Carbonade
If cookery is ever to be a science it must be exact in its nomenclature, and cooks must not be allowed to confuse common-sense with their ignorant use of terms. The carbonade has degenerated in France into a stew, having meant originally a grill; and attempts are made to introduce the word into England as corrupted by the French cooks. So long as Shakespeare and the Elizabethan dramatists are prized in England this new style will not be tolerated. The carbonade was "a rasher on the coals"; and the rasher was first of all slashed or scored, to increase the broiling surface and to permit the penetration of pepper and salt. It was in fact a devil. "He scotcht him and Carême notcht him like a carbonado," we read in Shakespeare ; and in Beaumont and Fletcher- Has he bespoke? what, will he have a brace, Or but one partridge, or a short-legged hen Daintily carbonadoed?
What has this to do with stewing? In England a carbonade will always mean something which is first scored and then grilled. Only nowadays it is not usual-except for devilling to score meat which is to be grilled, since to do so would let out the juices too freely and dry it. For further remarks turn to the Shoulder of Mutton, which is the principal piece of meat submitted to the carbonade; and to do justice to the French cooks, let us explain how it is that the carbonade of mutton has with them come to be a stew. It was because it was thought good to parboil the shoulder before sending it to the grill.
The only carbonade of beef which is much in favour is better known as broiled or grilled bones.
CARÊME is certainly the most celebrated cook of the present century. He had a great genius; he had rare opportunities; and he has done more than any other one man that can be named to determine the arrangements and the provisions of the dinner-table as we have it now. Mr. Hayward has done honour to his genius in a passage remarkable for its epigrammatic point, which will be found quoted in our notice of Beauvilliers. But he was a fearful egotist and coxcomb, and his national vanity is pitiful; so that it is sometimes a labour to go through his works. It is strange also to see that though he could be very simple when it pleased him, he had a perfect mania for elaboration and show; and he paid such excessive attention to the architecture of the table and the outward adorning of his dishes, that he has left an example which has perhaps done more harm than good. To succeed as he succeeded, a cook Carps must not only be a cook-he must be a draughtsman, a sculptor, and a colourist; and the time and taste which a cook spends on the arts of design, to prepare food for the eye, are so much time and taste diverted from the more important business of preparing food for the mouth.
CARPS are a great family, and include, besides the carp proper, tench, barbel, gudgeon, gold-fish, loach, bream, chub, roach, dace, minnow, and bleak. The carp has a remarkable tenacity of life. He not only lives to a great age-some say 200 years: he survives terrible afflictions. He has been found alive in the muddy bottoms of empty ponds; he may be taken out of the water, packed in moist moss, and with a mouthful of bread steeped in brandy, to be repeated from stage to stage, may be transported to almost any distance; both himself and his wives have been cut open for their roes, they have been sewn up again and returned to the pond, where they have afterwards, like capons and oxen, fattened amazingly and improved in flavour. Nature has provided not only that the carp shal live long, but also that he shall increase and multiply prodigiously. He abounds in roe, and one of his wives alone will produce 700,000 young in a year. The soft roe of the carp is one of the most prized of fishy delicacies, and is served by itself sometimes as an entrée or as a soup. (See Roe.) His tongue or false tongue is likewise considered a rare morsel, and for the sake of it some people will buy only carps' heads and make a dish of them.
As for the body of the carp, it is not superb, and requires all the rhetoric of the saucepan. If people choose to boil, fry, or grill him, they must take the consequences, and do the best they can with caper sauce, Holland sauce, or black butter. He should be either stewed or brazed; and however he is cooked, it is important first of all to extract from his head the gallstone, which else would impart a bitter flavour to the flesh.
Carp For a stew, dress him either in a matelote or à la poulette. In this case he can be served either whole or in pieces, and in company with his friends-the eel, the tench, the perch, and the gudgeon. But the grand style of announcing the fish was invented at Chambord, and is known as Carp à la Chambord. There is a great lake in this royal demesne where carp abound. The fish is best in running water; in still water it partakes too much of mud, and needs an extraordinary effort on the part of the cook to prepare it for human association. At Chambord it was deemed necessary to make this effort, and the result was so successful that it has sometimes been applied to fish like the salmon, which it is quite impossible for art to improve upon. A great idea struck one of the cooks at Chambord -to lard the carp. It is lamentable that in our degenerate days cooks who pretend to serve a fish in the Chambord manner neglect the most important point of all-the larding, and are content to bard him with slices of bacon in the cooking. This is not enough: the larding is essential; and if a cook does not dare to lard a salmon-(where is the cook who could be guilty of such profanation?)-he must not call it saumon à la Chambord.
First of all, after being duly cleaned, the carp is to be stuffed with ordinary veal stuffing or with quenelle of whiting. The skin is then to be removed from head to tail wherever the larding needle is to be applied. This simply means that the skin may be left on his shirtfront for the better preservation of his stuffing. He is next to be larded with bacon in geometrical lines, but if the day should happen to be Friday, the strips of bacon may be replaced by strips of eel or of cooked truffles, in which case he must at least in the brazier be enfolded in slices of bacon. He is, thus attired, to be laid in state-that is, not on his side, but in the position of life--on the drainer of a fishkettle, and to be somewhat more than half immersed in a Mirepoix of white wine. He is to be covered over with buttered paper Carving and brazed gently. In an hour he will be fit for the dinner of a king. Fiat.
Needless to say that the carp to be treated in this royal fashion is a large one: obtain, if possible, a large Rhine carp. He can be served in his own sauce, or if this is not deemed enough, it can be finished off with Allemande. But it is always a point of honour to make the dish look well, and to give the carp à la Chambord a glorious retinue of good things. Glaze his head; diaper him with slices of truffle; and surround him in ordered masses with truffles, with crayfish and crayfish tails, with quenelles of whiting, and with regiments of soft roes furnished by himself and brethren of his tribe.
CARROTS were first introduced into England by Flemish gardeners in the time of Elizabeth; and in the reign of James I. they were still so uncommon that ladies wore branches of them on their hats and on their sleeves instead of feathers. They are now, next to the onion, the most important vegetable in all soups and sauces; but-though they are also used to garnish various dishes, especially salt beef-they are rarely presented at table as an entremet by themselves. The only important entremet in which they appear is called after the Flemings, who first grew them for the English in Kent.
Carrots in the Flemish way. -The carrots must be young. Blanch them, slice them or turn them, and simmer them for half an hour in an ounce of butter, a wineglassful of water, and a little salt and pepper. Finish them with a leason of two yolks of eggs, a little milk or cream, a pinch of sugar, and a dash of chopped parsley.
Carrot Soup is known under the name of Crécy.
Two workable recipes are buried in this run of dictionary entries: a braised, larded carp in the Chambord manner and a short, precise dish of glazed carrots finished with egg yolks. The rest is Dallas arguing about vocabulary.
- Carbonade means grilled hereThe entry's whole point is that in English a carbonade (Elizabethan carbonado) is meat scored and broiled, not the beer-and-onion beef stew a modern menu means by the word. If you follow the entry rather than the argument, you are grilling a scored chop, not simmering anything.
- Brazed is braisedThroughout, "braze" and "brazier" mean braise and braising pot. For the carp that is a covered vessel over gentle heat; the entry says only "brazed gently" and gives no temperature. The fish sits upright on the drainer of a fish kettle and the liquid comes a little over halfway up.
- Mirepoix, 19th-century senseA mirepoix in this period is a preparation of diced aromatic vegetables with herbs and usually a little fat or ham; "a Mirepoix of white wine" means that preparation with wine, used as the cooking bath rather than as a garnish. The buttered paper is laid over the top as a covering.
- Larding a fishThe larding needle and strips of back fat are the operative instruction, and the reason the skin is stripped except over the belly. Salt pork or unsmoked fatback works; bacon will read smoky. If you cannot lard, barding with fat slices over the fish is the honest fallback the author complains about, and it will still braise well.
- The gallstoneRemoving the gall from behind the head before cooking is the step the entry insists on ("it is important first of all"). Broken gall gives an unmistakable bitterness through the whole flesh. A fishmonger can do it for you.
- Timing for the carpThe entry allows an hour, and specifies only that the fish be a large one. Judge by the thickest part behind the head rather than by the clock -- 145F is the safe figure for freshwater fish -- and let it settle in the pan before lifting it out; a braised whole carp breaks easily.
- Carrots in the Flemish way, quantitiesThe ounce of butter, wineglass of water and half hour of simmering suit a small quantity, on the order of a pound of young carrots, though the entry gives neither weight nor yield. A wineglassful here is about 2 fl oz. To "turn" them is to trim each piece to a small barrel shape, purely for looks; slicing is offered as the alternative.
- The liaison"Leason" is liaison. Take the pan off the heat, temper the two yolks with a little of the hot liquid and the milk or cream, return it and swing the pan over low heat only until it thickens. If it boils the yolks curdle and the glaze breaks.
Kettner's Book of the Table (1877) was written by the journalist E. S. Dallas and named for Auguste Kettner, the Soho restaurateur, and this page is Dallas at his most characteristic: an argument about words wedged between two working recipes. His complaint about carbonade is real philology thed English carbonado, scored and laid on the coals, is the sense Shakespeare and Beaumont and Fletcher use, while the French carbonade drifted toward a braise, plausibly by way of the parboiling step he describes. Carp rom the the royal chateau, which stands on the Cosson, and its carp ponds, and the dish was often served as a grand presentation for a large freshwater fish, complete with truffles, crayfish and quenelles. The claim that carrots reached England with Flemish gardeners under Elizabeth, and that court ladies wore the feathery tops in their hats under James I, is repeated in most Victorian food books and is best treated as traditional; the Kentish market gardens that supplied London were, however, genuinely Flemish-influenced. Crécy, the name given to carrot soup, is often said to refer to a carrot-growing district in France, though the naming is disputed, with Crécy-en-Ponthieu, the battle site, and Crécy-la-Chapelle in Brie both claimed.