Choice Cuts

by Mark Kurlansky

  It is usual for coffee made with water, and served after a meal, to be accompanied by a small pitcher of milk which has not been boiled, or cream. This can then be added to the coffee if one likes it this way.

  —from Le Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine, 1873,

  translated from the French by Alan and Jane Davidson

  SARAH JOSEPHA HALE ON DRINKING

  What shall we drink?—why, water—that is a safe drink for all constitutions and all ages,—provided persons only use it when they are naturally thirsty. But do not drink heartily of cold water when heated or greatly fatigued. A cup of warm tea will better allay the thirst, and give a feeling of comfort to the stomach, which water will not.

  Toast and water, common beer, soda water, and other liquids of a similar kind, if they agree with the stomach, may be used freely without danger.

  Fermented liquors, such as porter, ale, and wine, if used at all as a drink, should be very sparingly taken.

  Distilled spirituous liquors should never be considered drinkable—they may be necessary, sometimes, as a medicine, but never, never consider them a necessary item in house-keeping. So important does it appear to me to dispense entirely with distilled spirits, as an article of domestic use, that I have not allowed a drop to enter into any of the recipes contained in this book.

  As the primary effect of fermented liquors, cider, wine, &c., is to stimulate the nervous system, and quicken the circulation, these should be utterly prohibited to children and persons of a quick temperament. In truth, unless prescribed by the physician, it would be best to abstain entirely from their use.

  Most people drink too much, because they drink too fast. A wineglass of water, sipped slowly, will quench the thirst as effectually as a pint swallowed at a draught. When too much is taken at meals, especially at dinner, it hinders digestion. Better drink little during the meal, and then, if thirsty an hour or two afterwards, more. The practice of taking a cup of tea or coffee soon after dinner is a good one, if the beverage be not drank too strong or too hot.

  —from The Good Housekeeper, 1841

  ALEXIS SOYER ON SODA WATER

  “Do you know, Monsieur, that our horses have not had a drop of water today?”

  “Colonel,” said I, “I am not at all surprised at that; and more, you must put up with it.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Simply because you can’t get it, unless you like to do as I did yesterday—give them soda-water.”

  “Do you mean to say there is no water at all in this grand vessel?”

  “None, except soda-water.”

  “Eh bien,” said another, “give de soda-water alors.”

  “What, for the horses?”

  “Oui, for the chevals!”

  “Here, my man,” said I to one of the crew, “tell the steward to bring a dozen of soda-water for the colonel’s horse. Mind, colonel, it costs a shilling a bottle; but, as you are a good customer, and take a dozen, no doubt he will let you have it cheaper.”

  “I will not pay a sou for this bubbling water. I know what you mean. It fizzes like champagne, but it is not good to drink. The horses will never touch it. I thought it was spring-water that you called soda-water.”

  At all events, the soda-water was brought, to the great annoyance of the colonel, who thought he should have to pay for it; but I sent for some sherry and a few glasses, and we drank a bottle or two, instead of giving it to the horses, to the great gratification of the colonel, who, after partaking of it, said he liked it much better with sherry than brandy. About twenty banabaks soon after arrived with water in skins and leathern horse-buckets. The horses were properly watered; and thus ended the Sardinian revolt in the harbour of Balaklava, on the 14th of May, in the year 1855, beneath the ruins of the Genoese Tower and fortifications built by their ancestors.

  —from A Culinary Campaign, 1857

  BRILLAT-SAVARIN ON WATER

  Water is the only liquid which truly appeases thirst, and it is for this reason that only a small quantity of it is drunk. The main body of other liquids which man consumes are no more than palliatives, and if he were limited to water, it would never have been said of him that one of his privileges was to drink without being thirsty.

  —from The Physiology of Taste, 1825,

  translated from the French by M.F.K. Fisher

  ALEXANDRE DUMAS PÈRE ON WATER

  Unique among the legions of self-declared French gourmets, Dumas never in his life drank a glass of wine.

  —M.K.

  People who habitually drink water become just as good gourmets about water as wine drinkers about wine.

  For fifty or sixty years of my life, I have drunk only water, and no lover of wine has ever felt the same delight in some Grand-Laffite or Chambertin as I have in a glass of cool spring water whose purity has not been tainted by any earthy salts.

  Very cold water, even when it has been artificially cooled with ice, acts as an excellent tonic to the stomach, without provoking any irritation and indeed calming any which might already have existed.

  But this is not the case with water coming from melted snow or ice, which are heavy because they contain no air. Stir these waters well before drinking, and they will lose their injurious qualities.

  Formerly all of Paris slaked its thirst from the river which traverses it. Nowadays the water comes from Grenelle; pipes bring it to the mountain of Sainte-Geneviève, whence it is distributed throughout Paris. For the last five or six years, water from the Dhuys has been competing with this; it comes from the other side, that is to say from Belleville, Montmartre and the Buttes Chaumont.

  The water from the Seine was the object of so many calumnies for such a long time, particularly by people from the provinces coming to pass a few days in Paris, that it grew weary of slaking the thirst of two million ungrateful persons. But when the waters of the Seine were well purified and when it was drawn from above the zoological gardens, and from the middle of the stream, no other water was comparable to it for limpidity, lightness and sapidity. Above all, it was abundantly saturated with oxygen, having been turned over and over by the multiple meanderings which, over a distance of nearly two hundred leagues (eight hundred kilometres), subjected it to the action of the atmosphere’s air. Moreover, it flows along a bed of sand all the way from its source until it reaches Paris. Gourmands attribute to this circumstance the superior quality of fish from the Seine to those from other rivers.

  Everyone knows that monks have never really liked water very much; here is one more incident which proves their antipathy for this ‘dreary liquid.’ A Franciscan friar used to visit a bishop’s kitchen fairly assiduously, the latter having told his people to look after the good brother. One day, when the prelate was holding a big dinner, the monk happened to be at the bishopric. The monseigneur was talking about the holy man, and recommending him to the assembled company. Right away, several of the ladies exclaimed;

  ‘Monseigneur, you must amuse us by playing a trick on the monk. Summon him, and we will give him a beautiful glass of clear water which we will present to him as a glass of excellent white wine.’

  ‘But you’re not seriously thinking of such a thing, ladies!’ said the bishop.

  ‘Oh, but it would amuse us, let us do it, Monseigneur.’

  So they summoned a manservant, and had him prepare a bottle of water on the spot. This was fastened up properly, and correctly labelled. Then they had the mendicant friar summoned.

  ‘Brother,’ said the ladies, ‘you must drink to the health of his Grace and to ours.’

  The monk was congratulating himself on his good fortune, and prepared himself to receive it well. The bottle was uncorked and a bumper drink was poured out. However, the crafty monk, who immediately saw through the deceit, did not lose his head at all, and said in the most woeful and humble tone to the bishop: ‘Monseigneur, I will not drink as you have not given your holy blessing to this nectar.’

  ‘This is quite unnecessary, my brother.’

&
nbsp; ‘But in the name of all the saints of Paradise, I implore you to do so, Monseigneur.’

  The ladies joined in the discussion, and implored the prelate to have the good nature to do this for them. The bishop finally bowed to their wishes, and blessed the water. The Franciscan then called a lackey and said to him, smiling: ‘Champagne, take that into the church, a Franciscan has never drunk holy water.’

  He was really quite right, wasn’t he?

  —from Le Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine, 1873,

  translated from the French by Alan and Jane Davidson

  THE TALMUD ON THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF WINE

  There are eight things that taken in large quantities are bad but in small quantities are helpful:

  Travel, sex, wealth, work, wine, sleep, hot baths and bloodletting.

  —from the Babylonian Talmud, A.D. 500

  MAIMONIDES ON THE BENEFITS OF WINE

  Moses Maimonides (1136–1204) was born in Spain but lived in Egypt. He was not only a leading doctor but one of the most respected Jewish philosophers of all time.

  —M.K.

  The benefits of wine are many if it is taken in the proper amount, as it keeps the body in a healthy condition and cures many illnesses.

  But the knowledge of its consumption is hidden from the masses. What they want is to get drunk, and inebriety causes harm.…

  The small amount that is useful must be taken after the food leaves the stomach. Young children should not come close to it because it hurts them and causes harm to their body and soul.…

  The older a man is, the more beneficial the wine is for him. Old people need it most.

  —from The Preservation of Youth, twelfth century

  A. J. LIEBLING ON ROSÉ WINE

  In 1926, there were in all France only two well-known wines that were neither red nor white. One was Tavel, and the other Arbois, from the Jura—and Arbois is not a rose-colored but an “onion-peel” wine, with russet and purple glints. In the late thirties, the rosés began to proliferate in wine regions where they had never been known before, as growers discovered how marketable they were, and to this day they continue to pop up like measles on the wine map. Most often rosés are made from red wine grapes, but the process is abbreviated by removing the liquid prematurely from contact with the grape skins. This saves time and trouble. The product is a semi-aborted red wine. Any normally white wine can be converted into a rosé simply by adding a dosage of red wine or cochineal.

  In 1926 and 1927, for example, I never heard of Anjou rosé wine, although I read wine cards every day and spent a week of purposeful drinking in Angers, a glorious white-wine city. Alsace is another famous white-wine country that now lends its name to countless cases of a pinkish cross between No-Cal and vinegar; if, in 1926, I had crossed the sacred threshold of Valentin Sorg’s restaurant in Strasbourg and asked the sommelier for a rosé d’Alsace, he would have, quite properly, kicked me into Germany. The list is endless now; flipping the coated-paper pages of any dealer’s brochure, you see rosés from Bordeaux, Burgundy, all the South of France, California, Chile, Algeria, and heaven knows where else. Pink champagne, colored by the same procedure, has existed for a century and was invented for the African and Anglo-Saxon trade. The “discovery” of the demand for pink wine approximately coincided with the repeal of prohibition in the United States. (The American housewife is susceptible to eye and color appeal.) In England, too, in the same period, a new class of wine buyer was rising with the social revolution. Pink worked its miracle there, and also in France itself, where many families previously limited to the cheapest kind of bulk wine were beginning to graduate to “nice things.”

  Logically, there is no reason any good white- or red-wine region should not produce equally good rosé, but in practice the proprietors of the good vineyards have no cause to change the nature of their wines; they can sell every drop they make. It is impossible to imagine a proprietor at Montrachet, or Chablis, or Pouilly, for example, tinting his wine to make a Bourgogne rosé. It is almost as hard to imagine it of a producer of first-rate Alsatian or Angevin wines. The wines converted to rosé in the great-wine provinces are therefore, I suspect, the worst ones—a suspicion confirmed by almost every experience I have had of them. As for the rosés from the cheap-wine provinces they are as bad as their coarse progenitors, but are presented in fancy bottles of untraditional form—a trick learned from the perfume industry. The bottles are generally decorated with art labels in the style of Robida’s illustrations for Rabelais, and the wines are peddled at a price out of all proportion to their inconsiderable merits. There is also behind their gruesome spread the push of a report, put out by some French adman, that while white wine is to be served only with certain aliments, and red wine only with certain others, rosé “goes with everything,” and so can be served without embarrassment by the inexperienced hostess. The truth is, of course, that if a wine isn’t good it doesn’t “go” with anything, and if it is it can go in any company. Tavel though, is the good, the old, and, as far as I am concerned, still the only worthy rosé.

  —from Between Meals, 1959

  GEORGE SAND ON EAU-DE-VIE

  Amandine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin was born in France in 1804. Despite her wealth of female names she published a considerable body of writing—novels, plays, stories—under the name George Sand. Unlike the other noted women novelists of her day, George Sand was not a spinster. She had an active life and famous lovers. Though her reputation has faded in the twentieth century, and some of her writing has never been translated into English, at the time of her death in 1876 she was considered one of the greatest writers of her generation.

  —M.K.

  Cadoche, the beggar, having been crashed into by a carriage, was brought back to the mill by the miller and cared for.

  When they laid the old man on the miller’s own bed, he fainted. They gave him vinegar to inhale.

  “I’d rather sniff eau-de-vie,” he said when he started to come to. “It’s healthier.”

  He was brought some.

  “I’d rather drink it than breathe it,” he said. “It gives you more strength.”

  Lémor wanted to stop this. After such an accident this strong liquor could and would cause a terrible high fever. The beggar insisted. The miller tried to talk him out of it. But the lawyer, who had spent too much time studying his own health problems not to have certain medical opinions, declared that at such a moment water could be fatal to a man who has not had a drop of it in the last fifty years, that alcohol, being his customary drink, could only help him, and that since he really had nothing wrong with him other than being shaken up, the stimulation of a little snort could resuscitate him. The miller’s wife and Jeannie, who, like all peasants, had a deep belief in the infallible virtues of wine and its alcohols for all problems, agreed with the lawyer that they should do as the poor man wished. The majority opinion prevailed and while they were looking for a glass, Cadoche, who felt completely consumed with the kind of thirst that consumes the long-suffering, lifted the bottle to his lips and swallowed in one gulp about half of it.

  “Oh, that’s too much! Too much!” said the miller, trying to stop him. “How’s that, nephew?” answered the beggar with all the dignity of a head of the family assuming his rightful authority. “You are measuring out how much I can have under your roof? You want to quibble over how much first aid I deserve?”

  This entirely unjust reproach defeated the common sense of the humble and honest miller. He left the bottle at the beggar’s side and told him, “Keep it for later, but for now, that’s enough.”

  “You are a good kinsman and a great nephew,” said Cadoche, who suddenly appeared revived by the eau-de-vie. “And if I have to die, I want to die under your roof, because you will bury me well. I’ve always admired that, a good burial. Listen, my nephew, mill workers, Mr. Lawyer! … You are all my witnesses. I am charging my nephew and my heir, Grand-Louis d’Angibault, with the responsibility of laying me to rest in a style no better or worse than
in the manner that the old Bricolin de Blanchemont will go, no doubt quite soon … though barely outlasting me … even though he is considerably younger … but he took off.… Ah, tell me, all of you, isn’t it a fool who gets his drumsticks grilled for the sake of your savings. Though its true he had some in the cast-iron pot.…”

  “What is he saying?” the lawyer wanted to know, sitting in front of a table and not at all displeased to see the miller’s wife preparing tea for the patient, since he hoped to have a nice hot cup himself to guard him against the night mist on the banks of the Vauvre.

  “What is he babbling on about, his grilled drumstick and the cast-iron pot?”

  “I think he’s raving,” said the miller. “In any case, when he is not drunk or ill, he is still old enough to babble, and he thinks more about his yesterdays than his todays. That’s what old men are like. How do you feel, uncle?”

  “I feel much better since that nice little drop, though your eau-de-vie has no damn flavor. Did you play a little trick and try to save some money by watering it down?”

  —from The Miller of Angibault, 1845,

  translated from the French by Mark Kurlansky

  ANTON CHEKHOV’S MENU FOR JOURNALISTS

  In one of Anton Chekhov’s youthful sketches, he suggested this eight-course menu for journalists.

  —M.K.

  (1) a glass of vodka

  (2) daily shchi [cabbage soup] and yesterday’s kasha

  (3) two glasses of vodka

  (4) suckling pig with horseradish

  (5) 3 glasses of vodka