Consuming Interest
La Bombe c'est la Bombe
By ELIZABETH DAVID who can make a souffle.' You remember how Gertrude Stein wrote that when her friends
were all beginning to be t�known, Braque said,
'How life has changed, O we all now have cooks 0 If my friends are not all beginning to be known, and if they :can- not all of them make souffles, all of them can make good jokes about cooking. Or at least they can all make jokes which remind me of good jokes. Often one reads cookery books to be reminded of good recipes. At the same time one may be reminded of good jokes, too.
In Robin McDouall's Cookery Book my friend Robin McDouall, for he is the author, says when is a tart not a tart. When it is a pie, he says. I expect that Robin is right, I do not really know, but I will tell about a chef at the Paris Cordon Bleu school who was showing how to make a pear tart and how not to make the pastry full of jagged holes with a fork because that would make the juice from the fruit soak through it and then the pastry would be sodden. You were to make the lightest little darts with the point of a knife held on the slant between your thumb and first finger; that chef held his
knife with such a delicate balance that it made no more than little air ducts in the pastry, like the pinholes on the tops 'of certain kinds of biscuits. That, chef was very insistent on his point, he kept turning that flan round and show- ing it and saying you must not take liberties with a confection like that because, well because 'la tarte c'est la tarte quoi,' and he was pleased with his joke, and the way he said it it was funny. The audience laughed a great deal. It is nice when people enjoy their own jokes, like Robin McDouall enjoys his, that is partly why his book is nice, though that is not the only reason, he tells some good recipes, too; there is a very intelligent one for a blackcurrant ice. Why that is relevant comes later. To return to that pear tart, I did not and I still do not see the point of the joke, I think perhaps there was not one. The chef was making sure to impress upon us about not being rough on the tarte, and he did it the right way because I have re membered for a long time about how la tarte is la tarte, quoi.
There are jokes and jokes and not everyone makes them on purpose. Some of this kind I like best. Once in a cooking article I saw one about bombes making an elegant ending to a meal and how you need a home-made centre to make your bombe yours personally. There was
a time when personalised bombes were served as an hospitable welcome before the meal. 10 the year 1660 Robert May wrote about them in his book. It was called the Accomplisht Cook and Robert May tells how to make a paste• board warship with flags and streamers and gut's and trains of powder. Then a castle with battle• meets, portcullis, gates and drawbridges. An round these engines of war, served on chargers, was to be coarse salt and embedded in it blown eggs filled with scented waters. Flanking the war' ship and the castle were to be two pies that were not tartes, definitely not, they were pieS filled with sawdust and live frogs and birds. On another charger was to be brought a big stag made out of paste and with claret wine concealed inside him, and an arrow coming out of his side' Presently one of the ladies would be unable t° resist pulling out that arrow so the claret would start to flow like blood, then the fun would begin. The train of powder would be fired and when all was smoke and confusion those Stuart ladies in their fine dresses bombarded the cool' patty with Mr. May's scent-filled eggs and some' one who knew the secret of the pies lifted the lids and out came the frogs and the birds. Th frogs skipped, the ladies skipped and shrieked, the birds flew into the candles and put them out and what with the flying birds and the skipping frogs there was much delight and pleasure to the whole company, so Robert May wrote. T110° the music sounded and the banquet came on. A joke of this sort was called a Triumph and 3 Trophy. It was not quite the same idea as that personalised bombe in the lovely movie with Marilyn Monroe, bless her, wouldn't she just be in a lovely film like that, and George Raft too. 11 was where the rival gangsters arranged a feast and pretended they had all left their guns at home,
but one gang had not. The guns were hidden inside the cake and they were tommy-guns, That was as personalised a cake as you could get. But that came later, it was not until the 1960s. First I want to tell about the personalised bombes Written down on a list which I look at when I feel in a mood for la bombe.
These bombes have very pretty names. There is not room for me to tell them all, but I•think you will like to know some of them. There is Creole, 'that is one with banana ice outside and pineapple ice in the centre, and there is Cyrano with straw- 'berry encased in almond. Medicis had crystal- lised fruits embedded in strawberry, and Monte Cristo, oh but Monte Cristo is pretty, it is tangerine with tangerine and almond mousse. Otdro is apricot with blackcurrant. Otello has mystery, it is almond and peach, and petit due is almond and rum, but when I imagine about my bombes sometimes I imagine 1 would rather have brandy with my almond ice. Then it is Tosca I choose. Tosca is made the same way as petit due, it contains the same quantity of alcohol and it costs the same number of pounds, but there is a difference and you will know what I• mean. Tosca has more cachet, although not as much as Otero. Apricot with blackcurrant in The centre, how delicious that sounds and what a.. beautiful blending together of tastes and dOlours, as if M. Worth had made a dress for
Summer portrait to be painted by, I think, Sir Philip de Laszlo. Fortunate Otero, what Icharming things she had called after her, she 'was beautiful and amiable, this dancer and belle 161' the belle epoque, so that people thought of tihese charming dishes and gave them la belle
'with name. As well as that blackcurrant ice 'with apricot ice all round, there was a dish called 'Wets* de sole Otero, it was one of those jacket- baked potatoes from which you scoop the potato t1 replace it with something else, for Otero Was little folded .fillets of sole and rose prawns cream and bechamcl, que la caisse soit bien fttplie, the recipe says. Parmesan is sprinkled the top, melted butter too, and you faire a'cer vivement 5 la salamandre. Oh, it licious when it is well done, but it is very ?knit to do well, you will know what I mean.
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4:•;:To return to those bombes M. Escollier has 'any names and descriptions of them, so has Prosper Montagne in his gastronomic rousse. They are different from the ones I have Id. Some are just as pretty. There is andalouse d bresilienne, Manon, Dame Blanche, Helene, smonde, Veronique, Aida, algdrienne. La mbe algerienne is tangerine and pineapple with eapple cubes in kirsch. Perhaps you think that 'lough of that kind of joke is enough. Perhaps en you are not a person who cares to Lind your okery books full of drolleries put there on rposc or by mistake.
If that is how you feel, then what you should. d is the report just made by the potato mat- ting board. This body has blade a very im- rtant discovery, it is what I call a revelation. it ;;Ys a cooked potato should not break down such an extent that it no longer has a charac- eristic and recognisable shape when served.. Now that is news which is no laughing matter, ltd I am not laughing, I am just hoping that the Potato marketing board is going to do some- hing about it. I do not think there would be Itch point in the beautiful Otero's potato if it ere to break down and no longer have a charac- teristic and recognisable shape when served.
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