is! Here he is!” cried several voices at once. “Let him have his share!”

The doctor was standing at a sideboard, where a tray of tiny Japanese saucers had been placed, each with a gilded silver spoon. Dipping a spatula into a crystal vase, the doctor scooped out a piece of greenish paste or jelly, about the size of a thumb, onto each saucer.

The doctor’s face shone with enthusiasm, his eyes glittered, his cheekbones flared, the veins on his forehead stood out, his dilated nostrils sucked in the air in powerful draughts.

“This” he said, handing me my dose, “will be deducted from your portion of paradise.”

When everyone had eaten his share, coffee was served in the Arabian style - with grounds and no sugar. Then we sat down to eat.

This inversion of culinary habits will undoubtedly surprise the reader; it is hardly the custom to have coffee before the soup, and jelly is usually taken as a dessert. An explanation is in order.

In the Orient in times gone by there existed a redoubtable sect commanded by a sheikh known as the Old Man of the Mountains, or Prince of the Assassins.

This Old Man was unquestioningly obeyed. His subjects, the Assassins, carried out his orders with absolute devotion. No danger could stop them, even certain death. At a sign from their chief they would hurl themselves from a tower or stab a sovereign in his palace in the midst of his guards.

What means did the Old Man of the Mountains use to obtain such obedience? He had in his possession the recipe for a marvellous drug, which was capable of producing the most dazzling hallucinations. Those who tasted it, on waking from their intoxicated states, found real life so sad and colourless that they would joyfully make any sacrifice to return to the paradise of their dreams; if a man was killed in the course of obeying the sheikh’s orders he went straight to heaven - or, if he survived, was allowed to partake once again of the happiness conveyed by the mysterious drug.

The green paste doled out by the doctor was precisely this substance: that is to say,
hashish
, whence
hashishin
, or eater of
hashish
, which is the root of the word
assassin
, a term whose ferocious connotations are easily explained by the sanguinary habits of the Old Man’s followers…

The meal was served in a most bizarre manner, in all sorts of extravagant and picturesque vessels.

Large Venetian goblets veined with milky spirals, German tankards inscribed with mottoes and legends, Flemish stoneware jugs, narrow-necked flasks still wrapped in straw - these were our glasses, bottles and carafes.

The opaque porcelain of Louis Lebeut, as well as English china prettily decorated with flowers, were both striking in their absence. No two plates were the same, each one had its own particular merit. China, Japan and Saxony each contributed samples of their finest clays and richest colours. It was all a little chipped, a little cracked, but in exquisite taste.