An Omelette and a Glass of Wine

by Elizabeth David

  The clue to the whisky affair is not entirely obvious. Had the complainant been a woman it would have been easier to spot. Whisky is still, to many Englishwomen, a man’s drink, tough masculine tipple. Advice to splash it into the sauté pan strikes a rough rude note. Cognac, being foreign and French, is altogether more glamorous and elegant-sounding, therefore more appropriate to the refinements of good cooking. I wonder if deep down that peppery gentleman’s irritation might perhaps have been due to fear that once the gaff about whisky not being suitable for the kitchen was blown the master’s bottle would no longer be quite sacrosanct. The little woman, instead of having to explain the spending of twenty-five shillings of the housekeeping money on a half bottle of ‘cooking’ brandy, would be at liberty to raid the Scotch for a few tablespoonsful at any time, and nobody the wiser.

  In France, whisky was once a very smart and snob drink; it is now astonishingly popular. In 1961, it is estimated, 682,000 gallons of whisky were consumed by the French, and that was twice as much as in 1960. How many hundreds or thousands of those gallons were tipped into the saucepans the report does not reveal, but certain it is that in these days it is not at all uncommon to find dishes of chicken, langouste or lobster flambé au whisky on the menus of French provincial and Parisian restaurants. (For chapter and verse without going to France look at the lists of specialities given by the starred restaurants in the guide books.) An establishment at Arras even serves a speciality of andouillettes flambées au whisky – a faint echo of the haggis ritual…?

  I find the French development encouraging, for I have myself for years been experimenting with whisky in the cooking pots. One of the circumstances which drove me to these experiments will be familiar to most home cooks. It was simply that a bottle of brandy, even of the kind intended only for the kitchen (by which I don’t mean something not fit to drink, I mean something one prefers not to drink), somehow always turns out in fact to have been drunk by somebody just when it is needed for cooking and hasn’t been replaced, while whisky is a supply which is more or less automatically re-ordered as soon as it runs out. And not only have I found whisky successful as an alternative to cognac and armagnac in many fish and poultry dishes, but it has frequently had to do duty instead of Calvados in Norman dishes of veal, pork, pheasant and apples. Calvados isn’t always easy to come by in this country and such as we can get is usually one or other of the commercial brands which in spite of their high prices are pretty crude. So, for that matter, are all too many three-star-quality cognacs.

  Obviously, the flavour which whisky gives to a sauce differs from that produced by cognac, armagnac or Calvados; certainly the aromas coming from the pot while the whisky is cooking are also very different; but by the time the alcohol has been burned and cooked away I wonder how many people would spot what precisely the difference is.

  Not that that is quite the point. There should be no attempt to deceive. To take the simplest example, faisan à la normande would be understood, by anybody who knew a little about French regional cooking, to imply a dish of pheasant with a cream sauce and apples, blazed with Calvados. If the dish is blazed with whisky instead it is possible that nobody will know the difference; but a point of principle is involved; once the wedge is in how long before the apples have been replaced with carrots and peas, and the cream with tomato purée or pineapple juice? So all the restaurateur has to do (in the privacy of one’s own kitchen one can, after all, call one’s inventions what one pleases; until they leave the house one’s guests are in no position to pass remarks) is to follow the French example and describe his dish as faisan flambé au whisky or alternatively pheasant au Scotch. And if he feels that the French have an unfair advantage in that to them the words ‘whisky’ and ‘scotch’ are good selling points whereas to us they are just rather blunt or evocative in the wrong way then he can invent some totally new name.

  The whisky hurdle cleared, one quickly finds the way open to the successful use of all kinds of supposedly unorthodox spirits and wines in the kitchen. Not only have I used whisky instead of the brandy usually specified in pork and liver pâté recipes, which is a question of only about two, but two important, tablespoons to 1½ lb. of the mixture, but I have resorted also to rum (white rum is especially useful in the kitchen) and to gin for the same purpose, and the results have been excellent. Gin, we are told, is one of the purest spirits made, and juniper berries, the baies de genièvre or ginepro from which Geneva or gin derived its name, provide the characteristic flavouring which everyone who ever drank a glass of gin in their lives would recognize when he tastes the juniper-berry flavour in Provençal game terrines and certain Northern Italian sauces and stuffings for partridge and pheasant; and eau de vie de genièvre is a spirit used in French and Belgian Ardennais regional cooking, so it seems extraordinary that people blanch at the suggestion that gin should go into the casseroles. At least, before shuddering or crying ‘barbarism!’ and ‘Escoffier never said …’ look up – and cook – the delicious recipe for veal kidneys à la liégeoise given by Mr Ambrose Heath in his Good Food (Faber & Faber). The kidneys are cooked whole in butter and just before serving them you ‘throw in a wineglassful of burnt gin and a few crushed juniper berries. This is quite wonderful…’

  Then there is that recipe for a sauce for lobster which I came across in a French dictionary of cooking of the 1830s. Among the collection of outlandish ingredients called for were anisette liqueur and soy sauce. In those days cookery writers weren’t just filling out their recipes with ingredients they were being paid to sell. There must be some basis in reason for that sauce. Why not try it? I did, and came to the conclusion that it was the best sauce for lobster ever invented; and it is extraordinary that it has remained for so long buried in the cookery books. In a moment I will produce the recipe – and please, will readers do their best to suspend disbelief until they have tried it? – but one of the main points about this recipe is that it taught me (for after all, one does not buy lobsters all that often) that anisette is, improbably but incontrovertibly, a quite magical ingredient in fish dishes and sauces. You rarely need more than a teaspoonful, you add it at the absolute final moment of cooking, you do not blaze it (at least I do not), you treat it simply as a seasoning. To a creamy sauce for white fish such as John Dory, brill, and sole, to dishes of molluscs such as mussels and scallops, its concentrated, pungent-sweet and aromatic qualities give a lift such as could hardly be achieved with a mountain of fennel stalks or seeds used in the preparation of the initial stock (anise is a close relation of fennel, caraway and dill), and this in turn gives one ideas as to the use of many other liqueurs, aromatic vermouths, country wines, even drinks such as Pernod and Pastis in the cooking of fish and white meat and poultry dishes.

  LOBSTER COURCHAMPS

  For one freshly boiled, medium large (about 1½ lb.) hen lobster or langouste (if you are boiling the creature at home, you can always add the large goblet of Madeira called for in the original recipe), the ingredients for the sauce are 2 small shallots, a heaped teaspoon of tarragon leaves, 2 tablespoons of chopped parsley, salt, pepper, a scant teaspoon of strong yellow French mustard, 24 to 30 drops of soy sauce, approximately 6 tablespoons of mildly fruity Provence olive oil, the juice of half a rather small lemon, 1 teaspoon of anisette de Bordeaux.

  From the split lobster extract all the red and creamy parts. Pound them in a mortar. Mix with the finely chopped shallots, tarragon and parsley. Add the seasonings and the soy sauce, then gradually stir in the olive oil; add lemon juice. Finally, the anisette. Divide the sauce into two portions, and serve it in little bowls or squat glasses placed on each person’s plate, so that the lobster can be dipped into it. The lobster meat can be cut into scallops and piled neatly back into the shells.

  Apart from its sheer deliciousness (most cold lobster sauces, including mayonnaise, are on the heavy side for what is already rich and solid food) this sauce has other points to recommend it. Anisette is not a liqueur which, speaking at least for myself, one has a
great compulsion to swig down in quantity; in my cupboard a bottle lasts for years. A half-crown’s worth of soy sauce also tends – unless you are keen on Chinese cooking – to remain an old faithful among the stores; and although nothing can quite compare with fresh tarragon, it is perfectly possible to use the excellent Chiltern Herb Farm dried version. The makings of your sauce, then, are always with you. All you need is the freshly boiled hen lobster … And, as it is not a classic regional or other recognized traditional dish, you can call it what you please. It has no name of its own. I have named it after the Comte de Courchamps, author of the first of the three books1 in which I found the recipe. The others were by Dumas the Elder2 and the Baron Brisse.3 Highly imaginative as they were, all three gentlemen called it Sauce for Boiled Lobster.

  The Compleat Imbiber 4, 1963

  1. Néo-Physiologie du Goût par Ordre Alphabétique: Dictionnaire Général de la Cuisine Française Ancienne et Moderne ainsi que de l’Office et de la Pharmacie domestique, Paris, Henri Plon. Published anonymously in 1839, reprinted 1853 and 1866. Vicaire asserts that the book was the work of Maurice Cousin, Comte de Courchamps. In the preface to the book it is claimed that a number of the recipes came from unpublished papers of Grimod de la Reynière, The recipe in question might well be from his hand.

  2. Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine, Alexandre Dumas, 1873.

  3. Les 366 Menus de Baron Brisse, 2nd edition 1875, first published c. 1867.

  A Gourmet in Edwardian London

  The last years of Queen Victoria’s reign and the beginning of the Edwardian era saw the rise to fame and prosperity of the great London hotels we know to-day; the Savoy, the Ritz, the Carlton, the Berkeley, Claridges (even then known as ‘the home of kings’), the Piccadilly, the Hyde Park and – the only one which has since disappeared – the Cecil. At that time Romano’s was at the height of its glory; Mr Lyons and Mr Salmon were presiding at the Trocadero; and at Simpson’s in the Strand a fish luncheon for three, consisting of turbot, stewed eels, whitebait, celery and cheese, with two bottles of Liebfraumilch, cost £1. 1s. 3d.

  The restaurant world of that period was described in detail by the Edwardian gourmet, Colonel Newnham-Davis, the gastronomic correspondent of the Pall Mall Gazette. The Colonel made a habit of inviting to dinner certain of his friends whom, in his subsequent reports, he would disguise under discreet pseudonyms. A regular guest of his was Miss Dainty, an actress. One evening she dined with him at, curiously it seems to us, the Midland Hotel. A railway hotel dinner in those days seems hardly to have been the dread experience it would be to-day. The Colonel and Miss Dainty ate oysters, soup, sole, a fillet of beef cooked with truffles and accompanied by pommes de terre soufflées, wild duck à la presse, a pudding and an ice-cream (bombe Midland). With a bottle of wine this meal cost 28s. for the two of them.

  Colonel Newnham-Davis. Photograph front Le Carnet d’Epicure Janvier 1914 and restored by Hawkley Studio Associates Ltd

  Miss Brighteyes was a debutante who, to her host’s grief, drank lemonade with her caviare and gossiped of dresses and weddings while she ate terrine de foie gras. The Colleen – what a tiring girl she sounds – prattled incessantly of horses. The little Prima Donna was an American taken by the Colonel to the Star and Garter at Richmond. They had a pleasant drive down there (Goodwood was over and London deserted) and arrived at sunset; on this occasion the food was not a great success. There was petite marmite and, not for the first time, the Colonel is at a loss to understand why some restaurant managers seem unaware of the existence of any other soup. The mullet was not fresh – ‘I guess it has not been scientifically embalmed,’ said the Prima Donna.

  I should like to think that the Colonel’s sister-in-law (the daughter of a dean) to whom he gave dinner at the Café Royal, the Aunt whom he entertained at the Walsingham, and the Uncle whom he nicknamed the Nabob, were really his relations and not figments of his humorous imagination. Alas, they are just a trifle over life size.

  The dean’s daughter did not care for shell-fish, so they were forced to start dinner with caviare. The inevitable clear soup followed (pot au feu this time); the sole was served in a delicate sauce almost imperceptibly flavoured with cheese, and the dean’s daughter appreciated it so much that the Colonel’s initial peevishness began to wear off. The lamb which followed the sole was tough. Foie gras came next, then quails en cocotte. The ice which ended the meal was christened Pôle Nord and consisted of a soft cream encased in ice-cream, resting on an ice pedestal carved in the shape of a bird sitting on a rock. This creation cost 2s. 6d., the foie gras 4s. Champagne Rosé was what they drank and, with liqueurs and coffee, the total bill came to £2.4s.6d.

  The maiden aunt who was invited to Walsingham House arrived in a four-wheeler. She wore a stiff black silk dress, a lace cap and an expression of disapproval – ‘I hope they won’t take me for one of your actress friends,’ she boomed. The Walsingham was in Piccadilly, on the site now occupied by the Ritz; from the Colonel’s description of the panelling of inlaid woods, the white pillars and cornices touched with gold, the curtains of deep crimson velvet, the ceiling of little cupids floating in roseate clouds, the dining-room must have been every bit as ravishing as the pink and white Louis XVI restaurant which succeeded it and which, under the direction of César Ritz, became synonymous with all that was elegant, rich and glamorous in the early years of this century.

  Mrs Tota and her husband George were friends from the Colonel’s Indian Army days. George, it has to be faced, was a bore; he grunted and grumbled and refused to take his wife out to dinner on the grounds that the night air would bring on his fever. So the Colonel gallantly invited Mrs Tota, a maddeningly vivacious young woman, to a select little dinner for two. She was homesick for the gaieties of Simla, the dainty dinners and masked balls of that remarkable hill station. ‘We’ll have a regular Simla evening,’ declared the Colonel, and for this nostalgic excursion he chose to dine in a private room at Kettner’s, which still exists to-day, in Romilly Street, Soho; after dinner they were to proceed to a box at the Palace Theatre, return to Kettner’s, where they arranged to leave their dominos, and thence to a masked ball at Covent Garden. The meal, for a change, began with caviare, continued with consommé, filets de sole à la Joinville, langue de bœuf aux champignons accompanied by spinach and pommes Anna (how agreeable it would be to find these delicious potatoes on an English restaurant menu to-day), followed by chicken and salad, asparagus with sauce mousseline, and the inevitable ice. They drank a bottle of champagne (15s. seems to have been the standard charge at that period, 1s. each for liqueurs). Mrs Tota was duly coy about the private room decorated with a gold, brown and green paper, oil paintings of Italian scenery and gilt candelabra (‘Very snug’, pronounced the Colonel); she enjoyed her dinner, chattered nineteen to the dozen and decided that Room A at Kettner’s was almost as glamorous as the dear old Châlet at Simla.

  Although he was strictly fair in his reports and seldom expressed a particular preference, it is clear that one of the Colonel’s favourite restaurants was the Savoy. It was D’Oyly Carte, of Gilbert and Sullivan fame, who invited César Ritz, then at the Grand Hotel, Monte Carlo, to come to London and take charge of his recently opened Savoy Hotel. With him Ritz brought Escoffier to supervise the kitchens, and Echenard, proprietor of the famous Hôtel du Louvre, Marseille, to assist him as manager in the restaurant – a formidable combination indeed; no wonder the Savoy soon became the favourite haunt of stage celebrities, industrial magnates, Indian princes (there was a well-known curry cook attached to the Savoy kitchens) and, in fact, of all classes of the rich, the great, the greedy. Escoffier’s mousse de jambon, served on a great block of ice and melting like snow in the mouth, was recognised as a masterpiece; and the bortsch, with cream stirred into the hot strong liquid, was declared by Colonel Newnham-Davis to be the best soup in the world.

  Joseph, who succeeded the Ritz-Escoffier partnership, had an almost unique devotion to his art. On one occasion, when Sarah Bernhardt was the
guest of honour at a Savoy dinner, he cooked the greater part of the meal at a side table under her very eyes; his carving of the duck was a flamboyant display of swordsmanship; when asked if he ever went to the theatre he replied that he would rather see six gourmets eating a perfectly cooked meal than watch the finest performance of Bernhardt or of Coquelin.

  A few years later, the Savoy became the scene of all manner of fabulous banquets. At one of these the courtyard was flooded to represent a Venetian canal, tables were arranged all round, and Caruso sang to the guests as he floated in a gondola.

  What, I wonder, would our reactions be to-day to these junketings? What of the long menus and, the everlasting sameness of the food? With stupefaction one thinks of the wholesale slaughter of ducks and chickens, of pheasant and quail, the shiploads of Dover sole and the immense cargoes of foie gras from France, of caviare from Russia, the crates of champagne and the tons of truffles, which went to make up a single day’s entertainment in the great hotels of Europe. By present day standards the prices were, of course, absurd, although the cooking was luxurious and the service impeccable.

  The petite marmite, the pot au feu, the croûte au pot were made with rich beef, veal and chicken stock; the fillets of sole were invariably cooked with truffles and cream or with mushrooms and lobster sauce, with artichoke hearts or with white wine and grapes; noisettes d’agneau, from the finest baby lamb, made such frequent appearances on the menu that one wonders how any sheep has survived; the chicken was stuffed with a mousse de foie gras; the little birds which followed – quail, ortolan or snipe – were again presented with truffles; asparagus, in and out of season, were always accompanied by hollandaise sauce; and the bombe glacée, indispensable, it seems, to a good dinner, was the signal for all the display of which the confectionery chef was capable.