“Edgar Saltus says: "A perfect dinner should resemble a concert. As the _morceaux_ succeed each other, so, too, should the names of the composers." Few dinners in New York may be regarded as concerts and still fewer restaurants may be looked upon as concert halls, except, unfortunately, in the literal sense. However, if you can find a restaurant where opera singers and conductors eat you may be sure it is a good one. Huneker describes the old Lienau's, where William Steinway, Anton Seidl, Theodore Thomas, Scharwenka, Joseffy, Lilli Lehmann, Max Heinrich, and Victor Herbert used to gather. Follow Alfred Hertz and you will be in excellent company in a double sense. Then watch him consume a plateful of Viennese pastry. If you have ever seen Emmy Destinn or Feodor Chaliapine eat you will feel that justice has been done to a meal. I once sat with the Russian bass for twelve hours, all of which time he was eating or drinking. He began with six plates of steaming onion soup (cooked with cheese and toast). The old New Year's eve festivities at the Gadski-Tauschers' resembled the storied banquets of the middle ages.... Boars' heads, meat pies, _salade macedoine_, _coeur de palmier_, _hollandaise_ were washed down with magnums and quarts of Irroy brut, 1900, Pol Roger, Chambertin, graceful Bohemian crystal goblets of Liebfraumilch and Johannisberger Schloss-Auslese. Mary Garden once sent a jewelled gift to the _chef_ at the Ritz-Carlton in return for a superb fish sauce which he had contrived for her. H. E. Krehbiel says that Brignoli "probably ate as no tenor ever ate before or since--ravenously as a Prussian dragoon after a fast." _Peche Melba_ has become a stable article on many menus in many cities in many lands. Agnes G. Murphy, in her biography of Mme. Melba, says that one day the singer, Joachim, and a party of friends stopped at a peasant's cottage near Bergamo, where they were regaled with such delicious macaroni that Melba persuaded her friends to return another day and wait while the peasant taught her the exact method of preparing the dish. In at least one New York restaurant _oeuf Toscanini_ is to be found on the bill. I have heard Olive Fremstad complain of the cooking in this hotel in Paris, or that hotel in New York, or the other hotel in Munich, and when she found herself in an apartment of her own she immediately set about to cook a few special dishes for herself.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
containing three tablespoonfuls of salt, to the boiling point; boil half a pound of _macaroni_ in it until it is tender enough to pierce easily with the finger nail; then drain it in a colander, and wash it well in cold water; while it is boiling make a _Bechamel_, or white sauce, as in receipt No. 84: put just enough of it with the _macaroni_ to moisten it, heat it thoroughly; shake it up well with two forks to make the cheese fibrous, put it on a hot dish, sprinkle with half an ounce of grated Parmesan cheese, and serve it hot. 84.
Sources: The passage is from Carl Van Vechten, The Merry-Go-Round, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Corson, The Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical of 1877, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — navy cloth, cheese stamp.