The table for an ordinary Chafing-Dish meal, whether luncheon, dinner or supper, such as might be cooked after a diligent study of the foregoing chapters, should be arranged as simply as possible. One end bears the Chafing Dish on its own little tray and cloth. The remaining three-quarters of the table may be laid for a smallish party, and, by all the canons of good taste, avoid decorating it with tulle or nun's veiling, or chifFon, or whatever the silly, flimsy, puffy stuff is called. You might as well put ostrich feathers and bombazine in the middle of the table. Good simple glass and china, the older the better, as a rule, because the forms are more beautiful ; and I see no need for uniformity in either service, so long as AMENITIES OF THE TABLE 199 each individual piece is beautiful in itself. Pewter plates retain the heat splendidly, and some of the old ones are excellent in design. Wooden platters are affected by some people for meats, and I confess that the red juice of the meat on the well-scrubbed surface is very pleasing. Keep the centre ornament very low, so that one can see and talk across it. A big dish of almost any old blue and white ware, with a very few flowers, but each bloom perfect in itself, is my own ideal. Nothing is more trying than to talk to your opposite neighbour across a small table, through a mass of tightly packed towering flowers, or a jungle of dense fern. It is not beautiful, but just annoying. Chafing-Dish cookery, I am delighted to be able to add, seems to engender the love of beautiful things. It is so easy to pick up and use, in parlour cookery, all sorts of quaint and delightful pieces of china of curious and old-fashioned design. They may not all be genuine ; in fact, most of them are pretty certain not to be. But if the shape is good, the colouring pleasing, and the form well adapted for holding sauce, 200 THE CHAFING DISH sweetmeats, condiments, or anything else, then, so far as ChafRnda is concerned, their genuineness and intrinsic value is a secondary matter. One is occasionally tempted by the oiFer of a real old silver Chafing Dish with or without an ivory handle. Cooking in such an implement would be an ultra refinement of the art. But the temptation must be resisted, such things are not for daily use, although at one time and in some houses a silver dish no doubt was always put before the master, wherein to make his Welsh Rabbit. There is a sort of huge silver Chafing Dish in the Cluny Museum, which rather suggests a cauldron, so vast are its dimen- sions. It is evidently fairly old and has seen much use, though it is not quite evident what could have been cooked in it, unless it were the original marmite of Monsieur Deharme, which never left oiF cooking. Grimod de la Reyniere places on record, as an example to all good cooks, this extraordinary marmite — or stockpot — of Monsieur Deharme, a restaurateur in the Rue AMENITIES OF THE TABLE 201 des Grands-Augustins. He calls it " the everlasting marmite" as, at the date of writing (1803), it had not been ofF the fire for eighty-five years ! During that time it had cooked at least three hundred thousand capons, for Monsieur Deharme's specialty was the purveying of well-cooked hot capons at any hour of the day and night. His establishment was always open, and the procession of succulent birds to the marmite was unending ; in fact, the Deharme fowl was regenerated perpetually in one long procession of— apparently^the same bird, born anew for each successive customer. The author adds that this marmite was celebrated throughout Europe — and no wonder.

AI-modernized reading of the original text

The table for an ordinary Chafing-Dish meal, whether luncheon, dinner or supper, such as might be cooked after a diligent study of the foregoing chapters, should be arranged as simply as possible. One end bears the Chafing Dish on its own little tray and cloth. The remaining three-quarters of the table may be laid for a smallish party, and, by all the canons of good taste, avoid decorating it with tulle or nun's veiling, or chifFon, or whatever the silly, flimsy, puffy stuff is called. You might as well put ostrich feathers and bombazine in the middle of the table. Good simple glass and china, the older the better, as a rule, because the forms are more beautiful ; and I see no need for uniformity in either service, so long as each individual piece is beautiful in itself. Pewter plates retain the heat splendidly, and some of the old ones are excellent in design. Wooden platters are affected by some people for meats, and I confess that the red juice of the meat on the well-scrubbed surface is very pleasing. Keep the centre ornament very low, so that one can see and talk across it. A big dish of almost any old blue and white ware, with a very few flowers, but each bloom perfect in itself, is my own ideal. Nothing is more trying than to talk to your opposite neighbour across a small table, through a mass of tightly packed towering flowers, or a jungle of dense fern. It is not beautiful, but just annoying. Chafing-Dish cookery, I am delighted to be able to add, seems to engender the love of beautiful things. It is so easy to pick up and use, in parlour cookery, all sorts of quaint and delightful pieces of china of curious and old-fashioned design. They may not all be genuine ; in fact, most of them are pretty certain not to be. But if the shape is good, the colouring pleasing, and the form well adapted for holding sauce, sweetmeats, condiments, or anything else, then, so far as Chafinda is concerned, their genuineness and intrinsic value is a secondary matter. One is occasionally tempted by the offer of a real old silver Chafing Dish with or without an ivory handle. Cooking in such an implement would be an ultra refinement of the art. But the temptation must be resisted, such things are not for daily use, although at one time and in some houses a silver dish no doubt was always put before the master, wherein to make his Welsh Rabbit. There is a sort of huge silver Chafing Dish in the Cluny Museum, which rather suggests a cauldron, so vast are its dimensions. It is evidently fairly old and has seen much use, though it is not quite evident what could have been cooked in it, unless it were the original marmite of Monsieur Deharme, which never left oiF cooking. Grimod de la Reyniere places on record, as an example to all good cooks, this extraordinary marmite — or stockpot — of Monsieur Deharme, a restaurateur in the Rue des Grands-Augustins. He calls it " the everlasting marmite" as, at the date of writing (1803), it had not been off the fire for eighty-five years ! During that time it had cooked at least three hundred thousand capons, for Monsieur Deharme's specialty was the purveying of well-cooked hot capons at any hour of the day and night. His establishment was always open, and the procession of succulent birds to the marmite was unending ; in fact, the Deharme fowl was regenerated perpetually in one long procession of— apparently^the same bird, born anew for each successive customer. The author adds that this marmite was celebrated throughout Europe — and no wonder.

The cult of the chafing dish