The air is less dense than the earth, said Aristotle; poultry ought, then, to stand higher in estimation than quadrupeds. Our masters, the ancients, have left us fine examples on this head. In vain did impertinent sumptuary laws, enemies of progress, strive to repress the luxury of the farm-yards. These precautions on behalf of abstinence against the magiric genius were unceasingly met by a resistance, as energetic as it was truly Roman. Fannius, Archius, Cornelius, could make martyrs; but let us say, with pride, good cheer never had cause to envy them deserters and apostates. One of these tyrannical decrees was just published; a tribune of the people, a man of heart and taste, undertook to have it repealed. He courageously mounted the rostrum, and cried, with an inspired voice: “Romans! you are treated like slaves. By the gods! what can be more strange than the new law? They would force you to sobriety, whether you will or no! They would impose temperance on you! Ah! renounce this pretended liberty, of which you are so jealous, since you are no longer allowed to ruin yourselves, each one according to his fancy, or die of indigestion if you please.” This discourse was received as it deserved to be, and unanimous applause proved to the orator that he was addressing men capable of understanding him. But, alas! this excellent tribune had a dangerous In the early ages of the Church, poultry in general was regarded as a food for fast days; and this opinion was founded on the text in Genesis, where it is said that birds and fishes were created on the fifth day, whereas quadrupeds were created on the sixth. St. Benedict, in his rule, does not formally forbid the monks any other flesh than that of quadrupeds; and St. Columbanus, in his, permits the monks the flesh of poultry, in default of fish. The Greek monks ate it down to the 10th century. THE COCK.An object of divine worship in Syria, Italy also wished to enjoy this barbarous pastime. At Pergamus, any spectator might throw a cock into the arena, and a prize was awarded to the lucky possessor of the bird who remained master of the field of battle. This warlike bird has never enjoyed a high culinary reputation; nevertheless, it was eaten when old, that is to say, at that period of its life when its flesh, hard, fibrous, and tough, possesses neither juice nor flavour—then this wretched food was left to those among the common people who joyously feasted in the drinking-shops of Rome. They, THE CAPON.The cock being banished from the table of all respectable people, the necessity of dressing hens became evident, for it was necessary to live. Now, you are aware that there are two sorts of hens; one sort consumptive looking and tough, the other tender, plump, and before which an epicure banishes every other thought, and sighs with pleasure. These last were preferred, and, in order to render them more worthy of the voluptuous epicures for whom they were intended, they learned from the inhabitants of the island of Cos the art of fattening them in dark and closed places, with certain wonderful pastes, which increased their delicacy and tempting whiteness. This ingenious invention belonged to Greece and Asia. Rome possessed herself of it, and even improved it; but soon the constant tyrant of the kitchen, the Consul, C. Fannius, who thought bad what others thought good, and who pretended that in consequence of the immense consumption made of them, the result would be that not a living hen would be left in the empire, ordered that for the future the Romans should dispense with fattening and eating this delicious winged animal. Fortunately, the law said nothing about young cocks; this silence saved Roman gastronomy, and the capon was invented. Capon À la DÉliaque.—Draw completely a fat capon; then bruise pepper, alisander, and ginger, which you must mix with sausage-meat and fine flour, and a pig’s brains cooked; add some eggs, then some garum, a little oil, whole pepper, and several pine nuts. Make a stuffing of this mixture, and put it into the capon, which afterwards roast before a slow fire. THE HEN.The cackling of hens infallibly announced, among the ancients, some dreadful calamity to the person who had the misfortune to hear it. They therefore sought to diminish the number of these birds of ill-omen; they fattened them for eating, and they did right, since, according to learned physicians, the flesh of these birds is good for weakly persons, as well as those who are convalescent. At Rome, the art of fattening them became a serious occupation, which was long studied, and had its precepts and rules. Marcus Loelius Strabo, belonging to the order of knights, invented aviaries in which hens were confined; Afterwards barley flour, kneaded with milk, was preferred; then, instead of milk, water, and honey were employed. Excellent wheaten bread, soaked in good wine and hydromel, was also used with success. Skilful breeders by these means obtained magnificent hens of an incredibly exquisite flavour, and which weighed no less than sixteen pounds. The Fannian law unfortunately came, and, as we have before observed, brought impediments to these beautiful results by interdicting aviaries and skilfully prepared pastes. It is true that this law allowed a farm-yard hen to be served at every repast Poularde À la Viminale.—Cook a fine hen in its gravy; pound and mix benzoin, pepper, oil, and garum, a little thyme, fennel seed, cummin, mint, and rue; stir for a long time; add some vinegar; pound some dates, and mix them with honey and a little vinegar. Of all this make a homogeneous seasoning, and pour it on the hen when it is cold. THE CHICKEN.It is certainly surprising that a people so serious as the Romans generally were, should make the success of the greatest enterprise depend on the appetite of their famous sacred chickens. They were brought from the Island of Negropont, and were kept shut up in cages; their guardian was designated by the name of Pullarius. Publius Claudius, constrained to consult these strange prophets before engaging in a naval combat, ordered them to be fed; they refused to open their beaks. The incredulous general ordered them at once to be thrown into the sea, and laughingly exclaimed to the dismayed Pullarius: “Since they will not eat—well! then let us make them drink.” Diodorus of Sicily, and some ancient writers, tell us that the Egyptians, from a remote period, hatched chickens in ovens. This process is decidedly of the highest antiquity, and was applied to the eggs of all kinds of poultry. Chickens have ever been considered an estimable food, and hardly yielded to the two glories of their family—the fattened hen and the capon. Apician Macedonia of Chicken.—Chop small the meat of a chicken, which mix with a kid’s breast, and put it into a saucepan with parsley seed, dried pennyroyal, dried mint, ginger, green coriander, and raisins; then add three pieces of the finest oaten bread, some honey, vinegar, oil, and wine; some time after, add some excellent cheese, pine nuts, cucumbers, and dried onions, well chopped. Pour some gravy over the whole, and when it is cooked, surround the dish on all sides with snow, and serve. Parthian Chicken.—Open the croup dexterously, and put it in the saucepan; then mix some pepper, alisander, a little carrot, garum, and wine; fill the chicken with this seasoning; cook well, and sprinkle with pepper before serving. Numidian Chicken.—Begin by boiling a chicken for some time; then place it in a stew-pan, after having sprinkled it with benzoin and pepper. Afterwards bruise some pepper, cummin, coriander seed, benzoin root, pine nuts, rue, and dates; add honey, vinegar, garum, and oil; boil, thicken with fine flour, sprinkle with pepper, and serve. Chicken À la Frontonienne.—Half cook a chicken, and then put into the saucepan garum, oil, a bunch of dill, some leeks, winter savory, and green coriander. You then sprinkle with pepper, and serve. Chicken À la Coelienne.—Cook a chicken with garum, oil, wine, coriander seed, and onion. Then put some milk and a little salt into another saucepan, with honey and a little water, and cook this mixture over a very slow fire. Throw in by degrees some raspings of sweet biscuits, and take care to stir continually. Put the chicken into this sauce, and then serve with a seasoning of pepper, alisander, and wild THE DUCK.The duck swims so well it was thought to be paying a compliment to Neptune by sacrificing it to him. Attica and the whole of Greece sought the beautiful ducks of Boeotia, There were ducks at that prodigious dinner of the opulent Caranus, of whom we have already spoken several times. They were always served at the tables of the rich Greeks; Hippocrates evinces a contrary opinion. The flesh of this bird seemed to him hard, heavy, and indigestible. Ducks’ Brains À l’Epicurienne.—Cook some ducks’ brains, and mince them very small; then place in a saucepan, with pepper, cummin, benzoin root, garum, sweet wine, and oil; add milk and eggs, and submit the whole to the action of a slow fire, or rather, cook them in a bain-marie. Apicius’s Seasoning for a Roast Duck.—Make a mixture of pepper, cummin, alisander, mint, stoned raisins, or Damascus plums; add a little honey and myrtle wine; place it in a saucepan; cook, and then add to these substances vinegar, garum, and oil; afterwards some parsley and savory; serve with the roast duck. THE GOOSE.When a flock of geese are obliged to pass Mount Taurus—the dreaded abode of their enemies, the eagles—each of them takes the precaution to hold a stone in its beak, in order that he may keep a profound silence, which, otherwise, his natural loquacity would render impossible. The ancients highly esteemed its flesh. Homer The Egyptians served them at their meals every day; it was, with veal, the favourite dish of their monarchs, Some eastern nations were impressed with such deep veneration for this bird that they swore by nothing else. Those which were kept, out of gratitude, in the Capitol, were consecrated to Juno, Isis, Mars, and Priapus, But, alas! time obscures and effaces all the glories of this world; and that of the Roman geese, no doubt, had to submit to this sad fate, The luxurious Romans, however, neglected the entire animal, and thought only of the liver. They invented the art of fattening this viscera, and of increasing its size to such an extent that it often weighed two pounds. To obtain this result, they simply fed their victims of sensuality, during twenty days, with a paste of dried figs and water. It is not known exactly to whom we are to attribute this gastronomic discovery. Scipio, Metellus, and Marcus Sejus disputed the glory of the invention. The wings and neck of the goose also acquired some favour; the feet were added, when Messalinus had taught how to peel them by passing them rapidly over the fire, and then preparing them with cocks’ combs. The remainder was only good for the common people. Stuffed goslings also enjoyed a reputation among the Greeks, Sejus Seasoning.—Bruise pepper, alisander, coriander, mint, and rue; mix with it garum and a little oil; pour it over the roast goose, and serve. Apician Seasoning for a Roast Goose’s Liver.—Crush in a mortar, and then well mix, pepper, carrots, cummin, parsley-seed, thyme, onions, benzoin root, and fried pine nuts; add honey, vinegar, garum, and oil, and serve with the roast liver in the omentum. Boiled Goose À la Gauloise.—Boil a goose with garum, oil, wine, a bunch of leeks, coriander, and savory; then crush pepper and pine nuts, to which put a little water. Then take the leeks, coriander, and savory out of the saucepan; put in their place the mixture mentioned, add some milk, boil it, thicken with whites of eggs, and serve. In the sixteenth century they had dark cages, in which they fattened poultry with ground tares, wheaten flour, and barley meal. Capons fattened in hutches, where they could not turn, nor even stir, were esteemed delicious. They fed pigeons on the crumb of bread, steeped in wine; peacocks on the sediment from cider. On Michaelmas Day, the 29th of September, many persons in England eat roast goose for their dinner. It is said that this custom dates from the time of Queen Elizabeth, who was being served with a piece of goose on Michaelmas Day, at the very moment when news was brought of the defeat of the famous Armada. Some persons affirm that the Queen expressed a desire that this dish might, each year, serve to perpetuate the remembrance of so signal a victory. Would it not be more simple to suppose that Elizabeth herself already conformed to a custom which had existed before her time? At Mans, instead of letting the poultry eat freely, they are shut up in a dark place, and made to swallow pellets of about two inches long and one thick, composed of two parts of barley flour, and one of maize, made with sufficient quantity of milk. “In the time when the French had a decided taste for spices and aromatics, they imagined to vary at will the flavour and perfume of the flesh of fowls. With the paste used to fatten them was mixed musk, anise-seed, and comfits, with other aromatic drugs. A Queen was known THE PIGEON.The dove, a bird so dear to Venus, This was because the dove or pigeon (begging pardon, here, for mixing varieties) is to the hawk, according to an expression of a father of the Church, what the lamb is to the wolf, From the beginning of the heroic ages, pigeons were caught with snares and nets, The Greeks, therefore, used to bring up an immense number of pigeons, and built for them, in the most open situations, charming pigeon-houses, in the form of small towers, models of elegance and cleanliness, where those timid birds found at night a retreat, always fatal to some one amongst them. The Romans introduced in these sorts of edifices the most unusual luxury. Physicians of that period greatly praised the flesh of these birds; they recommended it to the sick and convalescent. Roast Pigeon, with Servilian Seasoning.—Bruise some dill seeds, dried mint, and the root of benzoin; add some vinegar, dates, garum, a little mustard, and oil; stir well; then mix with it some wine reduced to half, and pour the whole on the roasted pigeon. THE GUINEA HEN.This bird, called by the ancients the “Hen of Numidia,” comes originally from many burning regions of Africa. In Greece, and especially in Rome, vanity alone gave it a price which was willingly granted, more on account of its scarcity than for its taste. Guinea Hen À la Numide.—Cook it; then put it in a saucepan with some honey and garum; make several incisions in the bird; baste it with its own gravy, and sprinkle with pepper previously to its being served. THE TURKEY HEN.“There must be two to eat a truffled turkey,” said a gastronomist of the 18th century, to one of his friends—a noted gourmand—who had just come to pay him a visit. “Two!” replied the visitor, with a smile of sensuality. In Greece, more than one stomach would have been capable of challenging nobly the voracity of this modern polyphagus: witness the insatiable greediness of the well-known glutton who complained that nature ought to have given him a neck as long as the stork, that he might enjoy for a longer period his eating and drinking. But for a long time the Greeks were quite ignorant of the culinary value of the turkey; it was looked upon as an uncommon curiosity, and not condemned to the spit. Sophocles, the first who spoke of it, pretended that those marvellous birds came purposely from some distant climate beyond the Indies, to bewail the death of Meleager, who took possession of the throne of Macedonia (279 years B.C.), and who was soon driven from it. Aristotle hardly supplies us with any details upon turkey hens: he merely says that their eggs are distinguished by little specks from those of the common hens, which are white; Egypt also possessed some of these birds; but there they were still more rare than in Greece, and formed one of the principal ornaments in the triumphal pomp of Ptolemy Philadelphus, when he entered Alexandria. Large cages, containing meleagrides, were carried before the monarch, and on that day the people knew not which to admire most—the prince or the turkey. They were introduced into Rome about the year 115 before our era; but, for a long time, they were objects of uncommon curiosity: and Varro, the first of the Latins who speaks of them, confounds these birds with the guinea hens, or hens of Numidia. A century later, turkeys greatly multiplied, and vast numbers were reared in the Roman farms. Caligula, who had the good sense to make It appears, however, that the breed of turkeys soon began to diminish in Europe; very few were reared, and that only as a curiosity: in the citadel of Athens, towards the year 540 of the Christian era; Turkey À l’Africaine.—Roast a turkey; bruise some pepper, alisander, and benzoin; mix it with wine and garum. Pour this seasoning on the turkey, sprinkle with pepper, and serve. The historian of Provence, Bouche, will have it that the French are indebted for the turkey to King RenÉ, who died in 1480. Other writers assure us that this volatile was introduced during the reign of Francis I. by Admiral Chabert. La-BruyÈre-Champier speaks of it as a recent acquisition, and Beckmann refutes those who date its existence in France previous to the 16th century. He says that this bird, which was wild in the forests of America, became domesticated in Europe. It is also said that we owe the importation of it to the Jesuits. According to Hurtaut, it was not until about the time of Charles IX. that turkeys appeared in France. To fatten turkeys—every morning, for a month, give them mashed potatoes, mixed with buck-wheat flour, Indian corn, barley, or beans; a paste is made of it which they are left to eat as they please. Every evening what remains must be taken away. One month after, you add to this food, when they go to roost, half a dozen balls composed of In Provence, walnuts are given to them whole, which they are compelled to swallow by slipping them one by one with the hand along the neck until they have all past the oesophagus; they begin with one walnut, and increase by degrees to forty. This kind of food gives an oily taste to the flesh. Turkey eggs are good boiled, and are preferred to those of hens for pastry; mixing them with the common eggs makes an omelette more delicate. “To obtain all the advantages possible from turkeys, they must be killed at the same time as pigs; then cut the turkeys in quarters, and put them in earthen pots covered over with the fat of the pork, and by this means they may be eaten all the year round.”—Parmentier. The peacock comes originally from India: it was there that Alexander the Great saw it for the first time. He was so struck with its magnificent plumage that he forbad all persons, under pain of death, to kill any. Oriental princes kept the peacocks which travellers brought them, from time to time, in their aviaries. These birds were thus known over various parts of the world. Samos, which seems to have been provided one of the first, ornamented its money with their image. This variety became afterwards an article of commerce, and all wealthy people became desirous to have them. A male and female cost £8 sterling. At Rome, the peacock had a prodigious success. Quintus Hortensius, the orator, was the first who had them served in a banquet given by him on the occasion of being created an augur. Marcus Aufidius Livio was the first to contrive a sure way to fatten them; Horace preferred them to the finest poultry, The ridiculous consumption which was made of these birds did not allow of their becoming very common. Tiberius reared some in his gardens; and he condemned to capital punishment a soldier of his guards who had the misfortune to kill one. Ultimately, more savoury or more rare dishes took the place of peacocks’ flesh, which then began to be thought hard, unwholesome, and of difficult digestion. Peacock of Samos.—Mix some pepper, alisander, parsley, dill flowers, dried mint, and filberts, or fried almonds; bruise them with green smallage |