Madeira
If one thing could more decidedly than another prove the low estate to which cookery has descended in Paris, and expose the hollowness of the grand receipts which still figure in the cookery books, it is Madeira. There is scarcely any wine of great repute which it is so difficult to procure genuine, and when genuine it commands an exorbitant price. Yet from morning to night, and from year's end to year's end, in every restaurant in Paris, down to the meanest cabaret, the assembled world is invited to eat beefsteaks cooked in Madeira. In all the world there is not Madeira enough for a week's consumption of the filet au Madère in Paris. Besides which, the Parisian shopman has a wonderful fancy for imbibing Madeira by way of fillip. He goes into any café or cabaret and asks for a Madère. It is poured out for him a glass at three or four sous-and he is happy with the pernicious stuff that bears the fine name. So in the cookery books the great chefs, with an astonishing air of grandeur, direct that a bottle of Madeira must go into this sauce and half a bottle into that. Where are these bottles and half-bottles of Madeira to be found? It is a Maids of Honour vice of the French system-this grand style. There is a receipt for making Spanish sauce which sets out in the most noble of strains: "Take twelve ducks, a ham, two bottles of good old Madeira, and six pounds of fine truffles." Old Madeira too! Even if the old Madeira, worth a guinea a bottle, were forthcoming, it would be spoilt in such a decoction, without doing it more good than the same quantity of Marsala worth twenty-one pence a bottle. Would it not be better at once to come down to common sense, and to pour out frankly the humble Marsala, which is quite good enough for cooking purposes, and is certainly better than any Madeira that finds its way into the kitchen? Take this for a verity-that if any one who knows Madeira can lay his hand upon a bottle of it, he will drink it, and he will not leave a drop for the stewpan.