The salle à manger we find chequered with tables, where famished individuals are busily engaged, absorbing with astonishing rapidity savoury concoctions of original appearance, the obsequious "Kelner" displays a document, which imparts the refreshing knowledge that matter for refection is obtainable in endless variety from the cuisinal laboratory.
The Finnish has been liberally and literally rendered into the English tongue for our edification, and we have the choice of ox-steak, calf-steak, calf-cutlet, swine-steak, sheep's-leg, and so on, reminding us of some of the Parisian restaurants, where the liqueur "Chinois à l'eau de vie," is translated "a Chinese in brandy." Our lot falls upon calf-cutlet, and an unctuous conglomeration appears, redolent of garlick, and smothered in fennel and other species of the grass kind. Our entremêt is a cock-de-bois, which we innocently imagine might be cock of wood, alias woodcock, but the "rara avis" proves to be a species of capon, old as Methuselah, with a parchment hide, and must have lived at the period of the great fire and then and there been roasted. A supply of Finnish beer, a sort of attenuated rhubarb and magnesia tends to gravitate the solidities, but it is funny stuff, and our paymaster disburses the few farthings necessary in liquidation of expenses, and we adjourn to the billiard-room.
George Francklin Atkinson: Pictures from the north, in pen and pencil; sketched during a summer ramble. 1848
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