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Tuesday 2 December 2008

And Another Thing

When gobbling brawn is caviar to the general

Tis of all my hobbies the supreme in the eating way. He might have sent sops from the pan, skimmings, crumplets, chips, hog’s lard, the tender brown judiciously scalped from a fillet of veal (dexterously replaced by a salamander), the top of asparagus, fugitive livers, tender effusines of laxative woodcocks, the red spawn of lobsters, leverets’ ears, and such pretty filchings common to cooks. But these had been ordinary presents, the everyday courtesies of dishwashers to their sweethearts. Brawn was a noble thought.

The passage as a whole is worth a relish. I remember my mother reading it to me when I was a little boy. We did not think much of brawn in those days. Maybe they didn’t know how to make it in the Potteries. As the English equivalent of pâté de foie, it depends entirely on what you put in, and the spell you weave over it.

The ‘smack’ of food, to use Lamb’s favourite word, depends greatly on time and place, and the individual. Princess Diana told me: ‘My favourite of all is a hot bacon sandwich on a cold morning.’ Delicious; especially if you’re not used to it. Not long ago I talked to a pretty Japanese lady on a cruise liner. ‘Are you enjoying it?’ ‘Velly much.’ ‘What do you like best about it?’ ‘Stleaky bacon.’ Conjunction is the essence of gastronomy. Lord de Guest, one of the minor heroes of Anthony Trollope’s Dr Thorne, lays down: ‘Cold pheasant for breakfast is the best thing I know of. Pheasants at dinner are rubbish, mere rubbish.’ A well-made cold pheasant sandwich can cheer you up on a dismal occasion, as old Mr Crouchback noticed, as he munched during the sale of his house and furniture in the agricultural slump of the 1920s — a poignant vignette from Waugh’s Sword of Honour. As a boy, however, I did not rate sandwiches high — fishpaste fillings were dreary and a lettuce sandwich was the lowest form of human nourishment. But nowadays I regard a tea party (my favourite meal and form of entertainment) without wafer-thin cucumber sandwiches as a fraud on the public. It is the combination that matters. I don’t recall any greater delight in the 1950s than taking the breakfast special to Brighton for a day by the sea, and eating a well-done kipper in the dining-car — even better than the succulent Whitstables one had at English’s later for lunch.

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