The Good Life
Are we what we eat?
Pamela Vandyke Price
People do look like their pets. As one minces, Agag-like, across the excrement-encrusted pavements of the Royal Borough, one inevitably observes the Pekey people, tbe wire-haired, droppy-jowled and ratJnosed owners of terrier, basset and chihuahua; a Saluki-faced lady is towed by two four-footed versions and there is a woolly person • of sex that I cannot determine escorted by an equally woolly olde Englishe sheepdog of equally undiscernible gender.
But I have a nasty suspicion that people may also look like their food. There is that friend in the wine trade with hock-bottle shoulders, those frequenters of sandwich bars whose teeth are like bared canteen china, those snarl or beak-faced mottled persons Who. pursue and devour game (often gentle souls when you get to know them), the pallid slack-mouthed addicts of fish, the women who appear to be dressed in doilies and do their hair with a piping bag, clam-visaged devotees of crustaceans who are often gelid within, and every single counter stool in Fortnum and Mason's soda fountain is topped by a too amplehipped lady, with a garniture of fur or flowers on her head et la creme Chantilly, or a spike of velours resembling a chocolate chip, indistinguishable from the sundae, split or parfait she is ingesting. Come to
that, my own shoulders are quite as square as those of a Bordeaux bottle and — especially from the back — I may well be evocative of an ambulant sausage and mash.
What, then, can be the appearance of those who produce foods that are mock other foods? In recent years we have got used to saying that wines should stand on their own merits and not be mock or imitation anything; there is a laudable decline in the labelling of otherwise pleasant drinks as "Spanish Chablis," "Australian Burgundy". Wines made like sherry are beginning to sell under brand or national names. The public is adopting an adult attitude — it would not, presumably, buy mock mink or sable, any more than pseudo silk or a declassified diamond, and cod caviare, canned pâté, and created convenience foods, such as the fish finger, do not need to masquerade as Beluga, foie gras or quenelles.
So I have nothing but respect for the skill of the original Mr Bird who evolved a custard to which he gave his name because his wife could not eat eggs — it does not pretend to be anything except what it is. (I do, however, have an askance look — by which I mean an evil eye — for Mr Bird's commercial descendants, who I see are advertising in the catering press "syllabub" and "traditional trifle" which are concocted by the utilisation of a preparation "in minutes." Alas for the seduction of a firm by the marketing notions that there is no righteous palate to deplore such distortions. Call something "Yuk" or even "Heavenly Yuk" if you will, but don't cause future generations to suppose that a trifle or a syllabub can come out of any packet.
Not that I would insist on keeping a cow "to hand" for the milking
of same into the syllabub that one recipe requires, though Charles II did, in St James's Park. There are a number of syllabub recipes, with wine and cream (not, I suspect, in that catering packet mix) the essentials. In her admirable The Cookery of England (Andre Deutsch £5.50), Elisabeth Ayrton gives them, also several for trifle, including one called 'Whim Wham,' and one adapted from Mrs Glasse "fit to go to the King's Table." The joy of this book is the style and historical information that accompanies the recipes; not only is Mrs Ayrton scrupulous about these being English (not British), recipes such as blanquette de veau, and poulet a la creme de riz, to England long before they were dished up across the Channel, Unlike the authors of many — too many — cookery books, Mrs Ayrton cooks like a human being, not a demonstrator, and what she says about certain recipes taken from well-known past sources is helpful and encouraging to the person hesitant of interpreting mediaeval or even later cookery jargon.
This is a valuable book — indeed, I bought it, not even waiting for a possible review copy — and one can only wish that perpetrators of mock "traditional" dishes might be given an indigestion-provoking tablet (perhaps an encapsulated version of one of their own meals?) and set down in solitude to study it. The English may have often combined sweet with savoury (and Mrs Ayrton is excellent in her chapter on savouries), but they have a culinary tradition that merits respect. Well, to withstand the English climate, they would have to have, wouldn't they?
Pamela Vandyke Price is also wine correspondent of the Times
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