A La Francaise
By ELIZABETH DAVID
JUST two leaves of tarragon, two and no more, are to go into the butter and herb stuffing for a dish called poulet au reveiL 'I say two leaves only,' wrote Benjamin Renaudet, the author of this lovely recipe, 'because although they are very small, in adding more the taste of the stuffing might be distorted.' That is the kind of observa- tion Renaudet makes often in his book. It is called Les Secrets de la Bonne Table, is undated, and is concerned with post-1870, pre-1914 house- hold cookery in the provinces of France. Renaudet's book is one I have used and quoted often, read over and over again. Even so, it is only recently that I have paid close attention to the handful of English recipes which appear in the book and of which Renaudet says that they were evolved from notes made on the spot in England.
Renaudet was a selective collector and meticu- lous recorder of little-known French provincial recipes. On English cooking his views should therefore be worth hearing. So they are. Noting that the English kitchen 'in which roast beef plays so important a part' supplies also some interesting methods of using the left-overs, he gives a recipe for ra,coiit de boeuf roll, in English, says M. Renaudet, called roast-beef stew. A French version of cottage pie? Nothing of the kind. It is basically a boeuf miroton, the time-honoured dish of every Frenchwoman who ever had to deal with boiled beef left over from the pot-au-feu. The essential difference is that Renaudet's recipe calls for roast instead of boiled meat. The sliced beef, re-heated in stock, with bacon, onions, bay- leaves and whole small potatoes 'all as much of a size as possible' is arranged in a pyramid in the centre of the serving dish, the little potatoes dis- posed in a circle around the meat. Now if there is anything more typical of an old-fashioned French household dish than Renaudet's little whole potatoes all of a size and his description of the manner of serving of his roast-beef stew then I should like to hear of it. (In all fairness he does add that in England it is more usual to serve the meat within a border of boiled rice. Was it? Is it?) For the next of the interesting methods with left-overs as promised by M. Renaudet, invention seems to take over and we get pudding de rosbif, or cold beef boiled for three hours in a pudding crust. Now we get to our muttons. A gigot bouilli a l'anglaise, it surprises me only mildly by this time to learn from dear M. Renaudet, is 'tres delicate' and retains 'tout son jus.' So it may be and so it might had it been or were it ever cooked as M. Renaudet claims it is. He envelops his leg of mutton entirely in a flour-and-water paste two centimetres thick and covering every inch of the joint, shank bone included. The paste-wrapped gigot is then sewn securely in a cloth, lowered into a pan, of boiling water and simmered ex- tremely gently—'no faster than for our pot-au- feu'—for five hours. It is at this point that M. Renaudet throws caution as well as the entente cordiale to the winds and suggests that his French readers may prefer to serve a Villeroy or Bearnaise sauce with their gigot instead of the 'usual English mint or Cumberland sauce.' The suggestion that Cumberland sauce (no mention of caper sauce) goes with boiled mutton does rather confirm my suspicion that Renaudet Was borrowing at least some of his English cookery lore not from the 'Mrs. Holly of Black- heath' or the 'Mrs. Allingham of Turtle Cottage near Oakham in the Rutland,' the ladies to whom he attributes some quite plausible English recipes, but from Alfred Suzanne, author of La Cuisine Anglaise. published in 1898 and still freely quoted as a responsible French authority on English cookery.
At any rate Renaudet gives, in a footnote, a recipe for Cumberland sauce which is certainly Suzanne's, and one for which we have cause to be grateful, even if we do not eat it with boiled mutton. (It is curious that this sauce, originally German, appears to have entered the English kitchen via three French chefs—Alexis Soyer, Alfred Suzanne and Auguste Eseoffier.) Other aspects of Suzanne's book are less enchanting. The poor fellow had little gift of observation. 'All fruits are made into pies' . . . plum cakes are as French as possible and English in name only . . . plum pudding is the English national dessert . . . bacon is an unbeatable English speciality . . . it is cooked in the following way. Cut it into thin slices like veal birds, then spit them on small skewers and grill them over a hot fire or in a very hot oven. Serve on toast. . . . 'Haddock; this smoked fish is very common in England. The English bake or boil it and fill it with a forcemeat called veal stuffing.'
Two of M. Suzanne's employers were the then Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Wilton. Making every allowance for eccentricity, it is still hard to envisage those Victorian noblemen eating break- fast bacon dished up in genteel little rolls, demanding that their smoked haddock be stuffed and boiled,. and ordering plum pudding every other day for luncheon. If, in the 1960s, Suzanne's book is still the only one on English cooking available to French gastronomic researchers (the English dishes in Flammarion's recently trans- lated and loudly trumpeted Art of Cookery are all based on Suzanne) then it would seem to be high time for somebody to provide them with an authoritative exposition of the subject.
It is not so much that anyone would want to convert the French to English food--although there are those timid souls who transport their own English bread across the Channel, and many More who are horribly disillusioned when they order roast beef in France and find it cooked to a rare red rather than to English Sunday lunch grey—as that it would be so interesting to see what French housewives would evolve from authentic English recipes. We should see our own cooking with fresh eyes. We should also see, I think, that the Englishness of many of our dishes lies not so much in the basic treatment of the raw materials as in the finishing touches and presentation of the dish.
Those whole small potatoes for example, of Renaudet's—unless we were making super- human efforts to be French, we should never incorporate them in the dish with the meat. We should have them boiled separately and served separately, and probably there would be cauli- flower or sprouts and green peas as well, where- as a Frenchwoman, however English she wanted to pretend to be, would find it going too much against the grain to provide three boiled vege- tables with one meat dish, let alone offer a steak and kidney pudding—a dish which much fascinates French cooks—accompanied by Mashed potatoes and a boiled pease pudding. This classic combination is offered, so I learn, at Flanagan's restaurant in Baker Street. Perhaps this would be the place to take French visitors in search of authentic English food, although it must be said that I have myself always found it safe enough to take Paris friends to London- French restaurants. Whatever the efforts made by the proprietors and cooks to produce true French cooking, nothing will persuade my French friends that what they are eating is any- thing but typically English. They might be right.
It is perhaps our taste for extraneous unre- lated flourishes and garnishes which to the French makes our attempts at their cooking amusing, original (inattendu I think is the correct word), and so characteristically English.
It must have been a French cook more observant than his contemporary Alfred Suzanne but still not quite observant enough, who decided that to please the English gentle- men of the Turf who frequented the old Café Weber, originally the Taverne Anglaise, in the rue Royale, he would add a flourish or two to the grilled marrow bones which were one of the specialities (others were cold toast beef, York ham, and Welsh Rabbit), on which Weber's reputation was founded. By serving English mustard and chips with their marrow bones, Weber's were no doubt making a graceful concession to English taste. Which only goes to show, marrow bones being one of the rare dishes that no Englishman would want chips with, how difficult it is to get quite precisely under the skin of another country's cookery.
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