"L'art qui contient toutes les ÉlÉgances, toutes les courtoisies, sans lesquelles toutes les autres sont inutiles et perdus; l'art hospitalier par excellence qui emploie avec un Égal succÈs tous les produits les plus excellents de l'air, des eaux, de la terre."—Fayot.

Cookery is naturally the most ancient of the arts, as of all arts it is the most important. Whether one should live to eat, is a question concerning which the epicure and the ascetic will hold widely varying opinions; but that one must eat to live, will scarcely admit of controversy. The man who is wise in his generation will be inclined to choose a happy medium. Or perchance the French axiom that we only eat to live when we do not understand how to live to eat, may somewhat simplify the matter. As it is largely through food and drink that man derives his highest mental efficiency and physical well-being, as equally through improper diet accrue countless bodily disorders, it would appear that the proper choice and preparation of aliments and the selection of beverages should receive the profound consideration of every one.

In few of the arts has progress been more apparent during modern times. The mechanic has improved its accessories until the utmost perfection would seem to have been attained, medicine and chemistry have endeavoured to determine what elements of our daily dietary are injurious to certain individuals or to all, volume after volume has been written upon the subject, while the grand army of cooks has been busy in inventing new combinations or in resurrecting forgotten recipes.

And yet the digestive ills of humanity have continued to multiply, even though there are over six-score ways presented by a single author of serving the rabbit, and a competent priest of the range can utilise the egg in hundreds of different forms. Is it that with greater variety in our aliments, a greater number of ailments is a necessary sequence, and that as mankind increases in culinary knowledge digestion decreases in power? It is an olden adage that too many cooks spoil the broth; and it may be worthy of consideration whether a superfluity of dishes is not responsible to a considerable degree for the furtherance of various stomachic maladies. Or, on the other hand, is it that with the trebled facilities of locomotion supplied by modern science, and the closer confinement of indoor pursuits, the cause may be largely ascribed to lack of exercise and insufficient oxygenation?

However this may be, the art of cookery is far less generally understood than its great hygienic importance demands, while the art of dining is understood only by the relatively few. As M. Fayot observed to Jules Janin, "Without doubt, Monsieur, as you have often said, it is difficult to write well, but it is a hundred times more difficult to know how to dine well." Or, as Dumas has expressed it, "To eat understandingly and to drink understandingly are two arts that may not be learned from the day to the morrow." He himself was a striking example of the accomplished bon vivant, and his marked intellectual superiority over his son may be readily attributed to his greater knowledge of dining.

Where, indeed, more than at the well-appointed dinner-table may one echo the sentiment of Seneca, "When shall we live if not now?" "An empty stomach produces an empty brain," observes the author of the "ComÉdie Humaine"; "our mind, independent as it may appear to be, respects the laws of digestion, and we may say with as much justice as did La Rochefoucauld of the heart, that good thoughts proceed from the stomach." It is, however, a source whence our joys and sorrows both may spring. Neglect and indifference may impair its action to destruction; but, humoured kindly, it ever guides us in paths of peace. In a healthy and a hungry state, it yearns for special gifts which gustatory edicts demand, and rarely will confusion attend them when their bestowal is flavoured with prudence. It is a faithful minister and discriminating guardian, which rebels only when its functions are imposed upon; but when they are, its resentment is thorough and relentless. Worthy then, most certainly, of solicitous regard is the nourishment of an organ which may shape our ends for weal or woe.

"Cookery," said Yuan Mei, the Savarin of China and author of a scholarly cook-book during the eighteenth century, "is like matrimony—two things served together should match. Clear should go with clear, hard with hard, and soft with soft.... Into no department of life should indifference be allowed to creep—into none less than into the domain of cookery."

Concerning the art itself, it may be remarked that the French have been to cookery what the Dutch and Flemish schools have been to painting—cookery with the one and painting with the other having attained their highest excellence. Rubens, Rembrandt, Teniers, Jordaens, Ruysdael, Snyders, Berghem, and Cuyp may be paralleled in another branch of art by CarÊme, Vatel, Beauvilliers, Robert, LaguipiÈre, VÉry, Francatelli, and Ude. But, as in painting during its earlier stages Flanders and the Netherlands owed much to the Roman and Venetian schools, so in cookery the French are vastly indebted to their predecessors and former masters the Italians, who, if less distinguished colourists, were not to be despised as draughtsmen, and who if by instinct not as skilled in the chiaroscuro of sauces, were most dexterous in creating breadstuffs and pastry. Montaigne's reference to an Italian cook of the period will be remembered in this connection—one of the artists who had been employed by Cardinal Caraffa who discoursed upon the subject in such rich, magnificent words, well-couched phrases, oratoric figures, and pathetical metaphors as learned men use and employ in speaking of the government of an empire.

It is a long stone's throw from the first apple eaten in the Garden of Eden—and this was a wild fruit, and not a Spitzenberg or a Northern Spy—to a Chartreuse À la bellevue or that triumph of the ovens of Alsace—the pÂtÉ de foie gras. The first dish of which any record exists is the red pottage of lentils for which Esau sold his birthright—a form of food still very common in Germany and France. The first direct mention of breadstuffs in the Bible occurs in Genesis, where Abraham tenders the angel a morsel of bread, and bids Sarah make ready quickly three measures of fine meal, knead it, and make cakes upon the hearth.

The primitive tribes and nations were content of necessity with the spoils of the chase and the then more limited products of the vegetable world; and long before John the Baptist's time the Hebrews lived to no small extent upon locusts and kindred insects. In his enumeration of the animal food which they might eat without rendering themselves unclean, Moses specifies four insects of the locust family (Lev. x, 22). Some species of the Locusta are yet esteemed a delicacy in the East, these being cooked with oil, roasted upon wooden spits, baked in ovens, or broiled. The Bedouins, who are ever on the march, pack them with salt in close masses, carrying them in their leathern sacks. By the Athenians they were usually roasted; and mention is made by AthenÆus of an archimagirus, or master cook, who, in his tour around the ovens and stock-pots, enjoins one of his subalterns to take the utmost precaution with them and see that they obtain only a light golden hue.

Eggs, milk, rice, and honey, onions, succory, leeks, and garlic, the leaves of the vine, radishes, and carrots, with other growths of the garden, formed the staple articles of diet among ancient peoples. Vegetable food was more common than animal, the latter being served principally in the case of entertainments and special occasions of hospitality (Gen. xviii, 7, 8). Instead of lard and butter, olive oil was employed, and is still almost entirely employed by the Orientals. Fish constituted an important article of diet, together with game, lambs, and kids. Though not common, the flesh of young bullocks and stall-fed oxen was highly prized (Prov. xv, 17; Matt. xxii, 4), the shoulder being considered the choicest part. The master of the house was the matador, and upon the mistress devolved the preparation of the food. Among primitive cooks, Rebekah proved herself a performer of no mean ability, as instanced by her dressing the flesh of a young kid after the manner of venison, in order to obtain a father's blessing for her favourite son. Roots, berries, fruits, and the quarry of the bow and harpoon composed the fare of aboriginal man, and proved all-sufficient. When the struggle for physical existence called for strong exercise in procuring necessary food, little variety in nutriment sufficed, at no loss of brawn and sinew.

With many savage races, bread-fruit, nuts, the plantain, the cocoa-palm—known as the "tree of life"—with numerous other food-yielding palms, served as a principal means of subsistence. The first fruit-tree cultivated by man is said by all the most ancient writers to be the fig, the vine being next in order. The almond and pomegranate were cultivated at an early date in Canaan, and the fig, grape, pomegranate, and melon were known to Egypt from time immemorial. In Solon's law's, the olive, the fig, and the vine are enumerated, as also the cabbage, crambe, or sea-kale, pulse of various kinds, and onions. Cabbage and asparagus were known to the Greeks from the earliest ages, and by them the chestnut, largely utilised for food, was termed the "Oak of Jupiter." The original home of wheat and barley is supposed to be Mesopotamia and the fertile plains of the Euphrates, whence, after a period of cultivation, they spread eastward to China and westward to Syria and thence to Europe. Among other food-stuffs of the inhabitants were onions, vetches, kidney-beans, egg-plants, pumpkins, lentils, cucumbers, chick-peas, and beans—with such fruits as the apple, fig, apricot, pistachio, almond, walnut, and the product of the palm and vine.

Coffee, of very remote use in Abyssinia, was unknown to the early Greeks and Romans; they were, however, familiar with the cucumber, cultivated in India for at least three thousand years. The cucumber was also known to Moses and the Israelites, the patriarch referring to fish and cucumbers, melons and leeks, as among the delicacies that were freely eaten in Egypt (Numbers xi, 5). Various kinds of Cichorium, or chicory, were familiar to antiquity, while Lactuca, or lettuce, was extensively grown as a salad. The onion was a favourite with the ancient Egyptians, garlic likewise being made much use of—a plant denounced by their priests as unclean.[1]

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—

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:

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,

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,—

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:

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

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

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

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

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,—

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

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.