menu mysteries

[helixaspersa]

OK, so since I can't really walk at the moment (making shopping tricky), I am basically eating entirely in college, even breakfast; I am fortunate to have this option. I thought I was fairly competent on menu-French, but I have been bamboozled by something *every day* this week. I have learnt that 'champagne sayabade' (sp?) is a strange kind of

Comments

[shreena]

I suspect that 'Croute Arnold Bennett' is some kind of in-joke. Clafoutis is kinda hard to describe so I'll just give you a link instead - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clafouti. Salsify is, I think, a kind of vegetable which is supposed to taste like oysters when cooked a certain way - I don't know, I have never eaten oysters..

[helixaspersa]

How knowledgeable you are, thank you. You're probably right about Arnold Bennett - no doubt a crusty don of yesteryear for whom cheese on toast or something similarly prosaic is now named. . .

[smellingbottle]

But Oxford hall food 'French' is always some kind of joke. At my esteemed college, the chef and half the hall staff were French (some kind of exchange with a catering college, I think), and I suspect they used to sit about weeping with laughter and thinking up ridiculous new French-sounding nomenclature to inflict on les rosbifs. There is, however, an omelette Arnold Bennett invented for him by some chef at the Savoy, which may contain haddock or soemthing unlikely, but my brain refuses to see how this can become a 'croute' of any variety.

[ms_cataclysm]

A croute Arnold Bennett should be a small piece of melba toast with a small egg and haddock topping.

[helixaspersa]

Wow! that's impressive (and a very old post - I'm mostly friends locked now as you probably realised!)
In my (now more extensive) experience that is indeed what it is. Any idea why this is named after the said Arnold?

[kathminchin]

*wandering over from TLL*

Arnold Bennett was a novelist whose favourite ommlette when he stayed at the Savoy was one with smoked haddock. He liked it so much he insisted on having it prepared for him wherever he travelled; and it ended up being named after him.

(I confess to wandering over after reading your post about you health issues and academia, mainly cos when I was in Secondary school I had a friend who had arthritis as you described.)

[helixaspersa]

Hello! This is a very very old post as you can see. My journal is entirely f-locked these days. Do add me though if we have interests in common and I'll add you back.