204 COOKING POUR ET CONTRE. 



Father Andrew, at the Colonel's especial solicitation, favourec 

 us with a Latin grace. 



No one merits and relishes a good dinner better than 

 grouse-shooter. It delights me to see my companion eat 

 like a traveller ; and to please me, he should possess sufficient 

 acumen to enable him to appreciate the fare. I despise the 

 man who is cursed with a Spartan palate, and who hardly 

 knows the difference between beef and mutton; and yet, 

 in equal ratio, the gourmand is my abomination. There 

 is a limit in culinary lore beyond which, as I opine, the 

 sportsman should never travel. Like a soldier, he will 

 sometimes find it serviceable to be able to direct the broiling 

 of a steak and the combination of a stew. To fabricate 

 a curry, or even regulate a hash, may be tolerated ; and in 

 a wild country like Bally croy, or the Scottish highlands, 

 this knowledge will frequently be "worth a Jew's eye;" 

 but everything beyond this in kitchen accomplishments is 

 detestable. With one who composed omelets, and talked 

 scholarly of the materiel of a plum-pudding and I once 

 had the misfortune to fall into a shooting party afflicted with 

 such a personage I would consort no more upon the heath, 

 than I would shoot with a cook, or draw a cover with a con- 

 fectioner. And yet, with these antipathies, I recommend the 

 neophyte to make himself in everything as independent as he 

 can. A few practical lessons are worth a world of precept : 

 one week's cooking on the moors will render him for life an 

 adept ; and if gun and angle fail him not, he will be able to 

 command a dinner, without owing to the devil the compliment 

 of a bad cook. 



Did I wish to elucidate my opinions, I would stake them 

 upon two items in our bills of fare. The soldier compounded 

 the soup and such soup ! and yet it was the simple extract 

 of a mountain hare, and five broken birds, which had been too 

 much injured to permit their being sent away. Shade of 

 Kitchener ! one spoonful of that exquisite potage would have 

 made thee abandon half thy theories, and throw thy " cun- 

 ningest devices" to the winds ! 



The Priest superintended the fish an eight-pound-salmon, 

 crimped, split, subdivided, and roasted upon bog- deal skewers 

 before a clear turf-fire. All the sauces that Lazenby ever 

 fabricated, could not produce that soup, or emulate this broil. 



