CHAPTER XIX.
_Success in Entertaining--The Art of Dinner-giving--Selection of
Guests--A happy Mixture of Young Women and Dowagers--The latter
more Appreciative of the Good Things--Interviewing the Chef--“Uncle
Sam” Ward’s Plan--Mock Turtle Soup a Delusion and a Snare--The Two
Styles of cooking Terrapin--Grasshopper-fed Turkeys--Sourbet should
not be flavored with Rum--Nesselrode the best of all the Ices._
“We may live without love,--what is passion but pining?
But where is the man who can live without dining?”--
Owen Meredith.
The first object to be aimed at is to make your dinners so charming and
agreeable that invitations to them are eagerly sought for, and to let
all feel that it is a great privilege to dine at your house, where they
are sure they will meet only those whom they wish to meet. You cannot
instruct people by a book how to entertain, though Aristotle is said to
have applied _his_ talents to a compilation of a code of laws for the
table. Success in entertaining is accomplished by magnetism and tact,
which combined constitute social genius. It is the ladder to social
success. If successfully done, it naturally creates jealousy. I have
known a family who for years outdid every one in giving exquisite
dinners--(this was when this city was a small community)--driven to
Europe and passing the rest of their days there on finding a neighbor
outdoing them. I myself once lost a charming friend by giving a better
soup than he did. His wife rushed home from my house, and in despair,
throwing up her hands to her husband, exclaimed, “Oh! what a soup!” I
related this to my cousin, the distinguished _gourmet_, who laughingly
said: “Why did you not at once invite them to pork and beans?”
The highest cultivation in social manners enables a person to conceal
from the world his real feelings. He can go through any annoyance as if
it were a pleasure; go to a rival’s house as if to a dear friend’s;
“Smile and smile, yet murder while he smiles.” A great compliment once
paid me in Newport was the speech of an old public waiter, who had grown
gray in the service, when to a _confrère_ he exclaimed: “In this house,
my friend, you meet none but quality.”
In planning a dinner the question is not to whom you owe dinners, but
who is most desirable. The success of the dinner depends as much upon
the company as the cook. Discordant elements--people invited
alphabetically, or to pay off debts--are fatal. Of course, I speak of
ladies’ dinners. And here, great tact must be used in bringing together
young womanhood and the dowagers. A dinner wholly made up of young
people is generally stupid. You require the experienced woman of the
world, who has at her fingers’ ends the history of past, present, and
future. Critical, scandalous, with keen and ready wit, appreciating the
dinner and wine at their worth. Ladies in beautiful toilets are
necessary to the elegance of a dinner, as a most exquisitely arranged
table is only a solemn affair surrounded by black coats. I make it a
rule never to attend such dismal feasts, listening to prepared
witticisms and “twice-told tales.” So much for your guests.
The next step is an interview with your _chef_, if you have one, or
_cordon bleu_, whom you must arouse to fever heat by working on his
ambition and vanity. You must impress upon him that this particular
dinner will give him fame and lead to fortune. My distinguished cousin,
who enjoyed the reputation of being one of the most finished _gourmets_
in this country, when he reached this point, would bury his head in his
hands and (seemingly to the _chef_) rack his brain seeking inspiration,
fearing lest the fatal mistake should occur of letting two white or
brown sauces follow each other in succession; or truffles appear twice
in that dinner. The distress that his countenance wore as he repeatedly
looked up at the _chef_, as if for advice and assistance, would have its
intended effect on the culinary artist, and _his_ brain would at once
act in sympathy.
The first battle is over the soup, and here there is a vast difference
of opinion. In this country, where our servants are oftentimes
unskilled, and have a charming habit of occasionally giving ladies a
soup shower bath, I invariably discard two soups, and insist to the
protesting _chef_ that there shall be but one. Of course, if there are
two, the one is light, the other heavy. Fortunately for the period in
which we live, our great French artists have invented the _Tortue
claire_; which takes the place of our forefathers’ Mock Turtle soup,
with forcemeat balls, well spiced, requiring an ostrich’s digestion to
survive it. We have this, then, as our soup. The _chef_ here exclaims,
“Monsieur must know that all _petites bouchées_ must, of necessity, be
made of chicken.” We ask for a novelty, and his great genius suggests,
under pressure, _mousse aux jambon_, which is attractive to the eye,
and, if well made, at once establishes the reputation of the artist,
satisfies the guests that they are in able hands, and allays their fears
for their dinner.
There is but one season of the year when salmon should be served hot at
a choice repast; that is in the spring and early summer, and even then
it is too satisfying, not sufficiently delicate. The man who gives
salmon during the winter, I care not what sauce he serves with it, does
an injury to himself and his guests. Terrapin is with us as national a
dish as canvasback, and at the choicest dinners is often a substitute
for fish. It is a shellfish, and an admirable change from the oft
repeated _filet de sole_ or _filet de bass_. At the South, terrapin
soup, with plenty of eggs in it, was a dish for the gods, and a standard
dinner party dish in days when a Charleston and Savannah dinner was an
event to live for. But no Frenchman ever made this soup. It requires
the native born culinary genius of the African.
Now when we mention the word terrapin, we approach a very delicate
subject, involving a rivalry between two great cities; a subject that
has been agitated for thirty years or more, and is still agitated, i.e.
the proper way of cooking terrapin. The Baltimoreans contending that the
black stew, the chafing dish system, simply adding to the terrapin salt,
pepper, and Madeira, produce the best dish; while the Philadelphians
contend that by fresh butter and cream they secure greater results. The
one is known as the Baltimore black stew; the other, as the Trenton
stew, this manner of cooking terrapin originating in an old eating club
in Trenton, N. J. I must say I agree with the Philadelphians.
And now, leaving the fish, we come to the _pièce de resistance_ of the
dinner, called the _relévé_. No Frenchman will ever willingly cook a
ladies’ dinner and give anything coarser or heavier than a _filet de
bœuf_. He will do it, if he has to, of course, but he will think you
a barbarian if you order him to do it. I eschew the mushroom and confine
myself to the truffle in the treatment of the _filet_. I oftentimes have
a _filet à la mœlle de bœuf_, or _à la jardinière_. In the fall of
the year, turkey _poults à la Bordelaise_, or _à la Toulouse_, or a
saddle of Southdown mutton or lamb, are a good substitute. Let me here
say that the American turkey, as found on Newport Island, all its
feathers being jet black and its diet grasshoppers, is exceptionally
fine.
Now for the _entrées_. In a dinner of twelve or fourteen, one or two hot
_entrées_ and one cold is sufficient. If you use the truffle with the
_filet_, making a black sauce, you must follow it with a white sauce, as
a _riz de veau à la Toulouse_, or a _suprême de volaille_; then a
_chaud-froid_, say of _pâté de foie gras en Bellevue_, which simply
means _pâté de foie gras_ incased in jelly. Then a hot vegetable, as
artichokes, sauce _Barigoule_, or _Italienne_, or asparagus, sauce
_Hollandaise_. Then your _sorbet_, known in France as _la surprise_, as
it is an ice, and produces on the mind the effect that the dinner is
finished, when the grandest dish of the dinner makes its appearance in
the shape of the roast canvasbacks, woodcock, snipe, or truffled capons,
with salad.
I must be permitted a few words of and about this _sorbet_. It should
never be flavored with rum. A true Parisian _sorbet_ is simply “_punch à
la Toscane_,” flavored with _Maraschino_ or bitter almonds; in other
words, a homœopathic dose of prussic acid. Then the _sorbet_ is a
digestive, and is intended as such. _Granit_, or water ice, flavored
with rum, is universally given here. Instead of aiding digestion, it
impedes it, and may be dangerous.
A Russian salad is a pleasing novelty at times, and is more attractive
if it comes in the shape of a _Macedoine de legumes_, Camembert cheese,
with a biscuit, with which you serve your Burgundy, your old Port, or
your Johannisberg, the only place in the dinner where you can introduce
this latter wine. A genuine Johannisberg, I may say here, by way of
parenthesis, is rare in this country, for if obtained at the Chateau, it
is comparatively a dry wine; if it is, as I have often seen it, still
lusciously sweet after having been here twenty years or more, you may be
sure it is not a genuine Chateau wine.
The French always give a hot pudding, as pudding _suedoise_, or a
_croute au Madère_, or _ananas_, but I always omit this dish to shorten
the dinner. Then come your ices. The fashion now is to make them very
ornamental, a _cornucopia_ for instance, but I prefer a _pouding
Nesselrode_, the best of all the ices if good cream is used.
MADEIRAS.