The Delmonico Secret

Robert Langdon, the hero of Dan Brown’s conspiracy theory books, is involved in another one. I’m listening to The Lost Symbol, a secret Masonic something or other lost in Washington, D. C. Brown has mentioned several times how all human knowledge, even the most arcane mythological symbolism, can be found on the Internet. Dan is wrong. The Internet can’t unravel THE DELMONICO SECRET.

I was sitting in my dark paneled library wearing my red smoking jacket with a dark purple cravat and black silk pants. OK, I was sitting in the recliner with my mangy flannel pajamas with my computer on my lap. Just trying to provide a little atmosphere. I was trying to find a menu from the 19^th century that featured a charlotte russe for dessert. I had already learned the Oxford English Dictionary placed the first use of the word charlotte for a dessert in 1797 with a charlotte russe first mentioned in 1843. I plugged in my external hard drive, the big with one terabyte of space, and went to my historic cookbook collection and narrowed my search to books in the collection after 1840. A menu from Delmonico’s popped up with a entry for charlotte siberienne. Some more research showed the menu came from the fall of 1863. My knowledge of mystic analogies (from the SATs) told me that siberienne is to russe as Siberia is to Russia.

The fleet was in, not now, but in 1863. Alexander II, Czar of Russia, had freed his country’s serfs in 1861 and had taken a shine to our Great Emancipator,Honest Old Abe and sent a fleet to NY to show his support for the North. This at a time when Britain and France were a mite peckish  with us. The reception ball was held at Delmonico’s in New York. A little research showed that for a charlotte siberienne, the confectioners at the restaurant laid aside the lady fingers of the charlotte russe and ripped the guts out of large cake which was then filled with Bavarian cream and gelatinized fruit before having the top of the cake restored, icing applied, and a few hours of chilling added.

This confection sat on the menu near the bottom in the dessert section just above the statues made from sugar of President Lincoln, General Washington, and the Czar

.

So far so good, the menu was in restaurant French, and I could fairly easily translate the luxurious buffet’s items. Until that is, the hors d’oeuvres. There it was with the two kinds of oysters and the quail canapés-Snit-mitch á la Russe. What to make of this?  Obviously, it was an hors d’oeuvre and since á la Russe implied there were other kinds of Snit-Mitch á la something else, it would seem be a fairly common dish.

To the Internet! I quickly discovered all the references in the Google search came back to this one menu. In August, 2005  someone named Maria asked “Anyone have any idea what Snit-Mitch could possibly be?” The questioner cited the Delmonico cookbook noting that the recipe was not included in the book. John Wexler of Edinburgh, Scotland replied. At this point, fans of the Da Vinci Code should be at full alert-Maria is the name of the Virgin and Edinburgh is located only 9 miles from Rosslyn Chapel with its associations with the Knights Templar and the Holy Grail. At any rate, this John Wexler responds:

This is entirely speculative, based on no evidence whatsoever, so those whose time is valuable are hereby warned to skip to the next message.

I used occasionally to meet a dish called "russian salad" which consisted of root vegetables, diced into quarter-inch cubes, parboiled, mixed up together with cooked green peas, dressed in a light mayonnaise, and served cold. It was quite tasty, and also had a curious non-culinary use in the days when railway carriages were divided into separate compartments.

Anyway - I wonder whether your dish might be a russian salad trying to make itself sound exotic by using a Foreign Name. "A la russe" is simple enough, and I would guess that Snit-Mitch was an attempt at "schnitt" and "misch" - something chopped up and mixed together.

Actually, if they included some hard-boiled egg, and had some caviare
close at hand, it was probably delicious.

Nice try Mr. Wexler, if that is your real name, but the very next course has a “Salades de volaille á la Russe  (Russian Chicken Salad) and the Snit-Mitch was in the horsey duvers course. And what the heck is a “curious non-culinary use” in divided railway cars?

I worry about the fate of Maria (and myself) because nothing else is heard about Snit-Mitch from 2005 to today. This, of course, has not dissuaded me from continuing to learn the secret. Further research has discovered that a Snit is a beer chaser served with a Bloody Mary in Minnesota, but while that sounds perfectly wonderful, it’s not very helpful.  Next, I thought snit-mitch might be Russian for sandwich, but the Russian word sounds more like “butchybrats.”  Could snit-mitch be an inside joke between one of the Russian visitors and Delmonico’s? Did a hungry admiral walk into the restaurant looking for a BLT and order a snit-mitch instead of a sandwich?

There is no help for it. I will have to spend time delving into the indexes of old cookbooks. The Snit-Mitch must be the ultimate culinary Holy Grail. Why else am I being followed by an albino dressed in white and wearing a toque?