Cakes and Ale, A Dissertation on Banquets Interspersed with Various Recipes, More or Less Original, and anecdotes, mainly veracious
A long time ago, an estimable lady fell at the feet of an habitual publisher, and prayed unto him:—
“Give, oh! give me the subject of a book for which the world has a need, and I will write it for you.”
“Are you an author, madam?” asked the publisher, motioning his visitor to a seat.
“No, sir,” was the proud reply, “I am a poet.”
“Ah!” said the great man. “I am afraid there is no immediate worldly need of a poet. If you could only write a good cookery book, now!”
By : Edward Spencer (1844 - 1910)
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The story goes on to relate how the poetess, not rebuffed in the least, started on the requisite culinary work, directly she got home; pawned her jewels to purchase postage stamps, and wrote far and wide for recipes, which in course of time she obtained, by the hundredweight. Other recipes she “conveyed” from ancient works of gastronomy, and in a year or two the magnum opus was given to the world; the lady’s share in the profits giving her “adequate provision for the remainder of her life.” We are not told, but it is presumable, that the publisher received a little adequate provision too.
History occasionally repeats itself; and the history of the present work begins in very much the same way. Whether it will finish in an equally satisfactory manner is problematical. I do not possess much of the divine afflatus myself; but there has ever lurked within me some sort of ambition to write a book—something held together by “tree calf,” “half morocco,” or “boards”; something that might find its way into the hearts and homes of an enlightened public; something which will give some of my young friends ample opportunity for criticism. In the exercise of my profession I have written leagues of descriptive “copy”—mostly lies and racing selections,—but up to now there has been no urgent demand for a book of any sort from this pen. For years my ambition has remained ungratified. Publishers—as a rule, the most faint-hearted and least speculative of mankind—have held aloof. And whatever suggestions I might make were rejected, with determination, if not with contumely.
At length came the hour, and the man; the introduction to a publisher with an eye for budding and hitherto misdirected talent.
“Do you care, sir,” I inquired at the outset, “to undertake the dissemination of a bulky work on Political Economy?”
“Frankly, sir, I do not,” was the reply. Then I tried him with various subjects—social reform, the drama, bimetallism, the ethics of starting prices, the advantages of motor cars in African warfare, natural history, the martyrdom of Ananias, practical horticulture, military law, and dogs; until he took down an old duck-gun from a peg over the mantelpiece, and assumed a threatening attitude.
Peace having been restored, the self-repetition of history recommenced.
“I can do with a good, bold, brilliant, lightly treated, exhaustive work on Gastronomy,” said the publisher, “you are well acquainted with the subject, I believe?”
“I’m a bit of a parlour cook, if that’s what you mean,” was my humble reply. “At a salad, a grill, an anchovy toast, or a cooling and cunningly compounded cup, I can be underwritten at ordinary rates. But I could no more cook a haunch of venison, or even boil a rabbit, or make an economical Christmas pudding, than I could sail a boat in a nor’-easter; and Madam Cook would certainly eject me from her kitchen, with a clout attached to the hem of my dinner jacket, inside five minutes.”
Eventually it was decided that I should commence this book.
“What I want,” said the publisher, “is a series of essays on food, a few anecdotes of stirring adventure—you have a fine flow of imagination, I understand—and a few useful, but uncommon recipes. But plenty of plums in the book, my dear sir, plenty of plums.”
“But, suppose my own supply of plums should not hold out, what am I to do?”
“What do you do—what does the cook do, when the plums for her pudding run short? Get some more; the Museum, my dear sir, the great storehouse of national literature, is free to all whose character is above the normal standard. When your memory and imagination fail, try the British Museum. You know what is a mightier factor than both sword and pen? Precisely so. And remember that in replenishing your store from the works of those who have gone before, you are only following in their footsteps. I only bar Sydney Smith and Charles Lamb. Let me have the script by Christmas—d’you smoke?—mind the step—good morning.”
In this way, gentle reader, were the trenches dug, the saps laid for the attack of the great work. The bulk of it is original, and the adventures in which the writer has taken part are absolutely true. About some of the others I would not be so positive. Some of the recipes have previously figured in the pages of the Sporting Times, the Lady’s Pictorial, and the Man of the World, to the proprietors of which journals I hereby express my kindly thanks for permission to revive them. Many of the recipes are original; some are my own; others have been sent in by relatives, and friends of my youth; others have been adapted for modern requirements from works of great antiquity; whilst others again—I am nothing if not candid—have been “conveyed” from the works of more modern writers, who in their turn had borrowed them from the works of their ancestors. There is nothing new under the sun; and there are but few absolute novelties which are subjected to the heat of the kitchen fire.
If the style of the work be faulty, the reason—not the excuse—is that the style is innate, and not modelled upon anybody else’s style. The language I have endeavoured to make as plain, homely, and vigorous as is the food advocated. If the criticisms on foreign cookery should offend the talented chef, I have the satisfaction of knowing that, as I have forsworn his works, he will be unable to retaliate with poison. And if the criticisms on the modern English methods of preparing food should attract the attention of the home caterer, he may possibly be induced to give his steam-chest and his gas-range a rest, and put the roast beef of Old England on his table, occasionally; though I have only the very faintest hopes that he will do so. For the monster eating-houses and mammoth hotels of to-day are for the most part “run” by companies and syndicates; and the company within the dining-room suffer occasionally, in order that dividends may be possible after payment has been made for the elaborate, and wholly unnecessary, furniture, and decorations. Wholesome food is usually sufficient for the ordinary British appetite, without such surroundings as marble pillars, Etruscan vases, nude figures, gilding, and looking-glasses, which only serve to distract attention from the banquet. It is with many a sigh that I recall the good old-fashioned inn, where the guest really received a warm welcome. Nowadays, the warmest part of that welcome is usually the bill.
It is related of the wittiest man of the nineteenth century, my late friend Mr. Henry J. Byron, that, upon one occasion, whilst walking home with a brother dramatist, after the first performance of his comedy, which had failed to please the audience, Byron shed tears.
“How is this?” inquired his friend. “The failure of my play appears to affect you strangely.”
“I was only weeping,” was the reply, “because I was afraid you’d set to work, and write another.”
But there need be no tears shed on any page of this food book. For I am not going to “write another.”
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