As a rule, British inns and restaurants serve food as badly cooked as it is in American "hash houses," if not more so. I have had experiences with meat pies and sausages, with several kinds of pastry and with tasteless vegetables that quite recalled the Arizona days before Fred Harvey came from England—as related in the first chapter of this book—to civilize our Southwest.
Adulteration of foods is largely practised, and many of them are denatured by the use of chemical preservatives, although in these respects there has been considerable improvement since the "Lancet" exposed "the appalling state of the food supply" and fearlessly gave the names and addresses of hundreds of manufacturers and tradesmen who sold adulterated articles.
It was hoped that with the introduction of motoring there would come a revival of the good old coaching inns; but nothing of the sort has happened. According to the gastronomic editor of the "Pall Mall Gazette" what the touring motorist gets is "probably an American preserved soup which tastes like boiled blankets, a few sardines, stale and too long opened, a joint which has either been overcooked or under-done, a sodden pancake with no suggestion of the real thing, and a piece of cheese which is obviously non-British. And for this he is charged at least five shillings.... On the Continent one can get an excellently cooked and served meal for half the price."
While the English are thus their own severest critics, they do not hesitate, when brought to bay, to present the other side of the shield. In commenting on the Exhibition of the Cookery and Food Association in 1912, the London "Telegraph" called attention to the fact that "typical dishes are served to perfection every day on innumerable English tables"; and the writer just quoted, referring to the fact that France, Austria, Hungary, Italy, and Switzerland had sent over experts to show how things are done in their countries, goes on to say that "it might humbly be suggested that our own cooks might show the foreigners something. Few cooks, other than English, can cook whitebait satisfactorily; the same applies to Irish stew, steak, and kidney pudding with larks and oysters, to liver and bacon, to tripe and onions (no, not tripe à la mode de Caen), to a really good devil, and above all, to curry, wet or dry.... It is really about time that the British cook asserted himself."
A German lexicographer calls attention to the fact that the United Kingdom has contributed at least half a dozen words to the international dining-room language: Beefsteak, roast beef, Irish stew, mock-turtle soup, pudding, and toast. He might have added marmalade and cakes. A firm in Germany once offered a thousand marks for a good Teutonic equivalent for "cakes"; with what success I do not know.
It is not strange that Continental manufacturers are so much interested in these British cakes and biscuits. They are favorites the world over because of their crispness and good Flavor, and the exports of them amount to about £1,400,000 a year.
Seven million dollars! Is there a better guide to wealth than gastronomy, the art of preparing and serving appetizing food?
Plum pudding is another profitable product of British manufacturing skill.
Though it has been traced to a Teutonic origin (Pflaumen-grütze) it is now characteristically Anglican, and the plum (Pflaume) has disappeared. In that monumental compendium of English philological erudition, Murray's "New English Dictionary," we read as one of the definitions of Plum: "a dried grape or raisin as used for puddings, cakes, etc.," and the editor adds: "This use probably arose from the substitution of raisins for dried plums or prunes as an ingredient in plum-broth,—porridge, etc., with retention of the name plum for the substituted article."
Considering the national liking for this pudding it is not surprising that the word plum for this favorite was retained, for "plum" also stands for tit-bit, or a good thing in general. As long ago as 1660 devotion to this dish was amusingly illustrated by these words in a mock sermon: "But there is your Christmas pye and that hath plums in abundance.... He that discovered the new Star in Cassiopeia ... deserves not half so much to be remembered, as he that first married minced meat and raisins together."
Until a few years ago the English housewife always boiled her own plum pudding. To-day she can buy it if she desires. It is made by machinery; hundreds of thousands of pounds are shipped to other countries annually; and it is claimed that this kind is as a rule superior in Flavor and digestibility to the home-made. It was during the Boer war that the export business received its first great impulse, thousands of pounds being sent to the soldiers in Africa to give them a taste of the Christmas dinner at home; and now the pudding is made in such large quantities that the United States Government has begun to take cognizance of it in official reports. In the "Consular and Trade Reports" (1911) Commercial Agent, John M. Carson, had a two-page communication from which I cite the following:
The extent and magnitude of the trade may be inferred from figures furnished by one of the several large manufacturers. In order to be prepared to meet the demand for their product, manufacturers begin active operations as soon as the new crops of raisins, currants, and other required fruits appear in September. All the constituents of plum pudding, which do not include plums, are prepared and manipulated by elaborate and expensive machinery. Currants are washed and stems removed, raisins are stoned, nuts are shelled and ground, oranges and lemons are peeled, the peel candied and cut up, eggs are beaten, and all other ingredients prepared by machinery. The manufacturing firm alluded to, in order to supply their trade this season, used the materials and quantities given below.
Pounds. Currants 145,800 Sugar 101,250 Peel 72,360 Suet 72,360 Bread crumbs 72,360 Flour 54,000 Raisins 48,330 Sultanas 48,330 China ginger 3,510 Spices 1,440 Almonds 400 Milk, gallons 948 Rum, gallons 948 Exclusive of milk and rum, the ingredients above enumerated aggregate 620,140 pounds used by a single manufacturer in supplying plum pudding to meet the demands of the Christmas season of 1910, the number of puddings furnished aggregating 250,000. There are three or four other London manufacturers each of whose output perhaps equaled that described, and there are a large number of smaller establishments in which plum pudding was supplied for home and foreign consumption.
The pudding is put up in packages weighing one to five pounds each and securely packed to insure preservation and safe transportation. Properly prepared and packed the plum pudding of England, with ordinary care on the part of the housewife, will retain its virtues for a year or more.
Plum pudding has the evil repute of being indigestible. An English friend informs me that while it certainly is so if boiled only three hours, as is usually done, it becomes as digestible as good bread if boiled seven hours. It is then compact and yet brittle.
Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese
Still another profitable branch of the art of preparing appetizing food is that of the cheesemaker. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the English makers of Cheddar cheese have been flattered as few mortals have; for in the United States, as well as in Canada and Australia, most of the cheese made is of the Cheddar type. There would thus be no cause for exporting Cheddar, even if England had any to spare; nor is much of the Cheshire sent abroad, its fragile nature making it unsuitable for exportation, which is to be regretted, because in the opinion of Dr. Voelker, shared by many epicures, Cheshire is the finest flavored of British cheeses. It is made from milk which is perfectly sweet, and to this its special aroma has been attributed. For the third of the three best-known varieties of British cheeses—Stilton—there is a considerable demand for the tables of foreign epicures, as it exports well.
Stilton is a blue-molded cheese, which is manufactured of unskimmed milk in a way similar to the methods of making the French Roquefort and the Italian Gorgonzola. Like those, it owes its piquant Flavor to the mold, which is artificially spread throughout the cheese in diverse ways.[18]
Every American tourist who visits London goes to take a meal at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, made famous by Dr. Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith, and for three centuries the haunt of literary men, including Dickens and Thackeray. Toasted cheese—cheese bubbling in tiny tins and tasting like Welsh rarebit—was the original specialty of this place and is still served unless you prefer a wedge of uncooked Cheshire. But what ultimately made this place renowned throughout the world was its lark pudding.
Fortunately it is lark no more but pigeon pudding; at least, so it was frankly called when I ate it in September, 1912. What else it is compounded of no one knows but the proprietor and the cook, who guard the secret carefully. Kidney and steak and oysters are hinted at, and diverse strong spices are certainly in it.