[Sca-cooks] Re: Dickens was: Scottish foodstuffs

[Nanna Rognvaldardottir]

Vicente wrote:

> I seem to remember that Dickens recanted after being served a dinner at
> Delmonico's.  Saveur Magazine ran an article about Delmonico's a couple
> years back, and presented a few recipes from that dinner: tomatoes a la
> reine, whole poached salmon, spinach veloute, spring chickens in madeira
> sauce, and maraschino savarin, among other things.  I made the savarin for
a
> party once, and hooboy was that good.  If somebody served me a dinner like
> that, I'd take back whatever things they asked me to.  :-)

I don't think it took dinner at Delmonico's to make Dickens say nice things
about America, and about New York in particular. AFAIK, the Delmonico's
dinner wasn't until his second visit in 1868; this is what he said after his
first visit in 1842. Come on now, Master Adamantius, I wouldn't exactly call
this "virtually nothing good to say about the place", would you?:

"The country around New York is surpassingly and exquisitely picturesque.
The climate, as I have already intimated, is somewhat of the warmest. What
it would be without the sea breezes which come from its beautiful Bay in the
evening-time, I will not throw myself or my readers into a fever by
inquiring.
The tone of the best society in this city is like that of Boston; here and
there, it may be, with a greater infusion of the mercantile spirit, but
generally polished and refined, and always most hospitable. The houses and
tables are elegant; the hours later and more rakish; and there is, perhaps,
a greater spirit of contention in reference to appearances, and the display
of wealth and costly living. The ladies are singularly beautiful.
Before I left New York I made arrangements for securing a passage home in
the George Washington packet-ship, which was advertised to sail in June;
that being the month in which I had determined, if prevented by no accident
in the course of my ramblings, to leave America.
I never thought that going back to England, returning to all who are dear to
me, and to pursuits that have insensibly grown to be part of my nature, I
could have felt so much sorrow as I endured when I parted at last, on board
this ship, with the friends who had accompanied me from this city. I never
thought the name of any place so far away, and so lately known, could ever
associate itself in my mind with the crowd of affectionate remembrances that
now cluster about it. There are those in this city who would brighten, to
me, the darkest winter day that ever glimmered and went out in Lapland; and
before whose presence even Home grew dim, when they and I exchanged that
painful word which mingles with our every thought and deed; which haunts our
cradle-heads in infancy, and closes up the vista of our lives in age. "

Nanna