The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-10-25

held enough for him, not, indeed, the big
gest German beer mug
Longfellow, in the Golden Legend"
has chapter devoted 10 wine. In this
poem the old cellarer muses. as he goes to
draw the fine wine for his fathers, who sit
above the salt, and he utters this truth of
those brothers who sit below the salt:
Who cannot te bad wine from good
And are much better off than if they could.
The superior wines of the Rhine, Wal
porZheimer, Ahrwerter and Bodendorfer
all deserve notice.
The kind OF wine to be served with any
sort of dinner must depend on the means
of the host 1t is feared that ignorantly
or otherwise many wines are offered with
hlghsounding names which are not good
to guests who would rather have none.
Mr.. Evarts made witty remark on this
subject. Some one said to him: II hear
as great diner out that you ind yourself
the worse for drinking SO many different
grades of wine?" 'Oh, no." said Mr..
wines, it is the indifferent wines which
hurt me-"
Savarin says sententiously: Nothing
can exceed the treachery of asking people
TO dinner under the guise OF friendship,
and then giving them TO eat or drink of
that which may be injurious to health"
We should think so. That was the pleas
hood OF Neuwied. But there the dealers
are accused of much doctoring or galliza-
ton of wine. During the vintage, AT night
when the moon has gone down, boats
glide over the Rhine, freighted with a
soapy substance manufactured from pota-
toes and called by its owners sugar. This
stuff is thrown into the watts containing
the must, water is introduced from pumps
and wells, chemical ferments and artificial
heat are applied. This noble fluid is sent
by land and water all over, and labeled as
frst-class wine. 1t is not bad to the taste,
but does not bear transportation. This
adulteration chiefly affects the wines sold
at German hotels.
Heinrich Heine has left US this picture
of German dinner:
dined at the Crown at Clausthal. My repast
consisted OF spring greens, parsley soup, violet
blue cabbage, pile of roast veal, which re-
sembied ChImborazo in miniature, aud sort OF
smoked herring called Buckings from their in
ventor, William Buckings, who died in 1447.
and who on account OF that invention was so
greatly honored by Charles V. that the great
monarch in 1856 made Journey from Middle
burg to Berlied in Zealand for the express pur-
pose OF visiting the grave OF the great fish dryer.
How exqulsitely such dishes taste when We are
familiar with their historical associations.
1t is impossible in translation to give Heine's
intense ridicule and scorn. He was a French
man out of place in Germany. He revolted at
things German, but endeared himself TO his
people by his wit, universally of talent and his
sincerity. The world has thanked him for his
Reisebilder.l
Heine gives us new ideas Of the horrors
of German cookery when he talks of Got
tengen sausages, Hamburg smoked beef,
Pomeranian geese breasts, OK tongues,
calf's brains in pastry, gudgeon cakes, and
"a wretched pigs head in a wretcheder
sauce, which has neither Grecian nor
Persian flavor. but which tasted like tea
and soft soap"
He cannot leave Gottengen without this
description: The town of Gottengen,
celebrated for its sausages and its univer-
sity, belongs to the king of Hanover, and
contains 999 dwelling, divers chambers, an
observatory, a prison, library and
council chamber where the beer is excel
lent"
German sausages are very good. Even
the great Goethe in dying remembered to
send to his aesthetic love of a lifetime, the
Frau Won Stein, sausage.
Thackeray. who was keenly alive to the
horrors of German cookery, says that
whatever is not sour is greasy, and what
ever is not greasy is sour. The curious
bill of fare of middle-class German table
is something like this:
They begin with pudding. They serve
sweet preserved fruit with the meat, gen.
orally stewed cherries. They go on with
dreadful dishes of cabbage, preparations of
milk, curdled, soured and cheesed.
DR.. Lieber, the learned philologist, was
eloquent on the subject of the coarseness
of the German appetite. He had early
corrected his by visit to Italy. and he
remarked with his usual profundity that
it was 1.-The more incomprehensible as ma
ture had given Germany the finest wines
with which to wash down the worst cook
cry"
A fayorite dish is potato pancakes. The
raw potatoes are scraped fine, mixed with
milk, and then treated like flour cakes
served with apple or plum sauce.
Sauerkraut is ridiculed, but it is only
cabbage cut fine and picked.
There are two delicious dishes in which
it plays an important part: one is roast
pheasant cut tine and cooked with sauer-
kraut and champagne, the other is sauer-
kraut cooked in the croute of a Strasburg
pate de foie gras.
Favorite Austro-Hungarian dishes are
Bachhendl (baked spring chicken), the
chicken rolled INTO paste of egg flour
and then baked, rather dry to eat, but Just
the thing with bottle of Hungarian wine.
Also beefsteak with plenty of paprinka,
or Hungarian red pepper, brinsa cheese,
pot cheese, made in the Carpathian
mountains and baked in hot oven.
Brook trout is never fried, but boiled in
water or salt, and then served, surrounded
by parsley III melted butter.
In Eastern Russia grows a pea, the gray
pea. which is boiled and eaten like peanuts
by peeling off the hard skin, or boiled with
some sort OF sour-sWeet sauce, which soft
ems the skin. This pea is such a favorite
with the Lithuanians that it is made the
subject of poetry.
Venisons and hare soup are deliciously
gamy bouillons which are made of the
soup bones OF the roast.
The Polish soup barsz is made of bouil-
Ion with the juice of red beets, little sau-
cissons and especially made pastry with
highly-spiced forced meat balls swimming
in il.
Lettuce salad is prepared in Germany
with sour cream.
A favorite drink is ''warmbeer." beer
heated with the yolk OF an egg beaten in it.
Fill me once more the ioaminr pewter I'D!
Another board of oysters ladye minel
Tonight Luculus with himself shall sup
Those mute inglorous Millions are divine!
And as ! here IN sippe-ed ease recline
Qunfflng of Perkins entire my fill
sigh not for the lymph OF Aganippe's rill.
Beer is the amber inspiration of the
Germans and plays its daily, hourly part
IL their science of entertaining.
And the pea which can be skinned,
which is such favorite with the Lithu-
anians. has also been immortaIized by
Thackeray.
give thee all, I can no more
Though poor the offer be,
Stewed duck aud peas are all the store
That ! can offer thee.
A duck. whose tender breast reveals
Its early youth full Well.
And better still, pea tiqt Dess
From fresh transparent she'll.
But il must not be supposed that rich
German citizens of the United States do
not know how to give good dinner.
Cosmopolitan in everything else. these,
the best colonists whom Europe has sent
sy-l.1