STILL MEDIAEVAL

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 21999, 4 January 1935, Page 3

STILL MEDIAEVAL

FASHIONS IN FOOD

A fashionable world still follows the ritual of food as planned by the head cooks 350 years ago. Though London, Paris, and New York are the haunt of tho epicure, the choicest the chef can offer them is of mediaeval origin, stati's an overseas writer.

Of all fashions the fashion of food is the most conservative. Such delectable savouries as oysters, caviare, and smoked salmon, were choice in the 16th century and served in the same order as now, except that they were the principal items in the hors d'oeuvre.

The history of the menu has attracted men. of importance, as well as women. Kir Derek Keppel, Master of the Royal Household, is one, for he is a governing Don of Le Cordon Rouge, with the Marquis of Carisbrooke and Mr. Herman Senn, and also tho president of the Food and Cookery Association. This society has a famous library, and in its collection of menus are home that go back to the middle of the lbcn century. It is a library that the King's chef has often nsed, especially during the King's illness, when M. Henri Cedurd tapped every source to invent new dishes for the patient.

The menu of 1574 might be one of to-day in some of its dishes. There were oysters, Russian caviare, and smoked salmon, followed by a choice of four "potages" and five fish, which included turbot, but not sole.

The "releves," or remove course, which continued to Victorian days and appeared on the Windsor Castle menus, offered roast beef, ham, and saddle of veal. There were six entree dishes, one of foie gras, six roasts, including chickens, quails, and goose, and an entremets course ranging from sprouts and chestnuts, artichokes, and spinach, to charlotte Russe and fruit jelly, mushrooms, and cheese! The chefs of London smile ironically if a critic points out that their menu is monotonous and asks if an enterprising chef never creates an original meal. They will tell you that grapefruit and melon as appetisers are new. and that America's peaches and ham are mediaeval German; that King

Edward gave "crepe Suzette" its name, and that Escoffier compiled the recipe for peach Melba. Their just retort to the English critic is that, willy-nilly, the British have contributed little to fastidious epicurean interests. England's gravy soup, roast baron of beef, boiled fish, and steamed puddings are not sources of inspiration, they say. There remains, however, the English game, which is beyond criticism. Fashion and expediency have revolutionised women's dress, her position in the State and the field of sport. She runs her own car and aeroplane, flies across oceans and continents. Yet the menu is the same as when she wore a wimple. Food tabloids, apparently, are the only promise of a revolution in the menu.

Except that it is moro picturesque in phrasing the menu served at Buckingham Palace by M. Henri Ccdard, the King's chef, varies only slightly from those of Queen Victoria's at Windsor 60 years ago. Neither Queen Victoria's menus nor those of Imperial France of the same date carry out the ideas we cherish of 19th century burdened tables and lengthy meals. For a New Year dinner at Osborne Castle, the Queen served, in addition to the usual turkey and plum pudding, a choice of hot and cold fowls, wild boar's head, beef, tongue, and brawn, theso being written in English.