It would, probably, be impossible to trace the epoch at which man began to make use of milk as food. Abraham presented some to the three angels who appeared to him in the valley of Mamre;[XVIII_1] and it is likely, that long before that patriarch, the eastern nations had recourse to an aliment so easily acquired, and which their numerous flocks produced in such abundance.

Among the Jews, milk was always considered as an emblem of the wealth of a country and the fertility of its soil; so much so, that the sacred books almost invariably speak of a happy region, as one “flowing with milk and honey.”[XVIII_2] This metaphorical expression testifies sufficiently to the taste of the Hebrews for this aliment, which their King Solomon recommended to them in these terms: “and thou shalt have goat’s milk enough for thy food, for the food of thy household, and for the maintenance of thy maidens.”[XVIII_3]

Profane antiquity agrees on this point with our holy chroniclers. It represents to us the first men, free from passions and fears, surrounded by streams of milk and nectar, from which they drew health and life.[XVIII_4] Happy time! ere milk-maids existed to practise those deceptions they have now imbibed from the deceitful arts of chemistry.

The greater part of the wandering tribes, such as the Getes and Scythians, were galactophagists,[XVIII_5] or drinkers of milk;[XVIII_6] the Gauls[XVIII_7] and Germans[XVIII_8] made it also their principal food. In Greece and Italy, the shepherds decorated the vessels in which they had just milked their flocks with crowns of flowers; and, in honour of the rural divinities, they scattered about a small quantity of this sweet liquid.[XVIII_9] The reapers offered it to Ceres;[XVIII_10] and in one of the sections of Rome, Mercury was presented with milk instead of wine.

The ancients attributed to milk from cows, ewes, and goats, various Hygeian qualities.[XVIII_11] Hippocrates forbade it in cases of head-ache, fevers, and bilious attacks;[XVIII_12] but he sometimes ordered asses’ milk,[XVIII_13] which was considered as an excellent remedy, and a most wholesome aliment.[XVIII_14]

The voluptuous people of Rome rubbed their faces and skins with bread soaked in asses’ milk, to make them fairer and prevent the beard from growing too fast.

Suetonius[XVIII_15] and Martial[XVIII_16] speak of these refinements of luxurious delicacies. The satirical Juvenal informs us that bread was made into a kind of plaster or mask, with which they covered the face.[XVIII_17] PoppÆia, wife of Nero, was the first, or one of the first, to bring this recipe into fashion, being fully persuaded that she would thus preserve the whiteness and delicacy of her skin. Five hundred asses used to supply daily the necessary quantity of milk to make the cosmetic and bath[XVIII_18] of the coquettish empress.

This high patronage did not prevent asses’ milk from losing by degrees—and very unjustly, no doubt—the reputation it acquired.[XVIII_19]

Fashion—capricious and all-powerful deity—undertook to re-instate its virtues, after several centuries of profound forgetfulness. The success was complete. This is how the affair took place:—

Francis I., finding himself weak and languishing, the physicians, after a long consultation on the monarch’s illness, advised remedies which did not cure the royal patient. However, the King of France was getting worse every day, and his state gave serious apprehensions. Some one mentioning to his Majesty that a Jew of Constantinople was noted as one of the cleverest doctors in the world, Francis immediately ordered his ambassador in Turkey to send him this Israelitish doctor, whatever might be the cost. The Jew arrived, and prescribed no other remedy than asses’ milk. The king found himself much better, and the courtiers and ladies of the court eagerly followed the same diet, even for the slightest imaginary indisposition.

A patient, cured by the use of this wholesome and restorative food, thought of expressing his gratitude by the following stanza:—

MacÉdoine Germanique of Milk.—Pound dry almonds, and put them into a stewpan with the following ingredients:—the most delicate parts of mallows only, and white-beet, some leeks, parsley, and other leguminous herbs, previously cooked, a fowl boiled and minced small, the brains of poultry or sucking pigs, also boiled, and lastly, some hard eggs cut in two. Put all these together, as mentioned before; some little time after that, add sausage meat, fowls’ livers, fresh cod fish, and oysters—the whole reduced into pulp—some fresh cheese, pine nuts, and whole pepper. Whilst this is boiling on a very slow fire, prepare the following seasoning: pound some pepper, alisander, parsley seeds, and silphium; stew separately with gravy; mix raw eggs with a great quantity of milk; add it to the preceding seasoning; pour it over the contents of the stewpan, then pepper, and serve.[XVIII_20]

BUTTER.

A learned writer[XVIII_21] has maintained that the ancient inhabitants of the east did not know of butter, and that by this word must be understood, when it occurs in the holy writings, sour milk or cream. Whatever may be the respect due to the grave authority of Beckmann, we beg leave to adhere to the opinion of various translators of the Bible, and believe with them that the Jews knew how to prepare butter. Independently of the signification of chemack, to which a profound philosopher gives the same sense,[XVIII_22] and which appears very naturally to offer this acceptation, we could still fortify our opinion by the passage where Job, recalling with sorrow the happy days of his youth, says, that he used to wash his “feet in butter.”[XVIII_23] We agree that these words are understood in a figurative sense, and that the man of God wished to show by it that he was the possessor of a great number of flocks.

But it is nevertheless true, that this metaphorical locution recalls also one of the uses made of that fat substance, which was for a long while employed, like oil, to soften and refresh the limbs.

Indulgent reader, excuse this episode upon a ground which we ought not to touch, and let us re-enter the kitchen.

The Greeks, who understood many things, and knew them so well, passed over several centuries without once thinking that the milk of their ewes and cows contained a food already well-known by several barbarous nations. Aristotle mentions the serous part of milk, and cheese;[XVIII_24] but he hardly suspects the existence of butter, which he describes but very imperfectly as a liquid oil.[XVIII_25] Antecedent to him, Hippocrates never thought of it, except as a foreign remedy which Asia supplied to Greece.[XVIII_26]

It was only fifty years after Aristotle that it began to be noticed as an aliment. The Greeks, in imitation of the Parthians and Scythians, who used to send it to them, had it served upon their tables, and called it at first “oil of milk,”[XVIII_27] and later, bouturos, “cow cheese,” probably on account of the quantity made from the milk of that animal.[XVIII_28]

The Germans, according to Beckmann, taught the Romans how to make butter, but they never employed it otherwise than as a remedy in Italy.

It is certain that in the time of Pliny it had hardly been heard of at Rome,[XVIII_29] and that, according to this writer, the barbarians only—that is to say, those who were unfortunate enough not to be either Greeks or Romans—made their food of it.[XVIII_30] Towards the year 175 of the Christian era, Galen then placed butter only among the therapeutic agents useful in medicine.[XVIII_31] However, more than a century before him, Dioscorides wished it to be noticed that fresh butter made of ewes’ or goats’ milk was served at meals instead of oil, and that it took the place of fat in making pastry.[XVIII_32]

Herodotus has preserved some interesting details on the manipulation of butter among the Scythians. They received the milk in large pails, and beat it for a long time to separate the most delicate part, and appointed for this labour those enemies whom the fortune of war delivered into their hands. These unhappy creatures were deprived of sight, which prevented their escape.[XVIII_33]

The Romans set about making butter as we do. Pliny says: “Butter is made from milk, and this aliment, so much sought after by barbarous nations, distinguished the rich from the common people. It is obtained principally from cows’ milk; that from ewes is the fattest. Goats also supply some. It is produced by agitating the milk in long vessels with a narrow opening. A little water is added.”[XVIII_34]

Formerly it was required in many countries that the dealer in this article should sell good butter to his customers. In France, for instance, intolerance was carried so far as to forbid “all persons to re-scrape, beat, or work up any butter, either fresh or salted; change, mix, or mingle it, under pain of being whipped.”[XVIII_35] Since then the strangeness of such a measure has become palpable, the more so as modern good faith and honesty render it more useless than ever.

During the early ages of the Church, butter was burned in the lamps instead of oil. This practice is still continued in Abyssinia.[XVIII_36]

The cathedral of Rouen has a tower, called the “Butter Tower.” It acquired this name from the fact that George d’Amboise, who was archbishop of that city in 1500, seeing that oil was scarce in his diocese during Lent, authorised the use of butter, on condition that each diocesan should pay six deniers Tournois (about a farthing) for the permission. The money obtained by these means served to construct the “Butter Tower.”[XVIII_37]

To obtain butter instantly it is only necessary, in summer, to put new milk into bottles some hours after it has been taken from the cow, and shake it briskly. The clots which form, thrown into a sieve, washed and pressed together, constitute the finest and most delicate butter that can possibly be made.

One of the great means of preserving butter fresh for any length of time is, first to press all the buttermilk completely out, then to keep it under water (renewing the water frequently), and to abstract it from the influence of heat and air by wrapping it in a wet cloth.

When butter has become very rancid, it is melted several times by a moderate heat, with or without the addition of water, and, as soon as it has been malaxated, after the cooling, in order to extract any water it may have retained, it is put into brown freestone pots, sheltered from the contact of the air. Frequently, when it is melted, a piece of toasted bread is put into it, which acts in the same manner as charcoal; that is to say, it attenuates the rancidity.[XVIII_38]

CHEESE.

A demi-god, AristÆus, the son of Apollo, and King of Arcadia, invented cheese,[XVIII_39] and the whole of Greece welcomed with gratitude this royal and almost divine present. Sober individuals willingly ate some at their meals;[XVIII_40] gluttons perceived that it sharpened the appetite; and great drinkers that it provoked copious libations. Thus the aged Nestor, wise as he was, brought wine to Machaon, who had just been wounded in the right arm, and did not fail to add to it goat cheese and an onion, to force him to drink more.[XVIII_41]

This food was also well known to the Hebrews, and the holy writings sometimes mention it.[XVIII_42]

Mare’s milk, or that of the ass, makes an excellent cheese, but much inferior to that procured from the camel, for which an epicure could not pay too dearly. Cow-milk cheese, although more fat and unctuous, was only considered as third-rate.[XVIII_43]

The Phrygians made exquisite cheese by artistically mixing the milk of asses and mares. The Scythians only employed the former; the Greeks imitated them.[XVIII_44] The Sicilians also mixed the milk of goats and ewes.[XVIII_45]

The Romans smoked their cheeses, to give them a sharp taste; they possessed public places expressly for this use, and subject to police regulations which no one could evade.[XVIII_46]

In the time of Pliny, little goat cheeses, which were much esteemed, were sent every morning to the market for the sale of dainties, from the environs of Rome.[XVIII_47] With the addition of a little bread, they formed the breakfast of sober and delicate persons. Asia Minor, Tuscany, the Alps, Gaul, and NÎmes especially, furnished very good ones for the tables of the Romans,[XVIII_48] who sought in preference certain sweet and soft qualities. The greater part of barbarous nations esteemed only the strong cheese.[XVIII_49]

The Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans, always kept some of these last for the provision of their armies, and it was among them a military aliment.[XVIII_50] The Athenians fed their wrestlers with it,[XVIII_51] and it was the sole treat of the shepherds of Italy.[XVIII_52]

The lower classes and country people prepared with cheese and various salted substances a dish they thought most relishing, and which epicureans only mentioned with horror. This was called tyrotarichus, and Cicero often employs this word to designate a frugal style of cookery.[XVIII_53]

Besides those countries celebrated for the goodness of cheeses already mentioned, there is Tromelia, in Achaia,[XVIII_54] and the Island of Cythnus, where they represented their cheeses on their money, an ingenious manner of making them known, which succeeded wonderfully well; and lastly, Salonia, a city of Bithynia, renowned for its rich pastures, where numerous herds of cows were kept, and whose milk furnished an exquisite kind known by the name of Salonite cheese.[XVIII_55] It appears to have been often served to the Emperor Augustus, who ate it with brown bread, little fish, and fresh figs.[XVIII_56]

The art of giving a relish to the cheese, by mixing with it odoriferous herbs, is said to be more than nine hundred years old. This operation was designated persiller, showing that originally parsley was introduced.[XVIII_57] We cannot say whether the Romans made use of this plant to give a pungency to their cheese, but it is certain that they often mixed some herbs with it.[XVIII_58] Thus Columella informs us that sometimes the leaves and small branches of the fig tree were used to communicate an agreeable flavour.[XVIII_59] The same writer has transmitted to us a very simple process, much in use in his time, for preserving cheese. They first covered it with brine, and then dried it in a thick smoke obtained from straw or green wood.[XVIII_60]

The following are some of the dishes of which cheese served as the basis:—

Salad of Cheese À la Bithynienne.—Cut some slices of excellent bread; leave them for some time in vinegar and water; then make a mixture of this bread with pepper, mint, garlic, and green coriander; throw on it a good quantity of cow’s cheese salted; add water, oil, and wine.[XVIII_61]

Dish of Tromelian Cheese.—Take fresh cheese; mix it well with pepper, alisander, dried mint, pine nuts, sun raisins, and dates; then add honey, vinegar, and afterwards, garum, oil, wine, and cooked wine.[XVIII_62]

The celebrated cheese of Rouergue, known under the name of “Roquefort cheese,” was made, in the 17th century as follows—we cite from Marcorelle:—

“The curd employed is made from sheep’s milk, mixed with a little goat’s milk. It is broken as small as possible. When it is taken from the moulds, it is bound with a linen band and taken to the drying room; then to the caves, where it is rubbed with salt on the two flat sides of the surface. The downy substance which subsequently covers the crust is frequently scraped off; after which, it is left to ripen on tablets exposed to currents of air which proceed from the interstices of the rocks in which the caves are formed.”

Besides salt, employed as a seasoning and condiment for cheeses, they contain in their composition different substances which give rise to an infinite variety of odours, taste, and colour. In the Vosges, for example, they mix with the cheese of Gerardmer seeds of plants belonging to the family of umbellifers; in the country of Limburg, they incorporate chopped parsley, scallions, and tarragon; the Italians make use of saffron to colour the Parmesan cheese, and the English of roucou for the Cheshire cheese. Others are in the habit of cutting away a portion of the middle of the cheese, and filling the cavity with Malaga or Canary wine.[XVIII_63]

EGGS.

Orpheus, Pythagoras, and their sectators—good and humane people as ever lived—unceasingly recommended in their discourses to abstain from eggs, in order not to destroy a germ which nature had destined for the production of chicken.[XVIII_64] Many allowed themselves to be persuaded, and would have believed it an unpardonable crime if they had eaten a tiny omelette, or boiled eggs.

Many of the most learned philosophers held eggs in a kind of respect approaching to veneration, because they saw in them the emblem of the world and the four elements. The shell, they said, represented the earth; the white, water; the yolk, fire; and air was found under the shell.[XVIII_65]

In India and Syria, there was less scruple about swallowing a few eggs; but the hens were devoutly worshipped, because the world is indebted to them for chickens.[XVIII_66]

The Greeks and Romans, although more reasonable, felt, however, for eggs a trifling weakness not exempt from superstition. They already made use of them in their sacrifices, and carried them with great pomp in the festivals of Ceres.[XVIII_67] For them it was also a symbol of the universe, and an expiation would not have been complete if some eggs had not been broken on the altar of the irritated gods.[XVIII_68]

Magicians and sorcerers, who abounded in Rome, established singular fables with regard to eggs. Livia, the happy consort of Nero, being enceinte, consulted a sorceress, who said to her, “warm in your bosom a new laid egg until hatched; if a male chicken comes forth, thank the gods, who will grant you a son.” The empress followed this advice; a cock chick came, and the princess gave birth to Tiberius.[XVIII_69] This anecdote circulated in Rome, and all ladies in the same interesting situation, imitating Livia, amused themselves with hatching chickens.

It appears that the egg played also a most important part in dreams. A man having dreamed that he had eaten one, went to consult a soothsayer, who told him that the white signified he would soon have silver, and the yolk that he would receive gold. The fortunate dreamer really received very soon afterwards a legacy partly consisting of those two precious metals. He hastened to thank the diviner, and offered him a piece of silver. “This is very well for the white,” said the latter, “but is there nought for the yolk?”[XVIII_70] It is not known whether the heir was generous enough to understand this bon mot.

All these pagan follies are to be accounted for by the doctrine of the poet Orpheus, who first taught the Greeks that a primitive egg had produced all other beings;[XVIII_71] a very ancient idea, no doubt, transmitted to them by the Egyptians, who, as well as the Phoenicians, Persians, and Chaldeans, represented the world by that symbol.

It is now time to describe eggs as an aliment.

The shepherds of Egypt had a singular manner of cooking them without the aid of fire: they placed them in a sling, which they turned so rapidly that the friction of the air heated them to the exact point required for use.[XVIII_72]

In Rome and in Greece, new-laid eggs were served at the beginning of a repast;[XVIII_73] and the Roman gourmets asserted that, to maintain oneself in health, “it was necessary to remain at table from the egg to the apple.”[XVIII_74] We have adopted the half of that proverb, and we say every day, this story must be taken up ab ovo.

The Romans did not confine themselves to hens’ eggs, of which they preferred the long ones;[XVIII_75] they sought those of the partridge and pheasant, which Galen considered the most delicate.[XVIII_76] They also thought much of peacocks’ eggs. It was Quintus Hortensius who set the example of this luxury,[XVIII_77] which, however, was discarded by degrees when the precious fecundity of the hens of Adria began to be appreciated.[XVIII_78]

The ancients appear to have been very partial to soft-boiled eggs, which may be sucked at once. Nicomachus mentions them: “My father,” says he, “had left me a poor little estate; in a few months I made it as round as an egg; then, breaking the shell, I made but one gulp of it.”[XVIII_79]

At Rome, this aliment was prepared in twenty different manners; they pickled it,[XVIII_80] cooked it in water, on hot ashes, on charcoal, and in the fryingpan. Eggs eaten in the shell, however, were thought the most wholesome.[XVIII_81]

Eggs À la Romaine.—Cook some eggs; cut them, and throw over a seasoning composed in the following manner. Bruise some pepper, alisander, coriander, and rue, to which add garum, honey, and a little oil.[XVIII_82]

Hard Eggs À l’AthÉnienne.—Cut each egg in four, and sprinkle over garum, oil, and wine.[XVIII_83]

Fried Eggs À l’EpÆnÈte.—Fry some eggs; place them in a dish, and season with a mixture of pepper, alisander, pine nuts, garum, benzoin, and pepper.[XVIII_84]

Egyptian Egg Pudding.—Take the yolks of a good number of hard eggs; reduce them to a paste with crushed pine nuts, an onion, a leek, some gravy, and pepper; add a little wine and garum. Stuff an intestine with this pulp, and cook.[XVIII_85]

Dish of Eggs À la MacÉdonienne.—Put in a mortar some pepper, mint, parsley, pennyroyal, cheese, and pine nuts; when this is well crushed, add honey, vinegar, fresh water, and garum; then a large number of yolks of eggs; mix well with the rest; throw the whole into a saucepan; add bread soaked in vinegar and water,—which, however, must be well squeezed out—with fresh cow’s-milk cheese, cucumbers, almonds, chopped onions, fowls’ livers, and garum.[XVIII_86]

Lesbian Eggs aux Roses.—Pluck the leaves of some roses; take only the whitest part, and put them into a mortar with garum. Stir a long time; add half a small glass of gravy; stir and strain; put into this liquor the brains of four fowls and eight scruples of ground pepper; stir a long time; add to it eight eggs, half a small glass of wine, and as much cooked wine, and, lastly, a little oil. Grease well the inside of a dish, pour the whole into it, and place it over a very slow charcoal fire. Cook, sprinkle with pepper, and serve.[XVIII_87]

It was a custom, common to every agricultural population throughout Europe and Asia, to celebrate the new year by eating eggs; and they formed a part of the presents made on that day. Care was taken to dye them different colours, particularly red—the favourite colour of the ancients, and of the Celts in particular.[XVIII_88]

It appears that, formerly, people consumed an astonishing number of eggs in England on Easter Sunday. We find the following article in an account of expenses for the king’s household (Edward I.) on the occasion of this festival:—

“For four hundred and a half of eggs, eighteen pence.”[XVIII_89] At that epoch eggs were not so dear in England as they are now; nor did kings fail to eat more of them.

In 1533, a bishop of Paris, authorised by a bull from the Pope, Julius III., being disposed to permit the use of eggs during Lent, the parliament took offence, and prevented the execution of the episcopal mandate. It is this severe abstinence from eggs during Lent which gave rise to the custom of having a great number of them blessed on Easter eve, to be distributed among friends on Easter Sunday; whence comes the expression, “to give Easter eggs.” Pyramids of them were carried into the king’s cabinet after the high mass. They were gilded, or admirably painted, and the prince made presents of them to his courtiers.[XVIII_90]