The Real Life Downton Abbey (16 page)

The Countess of Warwick in her car circa 1905.

 

Food.
The very finest: truffles, oysters, caviar, game, langoustine, lobster, asparagus, guinea fowl, sirloin steak, soufflés, patisserie, pâtés, soups, desserts, course after course after course, cooked, boiled, grilled, cold, hot, served every way you can think of, covered in rich sauces, high glazes and pretty garnishes. You name it, the Edwardian elite eat it, often sourced from their own farmlands or shot on their estates – to be served on showily decorated, vast dining tables covered with crisp, snow-white linen, presented on costly silver dishes, eaten off the finest Wedgwood china, and washed down with the best wines, champagnes, ports and liqueurs served in sparkling crystal glasses.

It’s all so elaborate: enormous multi-coloured jellies that shimmer and sparkle in the light, petite pastry boats filled with colourful seasonal berries, ice-cream moulds shaped like pairs of cooing doves, carefully garnished with maidenhair ferns. Bonbons displayed on high stemmed dishes; creamy gateaux, enormous fruit baskets dotted along the tables. Pretty, decorative, alluring food displays. And that’s just dinner.

In fact, large quantities of food are served in the country house throughout the day; low-fat calorie counters need not attend. Showoffs, however, reign supreme. What you eat, how you eat it and, most importantly, where and with whom you dine or invite to your dinner table, are all of the utmost significance: food as status symbol, yet another way of showing the world your elevated position.

In some big houses, hostesses are judged purely on the talent of their ultra-fashionable chef: French, overpaid and frequently temperamental in the kitchen. Who cares if he rubs the kitchen staff up the wrong way? It’s his presence – and skills – that matter. Food is the ultimate social test; reputations can be ruined in the course of one evening if the meal or service isn’t perfect. And in the Season, the fashionable must see and be seen dining in London’s newest and smartest hotels, the Ritz, the Savoy, or the Prince of Wales’s favourite restaurant, Rules, in Covent Garden, where he regularly occupies his own intimate velvet-swagged dining room to wine and dine his favourite mistresses like Lily Langtry; love and laughter accompanied by huge, blow-out, twelve-course meals, with lashings of French champagne and wine. And lots of cigar smoke. (Rules and the Café Royal rent out private dining rooms by the hour for toffs in search of a bit of privacy with their latest squeeze.)

Edward’s gluttony, his love of everything French, particularly food inspired by the French culinary guru, artist and craftsman Escoffier (the Heston Blumenthal of his day but with a sexy French accent), sets the fashion for all upper-crust dining: it is excessive, highly structured and completely over-the-top, the last time in Britain’s culinary history that society will participate in such foodie indulgence in this way.

Compare this calorie-laden extravaganza to the diet of the very poorest working families. Their daily menu usually consists of tea, bread and jam for breakfast and a dish of potatoes with bacon later in the day. Meat or fish is, at best, a weekly luxury. And that is probably given to the man of the house. The contrast – and nutrition of the poorest – is shocking. Which is why country-house servants believe they’re more fortunate than most working-class people: they prepare and serve these vast mountains of food, so it follows that they too are fed each day – and sometimes quite well.

How is food cooked? Mostly on closed ranges, heated by coals, a labour-intensive method which is gradually being replaced by gas cookers – a quarter of families in towns and cities have a gas cooker by now. Yet most country-house kitchens continue to use the big range. And most of the food cooked in the below-stairs kitchen is consumed on the same or following day: domestic refrigeration is not yet commonplace, though ice from the ice chest is used for chilling fruit, wine and desserts as well as ice cream.

Here’s a brief rundown on the food and the dishes the aristocratic family consume at home. Overall, the food is very rich, very tasty and beautifully presented. But there are no concessions to vegetarianism for those who don’t eat meat – such beliefs are not fashionable and seen as eccentric or outlandish. And as we’ve already noted, the day’s menu is presented by the chef or cook to the lady of the house each day for clearance. For special occasions, of course, these menus have to be planned well in advance. Yet food shopping itself isn’t always on a huge scale: on a very big estate quite a lot of the produce is already available in-house, though certain foods are ordered from a local supplier. A saddle of mutton, for example, is ordered some days in advance from a local butcher.

Breakfast
is a very substantial meal. And there are many dishes waiting on the overladen sideboard that we are familiar with today for the classic English breakfast: a battery of solid silver dishes containing porridge, bacon, sausages, eggs – fried, poached, or boiled – kidneys, smoked fish, grilled cutlets, kedgeree (see recipe below).

The breakfast menu also includes potted meats and
precooked
dishes like curry, (India and the Raj are still very important to the aristocrats, curried eggs a big favourite), foods such as sardines on toast and big displays of cold meats like tongue, ham, even small quantities of game or roast fowls. At country-house shooting parties, breakfast for sportsmen may include game pie, devilled turkey and spiced beef. Piles of fruit are artfully displayed on sideboards, too. Plus toast, rolls, honey, marmalade, hot chocolate, coffee and tea.

The food is highly decorated, even at breakfast. If cold tongue, for instance, is on the menu, it is displayed in a special box-shaped holder. Like their houses, where the key idea is a specific room for a specific object or purpose, the wealthy Edwardians also use a range of kitchen and culinary equipment for table presentation that most of us would not recognise. The thick end of the tongue is placed in the holder and whipped butter is piped neatly along the top, complete with a sprig of parsley. Slices are carved from the thin end, as needed. Many dishes like this are then decorated with a white paper frill.

Lunch
started to evolve as a meal in itself in the nineteenth century. Before it was merely a snack and ‘dinner’ was the day’s main meal, taken in the middle of the day or the afternoon. But over time the main meal began to be taken later and later. So by the turn of the twentieth century – and with the introduction of artificial lighting – it became possible for society to partake of their main meal, dinner (not to be confused with ‘supper’ which is a very late meal, a snack of cold meats and cheese, served around 10pm), much later, at 8pm.

So by now, lunch is seen as a ‘light’ early afternoon meal. Yet it is still a three-course elaborate repast, served with wines and tea and coffee. Structurally, the idea is to start with a light dish, progress towards something heavier – like a meat course – then a final offering of something lighter.

• macaroni au gratin
  
• minced venison (croquettes made out of minced leftover venison, put into a sauce and seasoned)
  
• roast rabbit with potatoes, peas and carrots
  
• crème caramel or fruit compôte for dessert
  

Cold meats are also displayed on a sideboard as a buffet, so people can pick and choose. This is essentially a light meal. Popular dishes include mutton and fish like trout, salmon and crayfish, as well as whitebait, lobster mayonnaise (a very popular Edwardian dish), salmon, oysters, sole and langoustine. Turtle soup is also a favourite. Fish is often poached in an elaborate rich, creamy sauce. Or it is served in aspic (jelly) and garnished with herbs. And all fish is served boned.

Pâtés are also popular, usually sieved as highly as possible to ensure a velvet smooth texture. Anything with a soft texture like pâtés or soup is usually passed through a ‘tammis’ (a finely woven cloth) to make it super-smooth. Two kitchen maids hold the cloth, one at each end, and the soup is poured into the cloth, then it’s pushed through with a spoon to ensure an
ultra-smooth
texture.

Soup
itself is a fine art. And there’s plenty of choice as Isabella Beeton, or Mrs Beeton as she is known, the author of the definitive and highly regarded housekeeping ‘bible’ of the nineteenth century,
Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management,
points out:

Food Decoration
is for ‘special effect’, everything must look good. Often, hot food is covered in a glaze (a heavily reduced veal stock) in order to make it shine. Other decorative touches used include anchovy fillets, fine green beans, cooked egg yolk (put through a sieve), or herbs like parsley and chervil.

Even cold dishes are surrounded by decorative effects: tiny bits of chopped aspic, carrots, potatoes, turnips ‘turned’ into small shapes or cold vegetables bound with mayonnaise to make Russian salad. An enormous amount of painstaking detail is involved in the presentation of the food – mostly it is the role of the cook or chef alone to create the final decorative effect – to ensure perfection.

Afternoon Tea
is a ritual in itself. It is taken informally, in the drawing room, with all the cutlery placed on side tables. Although tea is primarily a feminine diversion, both sexes sometimes participate in the tea ritual. The ladies must wear their finest ‘afternoon’ clothing. Tea, Madeira cake, cherry scones, hot potato scones, flapjacks, coconut rocks, tiny cucumber sandwiches, cream, raspberry jam and butter – it’s a social event, very much a way of filling in the hours before dinner so that local friends and relatives may exchange courtesies. If there are house guests during shooting parties, the array of teatime treats becomes even more extensive – lobster sandwiches, anyone? For house-party groups, it might even be taken outside, picnic style, in a specially erected tent, with wicker baskets of food and drink carried out, with due ceremony, by the servants.

Dinner
is a very elaborate meal, a structured menu consisting of soup, entrée, fish, sorbet, then a roast, followed by dessert. Before dinner, the hostess must be ready in the drawing room, in her evening wear, at least fifteen minutes before the first guest arrives. Guests, in turn, know they are expected to be punctual.

When they arrive, they are ushered into the drawing room by the butler or first footman. For a dinner of more than six or eight people, each man is handed a place card carrying the name of the woman the hostess has placed next to him for dinner. If the man does not already know this woman, he must introduce himself and when the dinner gong sounds, he rises and offers her his arm. The dinner guests then move into the dining room, led by the host and the main female guest, the lady of the highest rank. This might be the eldest lady in the group or a stranger. But if there is a bride in the dinner group, precedence is given to her unless the dinner is being given specially for another female guest. Etiquette demands that husbands do not escort their wives into dinner – nor should brothers escort their sisters or sons escort their mothers. And the last couple in the dinner guest procession is the hostess, on the arm of the most socially important gentleman.

Invitations
are issued to equal numbers of men and women, though it is sometimes appropriate to invite two or more ‘extra’ gentlemen – so that married ladies do not only have the option of going into dinner with each other’s husbands.

At the dinner table, the host and the lady he has taken into dinner are seated at the bottom of the table, with the woman on the host’s right hand. The hostess is seated at the top of the table and the gentleman who has accompanied her into dinner must sit on her left. At large dinner parties there will be place cards carrying the names of the guests on the table. Sometimes, the guest’s name is printed onto a menu and positioned in front of each ‘cover’ (the name for the place laid at the table for each person). Menus are placed all along the dinner table, the dishes frequently written in French. Once a lady has taken her seat she may remove her gloves – long gloves can just be unbuttoned around the thumb and peeled back from the wrists.