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Cookery Among the Ancients (Be largely ascribed to lack)

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 1 connection-one of the artists who had been em-. ployed 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 belle-vue 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 e 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 fruittree 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 laws, 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.