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Part II
The second half of this little book is composed chiefly of recipes for dishes that can be made in haste, and by the inexperienced cook. But such cook can hardly pay too much attention to details if she does not wish to revert to an early, not to say feral type of cuisine, where the roots were eaten raw while the meat was burnt. Because your dining-room furniture is Early English, there is no reason why the cooking should be early English too. And it certainly will be, unless one takes great trouble with detail. Let us suppose that at 7.30 P. M. your husband telephones that he is bringing a friend to dine at 8. Let us suppose an even more rash act. He arrives at 7.15, he brings a friend: you perceive the unexpressed corollary that the dinner must be better than usual. In such a moment of poignant surprise, let fly your best smile (the kind that is practiced by bachelors' widows) and say "I am delighted you have come like this; do you mind eight or a quarter past for dinner?" Then melt away to the cook with this very book in your hand. I take it that you consider her to be the junior partner in the household, you, of course, being the senior, and your husband the sleeping partner in it. Ask what there is in the house for an extra dish, and I wager you the whole solar system to a burnt match that you will find in these pages the very recipe that fits the case. A piece of cold veal, viewed with an eye to futurity, resolves itself into a white creamy delightfulness that melts in your mouth; a new-laid egg, maybe, poached on the top, and all set in a china shell. If you have no meat at all, you must simply hoodwink your friends with the fish and vegetables.
You know the story of the great Frenchwoman: "Helas, Annette, I have some gentlemen coming to dine, and we have no meat in the house. What to do?" "Ah! Madame, I will cook at my best; and if Madame will talk at her best, they will never notice there is anything wrong."
But for the present day, I would recommend rather that the gentlemen be beguiled into doing the talking themselves, if any shortcoming in the menu is to be concealed from them, for then their attention will be engaged. It takes away from the made-in-a-hurry look of a dish if it is decorated, and there are plenty of motifs in that way besides parsley. One can use beetroot, radishes, carrots cut in dice, minced pickles, sieved egg; and for sweets, besides the usual preserved cherries and angelica, you can have strips of lemon peel, almonds pointed or chopped, stoned prunes cut in halves, wild strawberries, portions of tangerine orange. There is a saying, Polish the shoe, Though the sole be through, and a very simple chocolate shape may be made attractive by being garnished with a cluster of pointed almonds in the center, surrounded by a ring of tangerine pieces, well skinned and laid like tiny crescents one after the other. There is nothing so small and insignificant but has great possibilities. Did not Darwin raise eighty seedlings from a single clod of earth taken from a bird's foot?
It is to be regretted that Samuel Johnson never wrote the manual that he contemplated. "Sir," he said, "I could write a better book of cookery than has ever yet been written. It should be a book on philosophical principles." Perhaps the pies of Fleet Street reminded him of the Black Broth of the Spartans which the well-fed Dionysius found excessively nasty; the tyrant was curtly told that it was nothing indeed without the seasoning of fatigue and hunger. We do not wish a meal to owe its relish solely to the influence of extreme hunger -- it must have a beautiful nature all its own, it must exhibit the idea of Thing-in-Itself in an easily assimilable form. I am convinced, anyhow, that this little collection (formed through the kindness of our Belgian friends) will work miracles; for there are plenty of miracles worked nowadays, though not by those romantic souls who think that things come by themselves. Good dinners certainly do not, and I end with this couplet:
A douce woman and a fu' wame Maks King and cottar bide at hame. Which, being interpreted, means that if you want a man to stay at home, you must agree with him and so must his dinner.
— M. Luck
Hors d'CEuvre (Herring and Mayonnaise) Take some salt herrings, one for each person, and soak them for a day in water. Skin them, cut them open lengthways, take out the backbone, and put them to soak for a day in vinegar. Then before serving them, let them lie for a few minutes in milk, and, putting them on a dish, pour over them a good mayonnaise sauce.
The essay is period padding; the working recipe is the four-line herring hors d'oeuvre at the end. It is a soaking schedule rather than a cooking one, and the timings assume a barrel-salted fish far saltier than most of what is sold today.
- The hinge: taste before you commit to the scheduleA full day in water was right for hard, dry, barrel-cured herring. Modern salt herring and matjes fillets are much more lightly cured; a few hours in cold water, in the refrigerator, changing the water once or twice, is usually enough. Taste a corner before moving on to the vinegar.
- Buy the right fishYou want salt-cured herring, sold in brine or vacuum packs at Northern European and Jewish delis, not fresh herring and not the sweet-pickled jarred kind already sitting in vinegar. If you can find only fresh herring, this recipe does not apply to it.
- ParasitesSalt curing and vinegar do not reliably kill herring worm in lightly cured fish. Commercially cured salt herring is normally either frozen or cured strongly enough to deal with parasites, but this is not guaranteed by the label: ask the supplier, or freeze the fish yourself before soaking.
- Boning"Take out the backbone" is easier from the belly side with the fish opened flat. Run a thumb down the spine to lift it, then feel along the fillet for the row of fine pin bones and pull them out with the tip of a knife; they are soft after soaking but still noticeable.
- The vinegar dayPlain white wine or cider vinegar, diluted about half with water, is gentler than modern 5 to 6 per cent distilled vinegar used neat, which will bleach and toughen the flesh over 24 hours. Refrigerate, and count hours rather than a rigid full day.
- Why the milkThe final few minutes in milk is not decoration; it pulls out residual salt and acid sharpness and softens the flesh. Drain and blot the fillets dry, or the milk will thin the mayonnaise on the dish.
- The mayonnaise"A good mayonnaise" here means made by hand with raw yolk. If it is going to sit on a cold plate for any length of time, or be served to anyone vulnerable, use pasteurised eggs. Thin it slightly with a spoonful of vinegar so it coats rather than sits in a mound.
- Yield and serviceOne herring per person, as stated, gives two fillets each; serve cold as a first course with rye bread and butter. The garnish list a few paragraphs earlier -- diced beetroot, sieved egg, minced pickle, diced carrot -- is offered for hurried dishes in general and would suit this one.
The passage is the hinge of the book, written during the First World War when Belgian refugees were being housed across Britain and their recipes collected and published: the second half is aimed at the Englishwoman running a household with a cook, which is why it opens with a husband telephoning at half past seven. The herring that follows is not Belgian in any exclusive sense but North Sea in the broadest one; salt herring was the cheap protein of the Low Countries for centuries, cured at sea or on shore and traded inland in barrels, and the long freshening in water, then vinegar, then milk is a standard domestic method for turning a preserved fish back into something edible at table. Serving it under mayonnaise rather than with onion and oil suits the French-influenced Belgian kitchen of the period. The Johnson quotation about a cookery book on philosophical principles is recorded by Boswell.