flounder, and sole, are the least heating. Of these, the cod is the
least easy of digestion, though turbot is quite as difficult of
digestion when much lobster sauce is taken with it. The crimping of
cod facilitates the digesting of the fish. Sole and whiting are easily
digested. Salmon is nutritive, but it is oily, heating, and not very
digestible; far less so than salmon trout. The favourite parts of
most of these fish are the least fit for weak stomachs, and the most
trying to strong ones. Salmon, caught after the spawning season has
commenced, is almost poisonous; and eels are objectionable at all
seasons, from their excessive oiliness. Shell-fish generally may be put
down as “indigestible,” particularly the under-boiled lobsters of the
London market. The mussel is especially so; and these are not rendered
innocuous by the removal of the beard, which is not more hurtful than
any other part. Shell-fish, and, indeed, fish generally, affects the
skin, by sympathy with the stomach. The effect is, sometimes, as if a
poison had been generated: at others it very sensibly affects the odour
of the cutaneous secretions. This effect was thoroughly understood when
the Levitical Priests, like those of Egypt, were prohibited from eating
fish. The prohibition was based upon a just principle.
The Egyptian and Levitical Priests were more obedient to such
prohibitions than St. Patrick, who once, overcome by hunger, helped
himself to pork chops on a fast-day. An angel met him with the
forbidden cutlets in his hand; but the saint popped them into a pail
of water, pattered an Ave-Mary over them, and our indulgent Lady
heeded the appeal by turning them into a couple of respectable and
orthodox-looking trout. The angel looked perplexed, and went away,
with his index finger on the side of his nose. And see what came of
it! In Ireland, meat dipped into water, and christened by the name of
“St. Patrick’s Fish,” is commonly eaten there even on fast-days, and
to the great regret of all those who eat greedily enough to acquire an
indigestion.
St. Patrick’s fish ought to have fetched as high a price as the four
cod which formed the sole supply in Billingsgate-market on one of the
great frost-days in January, 1809; they were sold to one dealer for
fourteen guineas. During the same month, salmon was sold at a guinea
a pound! When fish is so high-priced, it is time to have done with
it. So, _enlevez_! and let us to the succeeding courses of viands more
substantial. While the fish is being removed, I will merely relate
that it was the practice of Sir Joshua Reynolds, who gave plentiful
dinners to admirable men, in his house in Leicester Square, always to
choose his own fish, of which he was a capital judge. He was, on those
occasions, ever the first visitor to the fish-shop still existing, in
its primitive simplicity, in Coventry-street. He selected the best;
and later in the day, his niece, Miss Palmer, used to call, dispute
the price, and pay for the fish. Sir Joshua’s table is said to have
been too crowded, both as to guests and dishes, while there was scant
attendance, and a difficulty of getting served; but the hilarity
compensated for all. The guests enjoyed themselves with a vulgar
delight that would have very much ruffled the dignity of such a pompous
president at repasts as the bewigged, bepatched, and bepowdered Sir
Peter Lely.
With the introduction of animal food is dated the era of professional
cooks; and that era itself is set down by M. Soyer, a competent
authority, as having commenced in the year of the world 1656. Other
authorities give 2412 as the proper date, when Prometheus, or
Forethought, as his name implies, taught men the use of fire, and
cooked an ox. But I think that both dates and mythology are somewhat
loose here, and that the period is easier of conjecture than of
determination. Ceres killed the pig that devoured her corn, Bacchus
the goat that nibbled at the tendrils of the vine, and Jupiter the
ox that swallowed his sacred cakes; and the animals slain by deities
were roasted and eaten by men. Another tradition is, that roast meat
originally smoked only on the altars of the gods, and that the Priests
lived on the pretended sacrifices, until some lean and greedy heretic,
having wickedly pilfered the sacred viands, so improved under the diet,
that his example was promptly followed, and men took to animal food,
in spite of the thunder of gods and the anathemas of Priests. I need
not say where there is better authority than all these pretty tales
for man’s subduing to his use and service the beasts of the earth, the
birds of the air, and the fishes of the sea.
A rearer of cattle was, in the olden time, an aristocrat in his way.
The gods looked after his herds, and the law gave its protection where
Olympian divinity so often proved worthless. Bubona sat the watchful
goddess of their fattening; and it was she who blessed the cabbages
steeped in vinegar, the straw and wheat-bran, and the bruised barley,
wherewith the oxen were prepared for the cattle-show or the market. In
the latter, the office of the Roman Prefect fixed the selling price:
the breeder could neither ask more nor take less than according to
the official tariff. There was a singular custom at one time in Rome,
which proves, however, that the seller had a voice in declaring the
value of his stock. Purchaser and vendor simultaneously closed, and
then suddenly opened, one of their hands, or some of the fingers. If
the number of fingers on both sides was even, the vendor obtained the
price which he had previously asked for his meat; but if the number was
uneven, the buyer received the viands for the sum he had just before
tendered. This was as singular a custom as, and a more honest one than,
that adopted by the first Dutch settlers in America. In their trading
with the Indians a Dutchman’s fist was established as the standard of
weight, with this understanding, that when a Dutchman was selling to an
Indian his fist weighed a pound, but that it should only be half that
weight when the Hollander was a purchaser!
The Roman markets were well supplied, and the pig seems to have been
the national favourite. The Emperors used to distribute thousands
of pounds of pork to the poor, as on festive occasions we, less
magnificently, divide among the needy our time-honoured English roast
beef. There was even an edict against making sausages of any thing
_but_ pork,--an edict which is much needed in some of our suburbs,
where “pork sausages” are made of any thing but pig;--and, after all,
they could not be made of a dirtier animal. But the grave Romans
strangely reverenced this unclean beast. Pliny places him only one
degree below humanity; and certainly the porcine and human stomachs
are very much alike! In the East, our ancient friend was a Pariah, and
his position among the unclean was fixed by a Jewish doctor, who said,
that if ten measures of leprosy were flung into the world, nine of them
would naturally fall to the execrated pig. There is no doubt that the
eating of the flesh of the pig in hot climates would bring on diseases
in the human system akin to leprosy; and this fact may have tended to
establish the unpopularity of the animal throughout the East, and to
account also for the prohibition. Galen, however, prescribed it as good
food for people who worked hard; and there are modern practitioners
who maintain that it is the most easily digested of all meats. It is
certainly more easy of digestion than that respectable impostor, the
boiled chicken, which used so cruelly to test, and defy, the feeble
powers of invalids.
Pigs were fatted, both in Greece and Rome, until they had attained
nearly the bulk of the elephant. These fetched prices of the most
“fancy” description; and they were served up whole, with an entire
Noah’s-ark collection of smaller animals inside, by way of stuffing.
A clever cook could so dress this meat as to make it have the flavour
of any other viand; and the first culinary _artistes_ of the day
prided themselves on the preparation of a _ragoût_ composed of young
pigs stifled before they were littered. The mother would have had no
difficulty in performing this feat herself for her own young, if sows
generally had been as huge as the one mentioned by Varro, and which he
says was so fat as to be incapable of movement, and to be unconscious
that a mouse, with a young family, had settled in the folds of her fat,
where they lived like mites in cheese.
In another page, I have spoken of what were called “the sacred pigs
and lambs.” Menæchmus, in Plautus, asks the price of the “_porci
sacres, sinceri_.” “_Sacres_” was applied to all animals intended
for immolation. The _sinceri porci_ were the white and spotless pigs
offered to the Lares on behalf of the insane. The merchant who gives
instruction, in the _Pseudolus_, to his servant, as to the splendid
repast that is to be served up on his birthday, is very particular
on the subject of pork; and he shows us what parts formed a dish
that might tempt princes,--the ham, and the head: “_Pernam, callum,
glandium, sumen, facito in aquâ jaceant_.”
If men were not, anciently, fonder of beef than of pork, the reason,
perhaps, was, that the ox was religiously reverenced, because of his
use to man, whereas the pig was really of no value at all but for
consumption. The excellence of the ox as food was, nevertheless, very
early ascertained, and acted on by some primitive people. The Jews were
permitted to eat of that of which Abraham had offered a portion to
angels; and calf and ox were alike an enjoined food. The Greeks, too,
devoured both with much complacency, as they also did tripe, which was
deemed a dainty fit for heroes. Indeed, for tripe there was an ancient
and long-standing propensity among the early nations. It formed the
chief dish at the banquets of men who met to celebrate the victory of
mortals and gods over the sacrilegious Titans.
The lamb and the kid have smoked upon divine altars and humble tables.
The Greeks were especially fond of both, and the Romans were like them
in this respect; but the Egyptians religiously abstained from the kid;
and more than one Eastern nation held, as of faith, that the lamb was
more fitting as an offering to the gods than as a dish for men. On
the other hand, there were people who preferred the flesh of the ass,
which was not an uncommon dish at Roman tables, where dogs, too, were
served as a dainty; for Hippocrates had recommended them as a refined
food; and the Greeks swallowed the diet thus authoritatively described.
The Romans, however, are said to have eaten the dog out of vengeance.
The curs of the Capitol were sleeping, when the sacred and watchful
geese saved it by their cackling; and thence arose, it is believed, the
avenging appetite with which puppies, dressed like hares, were tossed
into the stomachs of the unforgiving Romans. They were also sacrificed
to the Dog-star.
It is worthy of remark, that Mexico was partly conquered by aid of the
pig. Cortez was in need of supplies of fresh meat on his march, and he
took with him a large herd of swine,--sows as well as pigs,--“these
animals being very suitable for a long journey, on account of their
endurance of fatigue, and because they multiply greatly.” The Indians,
on most occasions, however, appear to have been able to have supplied
him plentifully: for we read, that at Campeche, for instance, in return
for his presents, they placed before him partridges, turtle-doves,
goslings, cocks, hares, stags, and other animals which were good to
eat, and bread made from Indian corn, and fruits. It was, for all the
world, like meeting a burglar at your dining-room door, and asking him
to stay and take breakfast, before he went off with the plate!
When the uncle of Job entertained his heavenly visitors, the dish he
placed before them was “roasted veal,” of a freshly killed calf. It
was tender, because the muscular fibres had not had time to become
stiff; and its pleasant accompaniments were melted butter, milk,
and meal-cakes. Veal is the national dish of Germany, where mutton
is scarce, and calves abundant. It is poor food at any time; but
the German veal is the most tasteless of meats. There, indeed, is
applicable the smart saying of that ardent young experimentalist, who
declared that eating veal was as insipid an enjoyment as kissing one’s
sister! Cardinal Zinzendorf used to denounce pork quite as strongly.
He deemed pigs to have been of no use but for their blood, of which
he himself used to make a bath for his legs, whenever he had the
gout. Quixote Bowles, on the other hand, held pig, in any form, to
be the divinest of meats, and the animal the happiest of all created
things. With true Apician fervour, he would travel any distance to
feast on the sight of a fatted porker; and a view of that prize pig
of Prince Albert’s, which was so uniformly huge that, at first sight,
it was difficult to distinguish the head from the tail, would have
made him swoon with gentle ecstasy. Bowles was an epicure in bacon;
and, whenever he went out to dinner, he took a piece of it, of his
own curing, in his pocket, and requested the cook to dress it. The
people of the Society Islands carry respect for pigs even beyond the
compass of Bowles. They believe that there is a distinct heaven for the
porcine souls; and this paradise of pigs is called by them “Ofatuna.”
The Polynesian pig is certainly a more highly favoured animal than his
cousin in Ireland; for, in a Polynesian farm household, every pig has
his proper name, as regularly as every member of the family. Perhaps,
the strangest cross of pigs ever heard of, was that of Mr. Tinney’s
famous breed for porkers,--Chinese, crossed by a half-African boar;
the meat was said to be delicious. Finally, with respect to pigs,
they are connected with a popular expletive, with which they have, in
reality, nothing to do. “Please the pigs!” is shown, I think by Southey
in his “Espriella,” to be a corruption of “Please the pyx!” The pyx is
the receptacle which contains the consecrated wafer on Romish altars;
and the exclamation is equal to “Please God!” The corruption is as
curious a one as that of “tawdry,” from “’t Audrey,” or St. Audrey’s
fair, famous for the sale of frippery,--showy, cheap, and worthless.
They who are half as particular about mutton as Quixote Bowles was
about pork, would do well to remember, that sheep continue improving
as long as their teeth remain sound, which is usually six years; and
that, at all events up to this time, the older the mutton, the finer
the flavour. A spayed ewe, kept five years before she is fattened, is
superior to any wether mutton. Dr. Paris, however, states that wedder
mutton is in perfection at five years old, and ewe mutton at two years
old; but he acknowledges that the older is the more digestible. It is
the glory of one locality, famous for its sheep, that the rot was never
known to be caught upon the South Downs. It is further said, that a
marsh, occasionally overflowed with salt water, was never known to rot
sheep. A curious fact is stated by Young, in his “Survey of Sussex;”
namely, that Lord Egremont had, in his park, three large flocks of
the Hereford, South-Down, and Dishley breeds; and that these three
flocks kept themselves perfectly distinct, although each had as much
opportunity of mixing with the others as they had with themselves.
I have alluded, in another page, to a circumstance first noticed, I
believe, by Madame Dacier,--that there is no mention of boiled meat,
as food, throughout Homer’s Iliad. The fair commentator is right; but
“boiling” is, nevertheless, used by the poet as a simile. When (in the
twenty-first book) Neptune applies his flames to check the swelling
fury of Scamander,--
“The bubbling waters yield a hissing sound,
As when the flames beneath a caldron rise,
To melt the fat of some rich sacrifice.
Amid the fierce embrace of circling fires
The waters foam, the heavy smoke aspires:
So boils th’ imprison’d flood, forbid to flow,
And, choked with vapours, feels his bottom glow!”
This is not a very elegant version of the original, it must be
confessed, albeit the translation is Pope’s. It is, however, the only
reference to boiling to be found in Homer, and here the fat of the
sacrifice boiled down is that of a pig.
Κνίσσῃ κελδόμενος ἁπαλοτρεφέος σιάλοιο.
I do not know that I can take leave of mutton and the meats by doing
them greater honour than by mentioning that Napoleon ate hastily of
mutton before he entered on the contest at Leipsic, and he lost the
triumph of the bloody day through a fit of indigestion.
Before the era of kitchen gardens, scurvy was one of the processes by
which the English population was kept down. Cabbages were not known
here until the period of Henry VIII.; and turnips are so comparatively
new to some parts of England, that their introduction into the northern
counties is hardly a century old. A diet exclusively of animal food is
too highly stimulant for such a climate as ours; and an exclusively
vegetable diet is far less injurious in its effects. No meat is so
digestible as tender mutton. It has just that degree of consistency
which the stomach requires. Beef is not less nutritious, but it is
rather less easy of digestion, than mutton: much, however, depends
upon the cooking, which process may, really not inaptly, be called
the first stage of digestion. The comparative indigestibility of lamb
and veal arises from the meat being of a more stringy and indivisible
nature. Old laws ordained that butchers should expose no beef for sale,
but of an animal that had been baited. The nature of the death rendered
the flesh more tender. A coursed hare is thus more delicious eating
than one that has been shot; and pigs whipped till they die, may be
eaten with relish, even by young ladies who pronounce life intolerable.
A little vinegar, administered to animals about to be killed, is said,
also, to render the flesh less tough; and it is not unusual to give
a spoonful of this acid to poultry, whose life is required for the
immediate benefit of the consumer. Some carnivorous animals have been
very expert at furnishing their own larder. Thus we read, that the
eagles in Norway exhibit as much cunning in procuring their beef as can
well be imagined; and more, perhaps, than can well be believed. They
dive into the sea, we are told, then roll in the sand, and afterwards
destroy an ox by shaking the sand in his eyes, while they attack him.
I think the French eagle tried a similar plan with the English bull,
during the wars of the Empire, and very ineffectually. It dived into
the sea, and rolled itself in the sand at Boulogne, and shook abundance
of it across the Channel; but the English bull more quietly shook it
off again from his mane, and the eagle turned to an easier quarry in
Austria. Animals not carnivorous have sometimes been as expert. There
have been horses, for instance, who have had their peculiar appetite
also for meat. Some twenty years ago, we heard of one at Brussels,
which, fond of flesh generally, was particularly so of raw mutton,
which it would greedily devour whenever it could get, as it sometimes
did, to a butcher’s shop.
The Jews, it is said, never ate poultry under their old dispensation;
and French gastronomists assert that this species of food was
expressly reserved to enrich the banquets of a more deserving people.
About the merits of the people the poultry, and winged animals
generally, would perhaps have an opinion of their own, were they
capable of entertaining one; for nowhere, as in France, have those
unfortunate races been so tortured, and merely in order to extract
out of their anguish a little more exquisite enjoyment for the palled
appetites of epicures. The turkey has, perhaps, the least suffered
at the hands of the Gallic experimentalists, though _he_ has not
altogether escaped. The goose has been the most cruelly treated,
especially in the case of his being kept caged before a huge fire, and
fed to repletion until he dies, the Daniel Lambert of his species,
of a diseased liver, which is the most delicious thing possible in a
pie. But it is ignoble treatment for the only bird which is said to be
prescient of approaching earthquakes. The goose saved Rome, and was
eaten in spite of his patriotism. He is skilled in natural philosophy,
and his science does not save him from death and sage-and-onions. Nay,
even a female Sovereign of England could not hear of the defeat of the
Spanish Armada without decreeing “death to the geese,” until the time
comes when Mr. Macaulay’s Huron friend shall be standing on a fragment
of Blackfriars’ Bridge, sketching the ruins of St. Paul’s.
It must be allowed, however, that the scientific ladies of farm-yards
have improved upon the knowledge of their ancestresses. Formerly, of
turkeys alone, full one-half that pierced the shell perished; but now
we rear more than fifteen out of twenty. I do not know, however, that
that fact is at all consolatory to the turkey destined to be dined upon.
Themistocles ordered his victory over Xerxes to be yearly commemorated
by a cock-fight; and the bird itself was eaten out of honour, as
dogs in Rome were for reasons of vengeance. At Rome, the hen was
the favourite bird; but hens were consumed in such quantities, that
Fannius, the Consul, issued a decree, prohibiting their being slain
for food, during a certain period; and, in the mean time, the Romans
“invented the capon.” The duck was devoured medicinally, that is, on
medical assurance that it was good diet for weak stomachs; and there
were great sages who not only taught that duck, as a food, would
maintain men in health, but that, if they were ill, the ample feeding
thereon would soon restore them again. Mithridates, it is alleged, ate
it as a counter-poison; other people, of other times and places, simply
because they liked it. The goose was in as much favour as the duck
with the digestion-gifted stomachs of the older races. It was _the_
royal diet in Egypt, where the Monarch did not, like Queen Elizabeth,
recommend it to the people, but selfishly decreed that it was only to
be served at his own table. Gigantic geese, with ultra-gigantic livers,
were as much the delight of epicures in Rome, as the livers, if not the
geese, are now the _voluptas suprema_ of the epicure of France, and
of countries subject to the French code of diet. A liver weighing as
much as the rest of the animal without it, was a _morceau_, in Rome,
to make a philosopher’s mouth water. This was not proof of a more
depraved taste than that exhibited by a Christian Queen of France, who
spent sixteen hundred francs in fattening three geese, the delicate
livers of which alone Her Majesty intended to dine upon. The pigeon and
guinea-hen never attained to such popularity as the goose and duck;
while the turkey, and especially the truffled turkey-hen, has its value
sufficiently pointed out by the saying of the gastronome, that there
must be two at the eating of a truffled turkey,--the eater and the
turkey! The turkey, originally from the East, was slowly propagated
in Europe, and the breed appears to have gradually passed away, like
the bustard in England. It was brought hither again from America, and
its first re-appearance is said to have been at the wedding-dinner of
Charles IX. of France.
The turkey was not protected, as the peacock was by Alexander, by a
decree denouncing death against whomsoever should kill this divine
bird, with its devilish note. The decree did not affect Quintus
Hortensius, who had one served up at the dinner which celebrated his
accession to the office of Augur. Tiberius, however, preserved the
peacock with great jealousy, and it was only rich breeders that could
exhibit this bird at their banquets.
A man who passes through Essex may see whole “herds” of geese and
ducks in the fields there, fattening without thought of the future,
and supremely happy in their want of reflection. These birds are
“foreigners;” at least, nearly all of them are so. They are Irish by
birth, but they are brought over by steam, in order to be perfected by
an English education; and when the due state of perfection has been
attained, they are, like many other young people partaking of the
“duck” or the “goose,” transferred to London, and “done for.”