Galantine
About this curious word the French philologers, Littré and Brachet at their head, are in a thick fog. Everybody knows that galantine is not gelatine. These are two words for two things which are as different as possible. Nobody dreams that a fowl or anything else in a galantine means the same thing as one in a jelly or gelatine. But the French etymologists, without a shadow of misgiving, insist that because in old writings they cannot find mention of galantine, whereas they do find mention of galatine, they must both mean the same thing (which indeed they do), and that this same thing must be gelatine, -which it is not. Oddly enough, M. Brachet winds up his proofs that galantine must be gelatine by quoting from a MS. account-book of the thirteenth century this item, "De duodecim lampredis portatis in galatina," which he does not actually translate, but which he assumes with the most perfect assurance to mean-Twelve lampreys served in a jelly or gelatine. Now it so happens that in England we can lay our hands upon the receipt for doing the lampreys in a galantine, and the moment it is explained it will be seen that it has nothing whatever to do with gelatine. It means, or rather it meant, a preparation flavoured with the powdered root of the sedge called galingale, or galangale, to which Tennyson refers when he speaks of "meadows set with slender galingale."
Galantine About the end of the fourteenth century-say 1390the master-cooks of King Richard II., after taking counsel with the physicians and philosophers of the court, made a collection of their most approved receipts, which they put together under the name of the Forme of Cury, and which gives valuable information as to the dishes most in request among the courtiers of that time. The MS. has unfortunately been lost, but it has been twice reprinted by learned doctors of the Church-first the Reverend Doctor Pegge, then the Reverend Doctor Warner, who may be relied on for the accuracy of the text, though they have not been too successful in its elucidation. In this collection of 198 receipts, the galantine, or galyntyne as it was spelt, is mentioned not once but many times, and always in connection with galyngale. Here is the receipt for making galyntyne-Number 138. "Take crusts of bread and grind them small. Do [add] thereto powder of galyngale, of canel [cinnamon], gyngynes [ginger], and salt it. Temper it with vinegar and draw it up through a strainer and mess [dish] it forth." There are other receipts for making sippets of galyntine, fillets of pork in galyntine, lampreys in galyntine, lamperns in galantyne. They are all in the same strain, and always imply the powder of galyngale, generally but not always mixed with breadcrumb. The word has passed out of the modern French dictionaries, which acknowledge the plant referred to only under the name of Souchet. But that the name existed in old French as it still exists in English may be ascertained by referring to an authority which all Frenchmen respect-Cotgrave. In this Englishman's dictionary of the French language, published in 1640, he gives as the French equivalent of galingale-galange, galangue, galingal. And for the plant itself, which belongs to the family of the sedges, and is technically known as Cyperus, this is what Sowerby says of it: "The root is perennial, long, creeping, twisted, astringent, chiefly remarkable for Galantine an agreeable spicy odour, in which it resembles the roots of some East Indian grasses that, when moistened, are used by the English to perfume their houses." In Parkinson's time that is, about 1650-it was still used in confectionery and cookery; but he says that the use of it was then dying out, and that it was chiefly employed for the perfume of houses. He describes also the extraordinary virtues which the plant was supposed to possess for the internal organs of men and women, while for a wonder he ventures to cast a doubt on their efficacy.
Although it is perfectly clear that the galantine of old times (which, by the way, was not a solid as it is now, but a sauce with a garniture in it-what in the language of the modern kitchen is known as a ragoût) was a preparation of the galingale or galangale, it is not so clear how the word galantine came to be formed; and it is important to explain this, because it has a curious bearing on a subsequent discussion. It is the key to a whole class of words beginning with gallimawfrey. The first step is to determine the meaning of galingale. The final syllable is a generic term indicating the nature of the plant; we have something parallel in sea kale. The first two syllables (which find their kindred in gala and regale) declare that the gale in question is a galing or regaling gale, and their meaning has survived in the modern English name for the plant-the sweet Cyperus, in the sense in which we speak of sweet herbs, as sweet Basil and sweet Marjoram. And what then is galantine? At first sight one is staggered by the termination, which suggests a Latin origin-but it is a good English word. Tine is a generic term which here takes the place of gale. As we have an old English mistle-tine as well as mistletoe, so there was galintine as well as galingale. In the old receipts they said indifferently-powder of galingale or powder of galintine. In dictionaries of provincial and obsolete English anybody will find the root tine preserved in various words Galantine that refer to brushwood, hedges and hedging, thorns, and figuratively sorrow.
Galantine, as we now know it, is quite a recent invention. There was a certain Marquis de Brancas, who kept a great kitchen in the end of the last century, at the head of which was a cook named Prévost. The Revolution made an end of the Marquis, extinguished his kitchen fire, and threw Prévost out of work. What was the great artist to do? Fortunately the Revolution, though it hated kings and nobles, had a great respect for cooks and loved good cheer. Prévost set his wits to work, and created the galantine of modern times a new preparation with an old name. He took into partnership with himself Philippe, who afterwards became celebrated for his restaurant in the Rue Montorgueil. For fifteen years they made galantines together, and sold them to the Parisians under the Republic, the Directory, the Consulate, the Empire. About 1805, when Nelson was sweeping the seas and culminating in Trafalgar, when Napoleon was traversing Europe and culminating on the field of Austerlitz-the fame of the galantine rose to its height, and Paris was informed that it had changed its domicile. The possession of the galantine was sold to M. Perrier-a pastrycook in the Rue Montorgueil. Prévost went out of the business altogether, but it was arranged that Philippe should continue to construct the galantines which Perrier was to sell. Between them they brought the galantine into fashion, and achieved for it a great position-indeed, the very highest position among cold viands.
The reader who expects a receipt for making galantine in this place will be disappointed. One might as well give a receipt for making a Bologna sausage, a Strasbourg pie, or turtle soup. These are dainties which belong to specialists, and are not fit for ordinary kitchens. To make a galantine well, you must make a business of it, and it is much the best way to go to M. Dumas, of 55, Prince's Gallimawfrey Street, Leicester Square, and buy it. The terrines which are sold in the shops under the name of Yorkshire pies are not Yorkshire pies, but galantines in pots. Buy them if you have not near you-worthy namesake and rival of the great Alexander-a Dumas who can make a romance out of the breast of a turkey, and a scene out of the merrythought of a chicken, raise a pheasant into a personage, put wit into a pistachio, and endue a truffle with the soul of poetry.
GALLIMAWFREY or GALIMAFRÉ, and GALIMATIAS.-For several hundred years these words have defied the learning of Europe, and so completely that not only has every etymologist, great and small, given them up in despair, but furthermore-the last theory concerning them, uttered by a competent scholar, Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood, is virtually that they are nothing but gabble to signify gabble. It may therefore seem hardy for any one to pretend at this time of day to have solved the riddle. But the fact is that the solution has hitherto been withheld, for the simple reason that the literary world has not deemed cookery books worthy of much notice.
Perhaps the unsafest of all guides to take in searching for an etymon would be Ménage; yet he was quite right, and most persons have felt that he was right, in asserting that there is a connection between Galimafré and Galimatias. They have the same meaning. It is known that Galimafré or Gallimawfrey was originally a fricassee of fowl, though we hear of it afterwards as a mess of mutton and even of sheep's head. Galimatias, on the other hand, as far back as we can trace it, has always passed for a jumble of nonsense; but it has also been connected with fowls through the explanation of it contained in the cockand-bull story of the lawyer who, having to argue his case of the stolen cock in Latin, blundered it by waxing eloquent over Galli Matthias instead of Gallus Matthiæ.
Gallimawfrey The key to both words is to be found in the Forme of Cury, and in the other Rolls of Cookery edited successively by the Reverend Doctors Pegge and Warner. These are a mine of wealth to the philologer, and have not received half the attention they deserve. The Forme of Cury is especially valuable. It was compiled by the master-cooks. of Richard II., assisted by all the doctors of philosophy and men of taste who took an interest in the elaborate gastrology of that court. Let it be remembered that Richard II. stands out in the history of the world as ons of the most lavish and luxurious princes that ever lived. Known throughout Europe as Richard of Bordeaux because, the English dominion then including Gascony, he was born there, and his father the Black Prince there held the seat of English government in France, we are told by his cooks and the doctors who worked with them that he " was accounted the best and ryallest viander of all Christian kings." It is to the early part of his reign, and all the luxury of it as described in the chronicles, that the poet Gray refers in the lines which have almost passed into proverbs:
Fair laughs the morn and soft the zephyr blows While, proudly riding on the azure realm, In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes, Youth on the prow and pleasure at the helm.
The common tradition is that Richard died of hunger; but while he reigned he had in his kitchen a staff of several hundred cooks; he entertained at his table 10,000 courtiers and followers, for whom were killed every day 28 oxen and 300 sheep, besides innumerable quantities of fowl and game. All the care and skill which the wealth and knowledge of the time could command were expended on the preparation of the viands. The cleverest cooks, the learnedest doctors, and the daintiest courtiers, put their heads together to range the earth for curious food, to invent new dishes, and to treasure up the most approved receipts Gallimawfrey of old ones. The result was the Forme of Cury-which was the old English way of spelling Queuerie-the business of a Queux or Cook. It was a cookery book in which the most cursory reader will detect the work of many hands, repetitions, varieties, here a new receipt in the language of the period, there an old one in a corrupt or forgotten language, further on a recently-worded explanation under an antique heading, and there again another set off with foreign phrases. M. Wallon has devoted two considerable volumes to the life of Richard II.: he has not said a word in it about this book and the gastronomic rage of the court. English scholars have given it the most superficial attention, and have strangely neglected its hints. The language has puzzled them sorely, and they have put it aside as beneath them.
Nevertheless this cookery book, and the contemporary Rolls of Cookery, some of which have been published, while others still remain in MS., chiefly among the Sloane MSS. in the British Museum, is to those who care to read it a mine of wealth. We can see in our own time how there still remain in the kitchen the relics of an antiquated speech unknown to books; and 500 years ago in the kitchen of the English king it was the same. There remained fragments of a language which was not only unknown to books, but was also scarcely understood by those who employed it, -words which had passed out of general acceptance, which had become unrecognisable, and which are now to the philologist what an oyster-shell on a hillside is to the student of geology, and the bones of bear, hyæna and lion in the London clay to a palæontologist. We light upon words which do not belong to the current language, and which are foreign to it, but which must at one time have been current somewhere in an antecedent speech; and we are driven back to the conception of an extremely remote language-not Sanscrit, but perhaps a brother or a cousin to it, from which the European dialects Gallimawfrey have sprung. We have resembling, indeed identical, fragments of words scattered more or less throughout the European languages-classical, romantic, Celtic, Teutonic, Scandinavian-which are not to be accounted for except on the theory of a lost antecedent language, their progenitor, transmitting through many centuries tiny details of likeness that here get broken into pieces, and there get mixed and crossed with new features. No need now, however, to lose ourselves in the contemplation of this shadowy language of far-distant ancestors; it is enough that receding only five centuries, to the days of the Canterbury Tales, and listening to the discourse of the cooks-not forgetting Chaucer's cook, who could roast and seethe and broil and fry, Maken mortrewës and well bake a pie, who could make blancmanger with the best, and who travelled with the pilgrims to boil their chickens and look after the galingale-we come upon traces of a language which had passed away, but which yet retained life enough in the rotting leaves it left behind to account for forms of speech that endure to this very day, and that, without the assistance of King Richard's cooks, might have remained for ever an impenetrable mystery.
In all previous inquiries into the nature of Gallimawfrey and Galimatias, the searcher has been thrown off the scent by not knowing the meaning of the first two syllables. He knew that the words referred to something about a fowl, and he looked for mention of the fowl in these early syllables. We now know, from proofs drawn out in the article on Galantine, that these two syllables, if they do not actually refer to the powdered root of the galingale which was used in flavouring the fowl, which was in great request among King Richard's cooks, which is mentioned as prominent in two or three dozen English receipts belonging to that time, and which Chaucer in the description of his cook Gallimawfrey singles out alone among plants as belonging to his craft, must have the same force as the first two syllables of that word-then in Galinmawfrey being elided before m.
Having arrived at this point, we can go further; for it has been ascertained that the Galingale means the sweet gale, an epithet which survives in the more modern name of sweet Cyperus, and which as applied to herbs-sweet basil, sweet marjoram, and the rest-means not saccharine, but savoury. We are not unprepared, therefore, to hear of the dishwhatever it be-having a different savour, to be more fitly expressed by Sal and Sauce, which is short for Salsa. It will on this view be evident that the same explanation which will account for Gali-ma-fré and Gali-ma-tias will also account for Sal -ma-gundi, the old English form, Sal -mi-gondis, the French form, and Sal -mi.
There are other words to follow; but in the meantime we confine our attention to this group of four; to a fifth word which contains their solution, appearing as it does many times in the old English rolls of cookery-Mawmene, or Mawmenny; and to a sixth-Malachi-which is of the same order, although not so common, and which has a still more modern interest if it should ultimately prove to be related to Cock-a-leekie, Miching Malicho, and Mullagatawny. In all these words the ma, maw, or mi, means a fowl. In proof of this point, let it be observed, to begin with, that we have the English word mew, the Scotch maw, to signify a gull; and that at the same time we have to this day preserved the usage of seamew and seamaw, implying that there are other mews besides those of the sea. note, that though by itself mew or maw in English and the kindred languages means always a gull, it may sometimes either in a compound or a derivative be applied to other birds. In German we come upon a pigeon-the Next Gallimawfrey turbit variety-which is called möwchen. In Icelandic, the name of a gull is már (plural mavar); but a crow is ben-már and blód-mar; a raven Iggjar-már, Odin's mar. In French there is mauviette, which is supposed to mean a lark; but it has no such meaning in literary language. No French poet could by any possibility speak of a mauviette instead of an alouette singing in the sky; and M. Génin has shown that it is an old kitchen term for any little bird. It is the remains of a lost language which has survived among the pots. Again, see the number of names of birds, besides those mentioned, which begin with this syllable or a similar one: Mallard, marrot (the great auk), mavis, macreuse, machette (French for an owl), merle, merlin, martin, missel, merganser. I do not give every word in this list as coming certainly from an antecedent root-maw, ma, or mi; but at least they demand a note of interrogation, and the received account of them cannot be accepted as final. It is not at all clear that. mallard, for example, means, as the French etymologists will have it, a male; that the mavis is a bird bad (mal) for the vines; and that merganser is a merging or diving anser. I am not bound to explain what all these words really mean: a full and correct account of them would take too much space and time. It is enough for present purposes to make out a prima-facie case for the interpretation of ma or maw as the generic name for a bird or fowl in the lost language from which the European languages have descended. That lost language might go further back even than Sanscrit, which has mayara and maruka as the name for a peacock, marala and marula for a duck, and mallika for a goose; but still, as far as we know, does not yield ma or maw as a generic name to include all three. The nearest hold we have of maw or mav as a generic word for bird or fowl is in the Latin language, if we may accept a conclusion to which all the evidence points, though t has not yet been absolutely proved that avis may origi- Galiimawfrey nally have been mavis, which survives in English as the name of a thrush. Let it be remembered that in Latin there was a curious tendency to get rid of the m sound, whether initial or final. How in Latin prosody the final m disappears before a vowel is one of the first metrical facts whipped into a schoolboy. As for the disappearance of the initial m, we are familiar enough with it in this country, where it is notorious that the ap of the Welshman is no other than the mac of the Caledonian. That this tendency to drop the initial m existed in Latin may be shown by two marked words. The Greek monos appears in Latin as unus; and the English milk, the Anglo-Saxon miluc, appears in Latin as lac. It is therefore strictly within the rules to suggest that the Latin avis may originally have been mavis, and was identical with the maw, ma, or mi, which has the meaning of a fowl in the language of the old English kitchen. It would be out of place here to follow up this suggestion by turning it to the elucidation of the names of birds. Still I venture upon three predictions: first, that the old name of marrot for the great auk will be found to be an exact translation of the great auk, which means a great bird (auca, avica, avis); second, that the martin, otherwise known as martelet or marrelet, will be found to derive its name, not from March, the time of its arrival, nor from Martinmas, the time of its departure, but from its being a ma with a habitation either in the sand or in the house-roof; and thirdly, that mallard, which is also spelt in old English maulard and maudelard, has no reference whatever to gender, but implies the bird or maw which has been decoyed.
Scanty though our knowledge of the word be, there is evidence enough to show with absolute certainty that the ma or maw of mawfrey, matias, magundi, mawmene, and malachi, is a fowl. There are at least a dozen receipts for mawmene or mawmenny, and every one of them has to do with fowl minced, teased, pulled, frayed, pounded, brayed, Gallimawfrey ground, bruised, carved, hacked to pieces, smitten to gobbets, hewed small. It is odd to see the variety and quaintness of the terms which, in the numerous receipts for mawmene, and in others of the same character not yet mentioned, are used to enjoin first the roasting or half-roasting of the fowl, and then the shredding and mincing of it. The receipts vary in their names, and have a crowd of varying ingredients, but they agree in thisthat they are all such a confused and nonsensical jumble of innumerable incongruous elements, solid and liquid, animal and vegetable, sour and sweet, hot and bitter, growing at home and fetched from over the seas, as we still understand by gallimawfrey and galimatias; that it is exceedingly difficult to distinguish one from another this one with a score of flavours and garnitures, but wanting perhaps the galingale or the vinegar, from that other with nearly the same score, but wanting the milk or the sugar; and that in one and all the fowl is pulled to pieces to be either chopped or brayed in a mortar. The constant refrain is this: "Take brawn [that is, flesh] of capons y-teased, or of pheasant teased small;" "Take the chese [that is, the chopper, from which we have the diminutive chisel] and of flesh of capons or of hens hack small in a mortar;" "Take brawn of hens or of capon and hew them as small as thou may; ;" "Take the thighs or the flesh of capons, skin them and carve them small."
This invariable rule has found expression in the final syllables of mawmene, mawfrey, matias, magundi, and malachi. Mawmene or mawmenny is a fowl minced-menu. Mawfrey, or mafré as the French write it, is a fowl frayed -what we still call pulled chicken. Matias is a corrupt rendering of the order given in one of the above extracts to tease the fowl. Magundi, or, as the French spell it, migondis, is to the like effect, though not expressed in a form which will so readily catch the modern ear. The earliest known form of the word is in the Sanscrit khand, Gallimawfrey to break, whence khanda-sugar which is broken, lump sugar, and the modern candy. But with loss of the n the same word still exists in French as coter, to break or bruise; it has relations with the first syllable of the English cudgel; and it also exists in a curious word which the French authorities profess themselves unable to explain, Godiveau-that is, veal minced and pounded to a soft forcemeat. As for malachi, it will be intelligible to any one who will turn back to read Wynkyn de Worde's inventory of terms for carving. He says that to carve brawn is to lesche it. The word is otherwise written leach, and it is to be identified at root with lash, slash, and (in the beating sense) lick. In provincial English to malahawk is to carve awkwardly and cut to pieces. This malachi (fowl leached or licked) has had a fate different from that of mawfrey, matias, magundi, and mawmene. It survives to the present day, though in an altered form. For the name of a fowl-masubstitute cock, and there is the Scottish dish of cocka-leekie. They fancy in Scotland that the latter part of the word refers to the leeks which are used to flavour the pottage. This is a mistake: it refers to the fact that the cock is to be leached as the French said, alachi.
But now we can go still further. If the foregoing explanation of Gallimawfrey, Galimatias, Salmagundi, Salmi, Mawmene, and Malachi be sound, it throws a new light upon certain other words, in some of which no difficulty has hitherto been suspected-Sauce Madame, Miching Malicho, Blancmanger, and Mullagatawny. Of these in their order.
Any one who will examine the old receipts, amounting to several hundreds, collected together in Dr. Warner's Antiquitates Culinaria, will feel that even five centuries ago, when the cookery books were compiled, maw in the sense of fowl was altogether obsolete as a simple word, and as part of a compound was archaic, scarcely if at all understood, and easily corruptible. It was then as now Gallimawfrey in the receipts of the kitchen: there were new-fangled names for old receipts, and there were old, unintelligible, corrupt names for receipts couched in the current language. Thus we have Douce Ame as the name for a dish of minced fowl exactly like those already described. Remembering that in those days the mute e had a decided pronunciation almost like an o, it is difficult to escape the suggestion that Douce Ame was a courtly attempt to put a pretty meaning into a phrase which, as involving the word ma or maw-let us, to be definite, say Galima-had become unintelligible and perhaps vulgar. This becomes all the more probable when we look into the Sauce Madame. Sauce Madame was a goose. Let no one be misled by the word sauce. It was not then, as now, strictly a noun; it was hovering between a noun and an adjective, being used in the sense of its original salsa, and like the first syllables of salmagundi, salmi, salpicon, saugrenu, saupiquet, etc. The word, therefore, had the force of sauced Madame, and Madame was a goose. The name was evidently invented to endue with a new and pleasant meaning some word on a par with mawfrey, matias, magundi, mawmene, and malachi, which had become stale and obscure. Probably that word was malachi, mispronounced maladi, confounded with my lady and translated madame. The following is the receipt for Sauce Madame : "Take sage, parsley, hyssop, and savory, quinces and pears, garlic and grapes, and fill the geese therewith, and sew the hole that no grease come out; and roast them well, and keep the grease that falleth thereof. Take galintine and grease and do in a posnet [porringer]. When the geese be roasted enough take and smite them in pieces. And take that that is within and do it in a posnet, and put therein wine if it be too thick. Do thereto powder of galingale, powder douce and salt, and boil the sauce and dress the geese in dishes and lay the sowe (sauce) onward." This is all fairly expressed in the language of Gallimawfrey the time, and when we expect to read for the title of it Hashed Goose, or something equivalent, we find the enigma of Sauce Madame. Why this meaningless French title?
The title first appears in a French cookery book-that of Taillevent, which was written twenty or thirty years before the cooks of Richard of Bordeaux set to work; and we may therefore conclude that it was the attempt of a Frenchman to give some appearance of sense to an older English title-Malachi-which had become dark to the English, and to Frenchmen wholly unmeaning. The same thing occurred in the case of the Sauce Robert. The English cooks had their Roebroth or Roebrewit-that is, a stew of roebuck with a peculiar sauce. The French cook Taillevent did not understand the word, determined to put a meaning into it, and made it Robert. So we have now the Sauce Robert as something distinct from Roebuck Sauce.
We have next to deal with Miching Malicho. It will be remembered that before the mimic play begins in Hamlet, there is a dumb show in which the spectators are treated to a revelation of the murder which had been committed and of the love which the murderer made to the dead man's wife. There occurs the following dialogue :- Ophelia. What means this, my lord?
Hamlet. Marry, this is miching malicho: it means mischief. Ophelia. Belike this show imports the argument of the play. Ophelia answers, and answers truly, her own question : but what is the meaning of Hamlet's answer? The explanation of the commentators is far from satisfactory. They say that mich is an old English verb meaning to lurk, and that there is a Spanish word malheco meaning a crime. Hamlet's reply therefore would come to the truism-" Marry, this is hidden crime, and crime means mischief." The explanation is not so satisfactory that we are bound to accept it, and I venture to suggest another-"Marry, this is cooking the goose: it means mischief." The difficulty Gallimawfrey in the way of this interpretation lies not with malicho, which, after the account above rendered of Malachi and Madame, ought to be plain enough, but with miching.
To mich means to lie hid and to muffle up: what has this to do with cooking? It has this to do with it that the French have a verb mijoter (old form, migeoter), which means to muffle up and to simmer or stew, and to this day it is the common French term for slow-boiling. A similar double meaning will be found in the English word coddle, which in the codling apple means an apple for stewing. But the word mijoter is evidently derived from a shorter one, which the French are at their wits' end to discover, and which for want of a better they take to be mie or mige, a crumb of bread. Now here is a much more likely root, the English mich or miche, which has been long known in one of the senses of the French mijoter-to lie hid, to nurse up, but which has not hitherto been found in the more common sense of stewing or simmering. Is it unreasonable to suggest that it had this sense? that we have indications of it in other English words, as mishmash and mess, as well as in the German meischen, to stir the malt in hot water? and that we have it in full bloom in Hamlet's phrase of miching malicho-cooking the goose and settling the hash?
And now for Blancmanger, a word which is as different from what it must have been originally as the thing we thus name-a jelly of isinglass, almonds, water and sugar-is from the original mess, a fowl pounded in milk, rice and syrup, or in almonds, rice, broth and sugar. It is indifferent whether we take for analysis the word as we now write it-Blancmanger, or as it was more anciently written-Blanc Mangier or Blanc Mengier; but at least it will be useful to bear in mind the older spelling. And this being premised, I proceed to show that the word is resolvable into Blanc Ma-en-sire, and means white fowl-in-syrup -the whiteness referring not to the fowl by itself, but to Gallimawfrey the fowl-in-the-syrup. There will be no difficulty in making this good; but before going into the proof of it, observe that Ma-en-sire, if this be indeed the original expression, would naturally become slurred into mangier, through contraction of the vowels and through the nasal n joining with the sh sound of sire to form g. Independently of the fact that the first syllable of syrup is connected with the first syllable of sherbet, we know that in a number of old French words there was a tendency in the sibilant to become in England and Northern France thickened into sh and ch: thus cive became chive, and we have such words as sure and sugar pronounced shure and shugar. Ma-ensire would therefore very easily run into mangier and mengier.
But was the word really Blanc Ma-en-sire? It is not to be found in this particular form, which must have been very ancient; but there is a considerable number of other words and phrases for the same thing perfectly parallel to it, and making it as unreasonable to doubt that it (that is, Blanc Ma-en-sire) is identical with Blanc Mangier as it would be to doubt that daisy is day's eye and foxglove is folk's glove. Here follow two receipts in succession; and though they show differences of detail, I defy the reader to discover any essential difference between them.
Number one :- "Put rice in water all a night, and at morrow wash them clean. Afterwards put them to the fires fort [strong] that they burst, and not too much. Then take brawn of capons or of hens sodden and draw it small. After take milk of almonds and put it to the rice and boil it, and when it is yboiled put in the brawn and alloy it therewith, that it be well chargeant [stiff'], and mingle it [stir it] finely well that it sit not to the pot. And when it is enough and chargeant do thereto sugar good part; put therein almonds fried in white grease and dress it forth."
Number two :- Gallimawfrey "Take brawn of hens or of capons sodden without the skin, and hew them as small as thou may. And grind them in a mortar. After take good milk of almonds and put the brawn therein, and stir it well together and do them to seethe; and take flour of rice and amidon [starch] and alloy it, so that it be chargeant; and do thereto sugar a good plenty, and a plenty of white grease. And when it is put in dishes strew upon it blanch powder."
Now the title of number one is "For to make Blanc Manger," and the title of number two is "For to make Blanc Desire." This Blanc Desire is but a variety of Blanc Manger-a fowl served in a syrup whitened with almonds, with rice and sometimes with milk. It is to be presumed that the original word Blanc de Sire had become doubtful and dim, and had to be touched up into Blanc Desire to give it a pretty meaning, just as in the same way Blanc Ma-en-sire had been worked up into Blanc Manger. There had been other forms of the word which still survived, and which perhaps were equally unintelligible as Blanc desorre, Blanc desurre, Blanc de Sorry, Blanc de Surry, and Blanc Surry-all for a fowl in syrup. Surry was one of the old names for Syria- They drew up sail of brighte hew, The wind them soon to Surry blew, and syrup was at one time known as the Syrian juice. The name Blanc Desire, therefore, which is so common, meant white of sire or syrup, and though strictly speaking it belonged not to the fowl, but to the sauce in which it was served, it was used to signify a preparation which is not distinguishable from Blanc Manger or Blanc Mangier. In all the receipts for Blancmanger there is syrup, and here we have a parallel series of receipts for the same thing in which the syrup distinctly enters into the title.
Further: although we have not yet found the precise words ma-en-sire save only in the contracted and corrupted Gallimawfrey form mangier, they were in a manner translated in the title of another parallel receipt-Capons in Confy (that is, confit), where, however, the confection was made without sugar. Here is the receipt :- "Capons in Confy. - Take capons and roast them till they be nigh enough: then take them off the spit and chop them in gobbets with broth of beef, temper them and do them in a pot with almond milk; and do thereto flour of rice or bread steeped in the same broth, and draw it through a strainer and powder of cloves and of canel (cinnamon) and of maces. And take hard eggs seethed, and take out the yolk all whole, and cut the white small, and do it in the pot and colour it with saffron, and let it boil, and dress it up on dishes, and lay the yolks whole upon and cloves therewith."
If syrup had been used here, the title would have been Capons in Sire or in Surry, a more modern rendering of the archaic ma-en-sire. And the title of Blanc is excluded from it because it is made Tawny with saffron. These illustrations make it probable that the final syllable of Blanc Mangier stands for sire or syrup; and it is quite certain that to the end of the reign of Louis XIV. the central fact of the blancmanger was a fowl, and that without a fowl it was impossible. May we not therefore fairly conclude that the indispensable fowl flaps its wings immortalized in the ma syllable of Blancmanger?
After all the facts marshalled in the foregoing pages, Mullagatawny does not look like a word that could present much difficulty. It looks-word and thing-like a modern version of one of the old receipts. It is a soup made of a fowl which has been "chopped to gobbets," which is mingled with rice, and which is made Tawny, if not with saffron at least with curry. It looks like our old friend malachi, simplified to suit modern tastes, and spiced and coloured with the curry which has superseded the older spices and colourings. But great authorities assure us, Garlic though without giving any reasons, that it is not an English word at all, that it is not even an Aryan word, that it comes from a language outside the Aryan group-Tamil, and that it means pepper water. It may be so; I do not dispute the point; and only note that the coincidence is remarkable of a Tamil name and a Tamil receipt for fowl broth which exactly corresponds, save in the substitution of curry for saffron, with an old English name and an old English receipt.
Garbure is a name in the south of France for a soup which is to be eaten with a fork. In heraldic English a sheaf of corn is called a Garb. The wheatsheaves which appear in the Grosvenor arms are garbs; and those who are curious in etymology will see in the term the first syllable of harvest. Metaphorically, a soup with garbs in it, and requiring the use of a fork, took the name of Garbure. The later French cooks, who do not understand the meaning of the word, insist that a Garbure should always have crusts in it; but this is arbitrary. A garbure may have anything in it that, like a sheaf, needs the use of a fork.
GARLIC is so little used in England that it seems of little use to refer to it. A recent traveller (see Monteire's "Angola and the River Congo," vol. ii., p. 240) writes: "Garlic I consider a most valuable article of food in a hot climate, especially eaten raw. I never travelled without a supply of garlic, and I found its beneficial effects on the stomach and system most marked. When very hungry and fatigued, I have found nothing to equal a few pieces of raw garlic, eaten with a crust of bread or a biscuit, for producing a few minutes after a delightful sensation of repose, and that feeling of the stomach being ready to receive food, generally absent when excessive emptiness or exhaustion is the case." Yet it is against this same garlic that Horace exclaims, when he Gelatine calls to mind the tough digestion of the mowers-"O dura messorum ilia!" The oddest contradictions arise. Henry of Navarre (Henry IV. of France) had his lips rubbed the moment he was born with a clove of garlic-a time-honoured custom in his native place. On the other hand, garlic was forbidden by statute of Alonzo XI. to his knights of La Banda ; and Don Quixote cautions Sancho Panza to be chary of it, as unseemly in the Governor of Barataria. Honest Sancho must beware of the garlic which the king of France had rubbed the first thing upon his infant gums. To English taste the pronounced flavour of garlic is insupportable; but many people do not know that some of the most successful compounds owe their excellence to an unsuspected undertone of garlic.