278 COOKERY OF THE GROUSE 



for dinner to-day ; for there is grouse, and I think 

 grouse is a dinner.' Certainly it is rather wicked to 

 eat a mere snippet of it at the end of a dinner of soup, 

 fish, half a dozen entrees, and very likely a solid releve. 

 The soup and the fish and one entree ought to be 

 ample when grouse in sufficient quantity forms the 

 roast. Also grouse forms a better ' solid ' than any- 

 thing else that I know to finish a fish dinner with 

 there is some subtle and peculiar appropriateness in 

 its specially earthy and dry savour as a contrast to the 

 fishinesses. For accompanying vegetables nothing can 

 equal French beans, which Nature supplies at the right 

 time exactly, and for drinking to match, nothing can 

 even approach claret, good, but not too good. Not 

 ' forty thousand college councils ' shall ever persuade me 

 but that it is something of a solecism and something 

 of a sin to drink the very best Bordeaux with any solid 

 food whatever. That should be drunk with a recueilk- 

 ment which is impossible to the palate when it is 

 simultaneously called to deal with the grosser act of 

 eating. Let, therefore, the host, however fortunate 

 and liberal, keep the First Three and also his best 

 Leovilles and Rauzans, Moutons and Pichon Longuc- 

 villes, for the time when the grouse has vanished : 

 but let him accompany it while it is being discussed 

 with anything up to Palmer or Lagrange, or even 



