Finance
to which French cookery paid homage, meant taxes; and the FINANCIERS were tax-farmers, who filled the coffers of the state, and made their own fortunes too, amid the groans and execrations of the people. The words have a larger meaning now; but still financing has from age to age the same characteristics, and the money-making class the same tastes and foibles. Newly rolling in wealth, the financiers are apt to be gaudy in their tastes and luxurious in their lives. The cooks have done them the honour to invent for their especial behoof the Financiers' Fine Herbs Ragout or Relish. The receipt for it is given among the Relishes (No. 1). It abounds in mushrooms to remind them of their upstart origin; in truffles to signify by the fragrant fruits of earth-grubbing the precious results of moneygrubbing; in cocks' combs emblematic of conceit; in quenelles, a delicate transformation of chicken, hinting at the transfiguring influence of wealth; and in collops of sweetbread to melt in the mouth, and make the financier, though his heart be hard, feel the softness of life. These and other dainties are bathed in the Financiers' Sauce, which is the finest Spanish sauce mingled with essences of mushrooms, truffles, and chicken, exhilarated with Madeira wine and reduced to a cullis.