carver must be provided with a knife having a good edge; and it will greatly facilitate his operations if the cook has previously taken care that the bones in all carcase-joints are properly jointed." The sending up of a carcase-joint not properly jointed, should, in our humble and humane opinion, be made felony, without benefit of clergy. Curse the cook, say we, who breaketh this law-simple hanging is too good for her, and she should be hung in jack-chains. Why have a cleaver in the kitchen at all? yet, perhaps, the best plan is to trust to the butcher-only the cook too must be answerable, and then you have a double security against the commission of the greatest crime that can stain the culinary annals of a Christian country. We cannot leave the subject of carving, without the following judicious quotation: "ROASTED PIG.-We could wish that the practice of having this dish carved by the cook were universal; for, in this fastidious age, the sanguinary spectacle of an entire four-footed animal at table is anything but acceptable. Like the larger poultry, pig is also very troublesome to the carver, who must have a sharp knife, with which the head is to be taken off in the first place then cut down the back from neck to rump; afterwards remove the shoulder and leg on each side. The ribs are then to be divided into four portions, and the legs and shoulders cut in two. The ribs are, or rather were, esteemed the most delicate part of this dish; now the neck of a well-roasted pig is the favourite morsel. The carver must use his discretion in distributing ear and jaw, as far as these will go, and help stuffing and sauce more liberally.' To this we have only to add, that the man or woman (surgeons excepted) who could cut up a pretty little roasted pig, would most assuredly not scruple to murder an illegitimate child. A Scotchman in London is perpetually pestered with the question, "What is a Haggis?" Now, no man can be reasonably expected to have the definition of a haggis at his fingerends. Henceforth we expect that we shall be spared such interrogatory. "THE SCOTCH HAGGIS.-Parboil a sheep's pluck and a piece of good lean beef. Grate the half of the liver, and mince the beef, the lights, and the re maining half of the liver. Take of good beef-suet half the weight of this mixture, and mince it with a dozen small firm onions. Toast some oatmeal before the fire for hours, till it is of a light brown colour, and perfectly dry. Less than two tea-cupfuls of meal will do for this meat. Spread the mince on a board, and strew the meal lightly over it, with a high seasoning of pepper, salt, and a little Cayenne, well mixed. Have a haggis-bag perfectly clean, and see that there be no thin part in it, else your whole labour will be lost by its bursting. Put in the meat with as much good beef-gravy, or strong broth, as will make it a thick stew. Be careful not to fill the bag too full, but allow the meat room to swell; add the juice of a lemon, or a little good vinegar; press out the air, and sow up the bag; prick it with a large needle, when it first swells in the pot, to prevent bursting; let it boil, but not violently, for three hours. “Obs.-This is a genuine Scotch haggis; there are, however, sundry modern refinements on the above receipt,--such as eggs, milk, pounded biscuit, &c. &c., --but these, by good judges, are not deemed improvements." A blind man cannot by any effort of the imagination conceive colournor can any man alive, no, not the greatest poet on earth, not Barry Cornwall himself, conceive a haggis, without having had it submitted to the senses. It takes possession of the palate with a despotism that might be expected from the great chieftain of the pudding race.' You forget for the time-being all other tastes. The real dishes before you seem fictions. You see them, but heed them not any more than ocular spectra. Your tongue feels enlarged in your mouth, not in size only, but in sensibility. It is more fibrousalso more porous. You could think it composed of the very haggis it enjoys. The There is a harmonious call among tongue, palate, and insides of the cheeks. That is the true total of the whole. Your very eyes have a gust; and your ears are somewhat dull of hearing, trying to taste. stomach receives without effort, in Epicurean repose, and is satisfied in such gradual delight, that you scarcely know when, how, or why you have ceased to eat. You continue to eye the collapsed bag with grateful affection,-command the waiter to behave kindly to it when removed,-and fol say, low it out of the room with a silent benediction. There is but one other Scotch dish at all comparable to a haggis-" alike, but oh, how different!"-and that, gentle reader, is Hotch-Potch. "HOTCH-POTCH.-Make the stock of sweet fresh mutton. Cut down four pounds of ribs of lamb into small steaks, and put them to the strained stock. Grate two or three large carrots. Slice down as inany more. Slice down also young turnips, young onions, lettuce, and parsley. Have a full quart of these things when shred, and another of young green pease. Put in the vegetables, withholding half the pease till near the end of the process. Boil well, and skim carefully; add the remaining pease, white pepper, and salt; and, when enough done, serve the steaks in the tureen with the hotch-potch. "Obs.-The excellence of this favourite dish depends mainly on the meat being perfectly fresh, and the vegetables being all young, and full of sweet juices. The sweet white turnip is best for hotchpotch, or the small, round, smooth-grained yellow kind peculiar to Scotland. Mutton makes excellent hotch-potch without any lamb-steaks. Parsley shred, white cabbage, or lettuce, may be added to the other vegetables, or not, at plea Bure. " Hotch-Potch, we cheerfully admit, is often met with in England-but it is of Scottish extraction. The truly delightful thing about Hotch-Potch is, that it comes in with the season of green pease. At Hotch-Potch we always think of the beautiful line of Burns', " My heart rejoiced in Nature's joy." It is redolent of summergardens, when gardens are in their glory. It is a dish that must have been known in Paradise-nor do we doubt that Meg Dods's receipt is the same as Eve's. In describing a feast in Eden, Milton says, that while Adam and Eve were listening to Raphael, the affable arch-angel, "no fear lest dinner cool." It was a cold dinner, it would appear, and therefore neither our first parents, nor their celestial guest, needed to be under any apprehensions of its getting any colder. The same freedom from anxiety accompanies Hotch-Potch. "No fear lest dinner cool;" for Hotch-Potch is the hottest thing in nature. Yet it is not too hot-The elements of fire and water are so mixed in him, that the lady of the house is entitled to stand up and "That is a dish." It would appear to be scalding, yet it scalds not You tremble to put a spoonful into your mouth, and blow cold; but it is needless all,—for carrots, turnips, onions, lettuce, parsley, peas, and lambsteaks, delicate and small, interspersed with the stock of sweet fresh mutton, are all at a temperature which some mysterious thermometer has regulated within the balmy and balsamic tureen that continues to fling up to heaven its rowling incense. We must forget, which God forbid, the happiest days of our youth, before we became insensible to the charms of Sheep's-head broth. This, we boldly say, is a dish peculiar to Scotland. What although it has been seen at the British Coffeehouse, London ? There it wants the true accent, and smacks not of the green pastoral braeș. It is incapable of being made on the ultramontane side of the Tweed. As in Scotland alone it boils, so to enjoy it you must be born a Scotsman. Hear it simmer! "SHEEP'S-HEAD BROTH.-Choose a large fat head. When carefully singed by the blacksmith, soak it and the singed trotters for a considerable time in lukewarm water. Take out the glassy part of the eyes, and scrape the head and trotters till perfectly clean and white; then split the head with a cleaver, and take out the brains, &c.; split also the trotters, and take out the tendons. Wash the head and feet once more, and let them blanch till wanted for the pot. "Take a small cupful of barley, and twice that quantity of white, or old green pease, with a gallon or rather more of water. Put to this the head and from two to three pounds of scrag or trimmings of mutton perfectly sweet; and some salt. Take off the scum very carefully as it rises; and the broth will be as limpid and white as any broth made of boiled rather more than an hour, add sliced carrot and turnip, and afterwards some onions and parsley shred. A head or two of celery sliced is admired by some modern gourmands, though we would rather approve of the native flavour of this really excellent soup. The more slowly the head is boiled, the better both the meat and soup be. From two to three hours' boiling, according to the size of the head and the age of the animal, and an hour's simmering by the side of the fire, will finish the soup. Many prefer the head of a ram to beef or mutton. When the head has that of a wether, but it requires much longer boiling. In either case the trotters require less boiling than the head. Serve with the trotters, and sliced carrot round the head." One only fault have we to find with this receipt. Instead of "one large fat Head," let there be Two. Instead of Four Trotters, let there be Eight. The effeminate Southern objects to the general blackness of the dish. That comes of looking at great lumbering white-faced Leicesters. Why! the living face of a true Scotch sheep is as black as that of a boiled one! So are the trotters. To suppose them white, would be hideous to the most hungry. The teeth are white-the jaw-bones are white-the cleaversplit skull is white-but would you have the seducing lips white-the inviting nostrils white-the fascinating chafts white? Ah no! Black as the comely countenance of that one of Afric's daughters, that won the heart of Lieutenant Clapperton beside the fountain of the desert! Shall we ever live to forget those truly Doric dinners, that duly every winter-Sabbath we devoured, we and two others now no more, alternately an each other's "pensive citadel,' hung in the purer atmosphere of fourteen stories; and at night shining like a star to mariners stemming the German ocean on a happy homewardbound! No other dish but potatoes and the dinner cooked by a bit lassic, who had also to take care, all the while, of the youngest bairn, while the honest couple were at the Kirk. We were collegians-nor haply altogether uninitiated into the mysteries of divine philosophy-for Monro, and Black, and Cullen, and Stewart, were yet in their prime. At head and trotters we eat away in silence; but over our hot toddy, (one moderate jug to each,) ye gods, how we did guffaw? There was nobody to disturb, for the fatnily were taking their decent afternoon walk on the Calton Hill-sound you know ascends, and the clouds are uninhabited. The little round table was drawn to the window of the watch-tower, and over the beautiful groves, where now the New Town stands, our eyes wandered delighted down to the sea, and away to the westward, where the High, land mountains seemed impatient for the glory of the setting sun. Then what Tusculan disputations! Powerful were we in argument in those daysat least so we thought-media probandi were never wanting-and we had winged words at will. When the blow of a thought failed to level our opponent, we dazzled his eye-sight with the lightning of an image, and then runningin, threw him a heavy fall. No subject came amiss. Dim as it might seem at first conception, and all unformed, how soon assumed it shape and splendour! Passed to and fro before our fancy, in numbers numberless, apparitions that now come not at our call, but seem to be all sunk for ever in the grave-cells of the sea. No scepticism had we, but we believed devoutly in all great and glorious things-in all things fair and lovely and of good reportin men unswerving in friendship, and in women faithful in love-in honour stainless as the burnished snow on the mountain accessible but to the flying footsteps of the beams of heaven-in the spirit of beauty that bathed the clouds, and built them up into edifices, through whose arched portals imagination walked as on wings into the great silent desert of the sky-in the music that saddened old hoary forests as they fluctuated in the night-windin voices heard in dreams, Oh! how tremulously tender and how disturbingly divine! in thoughts whispering almost like voices from the penetralian of our yet unpolluted hearts, and inspiring a glorious confidence in our own virtue, and glorious visions of victories-alas! never, never, to be won;-for what was it all but that dear and dread delusion, in which nature for a while nurses up the human soul, in which Time seems the same as Eternity, and the regions on this side of the grave so blessedly beautiful, that the light of Heaven itself is but as the shadow of life's transitory dream! We have in vain looked over Meg Dods again and again to find a quotation worthy of following this flight,So to conclude-it is not uncommon to meet persons in private life who declare that they are wholly indifferent about what they eat or drink-that they eat and drink because they are hungry and thirsty, and in order to recruit and keep up the system. We also eat and drink because we are hungry and thirsty, and in order to recruit and keep up the system; but so far from being indifferent about the matter, we hold the whole physical arrangement to be most exquisite and delicious. In corroboration of this our belief, we need only refer the reader to this and various other articles in the Magazine. Now we cheerfully admit, that there may be patients with callous appetites and hebetated tongues, who have lost the delighted sense of swallow, and are consequently such complete citizens of the world, that they know no distinction between French ragout and Welch rabbit, Italian macaroni or Scotch rumbletethumps; but if palate and tongue be sound, then the man who says he cares nought about eating and drinking, is obviously such a monstrous and prodigious liar, that we only consider why the earth does not open its jaws and swallow him on the spot. Only look at him lunching when he fondly supposes himself in privacy, and what a gormandizer! He is a great linguist, and understands the Laplandish, as many a rein-deer would confess, of whose tongue he had made himself master. He absolutely bolts bacon like one of the North-Riding school. Now he has swallowed the Oxford sausage; and, finally, he revels in the rookery of a supposed pigeon-house. Meanwhile he has been sluicing his ivories with horn after horn of old Bell's beer-trying whether it or his last importation of London porter be preferable for forenoon imbibation. Look, and you will see the large dewdrops on his forehead-listen, and you will hear his jaw or cheek-bones clanking; and that is the black-broth Spartan who is indifferent about what he eats or drinks! An ugly customer at an ordinary! a dangerous citizen in a beleaguered town! If bred to a seafaring life, the first man to propose, when put on short allowance, to begin eating the black cook and the cabin-boy! There is another class of men, not quite such hypocrites as the above, mistaken men, who bestow upon them selves the philosophical and eulogistical appellative of Plain-Eaters. Now, strip a Plain-Eater of his name, and pray what is he? or in what does he essentially differ from his brethren of mankind? He likes roast, and boil, and stew. So do they. He likes beef and veal, and venison and mutton, and lamb and kid, and pig and pork, and ham and tongue. So do they. He likes (does he not?) goose and turkey, and duck and how-towdy, and grouse and partridge, and snipe and woodcock. So do they. He likes salmon and cod, and sea-trout and turbot, and every other species of saltwater fish. So do they. He likes, or would like, if he tried it, A HAGGIS. So do or would they. He likes pancakes, and plum-pudding, and brandy nans. So do they. He likes Suffolk and Cheshire cheese, Stilton and weeping Parmasan. So do they. He likes grapes and grozets, pine-apples and jargonels. So do they. He likes anchovies, and devilled legs of turkeys. So do they. He likes green and black teas of the finest quality, rather sweet than otherwise, and sugar-candied coffee, whose known transparency is enriched with a copious infusion of the cream of many Ayrshire cows, feeding upon old lea. So do they. He likes at supper, the "reliquias Danaun," that is, the relics of the diners, presented in metamorphosis. So do they. He thinks that nuts are nuts. So do they. If the crackers are engaged, he rashly uses his teeth. So do they. He has been known to pocket the leg of a fowl. So have they. Once he has had a surfeit. So had they. Then was he very very sick. So were they. He swallowed physic. So did they. Or he threw it to the dogs. So did they. In all things the similitude nay the identity is complete-either he descends from his altitude-or all the world goes up stairs to him-mankind at large devour but one dish, or he is a Plain-Eater no more. The truth is, that it is as impossible to define a simple taste in eating, as in writing, architecture, or sculpture. A scemingly Doric dish, when analyzed, is found to be composite. We have seen a black-pudding with a Corinthian capital, eaten in truly attic style. Perhaps there exists not, except in abstraction, such a thing as a perfectly plain dish. A boiled potatoe seems by no means complicated. But how rarely indeed is it eaten without salt, and butter, and pepper, if not fish, flesh, and fowl! Reader! lay your hand on your heart and say, have you ever more than thrice, during the course of a long and well-spent life, eaten, bona fide per se, without admixture of baser or nobler matter, a boiled mealy or waxy? We hear you answer in the negative. Look on any edible animal in a live state, from an ox to a frog, and you will adınit, without farther argument, that he must undergo changes deep and manifold, before you can think of eating him. Madame Genlis tells us in her amusing Memoirs, that once at a fishing party, when a young married woman, to avoid the imputation of being called a Cockney, she swallowed a live minnow. That was plain eating. Madame Genlis was excelled by the French prisoner at Plymouth who eat live cats, beginning at the whisker and ending at the tip of the tail; but we believe that at particular parts he asked for a tallow candle. Without, however, reasoning the question too high, many is the honest man, who, while he has been supposing himself enacting the character of the Plain-Eater, has been masticating a mixture composed of elements brought from the four quarters of the habitable globe. That he might eat that plain rice-pudding, a ship has gone down with all her crew. The black population of the interior of Africa have been captived, fettered, driven like hogs to the field, and hanged by scores, that he, before going to bed with a cold in his nose, and a nasty shivering, might take his-gruel. We do not recollect ever to have witnessed anything approaching to plain taste in eating, except in a military man or two, who had seen severe service. One was a Major Somebody, and the other a mere Captain-but they eat up whatever might be put on their plates, without any varying expression suited to the varying viands. In fact, they relished all edible things, yet not passionately; and were never heard to discuss the character of a dish. Generally speaking, the army are neither epicures nor gluttons, when on a peace-establishment. What they may be in the field after a successful forage, we know not, nor yet after storm or sack. The clergy are formidable diners, as you may see with half an eye, from the most cursory survey of face and person. We defy you to find an exception from curate to bishop throughout our whole Episcopalian church. No doubt, there are too many small livings-yet produce the present incumbent (the late one is out of reach), and you will find him a weighty argument against all innova Not tion in ecclesiastical affairs. Much comfortable eating has arisen out of Queen Anne's bounty. Our Presbyterian ministers are not a whit inferior to their English brethren in any one essential quality of the clerical character. It is now the time of the General Assembly. What shoulders, and what calves of legs! Go to the Commissioner's dinner and admire the transitory being of the products of this earth. Much good eating goes on in manses, and in the houses of the heritors. Most ministers are men of florid complexion, or a dark healthy brown, and there is only one complaint of the stomach to which they are ever subject. No member of their body ever died of an atrophy. They can digest anything digestable-and you may observe, that, with a solitary exception here and there, they all uniformly die of old age. A preacher, that is, 66 a birkie without a manse, plays a capital knife and fork, and a first-rate spoon. He seems always to be rather hungry than otherwisegaunt, and in strong condition. that he or any of his cloth is a glutton. But being a good deal in the open air, and riding or walking from manse to manse, with a sermon in his pocket, the gastric juice is always in working power, and he is ready for any meal at the shortest notice. In every manse there should be a copy of Meg Dods lying beside Sir John Sinclair. Let it be lent to a neighbour, who will speedily purchase one of her own-she, too, will accommodate a friend-and thus, in a few months, there will be a copy in every respectable house in the pa rish. Before the arrival of Edward Irving's Millenium, in 1847, good eating in Scotland will have reached its acmè-and that event will be celebrated by a Great National Festival, of which the Cookery will be transcendental. Mr Irving will preside, and we ourselves, if alive, will cheerfully accept the office of croupier. ODoherty, then a grey-headed general, will sing an ode, accompanied on the violin by Mr Tweedie of Linnhouse. Maga, for February 1847, will indeed be a splendid Number. Yesthe Millenium Number will be as famous as that of the Chaldee or the Kirk of Shotts. But we are dreaming-and must be off to walk with the Commissioner. |