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The Seventh Day
"It seems invidious to give special praise where everything is so good," said Mrs. Sinclair next day at lunch, "but I must say a word about that clear soup we had at dinner last night. I have never ceased to regret that my regard for manners forbade me ask for a second helping." "See what it is to have no manners," said Van der Roet. "I plunged boldly for another portion of that admirable preparation of calf's head at dinner. If I hadn't, I should have regretted it for ever after. Now, I'm sure you are just as curious about the construction of these masterpieces as I am, Mrs. Sinclair, so we'll beg the Marchesa to let us into the secret." "Mrs. Sinclair herself had a hand in the calf'shead dish, 'Testa di Vitello alla sorrentina,' so perhaps I may hand over that part of the question to her. I am very proud that one of my pupils should have won praise from such a distinguished expert as Mr. Van der Roet, and I leave her to expound the mystery of its charm.
I think I may without presumption claim the clear soup as a triumph, and it is a discovery of my own. The same calf's head which Mrs.
Sinclair has treated with such consummate skill, served also as the foundation for the stock of the clear soup. This stock certainly derived its distinction from the addition of the liquor in which the head was boiled. A good consommé can no doubt be made with stock-meat alone, but the best soup thus made will be inferior to that we had for dinner last night. Without the calf's head you will never get such softness, combined with full roundness on the tongue, and the great merit of calf's head is that it lets you attain this excellence without any sacrifice of transparency." "I have marvelled often at the clearness of "What your soups, Marchesa," said the Colonel. clearing do you use to make them look like pale sherry?" "No one has any claim to be called a cook who cannot make soup without artificial clearing," said the Marchesa. "Like the poet, the consommé is born, not made. It must be clear from the beginning, an achievement which needs care and trouble like every other artistic effort, but one nevertheless well within the reach of any student who means to succeed. To clear a soup by the ordinary medium of white of egg or minced beef is to destroy all flavour and individuality.
If the stock be kept from boiling until it has been strained, it will develop into a perfectly clear soup under the hands of a careful and intelligent cook.
The fleeting delicate aroma which, as every gourmet will admit, gives such grateful aid to the palate, is the breath of garden herbs and of herbs alone, and here I have a charge to bring against contemporary cookery. I mean the neglect of natural in favour of manufactured flavourings.