His regular desserts are worthy of a line. The jam tart is a
death-mask that went wrong and in coiisequence became morose and
heavy of spirit, and the custard is a soft-boiled egg which started
out in life to be a soft-boiled egg and at the last moment--when
it was too late--changed its mind and tried to be something else.
In the City, where lunching places abound, the steamer works
overtime and the stewpan never rests. There is one place, well
advertised to American visitors, where they make a specialty of
their beefsteak-and-kidney pudding. This is a gummy concoction
containing steak, kidney, mushroom, oyster, lark--and sometimes
W and Y. Doctor Johnson is said to have been very fond of it;
this, if true, accounts for the doctor's disposition. A helping
of it weighs two pounds before you eat it and ten pounds afterward.
The kidney is its predominating influence. The favorite flower
of the English is not the primrose. It is the kidney. Wherever
you go, among the restaurants, there is always somebody operating
on a steamed flour dumpling for kidney trouble.
The lower orders are much addicted to a dish known--if I remember
the name aright--by the euphonious title of Toad in the Hole.
Toad in the Hole consists of a full-grown and fragrant sheep's
kidney entombed in an excavated retreat at the heart of a large
and powerful onion, and then cooked in a slow and painful manner,
so that the onion and the kidney may swap perfumes and flavors.
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