Smyrna times., 1898-09-07

He Kicks All the Way Down the Bill of
Fare and Is Particularly Irritated Over
q Dish of Powdered Horse Radish Served
With Frozen Whipped Cream.
When you have examined the con-
stitution of the German cuisine, you
are tempted to grow loquacious. You
are conscious of having discovered that
the psychology of a nation cannot be
constructed upon a mere analysis of its
made dishes. Your estimate of Brillat-
Savarin sinks. He could not tell you
what you are, even from all the menus
of your lifetime. Freiligrath's philo-
sophie conclusion that "man is what
he eats" you straightway qualify as
true only when referring to cannibal-
ism. And you will aver that only in
the case of paleolithic man can you
construct man from the crumbs that
fall from his dinner table. And this
you will want to prove, and conse.
quently will grow talkative with pre-
senting of much evidence.
And yet, in your sane moments, you
will have a sneaking affection for the
statement that a German is a German
because he eats what he eats. AS gen.
eral rule he may be said to eat five
times a day. But his hunger is con-
stantly being stilled.
He starts early in the day with cup
of cafe au lait and a small buttered
roll. This keeps him going till II
o'clock, when he demolishes a slice of
Duttered rye bread spread with slices
of hard boiled egg, raw chopped beef or
cheese. This he washes down with a
glass of ale, thus stilling his inner man
till dinner time. Dinner takes place to-
ward 1 o'clock and consists of soup
generally nourishing), plate Of meat,
with potatoes and fruit (cranberries,
prunes or apricots), occasionally cheese,
seldom sweets, rarely green vegetable.
Three hours later coffee is taken,
served with a piece of cake or thick
bread and butter. This is the hour pre-
cious to the gossip and the busybody,
the time for spreading scandal. Toward
s o'clock the appetite again asserts
itself The hour of the ubiquitous sau-
sages has arrived. Their name is legion,
and they share the honors with slices
of ham, smoked goose breast, pieces of
raw picked herring, and in summer
hard boiled eggs and potato salad.
Such is the German method of spread
ing the meals over the day OF course
there are exceptions. Many families
have two ample meals day, but the
bulk of the population eats mostly but
tered bread and snacks In justice to
Germany one must say that the fare in
many home will compare favorably
with that of many an American family.
In the German restaurant the cuisine
is on the whole monotonous and the
food singularly insipid. All meats seem
to have the same flavor, all are served
with the same heavy, yiscous sauces,
and invariably escorted with the same
soaplike potatoes. Stodginess and heavi-
ness are the great blots on the German
fare. The element of variety, too, seems
considered superfuous
In the concrete the subject is almost
too painful to face, the difficulty being
to steer clear of exclamations denoting
positive offensiveness. Some of the
kickshaws which figure regularly upon
the German table are reputed to be most
sustaining. They certainly are intense
ly and ostentatiously wonder inspiring.
One preparation is everywhere met
with under the name (more or less pho
netically spelled) of beefsteak la tar
tare. Its basis is raw chopped beef !;
this, spread out into pat of elliptical
shape, is crowned with the raw yolk of
an egg, raw finely chopped onion is
sprinkled over it, garniture of gher-
kins is added, and the whole is eaten
with much gusto and no worse conse-
quences than durable thirst.
In many Of the dishes you discover
all the humor, feeling and imagination
of Wagnerian composition. You find
the resolute desire to build up harmony
upon discord. OF this nature may be
considered the traditional menu of New
Years eve, carp, pancake and punch.
These three, brought into immediate
juxtaposition and consumed in plethoric
quantities, generally have the desired
effect-that of inducing a hysterical
good humor.
For stodginess nothing beats the IA
vorite dish, panache 1t consists Of
picked pork, sour cabbage and puree
of split peas boiled down to the con-
sistency Of stiff dough. Experiments on
this mass produce deplorable capers and
cause one to grunt mournfully. A va
riety of this diet is found in Berlin.
You substitute boiled balls of dough
and Indifferent prunes for the peas and
cabbage, and you have the dish popu-
larly termed ''the Silesian kingdom of
heaven. Cold eels, imbedded in a
translucid, glutinous substance, figure
in all workmen's taverns, while roast
goose is de rigueur for all soIemnities.
A dainty which we have recently
met with in Berlin recalled Darwin g
remark that hardly any experiment is
so absurd as not to be worth trying. "
1t consisted of finely powdered horse
radish served up with frozen whipped
cream.
One may sum up ones Judgment by
saying of German cooking what the art
critic said of nature, "It has infinite
potentialities. Not the least of these
Is its ambition to discover victims that
survive its charms only in the form
that the walls of Jericho survived the
trumpet blast Of Joshua.-Lippincott' q
Magazine.
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