Delights and Prejudices

by James Beard

The ability to recall a taste sensation, which I think of as “taste memory,” is a God-given talent, akin to perfect pitch, which makes your life richer if you possess it.

Let’s Welsh Rabbit Melt 2 tablespoons butter, and when it is just melted add 1 pound sharp Cheddar cut in small pieces or coarsely grated. Season with a small amount of salt, depending upon the saltiness of the cheese, 1 teaspoon dry mustard, a dash of Tabasco and 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce. As the cheese begins to melt, stir in 1 pint good beer, then stir in 1 egg, lightly beaten. When the mixture is creamy and soft, serve on toast or crackers. Do not allow it to get stringy or leathery. Sprinkle with paprika and serve with glasses of beer. If you keep this over low heat, you may dip pieces of French bread in it as you do with a Swiss fondue.

I recalled this controversy the other day when, in one of the great restaurants of the world, I heard an Englishman ask for bottled mint sauce to put on his baby lamb, which was cooked to absolute perfection. It was, I am sure, flavorful and tender and hot and needed nothing but the eating!

Let’s Wonderful Sweet Cream Biscuit Sift 2 cups flour, 1 tablespoon sugar and ½ teaspoon salt with 3 teaspoons baking powder. Fold in heavy cream until it makes a soft dough that can be easily handled. Turn the dough out on a floured board and pat to about ¾-inch thickness. Cut it in rounds or squares, dip them in melted butter, and arrange them in a buttered baking sheet or pan. Bake at 425° for 12 to 15 minutes. Serve the biscuits hot.

Just as we had people like Mrs. Harris to bring us butter and eggs, there were others on the lookout for Mother’s favorite fruits and vegetables. These scouts would call her the minute a shipment arrived, and she would be on the way to collect it with great dispatch. Thus we had the first artichokes of the season to arrive in Portland, and we had them in quantity while they lasted. The same was true of California strawberries, raspberries, asparagus, beans and many other items. Mother was not a season rusher, but she wanted the first good fruits and vegetables that appeared.

Farmers and producers took stands, which they rented from the city at nominal sums, and filled them with seasonal display, beginning in the spring with the earliest asparagus and berries and continuing through into the winter with celery bleached to an ivory whiteness by the Foltz family, all the winter root vegetables, late cauliflower, apples and pears, nuts and wild mushrooms—in effect, the round of the earth’s gifts to the palate.

Apples were a round of delight in themselves, from the early Graven-steins through the Baldwins, the Rambeaux, the Kings, the Spitzenburgs, the Northern Spies, the Winesaps, the Fall Bananas, the Winter Bananas, and the Newtown Pippins.

Cheese must have warmth and time to soften. Too many households and too many restaurants ruin every bit of their cheese by keeping it under constant refrigeration. Cheese that is served cold and hard is not fit for consumption.

My Mother’s Pot-au-feu

It has always been my contention that the people of the Western European countries ate pretty dull food until the discovery of America. We can assume that the ruling classes in Rome, Byzantium and the Mediterranean countries had wonderful food, but the table of peasant and serving classes was no doubt monotonous. The potato helped to enliven their diet.

However, some countries that grew the potato, such as Italy and Spain, took a long time in using it as food. France, too, planted it only in the flower gardens until Parmentier produced the secrets of making potatoes not only edible but a major gastronomic pleasure.

Then to crown all other horrors, people drench them with cold catchup and eat them! I have watched these same people consume nothing but a double order of French fries (and where that name came from, I don’t know) for lunch, along with bread and, of course, the catchup.

Hashed Brown Potatoes

Roesti Potatoes

Gratin Savoyard

Omelette Savoyarde

Duxelles

Corn au Gratin

Suquete, Catalan

I believe if ever I had to practice cannibalism, I might manage if there were enough tarragon around!

And unfortunately, it is seldom possible in America to get salmon cut as it should be—in long slices diagonally against the grain rather than in thickish slices across the grain. To be perfect, the fish must roll from the knife in thin, almost transparent, slices which are delicate but firm.

There is a coarse-meated sausage, lightly smoked, from the Jura, called morteau, after the name of the town where it is made. It is about eight inches long and is held together with a small wooden skewer. Braised in Beaujolais or the red wines of the district, it is served with a hot potato salad as an entree or a supper dish. I know of few sausages to equal it when it is prepared in this manner.

One of the great sausages of France to be seen is andouillette, a tripe sausage encased in a tripe lining. Grilled or braised in champagne and served hot with mustard and pommes frites, it is a delicious, but by no means light, luncheon dish. The same type of sausage, when more firmly packed in a larger casing and smoked, is called andouille. This is sliced thin and served as an hors d’oeuvre.

With bread and champagne, which is the perfect wine for ham,

Summer and fall the Mason and Economy jars were in constant use. Let was called in at times to assist, and other friends of Mother’s were on hand for particular canning events. Once again Mother had a staff at her disposal. The amount of work that was put in from June through October was staggering, but Mother thought it was a disgrace not to fill the cellar with the good things of life, and by the beginning of November a tour of our winter’s food supply was an impressive experience.

So the first thing put down was apt to be asparagus—but not the green variety, and this was an absolute rule. It was the white we canned, and during the season asparagus was often shipped to us from California in lots of several cases.

Next in line for canning were certainly strawberries. And the Marshall or the Everbearing were all that were allowed into the house. Special growers in the nearby countryside were commissioned to have the berries picked for a certain week. Then out came the great brass preserving kettle. A sugar-and-water syrup was made, and the cleaned berries were popped into the syrup with additional sugar and watched with unwavering attention till they were just right. As a result of fine berries and careful timing, these became legendary for their firmness, wholeness and flavor.

Raspberries had their turn soon after this and were done in much the same fashion, but in greater quantity because they were used in so many tarts and desserts as a flavoring agent.

Apricots were sometimes worked into the schedule before we went off to the...

At the beach we turned to the wild rather than to the farmer. Wild blue huckleberries were canned for use in pies and tarts.

But the wild blackberries or brambles were another story. For weeks before they were ripe we reconnoitered for the best patches, and as soon as they were ready, the raid began. Family, guests and all were set to work gathering berries (and some brutal scratches). The jam was made on the beach stove and bottled and stored, to be carried home in September.

When we returned from the beach at the summer’s end, work began in earnest. Our farmer in the country was visited and asked to slaughter two hogs for us, always two. He made sausage and bacon and smoked the hams, while we made head cheese, chitterlings, scrapple and all the other delicacies one makes from the pig. We ate copious quantities of spareribs and knuckles, as well as some smoked loin. Our farmer also made us a barrel of sauerkraut and a barrel of pickles. Sacks and sacks of potatoes were ordered—several different varieties.

And the canning went on: early apples from our trees—magnificent Gravensteins—for jelly and applesauce; corn on and off the cob; prunes, petite prunes and red plums, whole and in conserve; damsons for jam and damson cheese; oil pickles, sweet pickles, tomato pickles, hot apple chutney, piccalilli.

By this time everyone in the family needed a long rest, but the larder was a beautiful sight and a challenge for anyone to equal. With the addition of wines, flour and sugar, and such canned luxuries as good sardines, specially packed salmon, anchovies, olives, French peas and mushrooms, imported chutney and Cross and Blackwell’s chowchow, we were ready to face the winter! But first came the game season.

Let’s Sugar Cookies

Mother’s (Originally Let’s) Cream of Tomato Soup

By now we were getting close to the holidays, and preparations began for Mother’s cakes and puddings. It was her custom to make fruitcakes—a black one, a white one and an English currant cake—the year before they were used. The same was true of the plum puddings and the mincemeat. (Mother kept some of her wedding cake for twenty-five years by covering it with cloths bathed in cognac and keeping the container tightly sealed.)

Amazing

Shortbread

How tired and really unsavory homemade candy generally is! Marsh-mallows and bonbons and taffy and brittles—all of them should be dispensed with.

They are fine for the household if served fresh. But have pity on us, all you bakers—the spirit of Christmas notwithstanding—and deliver us from cookies that have crumbled or gone stale.

The dinner was a simple, good meal, usually served in late afternoon, which gave time to sit around the table afterwards for long discussions, a custom dear to my mother’s heart. I seem to have inherited it and love to sit at the table and talk long after dinner is over, sipping coffee and a liqueur. An attractive table is somehow the appropriate place for mellowed thought and sparkling conversation.

We had hand-plucked turkeys, and if there was an occasional pinfeather left, who cared? The flavor was superb, and the skin was deliciously crisp. At our house there were always two turkeys roasted—one for dinner and the other to assure us of plenty of leftovers, for we were a family passionately devoted to cold turkey.

and, for those who had to have them, cranberries. We were never a cranberry family, thank heavens. To me, the berry’s rather bitter tang is an offense to the palate, an abomination in any menu. And why the cranberry has become so generally accepted with turkey as to become a gastronomic cliché I will never be able to understand.

Thanksgiving was a happy meal and in every sense a harvest feast. The best of our larder was brought forth, the table was handsomely decorated with fruits and vegetables, and the nice old silver and my mother’s best gold-and-white china made their appearance. It was a leisurely dinner; no one felt pressed to hurry away from the table except my father, who wanted to get to his cigar and his chair away from the gathering.

Our main celebration was a big party on Christmas Eve, and I was permitted to stay up for Santa Claus—who I knew was my godfather, but I went along with the trick being played on me.

A wassail drink was served—eggnog or Tom and Jerry, and, during the era when it was available, champagne. Then around eleven o’clock Santa Claus arrived to the tinkling of a small bell on the tree, and all became engaged in present opening till they were exhausted.

At midnight there was a huge buffet of turkey and chicken salad, a vegetable salad, a variety of tiny sandwiches, usually a hot Olympia oyster stew and then a variety of sweets. The late buffet made it certain that guests would linger for hours. Occasionally they were joined by people dropping by after midnight Mass, and the talk and the sipping of holiday potables—including tea—continued till early morning. I often crept away upstairs without anyone’s noticing and fell into my bed. Despite my fatigue, I can think of no better way to have been initiated into the world of Christmas than this one.

Olympia Oyster Stew

Our traditional Christmas breakfast was a good porterhouse steak done to rare perfection atop the stove—Mother always had steak cooked in the French way until a much later period in her life—and served with merely a bit of butter on it. With this went sautéed or home-fried potatoes, coffee and probably grapefruit or oranges.

Dinner was seldom more than a family affair and not a tremendous effort. It might consist of cold turkey or hot turkey or, a great favorite in the house, goose, although this was usually reserved for the New Year’s menu.