The Express.
London, England, 1859-01-20 00:00:00

LITBRATUBZ

Hints for the Table. Kent and Co.
The above subject has been recently treated with
great copiousness and erudition in the columns
of an influential cotemporary, but although we
confess to having received much valuable light
from the rules there laid down, the main result
of our careful reading has been a melan-
choly fear that all this fine writing would
only terrify our dinner-giving friends, and
that we should be deprived of much
genial hospitality, by the impossibility which our
intending host must feel of complying with the
costly arguments of the correspondent from
Berkeley-square. Who would now have the moral
courage to place before his Mends " the eternal
oodshead and shoulders," although, in the season, it
is a dish to which an emperor might sit down ? Is
not our venerated saddle of mutton also exorcised,
and even the royal sirloin banished by this epicurean
ukase from all civilised society? Theo, who could
respond to the catalogue of rare and valuable wines
that are enumerated u the indispensable accompani
ment of a well-served dinner? We should, indeed,
fear that the age of dinner-giving vas paring away,
at least with people of means under ten thousand
@jazz, were it not that these Hints for the
have oonse floating up lilts oil .11DCW
the troubled waters, to lull the storm and smooth
away* the difficulties, and show us that the noblest
clone national institutions may yet genies on easier
conditions than those enjoined by the modern
Lemnos. On soaps our author has collected a goodly
array of authorities, but Dr. Mayo, the chief, admits
that they should be taken in great moderation. We
quite agree with him. The origin of maps is easily
understood. In countries where they prevail es •
dinner necessary the meat is invariably scarce and
tough. Being scares, every ingenious device must be
resorted to make it goes far u possible; and being
tough, it mast be boiled to rags to permit of its mu-
ticatioe. Soups, therefore, are frequently introduced
abroad, as puddings are at Yorkshire schools, to save
and screen the meat, and are not at all reconcilable
to sound principles of dieteties.The great basis of their
composition is hot water, sad the only effect of hot
water is to relax the stomach and destroy its con-
tractile power, which is the first great agent in
digestion. Soup palls the appetite and chills the
gustatory glands; it is in fact nothing but a "weak
invention of the enemy," and should be at once dis-
carded from English tables, when the intrinsic good-
ness of the fare requires none of such devices and
delusions. With respect to fish, this little book is
fall of valuable and interesting information, well
calculated to make as satisfied with the placatory
store with which Providence has filled the lakes,
rivers, and bays of Old England. There is, in fact,
no such fish to be obtained anywhere as the salmon
of English and Irish rivers, the trout of the Scotch
lakes', or the turbot and John Dory, which are
so plentiful on the southern and western coasts of
Ireland. As good wine needs no bush, neither do
such fish require much cooking. Whether boiled,
broiled, or fried, all they require is to be done
quickly, and done through, and they will recom-
mend themselves to the daintiest epicure without
any but the simplest sauces. They are not generally
well handled in England, simply because they are not
generally liked. The tremendously active Holed by
the great man of the people renders a more sub-
stantial food necessary. They require, as they say
themselves, a food that has more " lasting " in it,
and hence fish is sauce, dear, and a luxury. Its
cooking has to be learned as an art, and, being too
elaborate, is generally a failure. Oar Mend has
we perceive, under this head, allowed the
Burnt: soup of Run* and the Bonilla-
baise of Marseilles to escape his researches.
lie most not forget them in his second edition,
as no enumeration of fish dishes can be complete
without them. Wine has been included in the selec-
tion, we suppose, in order to make the book complete,
but it is too extensive a subject to allow of anything
valuable to be said of it within so small a compass.
As a general rule we know nothing at all about wine
in this country, for the fluids we use under that
name sre nothing but mixtures of various ingre-
dients, very different indeed from the primitive ex-
pressed juice of the grape. The taste for it is not a
genuine natural relish, such u we should have for
an orange or a grape, or for a savoury piece of meat,
but a conventional and acquired palate, and so artifi-
cial and unrelialics is it, that the most experienced
judges can easily be deceived. The keepers of
some famous hostelries in the metropolis could tell
curious tales about the connoisseurs rejecting some
particular port as being too dry or too fruity, and
then praising it to the skies when made by a dex-
terous bit of legerdemain to believe that it had been
changed for another bin. How often is honest
Bordeaux made to do duty for Chateau Margaux
simply by waxing the cork in a particular manner,
and bringing it in iu great form in a delicate basket,
which the waiter handles as if it were red hot.
Dub the same wine with a little port or brandy,
and it becomes famous Burgundy, and, later in the
evening, a flash of symposiarchal eloquence may
possibly elevate it into eke vouyeot. In fact,
it is a maxim amongst tavern-keepers that
after the first five or six rounds anything
will go ; " and certainly extraordinary
fluids are sometimes made to "go" during
the small hours, both at private and public parties.
As for champagne, a bottle of good pale ale in high
condition is infinitely better drinking than five-
sixths of the stuff which is sold in this country at
from seven to ten shillings the bottle. The faculty
of Paris were right when, in 1778, they pronounced
champagne to be the finest of all wines, but what they
meant was the champagne made in Champagne, and
not the deleterious compound of Jersey cider, goose-
berry juice, and sugar of lead, which is too commonly
sold under that name in this country. To our taste
there are only two genuine brands of this glorious
wine—Moet, for dry, and Madame Cliquot for sweet
champagne. Of the former, there is plenty
to be had in England, but the price is
long, and the public palate has latterly
come to like sweeter wines, which can be had for
much less money. It is to this change of taste that
is to be attributed the opening of the door for all
the modern adulterations. Sugar is a good disguise,
and with it, assistance the meet inferior liquids may
he made to pass muster. but of genuine sweet
champagne the growth of Madams Cliquot's vine-
yards is the pearl of wines. Once tasted it can
never be forgotten, nor mistaken, but we get
hardly any of it in England, as there are more cus-
tomers of half a century old in Russia than all the
year's production can supply. " Yeuve Cliquot" is
without any qualification the finest wine in the
world, and ten years after the old lady's death a
ease of it will be worth its weight in gold. As we
are nothing it not critical, we mast observe to
the compiler of these Hints for the Table
that he is evidently no smoker, or he
would have carried his researches somewhat
farther into the cloudland of Tabagie. Ile did not
write about Havannahs with one resting delicately
between the fingers of his left hand, or collect his
thoughts while he watched its pale smoke rising
gracefully to the ceiling. The best Havannah cigars
are to be had in Liverpool, and next to Liverpool in
London. There is only one way of distin-
guishing them, and that is by their flavour.
The Revenue, as he puffs his eiyarro del Hey
at 00 dollars the thousand, laughs when he
hears strangers descant on the signs and tokens of •
good cigar. Colour is nothing, spots are done with
vitriol, and as white an ash comes from Hamburg, at
ten a penny as from the finest Woodville or Cabanas.
Flavour is in short the only teat. The real Haven-
nab cigar is at once fall and mild, its soothing
effects are perceptible from the very lint puff, and
there is no taste of bitterness in the mouth after a
dozen of them. Bat we must not allow themes
which everyone can discuss, which everyone likes,
and which anyone can write about, to run away
with ea. The author must take our discursive ob-

nervations 's a proof of the comprehensive character of
his book, which contains a grouter number of valu-
able hints on the subjects of which he treats than
any volume of similar size with which we are
acquainted.

REFORM MEETINGS.