Tartar Sauce
This, whether it refers to catching a Tartar, or descending into Tartarus, is in effect the French ideal of a devilled sauce. A French devil is never hot like an English one-only a little pungent. Either a Mayonnaise or a Remoulade may be taken as the basis of a Tartar sauce the former being made of raw yolks, the latter of hard-boiled ones. The devilling comes of French mustard, or else English mustard with some addition of tarragon vinegar. The amount of bedevilment must depend on taste. It is usual, but not essential, to add a chopped ravigote.
TASTE is separated from the other senses by a curious difference. The others flourish by themselves alone, and Taste often attain their highest perfection when deprived of companionship. Hearing will become more acute with loss of sight, and touch more sensitive with deafness. But taste is made for marriage, and smell is its better half. It loses all its delicacy when it cannot mate with a fine olfactory nerve. Though thus deficient, it is by common consent chosen as the type of all that is most refined in human enjoyment-the worship of the beautiful. This is a feather in the cook's cap. It is the business of his life to minister to the sense of taste and taste is at once so fine and so potent that it is selected from all the senses to designate the standard of art and the power of detecting all that is loveliest in heaven and earth. We have one and the same name for the faculty which comprehends a suckingpig and for that which delights in Beethoven for the appreciation alike of a Strasbourg pie and of the Elgin marbles. The Greeks gave one and the same name to the palate and to heaven-Uranus. It is very odd, however, to see how tastes differ in small things as well as in great, and how fierce are the controversies waged round a dinner-plate. He is an outer barbarian who does not agree with us about a leek or a peppercorn, a bit of pig's grease or a little oatmeal. If there were no religious wars to waste us, there would certainly be gastronomical ones; and who knows but there is some hidden law which connects our creed with our food? It has indeed been observed that in the great schism of the Reformation the people who held to the oil-jar and the wine-butt remained faithful to the Pope; while those who drank good ale, and found in the keg of butter a sufficient feast of fatness, nearly all turned Protestant. Philosophers have never adequately explained, and it will probably remain a mystery to the end of time, how it comes that as in religion the wider differences of dogma seldom excite wrath, while the earth is devastated by controversies about the smallest details-the spelling of a diphthong or the lighting of a taper, so in Taste matters of taste we are not put out by great differences, but we wax furious over trifles. That an Eskimo should eat tallow candles; that the Dutch should eat their pickled herring raw; that the astronomer Lalande should enjoy the nutty taste of spiders; that an Australasian savage should stock his larder with his dog and his wife; that widows in the Andaman Islands should have the skulls of their late husbands nicely mounted, wear them dangling from their necks, and use them as an English lady uses her bag, -are matters of taste which do not rouse in us a tenth part of the emotion produced by the suspicion of garlic in a sauce, by the use of a spoon instead of a fork, steel instead of silver. There is a characteristic anecdote told of the Reverend Father de Madot, who towards the end of the seventeenth century was appointed to the bishopric of Belley. When he went to take possession of his see, the people of Belley gave him a dinner. He partook of it with remarkable satisfaction; but more especially seemed to enjoy a fondue of cheese, which gave a glory to the latter end of the feast. What was the surprise of his entertainers to see that the man of God ate it not with a fork but with a spoon! The company looked at each other with astonishment in the corners of their eyes, but they were too polite and reverential to say anything. Next day it was all over the town. "Do you know how the new bishop eats a fondue?" says s one. "Ah! my dear sir," says another, "it is quite true-I had it from an eye-witness-he eats it with a spoon." The tidings were soon wafted over the diocese, shook the minds of the faithful, and imperilled the Church. The impression produced was also a lasting one. A hundred years afterwards Brillat-Savarin (born in that diocese) was told the story by one of his grand-uncles, who was consumed with laughter at the notion of a bishop eating fondue with a spoon. And so this worthy father in God, De Madot, is for ever known in the history of his country not for his good works, his Teal prayers and his blessings-but only for the shocking act of eating fondue with a spoon!
TEAL is surely the most delicate of all the wild waterfowl. For the way to dress him, see the Widgeon and the Wild Duck.
TENCH is of the carp clan, and is a doubtful fish to eatvery good and very bad. He likes to lose himself in mud and impurity, and then he is nasty to the taste. So it happens that the Italians malign him. When he has lived in good circumstances, in clear streams, he is quite another creature. He is done in all the ways prescribed for carp, but he has nearly always to be marinaded before cooking, and after the fire to be overpowered with a decided sauce. Try him as a matelote, or à la poulette. If he is to be grilled, fill him with anchovy butter and fine herbs, and serve him either with a purée of tomatos or with Sauce Robert.
Dr. Badham in his Fishtattle makes a curious remark. "The skin (which from its thickness has procured for the tench in Holland the name of shoemaker) is a first-rate delicacy, and quite equal to turtle." Is this what the learned physician means by tattle?
THUNNY is the most illustrious of the Mediterranean fish, as salmon is the most illustrious of those which haunt our Northern waters. No one who has partaken of both can doubt the superiority of the salmon, not only to the thunny, but to all fish whatsoever. Yet note this as a tribute to the worth of the Mediterranean method of preserving fish in oil: that the tinned thunny which comes to London is much better than the tinned salmon which is preserved in vinegar and brine. The best part of the thunny, and much the best for pickling, is the belly.
Probably, of all the fish in the sea, the thunny grows with the greatest rapidity. In four months from his birth Tomatos he will weigh more than two pounds; and he would be very much more abundant than he is, but that his mother has such an admiration for her eggs that she eats them the moment they become fertilized. Were it not for this infanticide, the basin of the Mediterranean would be too small for the thunny population.
I had almost forgotten to say that the thunny is a British fish-haunting the Cornish coast; but the Cornish fishermen are not clever enough to catch it except by the merest chance. They have not hit upon a bait which will tempt this fish.
TIPSY CAKE is a Savoy Cake, with sherry poured over it, into which the juice of half a lemon has been mixed.