Part 2

Baking in ovens is of great antiquity, the ovens of old Egypt being frequently represented in contemporary paintings. The table appointments of Egypt are similarly portrayed in her paintings--the guests of both sexes seated in gala attire, with jewelled fingers holding the lily of the Nile or sacred lotus, while slaves, naked except for necklace and girdle, served them with viands and wines. Differing from the Egyptians, the Greeks and Romans excluded women from their feasts, agreeing with the sentiment of Fulbert Dumonteil that for a true gourmand there exist no blue eyes, white teeth, or rosy lips that may take the place of a black truffle. The only exception related to the cup-bearers--fair youths and tender maids--who were enjoined to refuse nothing to the guests, and the richly and gorgeously arrayed _hetæræ_, the voluptuous Aspasias, Barinés, and Phrynes of the period, who made their appearance at the conclusion of the repast.

With a corps of twelve stewards to provide for his table, eleven of whom were constantly travelling in search of viands and wines, it is reasonable to assume that Solomon, of whose menus so little record exists, scarcely confined himself to coarse dishes prepared from the flesh of "bullocks, sheep, harts, and roebucks," but that he, with his thousand wives and concubines, observed a sufficient variety and luxury in his kitchen to correspond with the magnificent table appointments and sumptuous surroundings chronicled in the book of Kings. For ruthless extravagance, Cleopatra's dish of a melted pearl, weighing seventy-four carats and valued at six million sesterces, probably exceeds that of any single plate of the Egyptian rulers or prodigal Roman potentates. Horace, in the third satire of the Second Book, makes mention of the spendthrift son of Æsopus as also dissolving a pearl in vinegar--his mistress's earring--

"... to say he'd quaffed A cool five thousand at a draught."

Boiling was another primitive mode of cooking; and the method even yet practised by barbarians is to utilise the hide of the slaughtered animal for a bag, placing the meat in this receptacle with water, and dropping in stones heated to a white heat until the flesh is cooked. Laving the meat on hot stones and covering it with ashes, or hanging it upon a tripod of sticks over the flames, was the mode of roasting and broiling of the aborigines, with whom utensils of pottery and metal were unknown--a method often resorted to by woodsmen at the present time.

The Persians were first to set an example of luxurious cookery, at least as it was understood in ancient times--the favourable climate and fertility of their products, as well as their natural inclination to ease, all tending to foster a love for the pleasures of the table. The oldest books of which we have any knowledge refer to their pomp in banqueting, and portray the brilliant revels of the Oriental kings.

Thousands of years before Henrion de Pensey pronounced his famous aphorism, a novel culinary preparation was regarded as of vaster importance than a new celestial visitant. The saturnalia of Darius and Xerxes, the powerful Persian despots, are notorious in history, as are also the feasts of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Chaldea, and those of Belshazzar, the final ruler of corrupt Babylon who fêted and feasted a thousand of his lords, his wives, and his concubines. Anticipating the munificence of the Roman emperors, Sardanapalus, last of the Assyrian kings, offered a guerdon of a thousand pieces of gold to him who would produce a new dish. "Eat, drink, amuse thyself: all else is vanity," was his maxim, and the precept he desired to have engraven on his tomb.

The book of Esther records the magnificent royal feast at Shushan given in the third year of his reign by the Persian king Ahasuerus: a carnival which lasted an hundred and fourscore days--where the beds were of gold and silver upon a pavement of red and blue and white and black marble; where were white, green, and blue hangings, fastened with cords of fine linen and purple to silver rings and pillars of marble; and where the people were given to drink, in vessels of gold, of royal wine in abundance, according to the state of the king. From the land of Zoroaster, therefore, the Greeks received their first lessons in gastronomy.

Simplicity in their habits was a characteristic of the early Greeks, this simplicity extending in a marked degree to their cookery, when the famous Spartan black broth, composed of pork-broth, vinegar, and salt, became a national dish. But this epoch of abstention was of comparatively short duration. The spiritual sense was overcome by the carnal, and, imitating the Arians, they soon converted a natural craving into a hypersensuous pleasure.

The dinner or supper developed into an elaborate banquet, partaken of on reclining couches, accompanied by wines of Corinth, Samos, Chios, and Tenedos, the fumes of incense, the strains of music, and the singing of pages and beautiful maids. The couches on which they partook of their repasts and offered their generous libations to the gods were ornamented with tortoise-shell, ivory, and bronze, some being inlaid with pearls and precious stones; the mattresses were of purple embroidered with gold. Then Archestratus, the Syracusan, who had travelled far and wide in quest of alimentary dainties of different lands, was the Carême of the Attic cuisine. His much-lauded poem on "Gastronomy" is unfortunately lost to posterity, and thus it may not be compared with that of Berchoux, composed twenty centuries later. This poem Athenæus has termed a treasure of light, every verse of which was a precept, and from which numerous cooks drew the principles of an art that rendered them illustrious. The cook in the "Thesmophorus" of Dionysius, however, denounces Archestratus, his rules, and his maxims. But cooks are notoriously jealous and prone to asperse their rivals, just as a jealous woman will decry another member of her sex whom men admire. His aspersions, therefore, are not to be weighed against the avalanche of encomiums that Archestratus has received. It was to the select few who appreciated the delicacies and importance of his art that his poem was addressed. He spoke with authority, and not as the scribes. Witness his stately opening stanza, one of the few surviving fragments of his epic:

"I write these precepts for immortal Greece, That round a table delicately spread, Or three, or four, may sit in choice repast, Or five at most. Who otherwise shall dine Are like a troop marauding for their prey."

Mithæcus, another famous Hellenic guide to epicurean delights, wrote a book entitled "The Sicilian Cook," which has been mentioned by Plato; but this was written in prose, and was the product of a former native of Sicily, whence Greece was largely accustomed to draw her supply of culinary masters. Among the most distinguished of Sicilian craftsmen was Trimalchio, whose cunning is said to have been so great that when he could not procure scarce and much coveted fish he could counterfeit their form and flavour so deftly as to deceive even Neptune himself.

The cook of Nicomedes, King of the Babylonians, was accustomed to serve him with anchovies, made in imitation of the real fish, at such times as his majesty expressed a desire for anchovies on a sea voyage. A turnip, disguised by oil, salt, poppy-seed, and other seasonings, was the basis of the _plat_, the king, as Euphron, the comic writer, records, smacking his lips over the dish and saying that cooks were equally as useful as poets, and even more skilful. That, with the aid of olives, salt pork, onion, parsley, condiments, and stuffing, with veal as the medium, an accomplished cook can prepare a fair semblance to an overdone quail is proverbial. But how a turnip can be made to counterfeit anchovies is not so apparent. The celebrated repasts of Socrates, at which the guests were seated on chairs, were an exception to the luxury of the times; these entertainments were extremely frugal, the cheer being of an intellectual more than a corporeal nature--a mere collation,

"... light and choice, Of Attic taste, with wine."

Epicurus, the Athenian who flourished three hundred years before the Christian era, is wrongly supposed by many to have been one of the _dediti ventri_--a slave to appetite and living only for epicurean pleasure: a supposition that his name naturally implies. But it should be recollected that in proposing pleasure or happiness as the supreme good, he qualified this doctrine by the maxim that temperance is necessary in order to enjoy the noble and durable pleasures which are proper to human nature.

However varied the fare and splendid the appointments, the position of the ancients at table--resting on their left elbows and reclining on couches as the gnomon and clepsydra noiselessly marked the lapse of the hours--must have been not only irksome, but one greatly furthering stomachic maladies. Besides, it must be borne in mind that the ancients ate with their fingers, while the use of emetics, first in vogue among the Egyptians, and later on among the Romans in order to forefend satiety and enable them to prolong their saturnalia, was extremely common. The ten books of Athenæus give us a complete manual of olden Greek cookery, and Herodotus, Plutarch, and other authors, if not as exhaustive, are most fertile in references to the subject. Plato, who denounced epicureanism and preferred olives to all other kinds of food, often making his meal from them alone, nevertheless praises Attic pastry, and extols the baker Thearion, who was noted for the perfection of his bread.

Besides beef and mutton, kids, the domestic swine, fowls, the wild boar, the roebuck, hares, rabbits, and numerous game and song birds, the Greeks were especially fond of the peacock, served in all his panoply of plumage.

As the Romans considered the mullet the king of fish, so the Greeks regarded the sole as the _piscis nobilis_. They were served then, as now, fried, when their size admitted, and likewise were prepared with a savoury sauce under the name of _citharus_,--

"The cook produced an ample dish Of frizzled soles, those best of fish, Embrowned, and wafting through the room, All sputtering still, a rich perfume."

Suckling pig was considered a signal delicacy, its charms no doubt having been set forth in melodious measures in the lost poem of Archestratus. Indeed, who knows but that the sportive grace of the "Dissertation upon Roast Pig" may, after all, be Grecian rather than Anglo-Saxon in essence, and be merely an inspiration caught from some forgotten Attic author? The sea, on its part, yielded its infinite treasures, including the oyster, the earth contributing its varied fruits and esculents. Strong and sweet wine was a common beverage, both mixed, unmixed, spiced, and scented.

After fish and game, pork was the most esteemed food set upon the salvers of ancient Greece and Rome--a food in which epicures believed themselves to have discovered fifty different flavours, or fifty parts, each possessing an individual taste. At large entertainments, and even where the guests were only equal in number to the Muses, it was customary to serve pigs roasted whole, stuffed with sausages and bursting with _boudins_, or "black pudding." The pig was salted by the ancients in order to preserve it; but Apicius recommended, for keeping purposes, that medium-sized pieces of pork be chosen and covered with a paste composed of salt, vinegar, and honey, and be stored in carefully closed vessels.

Of ancient recipes, Apicius and Athenæus present a vast array. Soyer also, in his aspiring, cumbersome, and learned "Pantropheon," affords convenient access to the mysteries of the Greek and Roman kitchens. But the only way to pass intelligently upon the cookery of the ancients would be to try it. It is true that we do not possess their marvellous digestive powers ere their vigour became impaired by centuries of unbridled luxury. To young and vigorous stomachs it is possible that, if accompanied by the appropriate wines, some of their dishes, executed by a skilful chef who would exercise extreme caution as regards the use of cummin, rue, coriander, and boiled grapes, might prove an agreeable surprise party at a dinner _à la Grecque_ or _à la Romaine_. So light a touch and so discriminating a palate, however, are necessary in employing certain herbs and spices; so much, moreover, depends upon knowing the precise moment when an entrée or a ragout has received its just caress from the flames, that only an artist of the foremost rank would be able to reproduce some of these dishes with success.

Two especially prized dishes were those termed _myma_ and _mattya_--the one composed of all kinds of finely minced viands and fowls, seasoned with vinegar, cheese, onions, honey, raisins, and various spices; the other a fowl boiled with a great variety of herbs. "Boil a fat hen and some young cocks just beginning to crow, with some vinegar added to the water, and in summer with sour grapes in place of the vinegar, then remove the herbs from the vessel in which they are cooked and serve portions of the fowls on the herbs, if you wish to make a dish worthy to be eaten with your wine," enjoins Artimidor in his treatise of cooking. Finally, Athenæus, in the "Banquet of the Learned," has the scholarly host Laurentius give his recipe for what he terms the "Dish of Roses," prepared, he states, in such a way that you may not only have the ornament of a garland on your head, but also in yourself.

"'Having pounded a quantity of the most fragrant roses in a mortar,' says Laurentius, 'I put in the brains of birds and pigs boiled and thoroughly cleansed of all the sinews, and also the yolks of eggs, and with them oil, and pickle-juice, and pepper and wine. And having pounded all these things carefully together, I put them into a new dish, applying a gentle and steady fire to them.' And while saying this he uncovered the dish, and diffused such a sweet perfume over the whole party that one of the guests present said with great truth:

'The winds perfumed, the balmy gale, convey Through heav'n, through earth, and all the aërial way'--

so excessive was the fragrance which was diffused from the roses."

Truly a noble _pot-pourri_--meet for the gods of high Olympus. The pickle-juice, the pepper, and the wine denote the address of a master in disguising any possible taint of the pen, while the yolks of eggs and the oil would necessarily blend and assimilate with the attar of the rose-leaves. Thus does a great architect plan the construction of a cathedral, or a wizard of the brush adjust his pigments upon a canvas that is destined to become immortal.

The early Greeks had four meals daily--the breakfast, or _acratisma_; the dinner, _ariston_ or _deipnon_; the relish, _hesperisma_; and the supper, _dorpe_. As luxury and cookery advanced, luncheon took the place of the midday dinner, the latter, among the wealthier classes, gradually being postponed to a later hour. At all great feasts and dinners of ceremony, which it was customary to hold in the evening, the bill of fare was presented to the guests, and huge chalices were offered them to quaff from.

The frequent and detailed references by the old Greek dramatists, poets and writers to eating, drinking and banqueting, and to the various products employed as food, make it apparent to what an extent gratification of appetite and feasting prevailed.

The reader who would penetrate further into the mysteries of Grecian cookery may be referred with advantage to Homer's repast of Ulysses at the home of Eumæus, Athenæus's "Marriage of Caranus," and Barthélemy's "Feast of Dinias." But Homer's fare which he allowed his heroes was, with few exceptions, extremely simple. Although he mentions many kinds of wine, he praises moderation, and never represents either fish or game as being put upon the table, but "viands of simple kind and wholesome sort," such as were calculated to render man vigorous in body and mind, the meat being all roasted and chiefly beef.

Athenæus, in particular, presents the Greek and Oriental kitchens in all their aspects, and, with his marvellous erudition, proves himself a very Burton of gastronomy--the most accomplished Master of Feasts that antiquity has produced. To turn the pages of the "Deipnosophists, or Banquet of the Learned" is to enter a larder of which he only holds the key. Thus he introduces Damoxenus, the old Greek comic writer, who picturesquely portrays a master cook of the period, superintending his saucepans and directing the preparation of the feast:

"I never enter in my kitchen, I! But sit apart, and in the cool, direct, Observant of what passes,--scullions toil. ... I guide the mighty whole, Explore the causes, prophesy the dish. 'Tis thus I speak: 'Leave, leave that ponderous ham; Keep up the fire, and lively play the flame Beneath those lobster patties;' 'Patient here, Fix't as a statue, skim, incessant skim.' 'Steep well this small _glociscus_ in its sauce, And boil that sea-dog in a cullender.' 'This eel requires more salt and marjoram;' 'Roast well that piece of kid on either side Equal;' 'That sweetbread boil not over much.' 'Tis thus, my friend, I make the concert play.

* * * * *

And then no useless dish my table crowds. Harmonious ranged, and consonantly just, As in a concert instruments resound, My ordered dishes in their courses chime."

The ideal cook is depicted with equal picturesqueness in a lengthy tribute by Dionysius wherein he thus sums up his qualifications,--

"Know on thyself thy genius must depend. All books of cookery, all helps of art, All critic learning, all commenting notes, Are vain, if void of genius thou wouldst cook!"

Cratinus, in his play of the "Giants," extols the merits of Sicilian cookery:

"Consider now how sweet the earth doth smell, How fragrantly the smoke ascends to heaven: There lives, I fancy, here within this cave, Some perfume-seller, or Sicilian cook."

And Hegesander, in his "Brothers," presents an _archimagirus_, proud as Lucifer, who sings his own praises in the following grandiloquent strain:

"When I am call'd to serve a funeral supper, The mourners just return'd, silent and sad, Clothed in funereal habits--I but raise The cover of my pot, and every face Assumes a smile, the tears are wash'd away. Charm'd with the grateful flavour, they believe They are invited to a wedding-feast.

* * * * *

Let me but have the necessary means, A kitchen amply stored, and you shall see That like enchantment I will spread around A charm as powerful as the siren's voice.

* * * * *

You know not yet The worth of him you speak to--look on those Whom you see seated round, not one of them But would his fortune risk to make me his."

Philemon, in turn, the witty Athenian bard, represents a cook as pluming himself upon his cunning, and saying:

"Those who are dead already, when they've smelled One of my dishes, come to life again."

Anthippus, too, presents a graduate of the range who was no less proficient in the resources of his art, and who devised his dishes according to the age of those who were to partake of them,--

"Insensible the palate of old age, More difficult than the soft lips of youth To move, I put much mustard in their dish; With quickening sauces make their stupor keen, And lash the lazy blood that creeps within."

Nor does Athenæus fail to depict a glutton of the period, transcribed from Pherecrates:

"A. I scarcely in one day, unless I'm forced, Can eat two bushels and a half of food.

B. A most unhappy man! how have you lost Your appetite, so as now to be content With the scant rations of one ship of war?"

Milo of Crotona, Titormus the Ætolian, and Astydamas the Milesian were still more celebrated; and even Ulysses in his old age is represented by Homer as eating "endless dishes" and quaffing "unceasing cups of wine." Gargantua and Pantagruel evidently existed long before the days of Rabelais, and time will run back to fetch the age of gluttony, as well as that of gold.

WITH LUCULLUS AND APICIUS

"Whether woodcock or partridge, what does it signify, if the taste is the same? But the partridge is dearer, and therefore thought preferable."--MARTIAL, Epigrams, xiii. 76.

Passing from Greece to Italy, we find frugality to have been a prominent trait of the early Romans, and porridge to have been the national dish until wheaten bread was introduced from Athens. Like the Greeks, who received their initial lessons from the Persians, the Romans derived their knowledge of cookery from Attica, whence they imported their first masters. The Romans proved apt scholars, and soon outrivalled their instructors in the pleasures of the table, where the pomp, luxury, and licentiousness of the times were carried to their furthest limit. It is indeed well-nigh impossible to conceive the splendour, prodigality, and sensuality that prevailed during the Republic and the Empire, when fabulous revenues were squandered at a single feast, and gluttony and intemperance were the gods of the hour.

It was towards the decline of the Republic, during the period of Pompey the Great, Cæsar, and Lucullus, that, dispensing with the culinary preceptors of Greece, the Roman cuisine attained its greatest celebrity.

For it was at this period that the great ravagers of the world, who were to carry the name and arms of Rome into distant lands, brought their cooks with them, who vied with one another in contributing the most appetising dishes of various countries. It was then when Antony, intoxicated with the spoils of conquest and more than usually pleased with the artist of his kitchen, sent for him at the dessert and presented him with a city of thirty-five thousand inhabitants--an example followed in a minor way by Henry VIII of England, who rewarded his cook for having composed a pudding of especial merit by the gift of a manor. It was then that the Sybarites bestowed public recompense and marks of distinction upon those who gave the most magnificent banquets, and especially upon those who invented new dishes.[2] It was then that the practised epicure professed to distinguish by the taste from what locality of Italy a wild boar had been procured, or whether a pike had been caught in the lower or upper Tiber. Thus Horace, in one of the "Satires":

"But say by what Discernment are you taught To know that this voracious Pike was caught Where the full River's lenient Waters glide, Or where the Bridges break the rapid Tide: In the mid-Ocean, or where Tiber pays With broader Course his Tribute to the Seas."[3]

It was then that the rich Romans had at their villas magnificent _piscinæ_ filled with fresh- and salt-water fishes that might be netted at a moment's notice to set before their guests. In his ode "On the Prevailing Luxury," the Venusian bard also alludes to these _vivaria_ and the inordinate fondness for fish of the Romans:

"Soon regal piles each rood of land Will from the farmer's ploughshare take, Soon ponds be seen on every hand More spacious than the Lucrine lake."[4]

The mansions of the wealthy were likewise provided with splendid aviaries filled with thrushes that were fed with millet and crushed figs mixed with wheaten flour. Cygnets and snow-white geese were held in great repute, and when fattened upon green figs their livers were highly prized.