“One costly delicacy was followed by another; all the productions of the remotest ends of the earth met at the banquet of Lycoris. Fish from the Atlantic ocean, Muraenae from Lake Lucrinus, Guinea-fowls from Numidia,[166] young kids from the province of Thesprotis[167] in Epirus, pheasants from the Caspian Sea,[168] Egyptian dates,[169] dainty cakes[170] from Picenum, figs from Chios,[171] pistachio nuts[172] from Palestine--were all here of the choicest quality and elaborately prepared. Euphemus,[173] Caesar’s own head-cook, could have done no more. Nor could anything be more perfect, than the grace with which the handsomely-dressed slaves offered each dainty on long slices of bread. After each dish had gone round, little boys with wings brought in magnificent onyx jars filled with perfumed water, which they poured over the hands of the guests. The long flowing hair of a female slave[174] served to dry them, in the place of the more usual linen or asbestos napkin. In such trifles as these Lycoris loved to be original.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
Cut thick slices from the middle of a loaf of light stale bread, pare the crust entirely from them, and dry them gradually in a cool oven until they are crisp quite through; let them become cold, then roll or beat them into fine crumbs, and keep them in a dry place for use. To strew over hams or cheeks of bacon, the bread should be left all night in the oven, which should be sufficiently heated to brown, as well as to harden it: it ought indeed to be entirely converted into equally-coloured crust. It may be sifted through a dredging-box on to the hams after it has been reduced almost to powder.
Sources: The passage is from Ernst Eckstein, Quintus Claudius: A Romance of Imperial Rome. Volume 1, tr. Bell, Clara, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Acton, Modern cookery for private families of 1845, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — slate cloth, pudding stamp.