Soyer's Culinary Campaign: Being Historical Reminiscences of the Late War.: With The Plain Art of Cookery for Military and Civil Institutions

P.M., at the Hôtel d’Orient, where you are staying. I will send some men with a few cabs. Mind you have all your luggage ready.” “I will. Many thanks for your kindness.” The next day, after visiting several public institutions, I was very desirous to taste an excellent dish called the bouillabaisse, which is exclusively a Marseillaise dish, as turtle-soup and roast beef and plum-pudding are essentially English. I therefore invited a few friends to that far-famed place, the “Reserve.” Among my guests, I had the pleasure of numbering a most eminent, amiable, and gallant gentleman, Captain Taunton, who, a few weeks previous, I heard, had the temerity to run his ship, the _Fury_, so close to the port of Sebastopol, that a round shot passed through her beam. The Captain, my friend M. Giraldo, and myself, formed the trio of degustators of the Grand Provençale dish called the bouillabaisse, as well as another celebrated one called the olio. The first one I, with veneration and justice, recognised as worthy of being immortalized in the archives of cookery. The olio, like many of its companions, so admired by the Marseillais, is only to be appreciated by the inhabitants of that city, who must have sprung from a bed of garlic, instead of that more genteel and more sweetly-perfumed one, the parsley-bed--so well known to the juveniles, who are made to believe they were found ruralizing amidst that delicate aromatic plant. The bouillabaisse pertains to Marseilles, as the whitebait to Greenwich and Blackwall. Even at Marseilles it is only at a few houses that you can get it in perfection, among which the celebrated “Restaurant de la Reserve” ranks as A 1, and next, the “Grand Hôtel des Colonies.” After all, the “Reserve” is the principal place. This beautiful and picturesque restaurant, with its pavilion and slim turrets, is gracefully situated on the top of the high rock at the entrance of the old seaport. When required, the proprietor procures the particular fish alive, at the threshold of his door, and shell-fish required for the composition of this dainty dish.[7] In