Vegetables
There are no finer vegetables to be found anywhere than in England; and the English do not know how to eat them. The weak point of an English dinner is always the vegetables. Some persons might fix upon the made dishes as most wanting-but this would be wrong, seeing that we could have a very good dinner without a single made dish. As far as animal food can go, there are some dinners quite perfect, with a good soup, a little plainboiled fish, and roast meat or game-but the dinner fails because the vegetables are at fault. There are some good remarks on this matter in the Original (see No. xix.). “I have observed," says Walker, "that whenever the vegetables are distinguished for their excellence, the dinner is always particularly enjoyed; and if they were served with each dish, as they are most appropriate and fresh from the dressing, it would be a great improvement on the present style. With some meats something of the kind is practised-as peas with duck, and beans with bacon-and such combinations are generally favourites; but the system might be much extended, and with great advantage. With respect to variety of vegetables, I think the same rule applies as to other dishes. I would not have many sorts on the same occasion, but would study appropriateness and particular excellence. This is a matter for study and combination, and a field for genius. It is a reasonable object for attention, as it is conducive to real enjoyment, and has nothing to do with mere display." This is very true; and to the eye of the initiated nothing can be more ridiculous than to see an English dinner-plate heaped up with a confusion of vegetables, none of them too well dressed except the potato-which is always present, and generally good. Do those English worthies who cannot now eat a morsel Vegetables of food unless accompanied with a potato ever try to imagine what dinners were two centuries ago, when potatoes were as rare as truffles?
The great sin, however, of the English treatment of vegetables goes much deeper than Walker indicates; and it is a moral fault, as well as one of taste-a great social wrong, as well as a gastronomical blunder. Take the general run of English tables, putting out of account the very poor and the highly refined: from year's end to year's end one will probably never on a single day see there a vegetable dish to be eaten by itself alone. This is a political error; for there is many a poor man obliged most days to dine on vegetables with nothing else; and our sleek middle-classes protest every day of their lives against this fare for themselves-they will never condescend to eat a vegetable by itself. A fine example for their servants, who are taken from the poorer classes; and a fine thought for the peasantry to know that not only will their masters refuse a vegetable dinner-but also they will never look at a vegetable as a thing to be eaten by itself! Scorn of the peasants' food is all the more remarkable inasmuch as a vegetable dish may be the greatest delicacy of the table. This is one of the advantages which the Catholic religion has contrived for the French: it has compelled them to make the best of Lenten fare. In England this is flat popery; but it is a species of popery to which the poor man is obliged to submit, and to which we ought all to be converted. At a French table the vegetable dish at the end of dinner is as much coveted and counted on as the pudding and the tarts are by children at an English table. Almost the only vegetable which Englishmen eat by itself is the artichoke, and this entirely because it cannot be put on their plates with meat and eaten with a forkthey have to strip it with their fingers. There is something in asparagus, too, which conduces to the same arrangement; but if, by possibility, an Englishman can get the asparagus Vegetable Marrow on the same plate with his meat, depend upon it he will. He is not going to eat vegetables alone-not he!
Take this for a certainty: the greatest single step in advance for the English family dinner is to decree that regularly every day, either in addition to the pudding or in lieu of it, there shall be a dish of vegetables nicely prepared. It is not a difficult thing to do; and there is an immense choice from the range of salads to asparagus, artichokes, potatoes, cauliflowers, sprouts, peas, kidney beans, vegetable marrows, and thence again to rice and Indian corn. Let the cook stick to her broils and her roasts she probably cannot in the way of meat do better; but let her superadd to her small modicum of accomplishments the very simple craft of cooking vegetables in such a manner that with their own fine flavour they can be eaten by themselves. This is a very little thing to ask for but the results will be found to be immense.
VEGETABLE MARROW is little more than fifty years old in England-not appearing in the market before 1819. It came from Persia, where the gourds are in perfection; but no one seems to know who brought us the seeds.
Whoever brought them made a noble gift to his country. Of all the gourds in Europe the latest known, it is in England the most cultivated. It is, indeed, more prized in England than in any other European country, and can be obtained so cheaply that it is in great favour with the poor as well as with the rich, It is a watery vegetable without much nutriment, but it has a fine mellow flavour; and at the end of dinner, when we want something light to play with, its juicy slices make a delicious entremet. The simplest way of preparing it is the best. Boil it, divide it lengthwise, remove the pips, and serve it with the English butter sauce.
Soup for the Shah. - It is to be hoped that the land of vegetable marrows sometimes makes a dish of them for the Velvet-down Shah en Shah-king of kings. Take some clear broth; mix with it a mash of the vegetable marrow; strew upon it fried crusts, with a few peas or asparagus points, to represent the emeralds and topazes which the Persians love: and there is a soup fit for the Shah himself.