The Quiet Corner
/ counsel thee, shut not thy heart nor thy library.—C. LAMB. "There should be a culinary geography," remarked Doctor Angelicus, putting down Sophie Kerr Underwood's new book of short stories,...
...Russian soups, especially their generous bowls of Borscht, have been known to delight me...
...Then it is that my stomach functions naturally: the parties are forgotten...
...Let nobody object to me that there are no more clams dug at Blue Stone or Little Neck, that the Idaho potatoes come from an earth not quite so distant, that the lobsters for which Sheepshead Bay and the Chesapeake were famous come now by midnight express from Maine...
...The Madeira, the pork rissoles and hot sausages: the pink Burgundy and Chablis...
...Scandinavian fish can tempt even my Catholic stomach on other evenings than Friday, and the cream sauces on the meats and sweets receive royal homage at my hands...
...THE LIBRARIAN...
...friends, who raise their eyes in horror when I confront a substantial cutting of my favorite blackberry pie, are of a different breed than myself, when I register my sensations at seeing them devour their half-dozen meat balls and the variegated cold fish sandwiches with which their hunger is appeased...
...It was a philosophy, it was a symphony, such as recalled Plato and Pericles: wq should have been in white chitons to approach such a board, not in mere black broadcloth...
...and the Greek and Syrian pilaffs have a savor that invites me to risk their heavy encounters with my gastric juices...
...Races should be classified, not according to their color or cheekbones or bow-legs, but according to their stomach capacities...
...Now, I am convinced that my Swedish...
...As for Italy, I am a weak brother before the minestrone and the coteleta Parmigiana...
...Let me have no pictures save the natural glow of the edibles, no music save the hiss of the fire, no choral or rhythmic dancing about the dishes—^but just the smiling, healthy service, the plain ritual of the true sibyl of the temple— "Gone are the homes where we dined before— On the shoat and cabbage of Baltimore...
...Ah, you refer to the supper at the Crillon...
...For the French, I have nothing but compliments and appreciations...
...The food of today is Italian and Yiddish, We sigh for the feasts that were Yankee and Biddish— The tables d'hote that we knew of yore...
...You will see that there is more bearing to these remarks, my dear Britannicus, when you consider the care which Mrs...
...Here in our city, where restaurants, French, German, Scandinavian, Russian, Greek, and Italian shoulder one another, the lesson of these racial divergences comes back to the diners— particularly on the morning after...
...I ask for no hot tomales, rinones or deadly Spanish or Mexican dulces...
...That she is a lady of taste as well as palate is well illustrated in her book...
...the noble James River shad baked so slowly that all the smaller bones had been dissolved...
...for the German pancakes and schnitzels, I need a cool evening and a comfortable old companion...
...then the Pol Rogers, and the eels with crayfish sauce followed by the Chateau Cheval Blanc, the salad and the coffee and liqueurs: then the dessert, the cheese, nuts and sugared marrons, the Dry Monopol and the fruits...
...But when all is said, done and digested, I revert with a natural slope to the dishes of our old Mary—the roast beef and mutton chops, the baked potatoes and colcannon that take on an Olympian flavor under the fingers of our Irish cordonbleu...
...Yes, it was art suchj as would have aroused the commendation of the great gastronome himself...
...Days of my youth, so vanished before our cafeterias and automats...
...Let us dream of faraway Kennebec, as we savor our salmon...
...race and tradition put me apart from the alien arts of culinary geniuses of Europe, Asia and Africa...
...the hot beaten biscuit and the 'superb proud lemon pie, all quivering gold below a flaky crust and the rich flavorous meringue above.' Rather gluttonous, I should say, for a man over forty...
...let us ask not in what wilds our venison steaks have been developed, nor where the golden pheasant spread its luscious wings and legs before the paper pantalettes were decked upon them...
...Underwood devotes to the menus given lavishly in the pages of her Confetti...
...May I interrupt you, at this moment, Doctor, to inquire whether you have changed your mind regarding that supper in honor of Brillat-Savarin, about which you were so enthusiastic last month ?" There was a bit of irony in| the voice of Britannicus, which the Doctor seemed not to notice...
...Then her other evening with canapes of herring roe and Spanish anchovy, real Virginia home-cured ham, boiled, skinned, baked and 'basted with grape vinegar until its fagade was a crisp and glistening brown, palest ecru to deepest Van Dyck.' The orgy —for a veritable chop-house orgy it proves to be—continues in an agglomeration of fig compotes, patties of shrimps, lobsters and oysters, grated cucumber, roast duckling, 'cream reclaimed from insipidity [what terrible American heresy is this ?] by a dash of bitter almond,' and as we might know was inevitable—' black walnut spice cakes with chocolate icing, and as a final finishing touch, a drop of attar of rose in each cup of steaming black coffee, turning it from a mere drink into an Oriental splendor.' "Such are the| ways of a novelist, full of pictures, adjectives, thrills and idle sentiments, approaching the kitchen shrine, the range, before which all the seven arts save those of the stomach should be put aside, and extraneous and irreverent to a votary of such an altar...
...that she carries on the Maryland traditions in cooking is also evident, although here and there I detect passages that indicate some study of the Dainty Luncheon Department of the Ladies' Home Journal, as in this compelling outlay of halves of grapefruit, the centres filled with white grapes, flecked over with sugar dissolved in Swedish punch...
...There should be a culinary geography," remarked Doctor Angelicus, putting down Sophie Kerr Underwood's new book of short stories, Confetti, after reading the Greedy section...
...Where are the tables d'hote of yore...
Vol. 6 • June 1927 • No. 8
