31 January 1966

The Coeur a la Creme of the Affair

“I can always tell something's wrong when you start being excessively masterful" Susan Weldon.

Preoccupied by the realisation that his wife is having an affair, Sir John Wilder orders a post concert dinner for himself and Susan Weldon. The ordering of the meal is just a prelude to the discussion with Susan in which she harpoons his hypocrisy ("Why is it men always think they have to kill their wive's lovers, but it never occurs to them that their wife may kill them for having a mistress?"). But Peter Draper uses the act of ordering the meal to tell us something about Wilder's character

After scanning the menu, Wilder tersely orders the same meal for both Susan and himself - Gazpacho, followed by Waterzooi. He assumes she will want the same food as himself (in contrast to his wife Pamela, who makes her own choices). He deals with the waiter in the same way that he gives orders to his secretary Kay Lingard."Afterwards we'll want Coeur a la Creme. Better order that now because I don't want it with cream and sugar, I want it with finely chopped chives."

Once the waiter has gone, Susan mocks his demand for "finely chopped chives" and for the first time Wilder queries whether she wanted sugar and cream. But the manner of his order is interesting. Wilder is not always as abrupt with waiters - in The Plane Makers episode Appointment in Brussels we see Wilder laid-back in a fogbound No Man's Land. Having temporarily given up trying to control events, he defers to the suggestions of the waiter who finds his choices "a little dreary" In contrast, as Susan Weldon has already guessed, The Crunch sees Wilder being "excessively masterful" to compensate for the sudden disorder in his private life.

After the ritual sampling of the Volnay - a red Pinot Noir said to combine finesse, elegance and femininity - the waiter fills the glass, and Wilder briefly hugs the glass to his nose as if trying to lose himself in its bouquet. It's only reluctantly that he lets Susan draw him back into conversation.

Wilder admits that he is confused by his reaction to Pamela's affair, and Susan's observation about being "excessively masterful" suggests that he is trying to control the minor events to compensate for lack of control in the major events.

Going back to Wilder's order for Coeur a la Creme. For some time I was confused by this, since most recipes (such as this one from actor Patrick O'Neal on the Silver Screen Suppers website) stipulate that the blend of cream and cheese has to sit in a rerigerator and drain the whey out of the mixture (leaving "the heart of the cream") for between three and twenty four hours. The fact that the waiter accepts Wilder's directions suggests that it's doable, and I finally found the answer in the Vincent Price - Supper With the Stars Cookbook.The recipe for Coeur a la Creme carries the helpful note that, "the cream cheese commercially available in the UK doesn't need to be sieved or left to drain overnight"!To celebrate, I quickly adapted Vincent Price's recipe to make a Coeur a la Creme a la Wilder.

The fact that Wilder says that the waiter will need to order it now suggests that he knows it will take longer than usual to pull this dessert together. Possibly he's eaten it here before. In other words, Wilder is telling the waiter his own restaurant's procedures. This echoes an observation of Ken Bligh's (Peter Barkworth) that Wilder would often pick up a bit of technical knowledge and trot it out at every opportunity. In short, Wilder could have just asked the waiter for his dessert, but needed to control every aspect of the process.

Having recreated the Coeur a la Creme, I couldn't resist adapting a recipe for Waterzooi from Margaret Fulton's Great Restaurant Dishes of the World( 1984). This Belgian compromise between soup and stew has double cream and egg yolk in its ingredients!

If Wilder is choosing his dessert on health grounds, it's arguable that it's too little, too late. While the gazpacho is full of nutrients, the Waterzooi may pushe up the cholesterol levels. But maybe Wilder just prefers his dessert with chives instead of strawberries and cream!

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