The Decadent Cookbook by Jerome Fletcher Alex Martin Medlar Lucan Durian Gray Page A
Book: The Decadent Cookbook by Jerome Fletcher Alex Martin Medlar Lucan Durian Gray
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it is hardly the custom to have coffee before the soup, and jelly is usually taken as a dessert. An explanation is in order.
In the Orient in times gone by there existed a redoubtable sect commanded by a sheikh known as the Old Man of the Mountains, or Prince of the Assassins.
This Old Man was unquestioningly obeyed. His subjects, the Assassins, carried out his orders with absolute devotion. No danger could stop them, even certain death. At a sign from their chief they would hurl themselves from a tower or stab a sovereign in his palace in the midst of his guards.
What means did the Old Man of the Mountains use to obtain such obedience? He had in his possession the recipe for a marvellous drug, which was capable of producing the most dazzling hallucinations. Those who tasted it, on waking from their intoxicated states, found real life so sad and colourless that they would joyfully make any sacrifice to return to the paradise of their dreams; if a man was killed in the course of obeying the sheikh’s orders he went straight to heaven - or, if he survived, was allowed to partake once again of the happiness conveyed by the mysterious drug.
The green paste doled out by the doctor was precisely this substance: that is to say, hashish , whence hashishin , or eater of hashish , which is the root of the word assassin , a term whose ferocious connotations are easily explained by the sanguinary habits of the Old Man’s followers…
The meal was served in a most bizarre manner, in all sorts of extravagant and picturesque vessels.
Large Venetian goblets veined with milky spirals, German tankards inscribed with mottoes and legends, Flemish stoneware jugs, narrow-necked flasks still wrapped in straw - these were our glasses, bottles and carafes.
The opaque porcelain of Louis Lebeut, as well as English china prettily decorated with flowers, were both striking in their absence. No two plates were the same, each one had its own particular merit. China, Japan and Saxony each contributed samples of their finest clays and richest colours. It was all a little chipped, a little cracked, but in exquisite taste.
The serving dishes were mostly faience from Limoges or enamels from Bernard de Palissy. Sometimes, beneath the food, a carver’s knife would encounter a porcelain reptile, frog or bird. The edible eel mixed its coils with those of the moulded viper.
A simple-hearted philistine would have felt a certain alarm at the sight of these hairy, bearded, moustachioed guests, some with the most unusual hairstyles, brandishing their 16th century daggers, Malaysian kriss or navajas, bent over their food which the guttering flames of the lamps cast into the most suspicious-looking shapes.
As the dinner drew to an end some of the more fervent members began to feel the effects of the green paste. I was already experiencing a complete transposition of tastes. The water I was drinking seemed to me a most exquisite wine, the meat turned to raspberries in my mouth, the raspberries into meat. I could not have distinguished a cutlet from a peach.
My neighbours began to look rather odd; great owl-sized pupils stared at me; noses stretched in probosces; mouths widened into sleigh-bell slits. Faces were tinted with unnatural colours. One man, a pale visage in a black beard, cackled loudly at an invisible comedy; another made incredible efforts to raise his glass to his lips, his contortions provoking deafening shouts of laughter. A man next to me was shaken by nervous spasms, and whirled his thumbs at fantastic speed. Another slumped back in his chair, eyes glazed, arms limp, floating voluptuously on a bottomless sea of annihilation.
With my elbows on the table I contemplated this scene in the light of my remaining reason, which guttered fitfully like a candle about to go out. Dull shudders of heat passed through my body, and madness, like a wave that foams round a rock and draws back before flinging itself forward again, entered and left my brain,
In the Orient in times gone by there existed a redoubtable sect commanded by a sheikh known as the Old Man of the Mountains, or Prince of the Assassins.
This Old Man was unquestioningly obeyed. His subjects, the Assassins, carried out his orders with absolute devotion. No danger could stop them, even certain death. At a sign from their chief they would hurl themselves from a tower or stab a sovereign in his palace in the midst of his guards.
What means did the Old Man of the Mountains use to obtain such obedience? He had in his possession the recipe for a marvellous drug, which was capable of producing the most dazzling hallucinations. Those who tasted it, on waking from their intoxicated states, found real life so sad and colourless that they would joyfully make any sacrifice to return to the paradise of their dreams; if a man was killed in the course of obeying the sheikh’s orders he went straight to heaven - or, if he survived, was allowed to partake once again of the happiness conveyed by the mysterious drug.
The green paste doled out by the doctor was precisely this substance: that is to say, hashish , whence hashishin , or eater of hashish , which is the root of the word assassin , a term whose ferocious connotations are easily explained by the sanguinary habits of the Old Man’s followers…
The meal was served in a most bizarre manner, in all sorts of extravagant and picturesque vessels.
Large Venetian goblets veined with milky spirals, German tankards inscribed with mottoes and legends, Flemish stoneware jugs, narrow-necked flasks still wrapped in straw - these were our glasses, bottles and carafes.
The opaque porcelain of Louis Lebeut, as well as English china prettily decorated with flowers, were both striking in their absence. No two plates were the same, each one had its own particular merit. China, Japan and Saxony each contributed samples of their finest clays and richest colours. It was all a little chipped, a little cracked, but in exquisite taste.
The serving dishes were mostly faience from Limoges or enamels from Bernard de Palissy. Sometimes, beneath the food, a carver’s knife would encounter a porcelain reptile, frog or bird. The edible eel mixed its coils with those of the moulded viper.
A simple-hearted philistine would have felt a certain alarm at the sight of these hairy, bearded, moustachioed guests, some with the most unusual hairstyles, brandishing their 16th century daggers, Malaysian kriss or navajas, bent over their food which the guttering flames of the lamps cast into the most suspicious-looking shapes.
As the dinner drew to an end some of the more fervent members began to feel the effects of the green paste. I was already experiencing a complete transposition of tastes. The water I was drinking seemed to me a most exquisite wine, the meat turned to raspberries in my mouth, the raspberries into meat. I could not have distinguished a cutlet from a peach.
My neighbours began to look rather odd; great owl-sized pupils stared at me; noses stretched in probosces; mouths widened into sleigh-bell slits. Faces were tinted with unnatural colours. One man, a pale visage in a black beard, cackled loudly at an invisible comedy; another made incredible efforts to raise his glass to his lips, his contortions provoking deafening shouts of laughter. A man next to me was shaken by nervous spasms, and whirled his thumbs at fantastic speed. Another slumped back in his chair, eyes glazed, arms limp, floating voluptuously on a bottomless sea of annihilation.
With my elbows on the table I contemplated this scene in the light of my remaining reason, which guttered fitfully like a candle about to go out. Dull shudders of heat passed through my body, and madness, like a wave that foams round a rock and draws back before flinging itself forward again, entered and left my brain,
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