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A Meditation on Colonial Goose

It has often appeared to me strange—nay, even extraordinary—in my peregrinations upon the terrestrial ball, as, like his Satanic majesty, I go up and down seeking not whom, but what, I may devour—It has seemed, I say, peculiar that no inspired bard, with poetic tire flaming in his eyes and true gastronomic enthusiasm in his stomach, has as yet arisen to hymn the excellencies of that worthy successor to Elia's pork—the succulent cate we call Colonial Goose. Surely it is worthy of a place in the galaxy of famous dishes of the ages, with the boar of which Martial speaks with a smack of the lips audible through nineteen centuries, with the oysters brought to Rome from far off Britain's misty isle, with the lampreys for which a lord once thought it worth while to die, with the peaches which killed a king through their too luscious sweetness—with all the dishes sung with joy by the epicures of all the years.

Colonial Goose is a modern dish, 'tis true: a most excellent reason for preferring to live in the present century, in spite of its faults, instead of in any other of the ages which have fled without this supreme boon.

Think of the days when there was no possibility of coming to the mid-day meal, ravenous from the toil of Saturday, or wearied with the parsons' drawl on the Sabbath, no possibility, I say, of finding an indefinable delicious odour pervading your modest domicile. How many are the constituents of that delicate perfume! Rich and luscious ingredients blended by the oven's cunning heat with more skill than any culinary artist might commingle them. Comes the tang of thyme—evoking images of sunny gardens and hastening bees, a whiff of sage or parsley fresh and crisp from the thrifty jardin potager—anon the oven door is opened wide and a whole wafer of perfume fills your enraptured nostrils, and arouses all the eager gastric juices. You can wait no longer. You hasten as if on wings to the apartment sacred to the gracious dish, and there impatiently you wait, whetting your carving knife and your appetite at once. At last, when you are almost exhausted with the ecstacy of desire, comes the luscious viands, steaming and smoking on its broad ashet (Happy word! How can the feeble platter hope to rival thee in expressiveness?)—the dish, I say, perfuming all the air around, and garlanded with a shining cincture of golden potatoes sizzling from the oven; with tiny particules of delicate brown stuffing protruding from each interstice in its gleaming sides—that pearl, that gem, that greatest achievement of the British Colonies—Colonial Goose.

Then comes the moment, when with anxious solicitude, you plunge your glittering steel into its flank and slice, but gently, so as to conserve its delicate juices, and slice again and yet again, for all the members of your household share in some degree, your affection and enthusiasm—until at long last comes the joyful moment when you pile your own plate high with slender slices and irregular masses of steaming stuffing (surely a word too prosaic to use of an article that embodies all the ingredients of true poetry), and those golden globules for which all true gourmands owe a debt of gratitude to that bold sea dog Raleigh—and, page 56 pouring over the whole the steaming, fragrant, slow flowing gravy, fall to (as the vernacular hath it) with pure joy. Perhaps this is the acme of delight, when the first crisp and juicy morsels are actually within your mouth, satisfying the palate which has been so long tantalised by perfume alone, but alas! the supreme moment is soon over, and though many more joyous come as the meal proceeds, and as you eat and slice and eat again, yet true it is, as saith the poet, that never can you recapture "the first fine careless rapture."

Perhaps the moment when you most nearly recover it is when, the meal at last finished and the melancholy ruin of what was once so fair a dish borne away to the culinary regions, you are reposing undisturbed in your own individual armchair by the cheerful fire-side. You are at rest, I say, and as, your pipe between your teeth, you sink gradually into the blissful unconsciousness of the post-prandial nap, you live over in memory those joyous moments, until you cry with one of our wisest poets to one who is surely our kindest, gentlest, tenderest, most human essayist—cry with a thrill of pure and selfless sorrow for what he has missed by being born too soon. "Elia! thou shouldst be living at this hour"; and, so crying, sink "to sleep, perchance to dream" of that joyous success of the culinary art, of that kindest calmer of shattered nerves, of that most succulent and delightful of dishes, which has given and will give so much pure and kindly joy to men,—that crowning achievement, I say, which will keep alive the memory of Britain's Colonies in men's hearts long after her mighty Empire with its sceptre and crown shall tumble down and in the dust be equal made, with the poor humble scythe and spade,"—Colonial Goose.

—Frengritla.