Читать книгу The Gastronomic Regenerator: A Simplified and Entirely New System of Cookery - Soyer Alexis - Страница 28

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This very seasonable novelty originated with M. Soyer, “the Gastronomic Regenerator,” of the Reform Club; and, like everything which emanates from his inventive brain, is distinguished by its taste and utility. This is, indeed, a picturesque mode of keeping game, so as to make them ornamental until they become useful—at table. The lovers of “still life” pictures cannot but admire this “Bouquet;” and it is not unworthy of our painters’ attention. The several articles of game, &c., are secured between branches of laurel and other evergreens, set off with dried and coloured flowers, “everlastings,” &c. The handsome specimen we have engraved bears the following, arranged in the order here denoted:

	TWO GOLDEN PLOVERS.
	LEVERET.
WILD DUCK.		PHEASANT.
	WILD RABBIT.
GROUSE.		WIDGEON.
FRENCH PARTRIDGE.		ENGLISH PARTRIDGE.
WOODCOCK.		TEAL.
	TWO SNIPES.
	TWO LARKS.

The brilliancy of the plovers and of the pheasant, and the brightness of the wild-duck, backed by the sombre green, and the whole variegated and relieved by multicoloured flowers, is really very effective.

Not many days since, M. Soyer presented one of his “Bouquets de Gibier” to Viscount Melbourne, at Brocket Hall; when his lordship admired the novelty exceedingly, as did also the noble party on a visit at Brocket.

Another “Bouquet” has been presented by M. Soyer to a lady of high fashion and beauty, if we may judge from the triplet which accompanied the offering:

Madam,

Flora having forsaken her flowers,

I quickly embraced the sport of swift Diana,

To dedicate and present this bouquet to Venus.

Count d’Orsay, the arbiter elegantiarum of our day, on the “Bouquet” being submitted to him, admired the artistical design, and suggested that Landseer would appreciate its novelty, adding, “What a beautiful trophy it would make for a sideboard or a dining-room!”

The “Bouquet,” we augur, will be popular in the approaching Christmas season; and though there is a musty old proverb about “looking at a gift-horse,” the above novelty will surely throw the old-fashioned baskets into the shade, by presenting much that is agreeable to the eye, with the proximate association of another sense of enjoyment.

Bouquet de Gibier.