THE DISH UNKNOWN ABROAD.
PROFESSOR TIEFDENKEN, of Giessen, in his interesting Versuch zu einer Allgemeinen Theorie der Vergleichenden Kochkunst (Attempt at a Universal Theory of Comparative Cookery), has drawn attention to the very curious question why, in the great assimilation of thought and life which arises from the wonderful multiplication of the facilities of intercourse between nation and nation, the last stronghold of absolutely local custom is usually the mode of eating and drinking and preparing food to which each locality has been accustomed. A great many examples of this are discussed by the learned professor, with his usual depth of thought and erudition, but we do not find in his work one of the most curious of all illustrations of this truth, that suggested by the title of our article. Why does the roofed pie and tart,— we do not allude to the open or embroidered tart, in which the fruit is interlaced with pastry, for that is eminently Continental, and possibly even Continental in origin, —remain an institution pecu- liar to these islands, and absolutely unheard of from Antwerp to Palermo, from Paris to Vienna ? Why has no one even attempted to introduce it as a sort of graceful homage to the English strangers, who are pursued by the offers of " Englis- cher bif-steck " from one end of the Continent to the other ? It is a curious fact in itself that Professor Tiefdenken, with his wide comprehensive glance, should have wholly missed this curious bit of still isolated cooking art. It is, of course, very difficult to say that the meat pie and the fruit tart are exclusively British in their origin. It is one of the great difficulties of antiquaries that on this side of human life they can hope for no " remains " which give them any insight into the civilization of the past, and are obliged to limit their researches to the incidental hints of early books. Crust is at the best temporary. The traces of pottery, no doubt, as Sir John Lubbock remarked at Dundee, are a great help to our knowledge of prehistoric times. But even this does not help us much here. For even if we are so fortunate as to find the remains of pottery in close juxtaposition with the stones of plums or cherries which have refused to vegetate, we can only fairly infer that these phenomena betoken a lost dish
of stewed plums or cherries,—the germinating power of the stones having been destroyed by heat, — and it is wholly unscientific to conjecture further that these remains point to a time and locality where the roofed tart was already known. It is said, indeed, that in one very curious tumulus a great anti- quary has discovered not only a large number of cherry-stones in connection with pieces of pottery which suggest conclusively a tart dish, but smaller fragments of a different fabric, which seem to suggest the internal cup sometimes placed there to receive and pre- serve the juice. And this, no doubt, would point to an age when our ordinary fruit tart was well known. This, however, is a rare case,
and the antiquity of the tumulus is still matter of dispute. We must admit, in common honesty, that in general, when ungerminat- ing fruit stones or the bones of pigeons and game are discovered in close juxtaposition with fragments of the deep species of dish sow called a pie-dish, we have no right at all to presume that these once belonged to fruit tarts or game or pigeon pies. They may easily have belonged to a period when the roofing crust was unknown, for whether that was present or absent, it would, unquestionably, have left no trace. But hampered as this question of the direct evidence as to origin clearly is, there can be no doubt that, from all we see of existing European civilization, we may fairly presume an exclusively British origin for the pie and tart. Indeed, the Continental nations apparently feel some real aversion to this institution of ours which forbids them to appropriate it, though it be only as an attention to strangers. There is not probably a single living person who ever ate a currant tart or a game pie of the regular cupola kind anywhere on the other side of the Channel. Of course, our experience is too limited to speak with absolute certainty, and we feel more doubt as to the game pie than as to the fruit tart. We have some idea that fragments of a pate de gibier which we once ate at Aix belonged properly not to the little pates so common in France, but to a large game pie of the true cupola kind. Still, as to fruit tarts we can speak with some confidence. We never saw, and never met with any one who had seen, anything that resembled a fruit tart. Pastry delicately covered with fruit is, as we have said, probably rather Continental than English. a3ut fruit secreted in pastry,—fruit with a well-spring of irrigat- ing juice gushing from the inmost cup at the heart of the tart,—that, we venture to believe, no living eye has ever seen on the Continent of Europe.
Now, to what shall we trace this peculiar English trait, and the evident reluctance,—may we not say inability ?—of foreigners to adopt it? There may be something, perhaps, in the suggestion that almost all foreign nations being more open and unreserved in social feeling than the English, they feel a repulsion to what may Abe called a very reserved, if not a clandestine, kind of food. There is something like one of Miss Braddon's heroines about a fruit tart. In appearance it is white, fat, pasty-faced, apparently incapable of black or, worse still, blood-red secrets. But open it, and there is such a flood of crimson juice as puts an entirely new colour on the meal. To a considerate mind there is certainly no greater contrast or contradiction than that between the crust and the contents. Then, apart from the reserve and surprise, there is a tendency abroad, especially, perhaps, in Germany, to have each separate dish a separate " concept," as the metaphysician says. We do not mean that they will not mash very queer things together, but that the mash when complete is not composed of still separable and distinct elements. Abroad they like to mix so com- pletely that there shall be no conflict of mind as to which part to eat first. Even their vegetables they often eat on a separate plate, and without the meat, and the meat, again, without the vegetables. They like to keep their mind clear at each separate stage as to what they are eating. Cauliflower is handed to you solemnly first, and when you have eaten it, then comes the fowl or the mutton, which an Englishman would have liked to have had with .it. On the other hand, compositeness—without amalgamation,—is a great feature of the British meal. We rather like to have four vegetables with our meat if we can,—e. g., potatoes, French beans, vegetable marrow, and cucumber. Such a freak is unheard of, 'unknown abroad. The German would probably never get clear in his own mind (" sich in's glare bringen ") as to his order of prefer- ence. A moral conflict at your meals is not pleasant, and with elements so distinct and even opposite in kind as juicy fruit and pastry there might be a moral conflict. Mr. Arnold has observed on the compositeness of the English nature, and the embarrassments and weakness it often brings upon us. The French character is complex enough, but the complex elements are amalgamated into an indissoluble unity. The German nature is simple, and not complex. Accordingly, you see the three nations reflected in their character-
istic food-preferences. We English like composite foods in which the elements are still distinguishable, still separable, still sometimes even in contrast and opposite. The French like highly complex unities, in which (so to say) a chemical combination has taken place, so that you cannot resolve them again into their elements. The Germans like simplicities, sometimes of the rawest kind, like their terribly earnest and simple raw ham, their rotten cabbage, (Sauerkraut), and their lonely vegetables.
Such is, we admit, a sadly incomplete and insufficient account of the curious imperviousness of the Continent to the English fruit tarts (roofed). Perhaps one additional reason may be that, as Professor Tiefdenken profoundly remarks in his chapter on "Bread," the Englishman contemplates food with relation to the family, and produces bread consequently in the loaf ;—the Con- tinental nations in relation to the individual, producing bread, therefore, in little rolls, twists, and fancy morsels. Now, the pigeon pie or the fruit tart has an obvious reference in it to family unity. The crust, enclosing all under its single roof, is a sort of symbol of the family roof-tree itself. It gathers together the scattered individualities of individual plums and cherries, just as the Englishman's home gathers together the distinct individualities of the domestic circle. Indeed, do we not call a pie a homely dish,—betraying thereby the analogy which it best suggests ? Professor Tiefdenken will, we hope, receive gladly this new illustration of his great principle, that " Der Kochkunst des festen Landes Europas liegt der Begriff des Individuums in Grande; der Kochkunst Englands im Gegentheil, liegt der Begriff des Familien-lebens zu Grande " (the idea of the Individual lies at the root of the cooking art of Continental Europe ; the idea of Family Life, on the contrary, lies at the root of the cooking art of England). We, on the other hand, can only admire the more the subtlety and acuteness of the thinker who discovered this great law from the theory of the Joint and the Loaf alone, and without the help of the light which would have been thrown upon his survey by the meat pie and the fruit tart.
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