The cult of the chafing dish

At the same time it is a culinary axiom that the less sauce used the better. A dish — any dish — " covered in sauce " is an abomination. We have the august authority of Pliny for moderation and simplicity. " Their best and most wholesome feeding is upon one dish, and no more, and the same plaine and simple : for surely this huddling of many meats one upon another of divers tastes is pestiferous. But sundrie sauces are more dangerous than that." This is Holland's translation. Another point worthy of consideration is that sauce is to a great extent a geographical expression. What may be most excellent in Madrid is wholly out of place in Inverness ; and what is nice at Nice is nasty at Norwich, SAUCES i6i Insufficient account, I venture to think, is taken of the influence of climate upon national food, and it is often difficult if not impossible to acclimatise foreign fare to British stomachs, not because of anything inherent in the food, but simply as a matter of latitude. It is an historical commonplace that in the bleak cold north of Europe boar's flesh was found more to man's taste than that of the bull or bear, because it is fatter, richer, and produces much more heat. For this very reason in the South and East of Europe the flesh of swine is an abomination. In the Scandinavian Edda we are told that a boar was killed every night for the food of the warriors who feasted in high Valhalla. The bones were all preserved, together with the hide and head, and in the morning they were put together and re-endowed with life. The name of this huge pig was Scehrimner, the cauldron in which it was boiled was called Eldhrimner, and the cook Andhrimner. Both bear-ham and boar-ham are delicacies to this day in the North of Europe. Much depends, too, upon the cooking ; bad cooking is waste, both of money and comfort. Those whom God has joined in matrimony, ill-cooked joints and worse-cooked potatoes have often put asunder. In sauces, above all things, careful cooking, implicit keeping to the exact formulae of recipes, and a restraint of all imagination, are immensely necessary. Not even the greatest artist can afford to juggle with sauces. They are fixed, immutable, and unalterable. A very favourite expression in French culinary manuals is the injunction to the cook : Travaillez Men votre sauce. The amateur sauce-maker would do well to bear this in mind. The sauce must be well worked, amalgamated, combined ; otherwise it is a mere mess, lacking cohesion and perfection. It is alleged of the incomparable Soyer that he said that sauces are to cookery what grammar is to language. Whether he really said so or not matters little. Some of the Soyer sauces are classics to this day, and not to be lightly imitated — especially on the Chafing Dish. Let it be borne in mind that each and every sauce should have a character of its own. Many otherwise quite virtuous cooks live and die in the belief that they cannot make a sauce sufficiently savoury without putting into it everything that happens to be available, thinking, ignorantly enough, that every addition is bound to be an improvement. There are only two real foundation sauces — meres sauces, or grandes sauces, as the French call them — the white and the brown sauce. AH other sauces are more or less based on these two. The great Car6me resigned the position of Master of the Mouth to George IV. after only a few weeks' service, and at an honorarium of ;^iooo a year, because he could not bear the English climate. His culinary swan-song took the form of a wondrous sauce, now alas ! lost, which he called la derniere pensie de Car erne.