It is such much better form to be
simple, poor and proud — besides, it costs less.
About forty years ago the late Lord Sidney
Godolphin Osborn wrote a letter on the
growing love of luxury to the Times, in the
course of which he said : " The wealthy per
force of their positions must have large
expensive establishments ; they are doomed
to live in show houses ; they are the proper
consumers of the produce of the decorative
arts ; but they yet have to eat, and here
comes the question. How can they eat in
character ? How can they dine up to their
pictures, sculpture, plate, and music?"
The answer is easy enough. They can
never dine up to their pictures, because
they are usually dyspeptic.
" I had some hopes of the cook at first, but when
I talked to her tightly and closely, I could make
nothing of her : she was all wiggle-waggle, and
I could never persuade her to be categorical."
Dr. Johnson ("D'Arblay's Memoirs").
Some of us have been to school. It was
usually a long time ago. Still, here and there
a man with a memory may recollect that
when Achilles, in the "Iliad," has granted
the request of the unhappy Priam in refer-
ence to the dead body of his son, his next
remark to the old man is an eminently prac-
tical and sensible one : " Let us now go to
dinner !" It has struck me that this classical
allusion may have been one of the reasons for
the erection of the Achilles statue at Hyde
Park Corner ; just to remind late dawdlers in
AMENITIES OF THE TABLE 193
the Park that dinner-time and dressing-tide
wait for no man or woman.
I have already had the presumption to
suggest that we eat too often and too much
and too late and too elaborately ; this has
emboldened me to further frankness. A
French friend who " knew himself" in dining
matters said to me once : " En Angleterre on
se nourrit bien, mais on ne dine pas." He
was both right and wrong. Right as regards
the very pseudo-French cookery of the
affluent middle-class, wrong as regards the
best restaurants and hotels.
Buckle, in his " History of Civilisation,"
following Cabanis, considers food as one of the
four physical agents most powerfully influ-
encing the human race. Men's manners and
morality, their customs and condition, depend
mainly on what they eat. The boldness of
the Norseman and the timidity of the Ben-
galee are justly due to their respective pre-
ference for msat or vegetables, for carbona-
ceous or nitroge lous diet. Slavery in India
is the direct result of rice, in Egypt of dates,^
of maize in Mexico and Peru.
We must, therefore, adapt ourselves to
194 THE CHAFING DISH
circumstances in so far as the circumstances
adapt themselves to us. It is no longer
fashionable to get drunk, and in a generation
or two it will be the worst kind of form to
eat more than three courses at dinner.
." Tell me what you eat and I will tell you
what you are," said Brillat-Savarin, Judge of
the French Court of Cassation in 1826, and
not a professed cook, as so many folk seem
to imagine. He goes on to say: "The
gourmets by predestination can be easily told.
They have broad faces, bright eyes, small
foreheads, short noses, full lips, and rounded
chins. The females are plump and pretty
rather than handsome, with a tendency to
embonpoint. ^^
This is not complimentary, and does not
seem to be borne out by experience. Women
gourmets are fewer than men, but they make
up in knowledge what they lack in number.
Both Goethe and Byron have left it on record
that they objected to seeing women eat, but
nowadays, with better table manners, it is not
a disagreeable sight, except perhaps at a Swiss
talk d'hSte.
An English dinner-party, in the present
AMENITIES OF THE TABLE 195
Page 52
Presented as published in 1904. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
AI-modernized reading of the original text
It is such much better form to be simple, poor and proud — besides, it costs less. About forty years ago the late Lord Sidney Godolphin Osborn wrote a letter on the growing love of luxury to the Times, in the course of which he said : " The wealthy per force of their positions must have large expensive establishments ; they are doomed to live in show houses ; they are the proper consumers of the produce of the decorative arts ; but they yet have to eat, and here comes the question. How can they eat in character ? How can they dine up to their pictures, sculpture, plate, and music?"
The answer is easy enough. They can never dine up to their pictures, because they are usually dyspeptic.
" I had some hopes of the cook at first, but when I talked to her tightly and closely, I could make nothing of her : she was all wiggle-waggle, and I could never persuade her to be categorical."
Dr. Johnson ("D'Arblay's Memoirs").
Some of us have been to school. It was usually a long time ago. Still, here and there a man with a memory may recollect that when Achilles, in the "Iliad," has granted the request of the unhappy Priam in reference to the dead body of his son, his next remark to the old man is an eminently practical and sensible one : " Let us now go to dinner !" It has struck me that this classical allusion may have been one of the reasons for the erection of the Achilles statue at Hyde Park Corner ; just to remind late dawdlers in
the Park that dinner-time and dressing-tide wait for no man or woman.
I have already had the presumption to suggest that we eat too often and too much and too late and too elaborately ; this has emboldened me to further frankness. A French friend who " knew himself" in dining matters said to me once : " En Angleterre on se nourrit bien, mais on ne dine pas." He was both right and wrong. Right as regards the very pseudo-French cookery of the affluent middle-class, wrong as regards the best restaurants and hotels.
Buckle, in his " History of Civilisation," following Cabanis, considers food as one of the four physical agents most powerfully influencing the human race. Men's manners and morality, their customs and condition, depend mainly on what they eat. The boldness of the Norseman and the timidity of the Bengalee are justly due to their respective preference for msat or vegetables, for carbonaceous or nitrogenous diet. Slavery in India is the direct result of rice, in Egypt of dates,^ of maize in Mexico and Peru.
We must, therefore, adapt ourselves to
circumstances in so far as the circumstances adapt themselves to us. It is no longer fashionable to get drunk, and in a generation or two it will be the worst kind of form to eat more than three courses at dinner.
." Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are," said Brillat-Savarin, Judge of the French Court of Cassation in 1826, and not a professed cook, as so many folk seem to imagine. He goes on to say: "The gourmets by predestination can be easily told. They have broad faces, bright eyes, small foreheads, short noses, full lips, and rounded chins. The females are plump and pretty rather than handsome, with a tendency to embonpoint. ^^
This is not complimentary, and does not seem to be borne out by experience. Women gourmets are fewer than men, but they make up in knowledge what they lack in number. Both Goethe and Byron have left it on record that they objected to seeing women eat, but nowadays, with better table manners, it is not a disagreeable sight, except perhaps at a Swiss table d'hôte.
An English dinner-party, in the present