The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1894-01-08
Some Curious Articles and Mixtures,
According to Our Notions.
From the New York Hera

From the New York Herald.
Every day in New York you can see a
score of pigtailed gentlemen in the neigh
borhood of Mott street each carrying a
huge brown paper bag. If you could open
these mysterious packages you would find
desiccated shrimps and prawns, picked
Annoy cabbage, delicate little tubers
known as "ma-tai" bitter cucumb ers,
dried devil fish, Awabi clans from Japan,
smoked oysters, preserved sharks fins,
pots of sweetmeats, funny-looking sau-
sages and lots of dainties for which there
is no name in English. A poor laundry
man will spend a quarter or a third of his
income upon these luxuries, and will de-
vote a half day of his precious time to
cooking them in approved Mongolian style.
The table is queer work of art, The
China and porcelain are superb, so beau
tiful that in this land of collectors they
would be placed in cabinets. There are
no knives or forks. The celestial mind
regards cutting and carving a labor I'M
worthy of a guest, and relegates it to the
cook. In lieu of forks are chopsticks-
long, slender bars of ivory tipped with
silver or gold. The spoons are films of
proclaim; the wine glasses, cups like
those in children's doll houses. Your
plate is a saucer. and your napkin a
silk towel held by a servant. The table
is handsome, nevertheless. 1t is nearly
covered with dainty plates containing hors
d'Ruvres piled up in a slender pyramids
One pile consists of peeled bananas, cut
into little drums; another of pineapple.
carved into tiny bars, like miniatures of
laundry soaps a third OF crystallized
dwarf oranges, mOisteded in honey; a
fourth of fine onion sprouts and fifth pre-
served eggs, dark green and suggesting
SLICED cucumbers. Other plates contain
eli ,s.Yl-1 ..I
hard boiled pigeons eggs, sweet picked
shredded ginger, sliced water chestnuts,
dried fish segments, desiccated pawns,
smoked fish roe. and score of other and
equally incongruous dainties.
You help yourself to any of these, both
before and during the banquet. In the
meantime the waiter or the "siug-song
girl ~ has filed your tea cup with frag
rant Oolong and your wine cup with
boiling wine. From this point neither
cup is permitted to remain empty nor
grow old. If it stands longer than the
time allotted by Mongolian etiquette, it is
removed and replaced by hot one At
ter few minutes of nibbling and sip
ping the courses begin to arrive and con-
tinue to arrive as long as there is soul
at the board. Soups and stews, omelettes
and entrees, roasts and boiled, ragouts
and fricassees, croquettes and vol au
vents, sweet dishes and sour follow one
another without apparent rhyme or rea-
son. AT the end of every half hour you
take recess of from five to fifteen min
utes. Everybody lights a cigarette or
puffs water pipe. A few retire to one of
the hunks and smoke pipe of opium.
The sing song girls" perform brief
concert, vocal and instrumental, and
again the meal proceeds. 1t is poor din
ner that has less than twenty courses.
Some have forty and fifty, and few pass
the hundred mark. You eat what you
please and as much as you please.
Scarcely any dish is simple; some contain
twenty ingredients. The average ban
quet uses pork, fresh, salt and smoked !;
pigs brain, liver ana kidney, chicken,
duck, pigeon, quail and goose; fish, fresh,
dried, salt and smoked; eggs of at least
four kinds, rice, pastry, beans, pease,
cabbage, millet, lentils, onions, garlic,
leek, cucumber. squash, melon, gourd,
potatoes, white and sweet; yam, natal,
bean, sprouts, spinach, turnip, parsnip,
carrot, devil fish, dragon fish, fish roe,
clans, oysters, crabs, sea weed, mush-
room and tree mushrooms, birds nests,
sharks fms, ohilliss, orange peel, ginger,
cocoanut, macaroni, and heaven knows
what not