The author of a rare and very curious work, For many centuries cooking has been exposed to these odious reproaches, the gravity of which we do not pretend to attenuate; and yet, ever pursuing its brilliant career amidst revolutions and ruins, the magiric art, endowed with eternal youth, embellishes each new era of civilization, receives its most constant homage, and survives it when it fades away. Let us speak plainly: mankind has thrown on cooks all the faults of which they ought to accuse their own intemperance. It was no doubt easier, than to avoid the fatal abuse of pleasure, and the evils it brings with it; but there was the crying injustice, which we do not hesitate to denounce; there lay the obstacle it was necessary to overcome, in order to bring about a peaceful understanding between the disciples of Galen and the followers of Apicius. Gourmandise would never have rebelled against the kitchen if all polyphagists had obtained from the good Ceres the gift she granted to Pandarea—a celebrated eater, who could pass days and nights at table, without experiencing the slightest indigestion. “But,” say you, “Seneca, the philosopher, perpetually combats, with the authority of his virtuous language, those dangerous men who are busied with a single stomach, The reply to this is, that Seneca, the pedant, should have thundered against the stomach, which alone is guilty (he has sometimes done so); that this atrabilarious preceptor of Nero, attacked with an incurable consumption, could only eat very little, which much enraged him; and that his imprecations on the subject of the excessive riches and prodigious luxury of the Romans of his age, neither hindered him from possessing, and unceasingly increasing, a more than royal fortune; nor from feeding—well or ill—several thousand slaves; nor from pompously displaying in his palace five hundred tables—only five hundred—of the most elaborate workmanship, of the rarest wood, all alike, and ornamented with precious incrustations. How often have people extolled the LacedÆmonians and their legislator, Lycurgus. Well, Lycurgus mercilessly commanded poor little children to fast when they looked fresh and fat. Moralists do not cease to repeat that Rome would never have had sumptuary laws had it not been corrupted by cooks from Athens and Syracuse. This is an error. All the ordinances of the consuls proscribed profusion, excess—in a word, all the ruinous expenses of a passionate and ridiculous gastrophagy, Why render the cook responsible for the extravagant tastes and follies of his age? Is it for him to reform mankind? Has he either the means or the right? What is asked of him? and what can be asked? To understand exactly the properties of everything he employs, to perfect, and correct, if necessary, the savours on which he operates; to judge with Such is, to use an original expression of Rabelais, “toute l’artillerie de gueule,” which the cook can master. It is the sum total of what has been bequeathed to us by some great men, whose scattered instructions, lying here and there in books of morality and philosophy—there are numerous analogies between the act of eating and the art of living well—have been collected with scrupulous care, classed with all the attention we can command, and will serve, we hope, to beguile the studious leisure of the lovers of antiquity and the culinary science. Mankind had long obeyed that imperious and periodical necessity which has been called hunger, when it announces its presence with its brutal exigencies, before any one thought to form a code of doctrine calculated to guide a sensation which, by its energy and duration, procures us the most thrilling and lasting pleasures. The primitive nations no doubt gave themselves up to their native gluttony. They eat much, but they fed badly. They did not yet possess gastronomy; and, consequently, they had no cooks, in the serious and complete acceptation of the word. The heroes of Homer prepared their repasts with their own hands,—and what repasts, gods of taste!—and prided themselves on their culinary talents. OÙ la vanitÉ va-t-elle se nicher? Ulysses surpassed all others in the art of lighting the fire, and laying the cloth. The conquerors of Troy shone more in the combat than under the tent which served them as kitchen. At length the aurora of the magiric ages began to dawn: it is not a revolution, it is a creation which is preparing to appear. Man has only known hunger; he shall now become acquainted with the charms of an appetite. The King of Sidon learns how to eat, and it is Cadmus, the grandfather of Bacchus, the future founder of Thebes, who takes upon himself to instruct this august mouth. And since that time how many illustrious followers have descended Somebody will, perhaps, one day publish a chronological history of celebrated cooks. In the meantime, it may not be amiss to recall to memory a few illustrious men, whose services and genius an ungrateful posterity has too soon forgotten. Thimbron, among the Greeks, took the culinary art from its cradle: he watched devoutedly over its development, and only descended into the tomb after having won the heart of the whole of Greece, Artemidorus collected and commented on all the words in use in the kitchens of his time. Mithoecus gave the “Sicilian Cook”—a remarkable type of a multitude of tiresome and insipid imitations. At length Archestratus appeared. He was of Syracuse, and passed all his life in profoundly meditating on the functions, strength, anomalies, and resources of the stomach. He discovered the laws which govern that organ, and presented to the world his magnificent treatise on gastronomy We must not omit the names of some celebrated theoricians, to whom the art owes its rapid progress:—Philoxenus of Leucadus, devoted himself to the difficult study of degustation, and practised several experiments, which were, however, ill-appreciated by his contemporaries. Thus, in the public baths, he accustomed his mouth and hands to the contact of boiling-water, in order to be able to seize and devour burning viands, the instant they were placed on the table. He recommended cooks to serve everything very hot, so that he alone exercised mastication and deglutition, while other guests less inured, were obliged to content themselves with looking at him. Pithyllus invented a sheath that covered the tongue, and protected it, without paralyzing its action, against a caloric dangerous to its delicate tissue. It was then the good time of Athens: gluttons had made way for epicureans; hunger, to a less fierce and gross sensation, already subjected to examination and discussion. The magiric art possessed its rules, its various partisans, its professors, and disciples. Great masters studied deeply the appetite—indispensable basis, on which will always rest the culinary exegesis; and they finished by classing it definitively, according to the three degrees of intensity which observation discovers in it. The bold appetite, said they, is that which is felt when fasting. It reflects but very little; is not squeamish about viands, and loses all reserve at the sight of a very indifferent ragoÛt. The indolent appetite requires to be encouraged. It must be enticed, pressed, irritated. At first, nothing moves it—but after having tasted a succulent dish, it rouses, is astonished, its ardour becomes animated, and is capable of performing prodigies. It is this appetite which has consecrated the trivial but true proverb: “L’appÉtit vient en mangeant.” The eclectic appetite owes nothing to nature; it is the child of art. Happy, thrice happy, the skilful cook to whom it says: “Thou art my father!” But how difficult is this creation—how rare! It is the work of genius—but listen. Some guests, chosen amidst veteran epicureans, seat themselves round a table covered with culinary offerings worthy only of the God of Feasts, and a small number of the faithful. Their indolent appetite examines, compares, judges, and, at length, abandons itself to the incomparable dainties from which it unceasingly seems to draw new ardour. But alas! pleasure, like pain, has its limits here below. Strength grows less, and becomes extinguished; the eye loses its greedy covetousness; In this solemn moment he received, among the ancients, a crown of flowers At this epoch, the best cooks came from Sicily. Trimalcio was one of the most celebrated. AthenÆus tells us that, when he could not procure rare and highly esteemed fish, he understood so well how to imitate their form and flavour with common fish, that the most cunning epicures were always entrapped. This reminds us of a certain cook of Louis XIV., who, on Good Friday, served the king with a dinner, apparently composed of poultry and butcher’s meat, which, in reality, offered nothing but vegetables, and prepared, too, au maigre. The Romans, inheritors of the luxury of Asia and Greece, did not erect a temple to the greedy Addephagia, goddess of good cheer, who possessed altars in Sicily; This is yet but little compared with the magnificence of Antony. He gave a supper to Cleopatra; that princess praised the delicacy of the feast, and immediately her lover called for the cook, and presented him with a city, in recompense. How times are changed! We, at the present day, treat all this as pompous and ridiculous prodigality. It is because our somewhat mean epoch judges the olden times by the narrow ideas of order, foresight, and economy. The ancients enriched their Archimagiri, wasted their revenue in feasts, and then killed themselves. We have adopted a very different style of living. But, at the same time, how far are our most sumptuous banquets behind the most modest collations of Greece and The Emperor Claudius had generally six hundred guests at his table. Vitellius did not spend less than £3,200 for each of his repasts; It must be confessed that cooks of that gastronomic era had to fulfil an incessant and most laborious task. What was then more natural than to abandon to them some thousands of those sesterces, which the profusion of the master devoured by millions, in the form of phenicopters’ tongues, scarus or parrot-fishes’ livers, and peacocks’ brains? We see that the CÆsars encouraged this frightful gastronomic monomania. Tiberius gave more than £3,000 to the author of a dialogue, in which the interlocutors were mushrooms, fig-peckers, oysters, and thrushes. Galba breakfasted before day-break, and the breakfast would have enriched a hundred families. These follies, which cooks were forced to obey, continued to astonish the world until the moment when Rome—with her gods, the monuments of her ancient glory, and of her recent turpitudes—crumbled beneath the invincible weight of that horde of barbarians, that mysterious and implacable scourge, which Divine vengeance reserved for the punishment of unheard-of crimes. But, as we have before remarked, the magiric art always survives revolutions and ruin of empires. Modern Italy inherited the wrecks of Roman cookery, and, thanks to her, Europe is at the present day acquainted with the delights of good cheer, and the charm of joyous repasts. Under the reign of Louis XII. there arose a company of sauce manufacturers, who obtained the exclusive privilege of making sauces. Their statutes (1394) inform us that the famous sauce À la cameline, Platina, a Latin author of the 15th century, speaks of other sauces, in the composition of which sugar was frequently employed, according to the proverb of those times: “Sugar never spoiled sauce.” In the middle ages, poultry, butchers’ meat, and roast game, were never eaten dry, as they are now, any more than fried fish. There were different sauces for all those dishes, and even for the different parts of each animal. The cooks of those days strove to acquire a reputation by inventing strange and grotesque sauces, which had no other merit than that of being surprising and difficult to make, as, for example: “eggs cooked on the spit,” “butter fried or roasted.” &c. We recognize in some of our most common ragoÛts, those of which our ancestors were so fond in the middle ages, such as the boeuf À la mode, À la persillade, au vinaigre et persil, le miroton de boeuf, veau percÉ de gros lard, fricassÉe de poulet, blanquette de veau rÔti; but we have lost the pot-pourri, composed of beef, veal, mutton, bacon, and vegetables, and the galimafrÉe, a kind of fricassÉe of fowl, seasoned with wine, verjuice, and spices, and thickened with the famous sauce cameline. The cooks frequently placed on their masters’ tables ragoÛts and other dishes borrowed from foreign nations. They had a German brouet, a Flemish chaudeau, eggs À la Florentine, and partridges À la Catalane. They knew the olla—a mixture of all sorts of vegetables cooked with different kinds of meats, which we owe to the Spaniards, as well as the ragoÛt of fowl, called À la Chipolata, and the keneffes—a kind of forced-meat balls made of bread and meat, to which the Germans are very partial, and the pilau—a dish of mutton, fowl, and rice, borrowed from the Turks. The art of cooking with its innumerable paraphernalia of sauces with gravy, pepper, cinnamon, garlic, scallion, brains, milk pottage, and ragoÛts, had a signal triumph at the wedding of Charles VI. of France. On that occasion a skilful cook covered the great black marble table of the royal palace The good physicians did not proscribe the art of cooking; several of their number even deigned to write treatises upon it. A certain monkish servant, moved by an indiscreet zeal, wished not only to mortify himself but all the Franciscans of the monastery. Consequently, he prepared the repasts in the worst manner he could. But the community held a chapter, and he was condemned to receive fifty lashes; many of the monks wanted to enforce a more rigorous discipline by giving a hundred. In the middle ages, the cook of a house of any note always seated himself in a high arm chair to give his orders; he held a long wooden spoon in his hand, with which he tasted, without quitting his place, the various dishes that were cooking on the stoves and in the saucepans, and which served him also as a weapon with which to chastise the idle and gluttonous. THE KITCHEN.Let as enter together one of those vast kitchens, where two thousand years ago, the marvellous suppers of some rich senator were concocted. In every direction, slaves are coming loaded with meat, game, sea-fish, vegetables, fruit, and those expensive delicacies of which the dessert of the Romans was principally composed. The slaves have been over the principal markets of the city, especially those of the Trigemina gate, DESCRIPTION OF PLATE No. XI. No. 1. Remains of a kitchen-stove in the house of Pansa, at Pompeii, much like those of the present day; a knife, a strainer, and a kind of frying-pan with four cavities, probably intended to cook eggs. No. 2. Stock-pot, in bronze, to hang over the fire, if we may judge from the eye at the top of the handle. No. 3. A similar one of another shape, for boiling. No. 4. Ladles of various forms, for making libation from larger vessels. No. 5. A brazier; the thickness of the sides are hollow, and intended to contain water, and the four turrets are provided with moveable lids, at the side is a cock to draw off the water. The centre of course was filled with lighted charcoal, and if a tripod, or trivet, were placed above it, many processes of cooking, such as boiling, stewing, or frying, might be performed.—“Pompeii.”—“Lib. of Ent. Know.” of the Metasudante, All these porters are under the immediate orders of a confidential servant—obsonator—charged with buying the provisions necessary for the household, and who is obliged to make himself acquainted with the taste of his master and also of each guest, that he may procure nothing which they dislike. The remaining comestibles are placed in an airy and spacious apartment adjoining the kitchen, and at the back of the house. In this spacious laboratory the most delicious emanations invite us. The chief of the cooks, the Archimagirus, At some distance from the culinary autocrat, on the opposite side, an immense iron grate, Some learned men have supposed that the Greeks and Romans had no chimneys; it is, however, easy to prove the contrary. Philocleo, a character in the comedy of the “Wasps” of Aristophanes, hides himself in a chimney. A slave who hears him, cries out, “What a noise there is in the pipe of this chimney!” Philocleo, being discovered, exclaims, “I am the smoke, and I am trying to escape.” Appian, speaking of the proscriptions of the triumvirs, relates that several citizens fled into the pipes of the chimneys. These two examples will preclude the necessity of more ample citations. A vast cauldron of brass from Argos, The magiric laboratory, to which the reader is invited, is very nicely decorated with a profusion of utensils similar in every respect to our own in point of shape—such as gridirons, cullenders, dripping-pans, and tart dishes. These objects are of tolerably thick bronze, plated with fine silver. DESCRIPTION OF PLATE No. XII. From the ancients very little is left us of their kitchen utensils; however, the vessels and instruments which they used must have been in great variety; they had boilers called by the names of caldarium, cacabus, cortina, adhenum; chaldron, lebes; stewpan, sartago; saucepan, pultarium; the cullender, with small holes perforated, Pliny calls colum, and more modern writers verna; spoons, in Latin, cochlear or cochleare; forks and hooks, to draw the meat out of the stockpots, they named creagra and fuscina; the dishes were called lances, disci, patina, patella, or catini; and distinguished from plates by the size, and sometimes the shape. No. 1. Stockpot, with a large ladle and cullender attached, with small holes; appeared on the column of Trajan, together with the stewpan of Silenus. No. 2. Broken stewpan, in bronze. No. 3. Smaller one. These three articles of kitchen utensils are from the cabinet of M. l’AbbÉ Charlet.—“AntiquitÉs de Montfaucon.” the light delicacies destined for the dessert, and the fire is underneath. The diploma, or double-vase, which has sometimes been confounded with the authepsa, does not in the least resemble the latter. It is thus they named the vessel called by us a “bain-marie;” These brass boilers, which boil on the hearth, supported by three feet, are precisely like those used by the French at the present day. The saucepans, around which a host of cooks are busily engaged, are for the greater part made of brass or earthenware, A confidential slave, charged with the care of the plate, is cleaning and polishing near a dresser a large number of bronze chafing-dishes, which are to be used at table to prevent the plates from becoming cold. It is in speaking of this useful invention that Seneca, the philosopher, says, “Daintiness gave birth to this invention, in order that no viand should be chilled, and that everything should be hot enough to please the most pampered palate. The kitchen follows the supper.” DESCRIPTION OF PLATE No. XIII. No. 1. This boiler is made of bronze; the lower part was filled with water, and made to boil by means of the cylinder, covered with a lid, in which lighted charcoal was introduced; the ashes escaped through holes perforated at the bottom, and the basin has a tap to let the water out. No. 2. A flat saucepan, or sautÉ pan, with a fluted handle, and a ram’s head at the end. No. 3. A kettle similar to our teapots. No. 4. A gridiron, and a dripping-pan. No. 5. A trivet, a cleaver, and a butcher’s knife.—St. Non, “Cabinet of Herculaneum.” neats’ feet. The heads, raised on the breasts, form graceful handles. Dishes of massive silver occupy another compartment of the vast cupboard. An opulent family could not possibly do without this luxury. Sylla had some which weighed 200 marks, and Rome would produce more than five hundred of the same weight. The patinÆ such was the name of these magnificent pieces of plate, served for ragoÛts and fish; the catinus, an immense vase of earthenware among the poor Those silver cups and saucers, of the same shape and size as those we employ for tea, have a destination very strange to our ideas. They are used to drink hot water. They are worked in relief, with a taste and delicacy which we cannot too much admire. The Roman spoons, rather different from our own, end on one side by a point, to pick shell fish from their shell, and at the other by the bowl of a spoon, with which eggs were eaten. Doubtless, forks were unknown to the Greeks, since AthenÆus relates, “that Pithyllus”—surnamed the Dainty—“did not content himself with covering his tongue with a species of net, to appreciate the taste of the various dishes, but cleaned and rubbed it with a fish. He also enveloped his hands in a kind of glove, to eat everything burning hot;” This indispensable addition to a modern table was, perhaps, not common at Rome, but nevertheless, it was to be seen at the residence of some wealthy families. The slave before-mentioned holds several in his hand. These forks are remarkable for the beauty of their workmanship. DESCRIPTION OF PLATE No. XIV. No. 1. Chafing-dish to keep everything hot. No. 2. Silver cup, beautifully chased, to drink hot water. The stags’ feet which terminate the handles, and the fillets with which they are ornamented, bear witness by their execution to the rare talent of the goldsmith. They are five inches and a half in length, and have only two prongs. Other servants dispose the earthenware pails, in which the wine is to be placed to cool, The knives, destined to serve at table, are of brilliant steel, and carefully sharpened; they bear each on the handle some whimsical ornament, and seem to have served as models for those which were so much in fashion towards the beginning of the 17th century, and which were called Chinese knives. The most precious plate is arranged before the arrival of the guests on the abacus, or sideboard, which decorates the dining room. This splendid piece of furniture, which will be noticed hereafter, was introduced into Rome 187 years B.C. It was also called the Delphic table. However, the Archimagirus has drawn up a list of the repast, which contains the bill of fare of the dishes, and which, both in Greece and Rome, was always presented to the guests. DESCRIPTION OF PLATE No. XV. No. 1. Roman silver spoon, found at Autun, in France. Martial says expressly that spoons were used by the ancients to eat eggs and shell fish. No. 2. Brass knife, from Herculaneum. The shape of the handle is rather singular, being too small for the hand, but it was probably covered with horn, wood, or ivory. However, it may have been, the knife is thirteen inches in length, from the tip to the ring, which was used to hang it up. The handle is three inches long, and the blade in its largest width is one inch and a quarter. It was used no doubt for sacrifices. No. 3. A simpulum, or a sort of spoon for salt or eggs. No. 4. A simpulum, or cup with a long handle, commonly ending with a hook, which was used as a ladle to take wine or other liquids out of large vessels. No. 5. Fork mentioned in the text, and given as antique in the “Recueil d’Antiq.,” III., Pl. 84. where they wait till some one comes to request their services. We will not accompany this great master any further: his instructions are already known to us. An enthusiastic disciple of Apicius, he practises the lessons of that illustrious professor; and we should only hear from him precepts which we have already faithfully transmitted. When the moment of supper is arrived, we shall find the Archimagirus presiding at that gastronomic order of battle on which depends the success of the day. May Vesta and Comus be propitious to him. In the 14th century, the refectories and kitchens of the numerous communities of Paris presented a curious scene. Immense coppers contained the pottage and boiled meat, and monster gridirons, on four wheels, covered vast braziers. All the utensils of these kitchens were of remarkable dimensions. DESCRIPTION OF PLATE No. XVI. No. 1. Roman silver knife handle. No. 2. Roman silver spoons. No. 3. A very deep dish of metal, either for sauces or some kind of liquid. |