The Boston Cooking-School Magazine (Vol. XV, No. 2, Aug.-Sept., 1910)Various
General
The Boston Cooking-School Magazine (Vol. XV, No. 2, Aug.-Sept., 1910)
Various
Cooking -- Periodicals; Home economics -- Periodicals
Nearly everybody who goes to London finds his way, sooner or later, to
Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese in Wine Office Court. Tucked away, as it is,
just off of Fleet Street, it presents anything but a pretentious
appearance and more than one party of timid American women has hurried
away, disappointed at sight of its dingy court. But the dinginess is
all on the outside; within, there is light and warmth, and cheery
greeting. The Cheese was a coffee house beloved by Samuel Johnson, and
the chair in which the great man sat, night after night, while busy
Boswell listened and took copious notes of the interchange of wits, is
still there, standing now beneath the big portrait of Dr. Johnson that
hangs on one side of the fireplace. Oliver Goldsmith was also a
regular patron of the Cheese, which is one of the few meeting places
of the literati of the eighteenth century that still remain. Indeed,
these old relics of the past are fast disappearing. Five years ago,
when I first visited the Cheese, the waiter, impressed with my
interest in the old associations, asked if I would care to see the
house in which Johnson lived. It was near at hand, but he said
emphatically, "You'll have to hurry for they are tearing it down at
this minute." Hurry we did and arrived in time to see the dismantling
of the last row of windows.
Ye Olde Cheese is too good a source of revenue for it to be destroyed,
and the prospects are that for years to come Americans will flock
there to exclaim over the high paneled walls and the sanded floors.
The tables still stand between high-backed benches, over which the
newspapers are hung, as they were in Johnson's day. The old grill is
on the second floor, and over its gleaming coals innumerable kidneys
and chops have been brought to culinary perfection. Beefsteak pudding,
which is served on Wednesdays, with all the pomp and ceremony of
ancient days, is an attraction that fills the tables and sends away
dozens of envious men and women, who can get no more than a sniff of
the Old English dish, as it is borne in triumph through the rooms.
Other days have their specialities, but it is the beefsteak pudding
that is the favorite, and if you delay your arrival, the prospects
are, you will have to be satisfied with a kidney or a chop, for not a
scrap of pie is ever left.
But with toasted cheese to follow, the kidney is not a bad substitute,
and it brings with it, also, a flavor of Dickens and Thackeray, whose
heroes dined frequently on such fare. With the luncheon comes
Devonshire cider, another speciality of the house, if you do not care
for beer or ale, but beer or cider is served in reproductions of the
pewter mugs that Dr. Johnson drank from, and, for a consideration, you
can carry one away, wrapped in an odd bag of woven reeds.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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