perruque in the dinner, no high spiced sauce,
no dark brown gravy, no flavour of cayenne
and allspice, no tincture of catsup and walnut
pickle, no visible agency of those vulgar
elements of cooking of the good old times, fire and
water. Distillations of the most delicate viands
had been extracted in silver dews with chemical
precision. Every meat presented its own aroma,
every vegetable its own shade of verdure. The
mayonnaise was fried in ice, like Ninon's description
of Sevigné's heart, "une citrouille frite à la
neige." The tempered chill of the Plombière
(which held the place of the eternal fondue and
soufflets of our English tables) anticipated the
stronger shock, and broke it, of the exquisite
Avalanche, which, with the hue and odour of
fresh gathered nectarines, satisfied every sense
and dissipated every coarser flavour. With less
genius than went to the composition of that
dinner men have written epic poems.

Comparing Carême with the great Beauvilliers
of No. 20, Rue Richelieu, the greatest restaurant
cook in Paris from 1782 to 1815, a great
authority on the matter says, rivalling Dr. Johnson's
celebrated parallel, "There was more à
plomb in the touch of Beauvilliers, more curious
felicity in Carême's; Beauvilliers was great in
an entrée, and Carême sublime in an entremet;
we would bet Beauvilliers against the world for
a rôt, but should wish Carême to prepare the
sauce were we under the necessity of eating
an elephant or our grandfather."

Napoleon, who ate whenever he was hungry,
day or night, was a torment to his cook, who
had always to keep cutlets and roast chickens
ready for the sudden and irregular hurricanes
of his appetite. His maître d'hôtel Durand,
however, had been a celebrated cook, and knew
how to meet his master's gusts of temper when
affairs went wrong. One day Napoleon
returned from the Council of State sullen and
moody. He had eaten nothing since
daybreak, events had run counter to his iron will.
A dejéuner à la fourchette was served up.
He had hardly lifted his knife and fork when
in a whirlwind of rage he dashed the table,
plates, dishes, all to the ground, and then
paced the room like a caged tiger. Durand
looked on, calm as a statue, and gave orders
to his staff to remove the débris of china and
meat. In a few minutes more an exact counterpart
of the déjeuner appeared, and Durand
quietly announced it by the customary "Sa
Majesté est servie." Napoleon was softened
by Durand's tact: "Merci bien, mon cher
Durand, merci," he said, with a smile, and sat
down with restored enjoyment.

But a cook of that great gastronome, the
Cardinal Fesch, showed even more adroitness by
his ingenious way of gaining his master a
credit for magnificence and hospitality. His
Eminence had been presented on the morning
of a feast with two turbots of singular size
and beauty. The cardinal was most anxious
to have the credit of both. The chef promised
that, both should appear, that both should
enjoy the reception which was their due. The
dinner came; a turbot entered to relieve the
soup. Two attendants came to carry the turbot
to the carver, but one of them missed his
footing and rolled over the turbot. The cardinal
turned pale, a deep silence prevailed. At
that moment the head cook advanced and said
with grand composure to his retinue, "Bring
in another turbot." The second enormous
turbot was then borne in to the astonishment
and delight of the alarmed guests.

Louis Eustache Ude was one of the most
eccentric of celebrated cooks. He had been
twenty years purveyor to the Earl of Sefton. He
had also been maître d'hôtel to the Duke of York,
who delighted in his anecdotes and his mimicry.
His mother was a milliner, who had married
an underling in the kitchen of Louis the Sixteenth.
He ran away from home, and became
alternately a jeweller, an engraver, a printer,
a haberdasher, a commercial traveller, an
actor, and an agent on 'Change. He was
then two years cook to Madame Letitia Bonaparte,
and on leaving her became chef to the
Earl of Sefton, at a salary of three hundred
pounds per annum, eventually receiving a
pension of one hundred pounds a year from
the liberal nobleman. In his work on cooking,
Ude announced himself as the only person
who had ever written with accuracy on the
great art.

Colonel Darner one day found Ude walking up
and down at Crockford's in a great rage, and
asked what was the matter.

"Matter, ma foi; you saw that man just
gone out? Well, he ordered red mullet for
his dinner. I made him a delicious little
sauce with my own hands. The mullet was
marked on the carte two shillings; I added
sixpence for the sauce. He refuses to pay the
sixpence. The imbecile: he seems to think
that red mullets come out of the sea with my
sauce in their pockets."

Ude was succeeded at Crockford's by the
accomplished Francatelli, who alternately had been
chef at Chesterfield House, at Lord Kinnaird's,
and at the Melton Club. The Earl of Errol
then obtained him the post of maître d'hôtel
to our amiable Queen, but at the end of two
years he was displaced by some household
cabal.

Let us close with a solemn advice to all true
Amphitryons. The man who wishes to make
his table famous must make a friend of his
French cook. He must watch over his health
with untiring and tender vigilance. A physician
should be called in the moment a cloud rises on
the brow of the man of mind. The profession
of a cook is one of fatigue and of danger, and
we must honour those who undergo these
dangers; for money alone can never recompense
them. The acrid vapours of the stoves undermine
in time even the most robust constitution;
the fury and glare of the fire are injurious to the
lungs, the liver, and the eyes; the smoke hurts
the vision and injures the complexion. The
professed cook lives in the midst of dangers
as a soldier lives amid storms of shot or