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Society as I Have Found It

<h3>CHAPTER XXIII.</h3> <div class="blockquot">Some practical Questions answered—Difference between Men and Women Cooks—Swedish Women the cleanest and most economical—My bills with a Chef—My bills with a Woman Cook—Hints on Marketing—I have done my own Buying for forty years—Mme. Rothschild personally supervises her famous Dinners—Menu of an old-fashioned Southern Dinner—Success of an Impromptu Banquet. </div> Twenty years ago there were not over three chefs in private families in this city. It is now the exception not to find a man of fashion keeping a first-class chef or a famous cordon bleu. In the last six years Swedish women cooks have come over here, and are excellent, and by some supposed to be better than chefs. No woman, in my opinion, can give as finished a dinner as a man. There is always a something in the dinner which has escaped her. It is like German and Italian opera,—there is a finish to the Italian that the Germans can never get. But{306} Swedish cooks deserve special mention; they are really wonderful—cleanliness itself. That is where the French chef fails. He must have scullions tracking his very footsteps to keep things clean, while the Swedish woman does her work without making dirt. These women get nearly as large wages as the men,—sixty dollars a month and a scullion maid. What a contrast to living in France! I had the best chef in Pau in 1856 for twenty-five dollars, and the scullion received three dollars a month. The question is often asked, What is the difference in expense to a household between a chef or a woman cook? This question is only learned by experience, which teaches me that with a woman, my butcher’s bill would be $250 to $275 a month; with a chef, $450 to $500. Grocer’s bill, with woman cook, say, $75; with a chef, $125. This does not include entertaining. For a dinner of twelve or fourteen one’s marketing is easily sixty{307} dollars, without the foie gras or fruit. An A1 chef’s wages is $100 a month; he takes ten per cent. commission on the butcher, grocer, baker, and milkman’s bill. If he does not get it directly, he gets it indirectly. In other words, besides his wages, he counts on these commissions. I speak now of the ablest and best; others not quite so capable take five per cent. Always remember that the Frenchman is a creature of impulses, and works for two things, glory and money. An everyday dinner wearies him, but a dinner privé, a special dinner, oh, this calls forth his talent, which shows that the custom some have of calling in and employing a chef to cook them a special dinner is correct. If you do not keep a chef out of respect for your purse or your health, it is a good plan to know of an “artist” whom you can employ on special occasions, with the express agreement that he submits the list of what he wants, and lets you{308} make the purchases, for these gentry like to make a little economie, which always benefits themselves, and such economie gives you poor material for him to work upon, instead of good. How often have I heard a hostess boast, “I never give any attention to the details of my dinner, I simply tell my butler how many people we are to have.” In nine cases out of ten this is apparent in the dinner. Madame Rothschild, who has always given the best dinners in Paris, personally supervises everything. The great Duchess of Sutherland, the Queen’s friend, when she entertained, inspected every arrangement personally herself. I daily comment to my cook on the performance of the previous day. No one, especially in this country, can accomplish great results without giving time and attention to these details. No French cook will take any interest in his work unless he receives praise and criticism; but above all things,{309} you must know how to criticise. If he finds you are able to appreciate his work when good, and condemn it when bad, he improves, and gives you something of value. Now let us treat of dinners as given before the introduction of chefs, and still preferred by the majority of people. The best talent with poor material may give a fair dinner, but if the material is poor, the dinner will evidence it. For forty years I have always marketed myself and secured the respect of my butcher, letting him know that I knew as much if not more than he did. In selecting your shin of beef, remember that a fresh shin is always the best for soup. In choosing fish, look at their gills, which should be a bright red. See your filet cut with the fat well marbled, cut from young beef. Sweetbreads come in pairs; one fine, one inferior. Pay an extra price, and get your butcher to cut them apart and give you{310} only the two large heart breads, leaving to him the two thin throat breads to sell at a reduced price. In poultry there are two kinds of fat, yellow and white. Fowls fed on rice have white fat; those on corn meal, yellow fat. By the feet of the bird, you can tell its age. The black and red feathered fowls are always preferred. Never take a gray feathered bird. Look at the head of the canvasback and the redhead; see them together, and then you will readily see the birds to pick, i.e. the canvasback. Weigh in your hand each snipe or woodcock; the weight will tell you if the bird is fat and plump. In buying terrapin, look at each one, and see if they are the simon-pure diamond back Chesapeakes. In choosing your saddle of mutton, take the short-legged ones, the meat coming well down the leg, nearly reaching the foot; a short, thick, stubby little tail;{311} must have the look of the pure Southdown, with black legs and feet. Of hothouse grapes, I find the large white grapes the best, Muscats of Alexandria. Parch and grind your coffee the day you drink it. Always buy green coffee. Never use the small timbales of pâté de foie gras, generally given one to each guest. Always have an entire foie gras, be it large or small, for in this way you are apt to get old foie gras thus worked up. Always buy your foie gras from an A1 house, never from the butcher or fruiterer. I here give as a recollection of the past the <div class="blockquot"> MENU OF AN OLD-FASHIONED SOUTHERN DINNER. Terrapin Soup and Oyster Soup, or Mock Turtle Soup, Soft shell or Cylindrical nose Turtle.[A] Boiled fresh water Trout (known with us at the North as Chub).{312} Shad stuffed and baked (we broil it). Boiled Turkey, Oyster sauce. A roast Peahen. Boiled Southern Ham. Escalloped oysters. Maccaroni with cheese. Prawn pie. Crabs stuffed in shell. Roast Ducks. A haunch of Venison. Dessert. Plum Pudding. Mince Pies. Trifle. Floating Island. Blanc Mange. Jelly. Ice Cream. </div> <div class="footnote">[A] This turtle is only found in the ditches of the rice fields, and is the most valued delicacy of the South. It is too delicate to transport to the North. I have made several attempts to do this, but invariably failed, the turtle dying before it could reach New York. Its shell is gelatinous, all of which is used in the soup. It is only caught in July and August, and even then it is very rare, and brings a high price. </div> On repeatedly visiting the West Indies, I found that two of the best Carolina and Georgia dishes, supposed always to have emanated from the African brain, were imported from these islands, and really had not even their origin there, but were brought from Bordeaux to the West Indies, and thence were carried to the South. I refer to the Crab à la Creole, and Les Aubergines farcies à la Bordelaise. After the great revolution, when the Africans of Hayti drove from the island{313} their former masters, good French cooking came with them to Baltimore, and other parts of the South. In talking of Southern dishes, I must not forget the Southern barnyard-fed turkey. They were fattened on small rice and were very fine. In discussing Southern dinners, I cannot omit making mention of the old Southern butler, quite an institution; devoted to his master, and taking as much pride in the family as the family took in itself. Among Southern household servants (all colored people), the man bore two names as well as the woman. The one he answered to as servant, the other was his title. Whenever, as a boy, I wanted particularly to gratify my father’s old butler, I would give him his title, which was “Major Brown.” He was commonly called Nat. I remember, on one occasion, a guest at my father’s table asking Major Brown to hand him the rice, whilst he was eating fish. The old gray-haired{314} butler drew himself up with great dignity, and replied, “Massa, we don’t eat rice with fish in this house.” Some features of the everyday Southern dinner were pilau, i.e. boiled chickens on a bed of rice, with a large piece of bacon between the chickens; “Hoppin John,” that is, cowpeas with bacon; okra soup, a staple dish; shrimp and prawn pie; crab salad; pompey head (a stuffed filet of veal); roast quail and snipe, and, during the winter, shad daily, boiled, broiled and baked. As there is reciprocity in everything, if you dine with others, they, in turn, must dine with you. Passing several winters at Nassau, N.P., I dined twice a week, regularly, with the Governor of the Bahamas. I suggested to him the propriety of my giving him a dinner. He smiled, and said: “My dear fellow, I represent Her Majesty; I cannot, in this town, dine out of my own house.{315}” “Egad!” said I, “then dine with me in the country!” “That will do,” he replied; “but how will you, as a stranger, get up a dinner in this land, where it is a daily struggle to get food?” “Leave that to me,” I said. The Governor’s accepting this invitation, recalled a story my father oft related, which caused me some anxiety as to the expense of my undertaking. A distinguished man with whom he was associated at the bar was sent as our Minister to Russia; when he returned home, my father interviewed him as to his Russian experience. He said, that after being repeatedly entertained by the royal family, he felt that it was incumbent on him, in turn, to entertain them himself; so he approached the Emperor’s grand Chamberlain and expressed this wish, who at once accepted an invitation to breakfast for the whole Imperial family. “McAllister,” he said, “I gave that breakfast; I was charmed{316} with its success, but my dear man, it took my entire fortune to pay for it. I have been a poor man ever since.” Having this party on hand, I went to the chef of the hotel, interviewed him, found he had been at one time the head cook of the New York Hotel in this city; so I felt safe in his hands. I went to work and made out a list of all the French dishes that could be successfully rechaufféd. Such as côtelettes de mouton en papillotte, vol au vent à la financière, boudins de volaille à la Richelieu, timbales de riz de veau, et quenelle de volaille; a boiled Yorkshire ham, easily heated over, to cook which properly it must be simmered from six to seven hours until you can turn the bone; then lay it aside twelve hours to cool; then put it in an oven, and constantly baste it with a pint of cider. It must be served hot, even after being cut. The oftener it is placed in the oven and heated the better it becomes. Thus cooked, they have been{317} by one of my friends hermetically sealed in a tin case and sent to several distinguished men in England, who have found them a great delicacy. I then hired for the day for $20 a shut-up country place; got plenty of English bunting, quantities of flowers; saw that my champagne was of the best and well frappéd; made a speech to the waiters and cook, urging them to show these Britishers what the Yankee could do when put to his stumps; and then with a long cavalcade of cooks, waiters, pots, and pans, heading the procession myself, went off to my orange-grove retreat, some five miles from Nassau, made my men work like beavers, and awaited the arrival of my sixty English guests, who were coming to see the American fiasco in the way of a country dinner and fête. In they came, and great was their surprise when they beheld a table for sixty people, pièces montés of confectionery, flowers, wines all nicely decanted, and a really good French{318} dinner, at once served to them. I only relate this to show that where there is a will there is a way, and that you can so work upon a French cook’s vanity that he will, on a spurt like this, outdo himself. Marvelous to relate, the chef positively refused to be recompensed. “No, sir,” he replied; “I am well off; I wish no pay. Monsieur has appreciated my efforts. Monsieur knows when things are well done. He has made a great success. All the darkies on this island could not have cooked that dinner. I am satisfied.” I was so pleased with the fellow, that when he broke down in health he came to me, and I had him as my cook two Newport summers. I kept him alive by giving him old Jamaica rum and milk fresh from the cow, taken before his breakfast,—an old Southern remedy for consumption. Some of his remarks on Nassau are{319} worthy of repeating. I said to him, “Chef, why don’t they raise vegetables on this fruitful island? Why bring them all from New York?” “Monsieur,” he replied, “here you sow your seed at night, by midnight it is ripe and fit to cook; by morning it has gone to seed. The same way with sheep. You bring a flock of sheep here, with fine fleeces of wool; in a few months they are goats, and not wool enough on them to plug your ears. {320} {321}” <h2>BALLS.</h2> {322}  {323}  <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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