The jam tart is a
death-mask that went wrong and in coiisequence became morose and
heavy of spirit, and the custard is a soft-boiled egg which started
out in life to be a soft-boiled egg and at the last moment - when
it was too late - changed its mind and tried to be something else.
In the City, where lunching places abound, the steamer works
overtime and the stewpan never rests. There is one place, well
advertised to American visitors, where they make a specialty of
their beefsteak-and-kidney pudding. This is a gummy concoction
containing steak, kidney, mushroom, oyster, lark - and sometimes
W and Y. Doctor Johnson is said to have been very fond of it;
this, if true, accounts for the doctor's disposition. A helping
of it weighs two pounds before you eat it and ten pounds afterward.
The kidney is its predominating influence. The favorite flower
of the English is not the primrose. It is the kidney. Wherever
you go, among the restaurants, there is always somebody operating
on a steamed flour dumpling for kidney trouble.
The lower orders are much addicted to a dish known - if I remember
the name aright - by the euphonious title of Toad in the Hole.
Toad in the Hole consists of a full-grown and fragrant sheep's
kidney entombed in an excavated retreat at the heart of a large
and powerful onion, and then cooked in a slow and painful manner,
so that the onion and the kidney may swap perfumes and flavors.
These people do not use this combination for a weapon or for a
disinfectant, or for anything else for which it is naturally
purposed; they actually go so far as to eat it. You pass a cabmen's
lunchroom and get a whiff of a freshly opened Toad in the Hole
- and you imagine it is the German invasion starting and wonder
why they are not removing the women and children to a place of
safety. All England smells like something boiling, just as all
France smells like something that needs boiling.
Seemingly the only Londoners who enjoy any extensive variety in
their provender are the slum-dwellers. Out Whitechapel-way the
establishment of a tripe dresser and draper is a sight wondrous
to behold, and will almost instantly eradicate the strongest
appetite; but it is not to be compared with an East End meatshop,
where there are skinned sheep faces on slabs, and various vital
organs of various animals disposed about in clumps and clusters.
I was reminded of one of those Fourteenth Street museums of
anatomy - tickets ten cents each; boys under fourteen not admitted.
The East End butcher is not only a thrifty but an inquiring soul.
Until I viewed his shop I had no idea that a sheep could be so
untidy inside; and as for a cow - he finds things in a cow she
didn't know she had.
