117 BETTY FUSSELL.
On Murdering Eels and Laundering Swine Murder we must. If not cows and pigs and fish, then cabbages and rutabagas. We flay bananas, violate oysters, ravage pomegranates. Our lot is beastly and there"s no help for it, for feed we must on creature kinds. Our hands are stained with carrot blood and not all the seas of Noah"s Flood will wash them clean, not after G.o.d"s pact with Noah: "Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you." That"s a lot of territory in which to a.s.sert our puny manhood and decree that this is fit and this not, this food pure and that dirty. No, all that lives is food for man who, dead, is food for worms. That"s the deal.
Some living things are harder to kill than others, even though some things beg to be killed. Snakes, for instance. Their very shape mirrors our throttled circ.u.mstances, the narrowness of our confines, the anguish of our pa.s.sage. The same root, ango ango, generates anguis anguis (snake) and anguish (pain). The same root generates (snake) and anguish (pain). The same root generates anguilla anguilla (eel), a fish in snake"s clothing. Its snaky form makes some eaters queasy and others ravenous, but to eat an eel you must kill him first and quite deliberately, with the zeal of an ax murderer, because he is well armed against us. (eel), a fish in snake"s clothing. Its snaky form makes some eaters queasy and others ravenous, but to eat an eel you must kill him first and quite deliberately, with the zeal of an ax murderer, because he is well armed against us.
I have killed many snakes in the desert when it was their life or mine, but killing an eel in cold blood, on the fourth floor, in a New York City apartment-that"s different. The eel and I were already intimate, for I had carried him in my lap in a large plastic bag on the subway from Chinatown, and he had roiled against my belly as if I were pregnant with eels. Watching the bag slither with speed across my kitchen floor, I was afraid to deliver him. I was, in fact, deathly afraid of snakes.
My father had kept them in cages in our bas.e.m.e.nt, next to the laundry tub, the newfangled washing machine, and the old-fashioned clothes wringer. Dumping laundry from tub to washer to wringer to basket for hanging on the line, I kept my eye on the snakes. Whether harmless as garters or lethal as rattlers, they were the Serpent anguiformes anguiformes, the One cursed by G.o.d to creep without legs or wings on its belly, condemned without mercy to the darkness of a bas.e.m.e.nt with a burntout bulb.
Their skins, if you touched them, were cold as death and, 118 though dry, wet as an oyster. Because of them I was d.a.m.ned, as my grandfather had read me in the Book of Genesis, "For the imagination of man"s heart is evil from his youth." I was young and therefore evil.
The logic was impeccable: the snake and I were kin.
Nothing in my bas.e.m.e.nt past, however, had prepared me for murdering an eel. I needed time to think and threw the bag in the freezer overnight. When I opened the bag in the sink next day, he looked stone cold dead. When I turned the water on to remove the slime, he came suddenly to life. I grabbed a Chinese cleaver and tried to grab his thrusting head, but he was all muscle and I was not. With both hands I slammed the cleaver down on what might have been his neck but may have been his shoulders. A mighty whack barely nicked him. I whacked again as, tail thrashing, he tried to worm his way down the minnow-sized drain. "I"m sorry," I apologized with every whack, and I was. But I needn"t have been because I had not even scotched the snake, let alone killed him.
I looked for a blunt instrument and found a wooden mallet that I used for pounding meat. I cracked the mallet on his head and the wood split, but nothing else. He was breathing heavily, gulping air that filled a pouch below his jaws. Was he strangling? I didn"t want to know. Like Raskolnikov, I wanted him dead. Like Rasputin, he refused to die. I looked to the freezer for respite and held the bag open for him to slither in. He went halfway, then with a quick U-turn wrapped his tail around my arm and began to slither out. Engulfing him with a second bag, I flopped the works onto the ice trays and slammed the freezer door.
I needed time for research and reflection, my brain against his muscle.
I consulted books. "To kill eels instantly, without the horrid torture of cutting and skinning them alive, pierce the spinal marrow, close to the back part of the skull, with a sharp-pointed skewer," William Kitchiner advised in the Cook"s Oracle Cook"s Oracle in 1817. "The humane executioner," he added, "does certain criminals the favour to hang them before he breaks them on the wheel." A kind thought, but what if the criminal refused to hang? Madame Saint-Ange, in in 1817. "The humane executioner," he added, "does certain criminals the favour to hang them before he breaks them on the wheel." A kind thought, but what if the criminal refused to hang? Madame Saint-Ange, in La Cuisine La Cuisine, advised French housewives to grab the eel"s tail in a dishtowel and bash its head violently against a stone or wall. So much for sentimental Brits.
Surely there was some practical, efficient, clean-American-way to kill. The best way to kill an eel, A. J. McClane wrote in his Encyclopedia Encyclopedia of Fish Cookery of Fish Cookery, was to put him in a container of coa.r.s.e salt. I poured two large boxes of coa.r.s.e kosher salt into a large stockpot, pulled the eel bag from the freezer, and slid the mound of icy coils into the pot.
Before 119 they could quiver, I blanketed them with salt and waited. Nothing stirred. Salt, McClane said, also "deslimes" the eel, but my hands and clothes were already covered with an ooze that would not wash off.
When I finally inspected my victim, I found the deed was done, his mouth marred by a single drop of blood.
Skinning was yet to come. McClane suggested I attach his head by a string to a nail pounded in a board. I had neither nail nor board. What I wanted was an electric 7 -inch circular saw with a carbide-tooth blade. What I had was a pair of poultry shears. I pierced his thick hide and cut a jagged circle below his head, then scissored the length of his belly. With one hand I held his head and with the other pulled back the skin with a pair of stout pliers. It was slow work, but the leathery hide finally slipped off the tail like a nylon stocking. Naked, he was malleable as any flesh.
With one clean stroke I severed his head and hacked him into lengths.
He was a three-pound meaty boy, thick and fat. He was everything one could ask for in an eel. I put him in a pot and baptized him with white wine and vinegar, vegetables and herbs, and b.u.t.ter whipped to a froth.
He was delicious, as fat eels always are, and crowned my murderer"s feast with blessing. For the order of eels are in nature born and buried in salt. Enduring a lifetime"s banishment to freshwater pastures and the long journey there and back, they return to their cradle in the salt Sarga.s.so Sea to die in a burst of sperm and roe. "It is a covenant of salt forever": G.o.d"s covenant with Levi matched the one with Noah. The salt that blesses and preserves also deslimes and kills. The eel and I were bound by the same double deal. His life for mine, salt our shared salvation.
A serpent dead, however, did nothing to scotch my deeper anguish.
"s.h.i.t is a more onerous theological problem than is evil," Milan Kundera wrote in The Unbearable Lightness of Being The Unbearable Lightness of Being. "Since G.o.d gave man freedom, we can, if need be, accept the idea that He is not responsible for man"s crimes. The responsibility for s.h.i.t, however, rests entirely with Him, the Creator of man." If murder is man"s crime, s.h.i.t is not. s.h.i.t is G.o.d"s joke, yet s.h.i.t we must even as we feed.
What was my relation to the ten pounds of frozen hog"s guts, thawing and spreading like drowned Ophelia"s hair, in my apartment bathtub?
The chitterlings, ten times the length of my own inner tubing, were pastel yellow, white, and pink. They spread like dubious laundry, triggering memories of washing dirty socks and underwear in the bathtubs of innumerable French and Italian hotels that invariably for-bade 120 guests to launder. With guts as with underwear, it were better to do as a French cookbook instructs, "Take the stomach and intestines to the nearest stream or river." Women once washed guts as they washed linen, rising at dawn to carry their baskets of offal to the communal gathering place, to laugh and quarrel, a medieval poet said, as they washed "inwards" at the stream.
It is laundry that connects pig"s inwards to man"s outwards. The ruffles on a shirtfront were once called chitterlings, "exuberant chitterlings," as Washington Irving said, "puffed out at the neck and bosom."
Our foppish frills were once the ancients" omens, when offal was deemed awe-ful and the parts most worthy of the G.o.ds. A beast"s inwards then put man in touch with the stars, the outermost circle of our confinement. But we who see in serpents no more than snakes, in guts no more than garbage, in destiny no more than a gambler"s shake-to our narrow and straightened palates, chitterlings are the food of slaves.
I suppose it"s the smell that does it, a pervasive stink that clings to hands and hair, slightly sweet, slightly sour, like dank earth turned over, like rotting bodies in a trench, like human s.h.i.t. It rubs our noses in all we would deny. Washing guts, I found cl.u.s.ters of fat stuck to the inner lining, along with specks of what dignified recipes call "foreign matter." Some guts are thick and rubbery, others thin and limp as wet hankies. Guts are not smooth like plastic tubing, but gathered lengthwise along invisible seams, to puff like parachute silk with gas. They are gathered the way a seamstress gathers cloth for ruffles. To reach the translucent membrane of the casing, I had to strip and strip again the clogging fat until, held to the light, the stretched skin showed leaf patterns, clouds, sea sc.u.m, palely mottled and beautiful. Only by laundering the guts of swine did I discover that s.h.i.t comes wrapped in a layer of clouds trapped in a membrane resilient as nylon. Still, my l.u.s.trations were brief. Most of the cleansing had been done for me at the slaughterhouse, before the guts were frozen by the Gwaltney Company, a son of IT&T. The corporate master that sent me hog"s guts puts satel-lites in s.p.a.ce, making however inadvertently the cosmic connection of s.h.i.t and stars.
From Lily of the Valley, Virginia, a slave"s granddaughter told me that she cooks chitlins in their own yellow juice with onion and garlic and vinegar, until the guts are tender enough to chew. Chewy they are, rich on the tongue like all rejected vitals-heart, liver, lights, or has-let-all those messy inwards that remind us uneasily of our own. "Cut them chitlins in small lengths, or knot "em, and cook "em up with collards or rice in the pot of chitlin gravy, or fry "em deep in bubblin"
121 fat till they float up crisp and light," she said.
Even crisp and light, a little inwards go a long way. They go a long way as vitals, en route to s.h.i.tty death. Bre"r hog knows better than I the rhythm that melds eating and s.h.i.tting in every moving thing that lives, in the dung birth and death of cabbages and swine, men and snakes. "We must pitch our tents in the fields of excrement," cried Crazy Jane, who liked the way my fingers smell, my stove, my bathtub. The smell of chitterlings clings to the air the way the taste of chitterlings sticks to the tongue. It is a lingering power that gives, my Lily of the Valley friend says, satisfaction.
But I am a child of deodorized air and Lysol drains. My pasteurized senses are not ready for the excremental smell of my bathtub. I poured "Fragrant Pine" bubble bath into the water and was ashamed to read the labeled contents: sulfates, chlorides, formaldehydes, succinates, and an ingredient called "fragrance." I am too sanitized for the fragrance of pig s.h.i.t. I can turn murder into blessing by symbolic salt, but excrement into sacrament is a harder trick to turn. G.o.d owes me there. My guts are serpentine as a mess of eels, but the inward darkness of Genesis shakes out as farce. Farce is my Exodus. I know that after a lifetime"s wandering through a wilderness of snakes and swine, no amount of murdering, no amount of laundering, will change my promised end as meat and gravy for rutabagas, pudding for worms.
122 HARRY CREWS.
FROM A TELEPHONE INTERVIEW AUGUST 1986.
WITH BETTY FUSSELL.
On Food I still love all the stuff I grew up eating. I like weird s.h.i.t, I mean if I really want to pleasure myself-I always have it in the house though I don"t eat it all the time-I"ll have some hog"s head cheese. You know what hog"s head cheese is. Take the eardrums and eyeb.a.l.l.s out of a pig"s head and sc.r.a.pe it good and boil it some and pick the teeth out and mix all that fat on the head with all kinds of herbs and press it into a mold and there it is. still love all the stuff I grew up eating. I like weird s.h.i.t, I mean if I really want to pleasure myself-I always have it in the house though I don"t eat it all the time-I"ll have some hog"s head cheese. You know what hog"s head cheese is. Take the eardrums and eyeb.a.l.l.s out of a pig"s head and sc.r.a.pe it good and boil it some and pick the teeth out and mix all that fat on the head with all kinds of herbs and press it into a mold and there it is.
I don"t know how to say this without sounding racist, but I shop a lot where the brothers and sisters, the black folk, shop because they eat the kind of s.h.i.t I eat. They just do. I"m very fond of tripe, which is cow"s stomach, but most people don"t like it because it"s cross-grained like a piece of plywood. You have to have a good set of teeth and you have to like to chew. I"ve never understood people who talk about meat melting in their mouth. I don"t want the s.h.i.t to melt in my mouth. I want to chew, man, and I want to chew a long time. I want to fight with that sucker.
If I"m shaky from some outrage the previous night and I really got to get back onto my game quick, or if I simply want to do something to pleasure myself in the morning, what I do is I take three ounces of Jack Daniel"s Black Label, or any kind of sour mash whiskey will do, and I suck a couple of eggs but I suck "em in a strange way. You punch a little hole in either end of the egg-if you don"t punch two holes the egg won"t come out-and then you suck out about a quarter egg and then you fill the sh.e.l.l with Tabasco sauce or Red Rooster or anything comes out of New Iberia, Louisiana, and then you suck that sucker down and drain off about half of the Jack Daniel"s and do the same with the other egg. And I tell you, man, you"re ready to eat nails. I mean, f.u.c.k it, bring "em down, no quarter asked and none given, the word goes out all along the line-the saber"s out.
123.
I like to hunt, I find it very relaxin". I like to hunt rattlesnakes and I like the butcherin" of "em and the skin that I keep and tan and use for belts and other s.h.i.t. I generally like the steak which you cut so that there"s two ribs in each one of the little inch-thick pieces of meat. You chop the head off about six inches behind where the fangs are and then just gut it and skin it. No skill is required. You cut it along the backbone so that two ribs are in each little thing and then dip it in whatever kind of batter pleases you. I"m strong to go to s.h.i.t like garlic and Tabasco sauce and jalapeno peppers and that kind of thing. You have to deep-fry a snake.
You see, a rattlesnake-I don"t know if there"s a word for it, they can"t control their temperature-they"re as hot or as cold as wherever they find themselves. So you have to wait until a day when it"s cold but above freezing. They can"t be on top of the ground if it"s below freezing, or they"ll die. And so, here in the South, you wait until it"s a good chilly day and you go up on a sandy ridge where there"s blackjack oak. They live in gopher holes-or land tortoise, that"s what southerners call gophers. They live down there with the gopher, they go down in the earth and it"s warm down there. They don"t screw with the gopher and the gopher don"t screw with them. I don"t know why they don"t eat "em, I don"t know why they don"t strike "em, but they don"t. Whatever they eat they got to eat whole because they got no teeth. They live down there in perfect harmony.
What you do when you go out looking" for them, you take eight to ten feet-six will do but you want to take eight to ten to get all the way down-of garden hose. Push it all the way down the gopher hole, because he digs a hole way down there and you gotta git it all the way to the bottom or the snake won"t come out. When it"s all the way to the bottom you take about a half teaspoon gasoline, pour it in the top, blow on the garden hose and those fumes come out the bottom and in a few minutes here comes Mr. Rattlesnake, drunk and staggerin" from the gas and you just throw him in the sack, take him home, cook him up, and eat him. Really a lot of fun.
To take him out of the sack, that"s a fairly simple matter. The big thing one would want to know that might not occur to you when you got one in the croaker sack-what you call burlap sack-bringin" "im home, you don"t want to throw that croaker sack over your shoulder "cause he can strike through the sack. When you let him out of the sack-all snakes are notoriously slow, even those black racers that look like they"re goin" eighty miles an hour, h.e.l.l, even the slowest fattest man 124 could get away from "em and you can probably walk faster than a rattlesnake can crawl, so there"s no problem there-a lot of people use noose sticks, a stick with a noose on the end, but I"ve never used that.
I use a forked stick and put that behind his head and pick him up and take a machete and go to the block and there goes his head. Gut and skin "em like an eel, same way.
Other people when somethin" good happens to them, they go out and buy a bottle of champagne, but this is the honest to G.o.d"s truth here, I mean growin" up where I did in south Georgia, I go out and buy if I don"t have some in the house which I probably would have, I"d go out and buy a pickled pig"s foot. You see, we really like pickled pig"s feet. It was a delicacy when I was a child. Like light bread. We used to get light bread about once a year when I was growin" up on a tenant farm. You know, sliced bread, light bread, and I used to think it was the greatest G.o.dd.a.m.n thing in the world and I wouldn"t eat that s.h.i.t on a bet today. I much prefer what we call hoecake, which was nothing but ground meal and lard and water, and they call it hoecake because slaves used to fry it on a hoe at the end of the row.
Grits I eat every day of my life. I still love backbone and rice, that"s pig backbone. Backbone is great with any kind of greens except turnip, but mustard and greens like that. You get to suck and chew and gnaw around on it a lot. A thing that I"m very very fond of-you almost can"t do this in a butcher shop even if you know the butcher, h.e.l.l he can git it for you but you won"t see it there in the store-is something that I grew up eating. What we used to call liver and lights. Lights is lungs.
You can also put the heart in there but you gotta have an absolutely freshly slaughtered pig. You can"t do it if it"s old. Never mind freezing, but if it"s been killed for any length of time, it doesn"t taste the way it"s supposed to taste.
Where I live in Gainesville, it"s easy enough to go to a slaughterhouse and git what you want. You can cook it up any d.a.m.n way you want for stew. But the way I cook it: first and foremost, always always if it"s at all possible or compatible when I"m cooking, I"ve got more cloves of garlic in there than anyone wants to think about and I do onions and bell pepper and carrots, you know, all that s.h.i.t up there, all those spices and whatever I"m feeling like, that"s what I do. I pretty much wait until I get the stuff on the plate to do anything with hot sauce, but I also put jalapeno peppers right in the stew, a liquidy stew, absolutely, but you can make it thick or not. if it"s at all possible or compatible when I"m cooking, I"ve got more cloves of garlic in there than anyone wants to think about and I do onions and bell pepper and carrots, you know, all that s.h.i.t up there, all those spices and whatever I"m feeling like, that"s what I do. I pretty much wait until I get the stuff on the plate to do anything with hot sauce, but I also put jalapeno peppers right in the stew, a liquidy stew, absolutely, but you can make it thick or not.
Another thing I love-it"s good for you, it"s good lean stuff, and you 125 125 can ask your butcher to order you one-is beef tongue. A lot of people don"t want to screw with beef tongue. First thing you do is get that membrane off, and if you boil it that membrane comes right off. Otherwise you have to take it tediously off the tongue. But the membrane, that thick kind of thing, I guess it"s the taste buds or b.u.mps on the d.a.m.n tongue, and most people don"t want to screw with it because they can"t stand looking at the d.a.m.n thing because it looks just like what it is-a beef tongue. What I would do, after I"ve boiled it, I"d put it in the oven and put some new potatoes, that I"d already boiled, in the little tray with the tongue. And I"d put a lot of lemon or grapefruit slices. The thing about tongue, it"s like a solid muscle, marvelous consistency, good chewable solid stuff and however you cook it you can put what you don"t eat in the icebox and it makes tremendous sandwiches.
Speaking of tongue, there"s another thing I grew up eating-brains and eggs. Pork brains, I"m talking about. You grow up doin" a thing and for various reasons you get away from it, most people do. I think I got away not only from the way I talked but where I came from and the stuff I ate because when I left Georgia at seventeen and was thrown into the Marine Corps with a bunch of guys from Jersey and New York, a bunch of Yankees, I was like f.u.c.kin" ashamed of where I came from and how I talked and I made this conscious effort. But it wasn"t long before I come full circle.
I"ve never managed to cook cornbread like my mama does. Most restaurants here in the South, you get a cornbread that"s not as sweet as you see up North, but it"s too light. My mama"s cornbread is dry and coa.r.s.e and thick, and sort of got this crust around the edge. I love that stuff. When I was on the farm right until the time I left, there was a gristmill and we"d sh.e.l.l the corn and took it to town once a month and had it ground for meal and grits right there at the gristmill.
Turtles? Oh yeah, at home I catch "em on a trotline, you know what a trotline is, you put out a line in the water and it"s legal where I am if you don"t put no more than sixteen hooks on a line. You have to have a commercial license to put sixteen hooks on the line. You bait it with various things depending on what you want to catch during the night.
And you"ll get three or four turtles a week. The sh.e.l.l"s not hard, I just do it with a G.o.dd.a.m.n hatchet, it"s the easiest f.u.c.kin" way to do it, the bottom of the sh.e.l.l comes right off. "Sorry turtle, here I come." Let him keep his f.u.c.kin" head in, I don"t care. I just turn him on his side and cut him open like a G.o.dd.a.m.n nut.
They also have a license for harvesting of gators down South where 126 126 I am. They draw lots and bulls.h.i.t, but if I want gator tail I just go out and take it. You can shoot it but there"s a problem with that. Game wardens all over the place down there. They"re brighter than they used to be and I just don"t care to f.u.c.k with the law. You can always tell where they"re gonna be or not gonna be, and the problem with a gun is the sound. So you set what"s called a brush hook and a brush hook is where you find a limb that"s going out over the water where gators are. The water can be deep or shallow it doesn"t matter, and what you do is run a line from the limb down to the water, but not all the way to the water, and put a good piece of rotten meat on the end of it. They love things that are full of putrefaction, gators do. A gator"ll eat any G.o.dd.a.m.n thing he can get his mouth on, including each other, they"re into cannibalism.
Now, if you want to catch a little gator, you put your hook six inch off the water and you"ll probably get a small gator. If you want a bigger gator, the bigger gator you want the higher you raise your hook off the water, but with this s.h.i.t hangin" on it. A small gator can"t rise up out of the water. You put the hook a foot or eighteen inches off the water, you"ll get a good-sized gator. Easy enough to do it, makes no sound.
Once the gator"s taken the hook, a very large hook, he goes back in the water and then it"s cool. The line is good and stout and you drag him out of the water and kill him. You bash him. That"s all it is. They"re not difficult to kill.
If you want to take the hide and f.u.c.k with that, well that"s more difficult than it sounds. Tryin" to cure a gator skin is a hopeless and thankless task, but gator tail itself is absolutely wonderful. A small gator, say a five-foot gator-a gator grows a foot a year so you"re talkin"
about a five-year-old gator-you"d get about fifteen pounds of good, solid, edible, wonderful flesh. Gator can be barbecued, but the best way to do gator tail is to put it in an egg and flour batter and deep-fry it.
Cut it into small bite-sized pieces, put it in deep fat and fry it up.
I"m very fond of doves. Usually I eat the doves I shoot, but there is a guy nearby raises doves commercially and I went over and got some doves and brought "em home and all you do is pull their little heads off and dip "em in boiling water and pull the feathers out and split "em open and put "em under the broiler and they come out wonderful if you cook "em just right. Put "em pretty close to the f.u.c.kin" flame and don"t leave "em too long. That"s the mistake everybody makes because they say fowl"s got to be done. I"m with you but they don"t got to be cooked to death.
127 That"s the mistake people make with liver. n.o.body wants to eat liver.
But if they would just marinate the f.u.c.kin" liver in milk for about fifteen minutes before they cook it and then put a whole pan-I"m talking about a big black skillet-full of onions in there, and do those guys right by themselves until they"re all cooked in their own water-and maybe just a tiny little bit of flour in there until they"re brown-get those guys done, take "em out of the skillet, put the liver right in the frying pan where the onions were, where that juice is-you can put garlic or whatever"s to your taste, whatever you dig-with the skillet really hot, cook it one minute on one side. Turn that sucker off, turn the fellow over, the liver over, turn the fire off. Put the onions back in, leave "em about four minutes, take the whole thing out and you"ve got great liver.
I mean it"s going to be a little b.l.o.o.d.y, but it"s done done. Liver you buy everywhere is like shoe leather. I don"t blame anyone for not eating it.
I tell you the honest to G.o.d truth I don"t eat sweets hardly at all. In my childhood we didn"t get much of that, no. We might git a cake once a year maybe. Something that I still love to this day is to take peanuts and syrup, that we make ourself-just grind the cane, cook it in a vat and it cooks right down to sugarcane syrup-and you take what we call a cookie pan, with the little sides, not a sheet but a pan. And you put about a half inch of syrup in there, then you just put mature raw peanuts, the early ones, in there in the syrup and bake it and just keep on baking it, about 350 degrees, until you can reach in there with your finger and touch it when it"s beginning to set up-it"s not setting up but a bunch of s.h.i.t evaporates out of it, right? And then when it sets up it"s not exactly hard like peanut brittle, it almost is, but it"s firm enough so it"s chewy, like toffee. Other than that and punchin" a hole in a biscuit with your finger and pourin" syrup in there until it soaks it up, other than s.h.i.t like that, we didn"t get anything sweet. There just wasn"t nothing there. We were on a tenant farm, Macon County, Georgia, and that"s where I come from.
128 ALEXANDRE DUMAS.
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY ALAN AND.
JANE DAVIDSON.
Mustard "M ustard" is an elegant essay of more than five thousand words, supposedly ustard" is an elegant essay of more than five thousand words, supposedly written in response to an anonymous correspondent who had conveniently written in response to an anonymous correspondent who had conveniently requested Dumas to deal with the subject historically, etymologically, botanically, and in the context of cookery. Dumas did so, in such an orderly and co-herent way as to startle any reader familiar with the looser and more jumbled requested Dumas to deal with the subject historically, etymologically, botanically, and in the context of cookery. Dumas did so, in such an orderly and co-herent way as to startle any reader familiar with the looser and more jumbled essays in the dictionary. Extracts only are given here; but we have taken care essays in the dictionary. Extracts only are given here; but we have taken care to include the final page, in which the purpose of the whole essay is revealed to include the final page, in which the purpose of the whole essay is revealed as an advertis.e.m.e.nt for Bornibus Mustard as an advertis.e.m.e.nt for Bornibus Mustard.
You ask me, my dear anonymous correspondent, how far back in history mustard goes. Let me, then, deal with the egg before I come to the chicken, and with the seed before the plant.
The Greeks and Romans, who were not familiar with mustard in pots or in "bricks," as it is sold nowadays, knew it in the form of mustard grains, which they used in stews, and as a powder, which they employed with roasts, just as we use our modern mustard.
Greeks and Romans had but the one word for mustard, which proves clearly that this condiment came from Greece to Italy, from Athens to Rome. They used the name sinapis sinapis without distinction for both mustard grain and powdered mustard. without distinction for both mustard grain and powdered mustard.
[After further comments on mustard in cla.s.sical times, Dumas describes the Dark Ages when much knowledge and many recipes were lost.]
Dijon alone, the city which the Romans called Divio, had kept the original recipe of Palladius, and can be credited, if not for inventing mustard, at least for restoring it to us.
Since when have the Dijonnais had the honour of providing this in-dispensable condiment for our table?
It is impossible to say. All that is known is that Etienne Boileau, who was Provost of Paris under Saint Louis, granted to the vinegar-129 makers, in his regulations about guilds and corporations, the right to make mustard.
In the Cris de Paris Cris de Paris of the thirteenth century, we find: of the thirteenth century, we find: "Vinaigre qui est beau et bon!
Vinaigre de moutarde."
During that period, the sauce-vendors ( sauciers sauciers) used to carry sauces to people"s houses at dinner-time, and would run through the streets of Paris, crying: "Mustard sauce!...Garlic sauce!...Onion sauce!...Verjuice sauce!...Ravigote sauce!..." Anyone who was disinclined to eat his meat without sauce would open his window or door and summon the vendor, whereupon he would be served at once with the sauce of his choice.
It is readily understandable that these sauce-vendors resorted to imitation in an effort to make mustard their own product and to exploit it; but Dijon maintained her supremacy in its manufacture.
[After explaining that attempts in the south of France to supplant the vinegar in mustard with wine-must were unsuccessful, Dumas returns to the Paris scene.]
At nine o"clock in the morning and six o"clock in the evening the only people one met in the streets of Paris were children on their way to buy a pennyworth of mustard. If one asked what time it was, the reply would not be "nine o"clock" or "six o"clock," but "it"s the time for children to be fetching the mustard."
The first cookery book to appear in France, Le Viandier Le Viandier by Taillevent, head chef of King Charles VII, contains a long and unaffected eulogy of mustard. Here is what he wrote, in French which is difficult to read, but which we render in a manner comprehensible to all. by Taillevent, head chef of King Charles VII, contains a long and unaffected eulogy of mustard. Here is what he wrote, in French which is difficult to read, but which we render in a manner comprehensible to all.
"One evening, following a great battle against the English, King Charles VII and his three inseparable companions, Dunois, La Hire, and Xaintrailles, came to lodge for the night in the little town of Sainte-Menehould, in which only five or six houses survived, the town having been burned. The king and his suite were dying of hunger. The ruined and ravaged countryside was lacking in everything. Finally, they managed to get hold of four pig"s feet and three chickens.
"The king had with him no cook, male or female; so the wife of a poor edge-tool maker was charged with cooking the chickens. As for the pig"s feet, there was nothing to do but put them on the grill. The good woman roasted the chickens, dipped them in beaten egg, rolled 130 130 them in breadcrumbs with fines herbes, and then, after moistening them with a mustard sauce, served them to the king and his companions, who devoured the pig"s feet entire and left only the bones of the chickens.
"King Charles, who had supped to perfection, asked on more than one occasion subsequently for des poulets a la Sainte-Menehould des poulets a la Sainte-Menehould. Taillevent, who knew what he meant, served him chickens like those which the wife of the poor tool-maker had prepared for him."
Louis XI, who liked to invite himself to supper at short notice with his cronies, the bons bourgeois bons bourgeois of Paris, used almost always to carry with him his own pot of mustard. According to the of Paris, used almost always to carry with him his own pot of mustard. According to the Contes Contes of J. Riboteau, the Receiver-General of Bourgogne, he ordered from an apothecary of Dijon, in 1477, twenty pounds of mustard for the personal use of the king. of J. Riboteau, the Receiver-General of Bourgogne, he ordered from an apothecary of Dijon, in 1477, twenty pounds of mustard for the personal use of the king.
Finally, and to end this chronological history of mustard with an anecdote which I believe to be little known, we shall relate that among the various Popes who held such a brilliant court at Avignon, Pope John XXII was one of those who did not disdain the pleasures of the table. He was pa.s.sionately fond of mustard, put it in everything, and not knowing what to do with one of his nephews who was a good-for-nothing, made him his premier moutardier premier moutardier (head mustardier). Hence comes the practice of saying of a conceited fool that he thinks himself (head mustardier). Hence comes the practice of saying of a conceited fool that he thinks himself "the Pope"s head mustardier."
[Dumas explains how the dominant position of mustard was threatened by the influx of new spices and condiments from, e.g., the East Indies.]
Mustard, attacked by this invasion of eastern and western spices, fought a brave battle. Dijon, the great centre for its manufacture, thought that the product needed statutes which would completely rea.s.sure the public about the way in which mustard was handled and about the ingredients of which it was composed. As a result, the mustard-makers and the vinegar-makers of Dijon were given, in 1634, statutes which brought them into line with the other trades of the town and gave to them alone the right to make mustard.
Twenty-three vinegar-mustard makers of Dijon adhered to the new regulations. Among their signatures is to be seen that of Naigeon.
But, despite all this, the fashion for mustard was continuing to decline.
People found that it left something to be desired, as a source of acidity and variety in their food. Then there arrived on the scene Jean Naigeon, great grandson of the one who had signed the regulations of the twenty-three. By changing one single element in the manufacture of mustard he brought about a recrudescence of sales and a renewal of the 131 131 favour which mustard had enjoyed.
What did he need for this? An inspiration, a flash of genius. He was the first to subst.i.tute verjuice for vinegar, verjuice being the juice pressed from the grape before it is ripe. The result of this was that mustard no longer contained any sugar or acetic acid, but only tartaric, citric and malic acids.
[Meanwhile, however, there was a new development.] Paris had begun to be a serious compet.i.tor of Dijon. This revolution began in 1742.
A vinegar maker of Paris, called Capitaine, began to use white vinegar instead of red vinegar for his infusions, and to introduce capers and anchovy essence into mustard of high quality. These innovations found great favour.
Ten years later, another vinegar-maker, called Maille, established a European reputation for his speciality. Having been named purveyor "by appointment" to the Marquise de Pompadour, he a.s.sumed the t.i.tle, just a shade ambitious, of vinegar-maker and distiller to the King of France and the emperors of Germany and Russia. A man of ready wit, who understood his own epoch, which was one of full sensuality, he began by composing some vinegars for the use of women and others for men. His clientele soon included all the smartest people and the dandies of the aristocracy, d.u.c.h.esses, marquises, countesses, young beaux and abbes who moved in society. To work for the boudoir was a sure means of arriving in the kitchen. Before the emergence of Maille there were only nine kinds of vinegar. He added ninety-two, all of fine quality and good for the health.
He multiplied to a similar extent the number of vinegars used at table.
He had twenty-four mustards: red mustard, fine mustard with capers, fine mustard with anchovy, mustard powder, garlic mustard, tarragon mustard, nasturtium mustard, lemon mustard, Choiseul mustard, Choisy mustard, mustard a la conserve, aux fines herbes, a la grecque, a la a la conserve, aux fines herbes, a la grecque, a la marechale, a la marquise, a la reine, a la romaine marechale, a la marquise, a la reine, a la romaine, and finally mustard with truffles. These were all his own, except for the versions with capers and with anchovy. The most fashionable were mustard a la ravigote a la ravigote, with garlic, with truffles, with anchovy, and with tarragon.
Bordin flourished at the same time as Maille and, like him, had his role in the period. He invented the mustard called de sante de sante (for the health) and composed recipes for forty different kinds of mustard-imperial mustard, mustard (for the health) and composed recipes for forty different kinds of mustard-imperial mustard, mustard au vin de Champagne, a la rocambole, aux cham-pignons, a la rose, a l"italienne au vin de Champagne, a la rocambole, aux cham-pignons, a la rose, a l"italienne, and a la vanille a la vanille.
In 1812, counting the twenty-nine new kinds of mustard invented 132 132 by Acloque, the pupil and successor of Maille, but not counting the mustards of Capitaine and of Dijon, France possessed eighty-four kinds of mustard. At this point Grimod de la Reyniere announced three new mustards, which brought the total up to ninety-three [?]. These three were those of Chalon-sur-Saone, Besancon, and Saint-Brieuc.
Here is what was said about them by this famous connoisseur, on whose part we must notice a marked preference for Messieurs Maille and Bordin, who were, I suspect, regular and profitable subscribers to the Almanach des Gourmands Almanach des Gourmands.
"An apothecary and chemist of Saint-Brieuc has recently constructed a factory for the production of a mustard which is not without merit and which has above all great strength and pungency. It is beginning to penetrate the old region of Armorique and to arrive as far as le Contentin. M. Maout (for this is the name of the manufacturer, who was predestined to make mustard, since his name includes the first five letters of moutarde moutarde) plans to set up an establishment at Paris."
However, this brief comment on the product of M. Maout was enough to attract attention to him. Doctor Gastald, Portalis and Cambaceres declared themselves in favour of the mustard of Maout, and wherever one supped in France, that is to say wherever one ate with a certain delicacy, this "Celtic" mustard appeared on the table beside those of Maille and of Bordin. This triumvirate reigned for more than half a century on the tables of France.