Part 24

“But,” say you, “Seneca, the philosopher, perpetually combats, with the authority of his virtuous language, those dangerous men who are busied with a single stomach,[XXII-3] and who lay the foundation for a train of maladies.”

The reply to this is, that Seneca, the pedant, should have thundered against the stomach, which alone is guilty (he has sometimes done so); that this atrabilarious preceptor of Nero, attacked with an incurable consumption, could only eat very little, which much enraged him; and that his imprecations on the subject of the excessive riches and prodigious luxury of the Romans of his age, neither hindered him from possessing, and unceasingly increasing, a more than royal fortune; nor from feeding--well or ill--several thousand slaves; nor from pompously displaying in his palace five hundred tables--only five hundred--of the most elaborate workmanship, of the rarest wood, all alike, and ornamented with precious incrustations.[XXII-4]

How often have people extolled the Lacedæmonians and their legislator, Lycurgus. Well, Lycurgus mercilessly commanded poor little children to fast when they looked fresh and fat.[XXII-5] Strange law-giver of a strange people, who never learned to eat, and yet who invented the celebrated “black sauce,” the _jus nigrum_, for which the entrails of the hare served as the foundation. So true it is that cookery always preserves certain imprescriptible rights over the most fervent disciples of frugality.

Moralists do not cease to repeat that Rome would never have had sumptuary laws had it not been corrupted by cooks from Athens and Syracuse. This is an error. All the ordinances of the consuls proscribed profusion, excess--in a word, all the ruinous expenses of a passionate and ridiculous gastrophagy,[XXII-6] at the same time, respecting the magiric art itself; that is to say, that industrious chemistry which composes, decomposes, combines, and mixes--in a word, prepares different substances which gluttony, delicacy, the fashion, or luxury may confide to it for the space of a few minutes.

Why render the cook responsible for the extravagant tastes and follies of his age? Is it for him to reform mankind? Has he either the means or the right?

What is asked of him? and what can be asked? To understand exactly the properties of everything he employs, to perfect, and correct, if necessary, the savours on which he operates; to judge with a true taste, to degustate with a delicate palate, to join the skilful address of the hand, and the prompt and comprehensive glance, to the bold but profound conceptions of the brain; and above all--it cannot be too often repeated--to identify himself so well with the habits, the wants, even the caprices and gastronomic eccentricities, of those whose existence he embellishes, that he may be able, not to obey them, but to guess them, and even have a presentiment of them.[XXII-7]

Such is, to use an original expression of Rabelais, “_toute l’artillerie de gueule_,” which the cook can master. It is the sum total of what has been bequeathed to us by some great men, whose scattered instructions, lying here and there in books of morality and philosophy--there are numerous analogies between the act of eating and the art of living well--have been collected with scrupulous care, classed with all the attention we can command, and will serve, we hope, to beguile the studious leisure of the lovers of antiquity and the culinary science.

Mankind had long obeyed that imperious and periodical necessity which has been called hunger, when it announces its presence with its brutal exigencies, before any one thought to form a code of doctrine calculated to guide a sensation which, by its energy and duration, procures us the most thrilling and lasting pleasures.

The primitive nations no doubt gave themselves up to their native gluttony. They eat much, but they fed badly. They did not yet possess gastronomy; and, consequently, they had no cooks, in the serious and complete acceptation of the word.

The heroes of Homer prepared their repasts with their own hands,--and what repasts, gods of taste!--and prided themselves on their culinary talents. _Où la vanité va-t-elle se nicher?_ Ulysses surpassed all others in the art of lighting the fire, and laying the cloth.[XXII-8] Patroclus drew the wine, and Achilles very carefully turned the spit.[XXII-9]

The conquerors of Troy shone more in the combat than under the tent which served them as kitchen.

At length the aurora of the magiric ages began to dawn: it is not a revolution, it is a creation which is preparing to appear. Man has only known hunger; he shall now become acquainted with the charms of an appetite. The King of Sidon learns how to eat, and it is Cadmus, the grandfather of Bacchus, the future founder of Thebes, who takes upon himself to instruct this august mouth.[XXII-10]

And since that time how many illustrious followers have descended into the arena, how many glorious names will not culinary annals have to register!

Somebody will, perhaps, one day publish a chronological history of celebrated cooks. In the meantime, it may not be amiss to recall to memory a few illustrious men, whose services and genius an ungrateful posterity has too soon forgotten.

Thimbron, among the Greeks, took the culinary art from its cradle: he watched devoutedly over its development, and only descended into the tomb after having won the heart of the whole of Greece,[XXII-11] for his favourite science. Timachidas of Rhodes, cook and poet of the highest renown, composed an epopee on the art which he professed, in the midst of emanations from the stoves and the spit.[XXII-12] His verses, glowing with the sacred fire which inspired him, lighted up the magiric vein of several of his disciples, among whom Numenius, Hegemon, and Metreas, are still cited.[XXII-13]

Artemidorus collected and commented on all the words in use in the kitchens of his time.[XXII-14] Greece owed to this patient terminologist the possession of a culinary language, subject to certain unchangeable rules.

Mithœcus gave the “Sicilian Cook”--a remarkable type of a multitude of tiresome and insipid imitations.[XXII-15]

At length Archestratus appeared. He was of Syracuse, and passed all his life in profoundly meditating on the functions, strength, anomalies, and resources of the stomach. He discovered the laws which govern that organ, and presented to the world his magnificent treatise on gastronomy[XXII-16]--an inestimable master-piece of laborious investigation of which time has deprived us, together with the works of his useful predecessors.

We must not omit the names of some celebrated theoricians, to whom the art owes its rapid progress:--Philoxenus of Leucadus, devoted himself to the difficult study of degustation, and practised several experiments, which were, however, ill-appreciated by his contemporaries. Thus, in the public baths, he accustomed his mouth and hands to the contact of boiling-water, in order to be able to seize and devour burning viands, the instant they were placed on the table. He recommended cooks to serve everything very hot, so that he alone exercised mastication and deglutition, while other guests less inured, were obliged to content themselves with looking at him.[XXII-17]

Pithyllus invented a sheath that covered the tongue, and protected it, without paralyzing its action, against a caloric dangerous to its delicate tissue.[XXII-18] This ingenious cuirass was not appreciated, and history, in its thoughtlessness, has not even transmitted to us a description of it.

It was then the good time of Athens: gluttons had made way for epicureans; hunger, to a less fierce and gross sensation, already subjected to examination and discussion. The magiric art possessed its rules, its various partisans, its professors, and disciples. Great masters studied deeply the appetite--indispensable basis, on which will always rest the culinary exegesis; and they finished by classing it definitively, according to the three degrees of intensity which observation discovers in it.

_The bold appetite_, said they, is that which is felt when fasting. It reflects but very little; is not squeamish about viands, and loses all reserve at the sight of a very indifferent _ragoût_.

_The indolent appetite_ requires to be encouraged. It must be enticed, pressed, irritated. At first, nothing moves it--but after having tasted a succulent dish, it rouses, is astonished, its ardour becomes animated, and is capable of performing prodigies. It is this appetite which has consecrated the trivial but true proverb: “_L’appétit vient en mangeant_.”

The _eclectic appetite_ owes nothing to nature; it is the child of art. Happy, thrice happy, the skilful cook to whom it says: “Thou art my father!” But how difficult is this creation--how rare! It is the work of genius--but listen. Some guests, chosen amidst veteran epicureans, seat themselves round a table covered with culinary offerings worthy only of the God of Feasts, and a small number of the faithful. Their _indolent appetite_ examines, compares, judges, and, at length, abandons itself to the incomparable dainties from which it unceasingly seems to draw new ardour. But alas! pleasure, like pain, has its limits here below. Strength grows less, and becomes extinguished; the eye loses its greedy covetousness;[XXII-19] the palate languishes; the tongue becomes paralysed; the stomach sinks, and that which before pleased, now creates only fatigue and disgust. It is then that a _cusinier hors ligne_, tries a bold diversion, which must never be risked if the artist does not feel in himself that force of generous efforts which is no other than genius. By his orders, three or four dishes, prodigies of science and of luxury, appear on the altar, which the sacrificers no longer heed. At this sight, their looks brighten; desire revives; the smile reappears; the magiric _facies_ shines forth with all its splendour; the chest dilates, and you no longer distinguish your former guests. A man has transformed them. Each one chooses, tries, tastes--is silent, and lost in wonder. The appetite is perhaps tired, but not satiated; and the skilful cook at length enjoys a deserved triumph.

In this solemn moment he received, among the ancients, a crown of flowers[XXII-20]--sweet and noble recompense of his arduous toil. Nay, a more substantial proof of gratitude often greeted his new dishes. In Greece, the inventor alone had a right to prepare them during a whole year, and drew from it all the honour and profit. It was necessary, in order that these culinary preparations should fall into the public domain, that some one of his colleagues should succeed in surpassing him.[XXII-21]

At this epoch, the best cooks came from Sicily. Trimalcio was one of the most celebrated. Athenæus tells us that, when he could not procure rare and highly esteemed fish, he understood so well how to imitate their form and flavour with common fish, that the most cunning epicures were always entrapped. This reminds us of a certain cook of Louis XIV., who, on Good Friday, served the king with a dinner, apparently composed of poultry and butcher’s meat, which, in reality, offered nothing but vegetables, and prepared, too, _au maigre_.

The Romans, inheritors of the luxury of Asia and Greece, did not erect a temple to the greedy Addephagia, goddess of good cheer, who possessed altars in Sicily;[XXII-22] but they thought it impossible to repay too highly those who knew how to extend the limits of the pleasures of the table,[XXII-23] and a generous senator offered his _chef_ at least four talents, or more than £800 a year.

This is yet but little compared with the magnificence of Antony. He gave a supper to Cleopatra; that princess praised the delicacy of the feast, and immediately her lover called for the cook, and presented him with a city, in recompense.

How times are changed! We, at the present day, treat all this as pompous and ridiculous prodigality. It is because our somewhat mean epoch judges the olden times by the narrow ideas of order, foresight, and economy. The ancients enriched their _Archimagiri_, wasted their revenue in feasts, and then killed themselves. We have adopted a very different style of living. But, at the same time, how far are our most sumptuous banquets behind the most modest collations of Greece and Rome! Lucullus caused to be served to Cicero and Pompey a little _ambigu_, which cost £1,000. There were only three of them to partake of it!

The Emperor Claudius had generally six hundred guests at his table.[XXII-24]

Vitellius did not spend less than £3,200 for each of his repasts;[XXII-25] and the composition of his favourite dishes required that vessels should unceasingly ply between the Gulf of Venice and the Straits of Cadiz.[XXII-26]

It must be confessed that cooks of that gastronomic era had to fulfil an incessant and most laborious task. What was then more natural than to abandon to them some thousands of those sesterces, which the profusion of the master devoured by millions, in the form of phenicopters’ tongues, scarus or parrot-fishes’ livers, and peacocks’ brains?

We see that the Cæsars encouraged this frightful gastronomic monomania. Tiberius gave more than £3,000 to the author of a dialogue, in which the interlocutors were mushrooms, fig-peckers, oysters, and thrushes.[XXII-27]

Galba breakfasted before day-break, and the breakfast would have enriched a hundred families.[XXII-28] Ælius Verus invented the _pentapharmacum_, a kind of _Macédoine_, composed of sows’ flanks, pheasants, peacocks, ham, and wild boars’ flesh.[XXII-29] Geta insisted upon having as many courses as there were letters in the alphabet, and each of these courses must contain all the viands whose name began by the same letter.[XXII-30]

These follies, which cooks were forced to obey, continued to astonish the world until the moment when Rome--with her gods, the monuments of her ancient glory, and of her recent turpitudes--crumbled beneath the invincible weight of that horde of barbarians, that mysterious and implacable scourge, which Divine vengeance reserved for the punishment of unheard-of crimes.

But, as we have before remarked, the magiric art always survives revolutions and ruin of empires. Modern Italy inherited the wrecks of Roman cookery, and, thanks to her, Europe is at the present day acquainted with the delights of good cheer, and the charm of joyous repasts.

Under the reign of Louis XII. there arose a company of sauce manufacturers, who obtained the exclusive privilege of making sauces. Their statutes (1394) inform us that the famous sauce _à la cameline_, sold by them, was to be composed “of good cinnamon, good ginger, good cloves, good grains of paradise, good bread, and good vinegar.” The sauce, _Tence_, was to be made of “good sound almonds, good ginger, good wine, and good verjuice.” We find in Taillevant, the celebrated cook of Charles V. and Charles VI., besides the _cameline_, _l’eau bénite_ (holy water)--the sauce for pike, _le saupiquet_, _le mostechan_, _la gélatine_, _la sauce à l’alose_, _au moût_, that of milk-garlic, cold, red, and green sauces, _sauce Robert_, _Poitevine_, _à Madame rappée_, and _à la dodine_.

Platina, a Latin author of the 15th century, speaks of other sauces, in the composition of which sugar was frequently employed, according to the proverb of those times: “Sugar never spoiled sauce.”

In the middle ages, poultry, butchers’ meat, and roast game, were never eaten dry, as they are now, any more than fried fish. There were different sauces for all those dishes, and even for the different parts of each animal. The cooks of those days strove to acquire a reputation by inventing strange and grotesque sauces, which had no other merit than that of being surprising and difficult to make, as, for example: “eggs cooked on the spit,” “butter fried or roasted.” &c.[XXII-31]

We recognize in some of our most common _ragoûts_, those of which our ancestors were so fond in the middle ages, such as the _bœuf à la mode_, _à la persillade_, _au vinaigre et persil_, _le miroton de bœuf_, _veau percé de gros lard_, _fricassée de poulet_, _blanquette de veau rôti_; but we have lost the _pot-pourri_, composed of beef, veal, mutton, bacon, and vegetables, and the _galimafrée_, a kind of _fricassée_ of fowl, seasoned with wine, verjuice, and spices, and thickened with the famous sauce _cameline_.[XXII-32]

The cooks frequently placed on their masters’ tables _ragoûts_ and other dishes borrowed from foreign nations. They had a German _brouet_, a Flemish _chaudeau_, eggs _à la Florentine_, and partridges _à la Catalane_. They knew the _olla_--a mixture of all sorts of vegetables cooked with different kinds of meats, which we owe to the Spaniards, as well as the _ragoût_ of fowl, called _à la Chipolata_, and the _keneffes_--a kind of forced-meat balls made of bread and meat, to which the Germans are very partial, and the _pilau_--a dish of mutton, fowl, and rice, borrowed from the Turks.[XXII-33]

The art of cooking with its innumerable paraphernalia of sauces with gravy, pepper, cinnamon, garlic, scallion, brains,[XXII-34] with its gravy soups,

milk pottage, and _ragoûts_, had a signal triumph at the wedding of Charles VI. of France. On that occasion a skilful cook covered the great black marble table of the royal palace[XXII-35] with a hundred dishes prepared in a hundred different ways.

The good physicians did not proscribe the art of cooking; several of their number even deigned to write treatises upon it.[XXII-36]

A certain monkish servant, moved by an indiscreet zeal, wished not only to mortify himself but all the Franciscans of the monastery. Consequently, he prepared the repasts in the worst manner he could. But the community held a chapter, and he was condemned to receive fifty lashes; many of the monks wanted to enforce a more rigorous discipline by giving a hundred.[XXII-37]

In the middle ages, the cook of a house of any note always seated himself in a high arm chair to give his orders; he held a long wooden spoon in his hand, with which he tasted, without quitting his place, the various dishes that were cooking on the stoves and in the saucepans, and which served him also as a weapon with which to chastise the idle and gluttonous.[XXII-38]

THE KITCHEN.

Let as enter together one of those vast kitchens, where two thousand years ago, the marvellous suppers of some rich senator were concocted. In every direction, slaves are coming loaded with meat, game, sea-fish, vegetables, fruit, and those expensive delicacies of which the dessert of the Romans was principally composed. The slaves have been over the principal markets of the city, especially those of the Trigemina gate,

DESCRIPTION OF PLATE No. XI.

No. 1. Remains of a kitchen-stove in the house of Pansa, at Pompeii, much like those of the present day; a knife, a strainer, and a kind of frying-pan with four cavities, probably intended to cook eggs.

No. 2. Stock-pot, in bronze, to hang over the fire, if we may judge from the eye at the top of the handle.

No. 3. A similar one of another shape, for boiling.

No. 4. Ladles of various forms, for making libation from larger vessels.

No. 5. A brazier; the thickness of the sides are hollow, and intended to contain water, and the four turrets are provided with moveable lids, at the side is a cock to draw off the water. The centre of course was filled with lighted charcoal, and if a tripod, or trivet, were placed above it, many processes of cooking, such as boiling, stewing, or frying, might be performed.--“_Pompeii._”--“_Lib. of Ent. Know._”

of the Metasudante,[XXII-39] of the Suburd Way,[XXII-40] and the Sacred Way.[XXII-41] Each one lays his basket at the feet of the procurator or major-domo, who examines the contents, and registers them on his tablets;[XXII-42] then he has placed in the pantry, contiguous to the dining room, those of the provisions which demand no preparation,[XXII-43] but whose graceful and symmetrical arrangement is confided to two Æolian servants designated under the name of _structores_.[XXII-44]

All these porters are under the immediate orders of a confidential servant--_obsonator_--charged with buying the provisions necessary for the household, and who is obliged to make himself acquainted with the taste of his master and also of each guest, that he may procure nothing which they dislike.[XXII-45]

The remaining comestibles are placed in an airy and spacious apartment adjoining the kitchen, and at the back of the house.[XXII-46] There, around a table loaded with numerous wooden figures, representing a variety of animals, some attentive young men are practising, under the direction of an experienced master, the difficult art of carving game and poultry;[XXII-47] whilst a melodious symphony accustoms their skilful hands to hasten or retard their graceful movements according to the time of the music.[XXII-48] In this learned rehearsal the eye and ear, alike charmed, pass alternately from the peaceful emotions of the pensive _adagio_ to the lively cadences of the rapid _allegro_, and from the harmonious and calm _andante_ to the captivating and joyous accents of a frenzied _prestissimo_.

In this spacious laboratory the most delicious emanations invite us. The chief of the cooks, the _Archimagirus_,[XXII-49] seated on a raised platform, embraces at a single glance the series of stock-pots and brick stoves,[XXII-50] very similar to those in use at the present day, at which the silent crowd of assistants,[XXII-51] ministers of his will, elaborate and watch the expensive dishes destined to form a splendid supper. As, at the moment of battle, the general, motionless on a height which commands a view of his army, hastens, orders, scolds his scattered battalions, absent and yet everywhere, animating with his own inspiration the warlike masses, and exciting them with the excitement of his own soul, he invokes victory, and victory replies, “Behold me!” The _Archimagirus_ has also his days of triumph; and in the evening, perhaps, the king of the feast will place on his head a crown of flowers, precious recompense of his talent and success.

At some distance from the culinary autocrat, on the opposite side, an

immense iron grate,[XXII-52] carefully supplied with wood,[XXII-53] which an unhappy slave unceasingly blows with his breath into a flame,[XXII-54] throws around its lurid glare. The _Lares_, grotesque figures, roughly carved in stone, protect this spot. A cock is sacrificed to them in the month of December.[XXII-55]

Some learned men have supposed that the Greeks and Romans had no chimneys; it is, however, easy to prove the contrary. Philocleo, a character in the comedy of the “_Wasps_” of Aristophanes, hides himself in a chimney. A slave who hears him, cries out, “What a noise there is in the pipe of this chimney!” Philocleo, being discovered, exclaims, “I am the smoke, and I am trying to escape.”[XXII-56]

Appian, speaking of the proscriptions of the triumvirs, relates that several citizens fled into the pipes of the chimneys.[XXII-57]

These two examples will preclude the necessity of more ample citations.

A vast cauldron of brass from Argos,[XXII-58] or Dodona,[XXII-59] placed on a tripod above the fireplace, furnishes the hot water required for the service of the kitchen. The frying-pan, beside it, serves in the cooking of certain delicate cakes or fish.[XXII-60]