coffee. The soles of the north of France are as good as any that ever came out of British waters ; and Paris — sending tentacles west to the waters where the sardines swim, and south to the home of the lamprey, and tapping a thousand streams for trout and tiny gudgeon and crayfish — can show as noble a list of fishes as any city in the world. The chef de cuisine who could not enumerate an hundred and fifty entrees all distinctively French, would be no proficient in his noble profession. The British beef stands against all the world as the meat noblest for the spit, and Scottish sirloins are sent as far south as Monte Carlo, but the French ox which has worked its time in the fields gives the best material for the soup-pot ; and though the Welsh lamb and the Southdown sheep are the perfection of mutton young and mutton old, the lamb nurtured on milk till the hour of its death, and the sheep reared on the salt-marshes of the north, make splendid contri- bution to the Paris kitchens. Mutton is often de- scribed on the bill of fare by the name of the breeder of the sheep. Several of the great sheep-breeders of France, the Marquis de Behacque amongst them, have imported Southdown sheep, and the mutton called by their names has an English ancestry. Veal is practically an unknown meat in London ; and the calf of Pontoise, which has been fed on milk and yolk of egg, and which has flesh as soft as a kiss and as white as snow, is only to be found in the Parisian restaurants. Most of the good restaurants in London import all their winged creatures, except game, from France ; and the Surrey fowl and the Aylesbury duck, the representatives of Great Britain, make no great show against the champions of* Gaul, the fowls of Mans and Houdan and Bresse, and the duck of Rouen, though the Norfolk turkey holds his own. A vegetable dish, served by itself and not flung 4 The Gourmet's Guide to Europe into the gravy of a joint, forms part of every French dinner, large or small ; and in the battle of the kitchen gardens the foreigners beat us nearly all along the line, though I think that English asparagus is better than the white monsters of Argenteuil. A truffled partridge, a partridge a la Bourguignonne , cooked in a terrine with a red wine sauce, or the homely Perdrix aux choux, or the splendid Faisan a la Financier e show that there are many more ways of treating a game bird than plain roasting him ; and a woodcock, in my humble opinion, never tastes so well as when it has been flambe , an auto-da-fe which takes place almost under the diner’s nose. The Parisian eats a score of little birds we are too proud to mention in our cookery books ; he knows the difference between a mauviette and an alouette , and I trust insists on his cook not sending him to table the skylarks, for a true gourmet should never encourage the slaughter of any winged thing that sings. Perhaps the greatest abasement of the Briton, whose ancestors called the French “Froggies” in scorn, comes when his first morning in Paris he orders for breakfast with joyful expectation a dish of the thighs of the little frogs from the vine- yards. An Austrian pastry-cook has a lighter hand than a French one, and the heathen Turk makes the best sweetmeats in the world, but the Parisian open tarts and cakes and the friandisesy the creams, and the ice, or coupe-jacque at the end of the Gallic repast are excellent.

AI-modernized reading of the original text

coffee. The soles of the north of France are as good as any that ever came out of British waters ; and Paris — sending tentacles west to the waters where the sardines swim, and south to the home of the lamprey, and tapping a thousand streams for trout and tiny gudgeon and crayfish — can show as noble a list of fishes as any city in the world. The chef de cuisine who could not enumerate an hundred and fifty entrees all distinctively French, would be no proficient in his noble profession. The British beef stands against all the world as the meat noblest for the spit, and Scottish sirloins are sent as far south as Monte Carlo, but the French ox which has worked its time in the fields gives the best material for the soup-pot ; and though the Welsh lamb and the Southdown sheep are the perfection of mutton young and mutton old, the lamb nurtured on milk till the hour of its death, and the sheep reared on the salt-marshes of the north, make splendid contribution to the Paris kitchens. Mutton is often described on the bill of fare by the name of the breeder of the sheep. Several of the great sheep-breeders of France, the Marquis de Behacque amongst them, have imported Southdown sheep, and the mutton called by their names has an English ancestry. Veal is practically an unknown meat in London ; and the calf of Pontoise, which has been fed on milk and yolk of egg, and which has flesh as soft as a kiss and as white as snow, is only to be found in the Parisian restaurants. Most of the good restaurants in London import all their winged creatures, except game, from France ; and the Surrey fowl and the Aylesbury duck, the representatives of Great Britain, make no great show against the champions of* Gaul, the fowls of Mans and Houdan and Bresse, and the duck of Rouen, though the Norfolk turkey holds his own. A vegetable dish, served by itself and not flung 4 The Gourmet's Guide to Europe into the gravy of a joint, forms part of every French dinner, large or small ; and in the battle of the kitchen gardens the foreigners beat us nearly all along the line, though I think that English asparagus is better than the white monsters of Argenteuil. A truffled partridge, a partridge a la Bourguignonne , cooked in a terrine with a red wine sauce, or the homely Perdrix aux Choux, or the splendid Faisan a la Financiere show that there are many more ways of treating a game bird than plain roasting him ; and a woodcock, in my humble opinion, never tastes so well as when it has been flambe , an auto-da-fe which takes place almost under the diner’s nose. The Parisian eats a score of little birds we are too proud to mention in our cookery books ; he knows the difference between a mauvette and an alouette , and I trust insists on his cook not sending him to table the skylarks, for a true gourmet should never encourage the slaughter of any winged thing that sings. Perhaps the greatest abasement of the Briton, whose ancestors called the French “Froggies” in scorn, comes when his first morning in Paris he orders for breakfast with joyful expectation a dish of the thighs of the little frogs from the vineyards. An Austrian pastry-cook has a lighter hand than a French one, and the heathen Turk makes the best sweetmeats in the world, but the Parisian open tarts and cakes and the friandises the creams, and the ice, or coupe-jacque at the end of the Gallic repast are excellent.

The gourmet's guide to Europe