cultivation destroys life; and when the grain is eaten, its value as
a supporter of strength is very uncertain. The cultivation of this
production, where it does not destroy life, does destroy comfort, and
slaves may be compelled, but freemen will not go voluntarily, to raise
the “paddy crop.” In India, where the people of many districts depend
upon it entirely as a chief article of food, famine is often the
result, simply because the failure of one crop leaves the unenergetic
people without any other present resource.
And now, by way of a concluding word to those who read medicinally, I
would say, on the best authority, first, that of the haricot-bean I
have nothing to add to what I have already stated. With regard to peas,
they are, like many other things, most pleasant and wholesome when
young. Old, they are the fathers of gaseous colic; and, when swallowed
with the additional tenacity of texture derived from being made into
pudding,--why, then the unhappy consumer is a man to be pitied.
Potatoes are best baked, or roasted lightly. In the latter case, they
are scarcely less nutritious than bread; but the potato must be in
full health, and the cooking unexceptionable. There is many a cook
who could execute, to a charm, the _fricandeau_, invented by Leo X.,
who has not the remotest idea of cooking a potato. When the Flemings
sent us the carrot, in the reign of Elizabeth, it is a pity they could
not have deprived it of its fibrine texture, the drawback to be set
against its saccharine nutritiveness. As the Romans waxed strong upon
the turnip, we may allow that it has some virtues, and that Charles the
First’s Secretary, Lord Townshend, did good service by re-introducing
it to his countrymen. Like the Jerusalem artichoke, it requires a
strong accompaniment of salt and pepper, to counteract its watery and
flatulent influences. As for radishes, he who eats them is tormenting
his stomach with bad water, woody fibre, and acrid poison; and if his
stomach resents such treatment, why, it most emphatically “serves him
right.” As for cucumber, in the days of Evelyn, it was looked upon as
only one remove from poison, and it had better be eaten and enjoyed
with that opinion in memory. It is a pity that what is pleasant is
not always what is proper. Thus the cucumber is attractive, but not
nutritive; while the onion, at whose very name every man stands with
his hand to his mouth, like a Persian in the act of _ad-oration_,
is exceedingly nourishing and wholesome. But I can never think of
it, without remembering the story of the man who, having breakfasted
early on bread and onions, entered an inn on a bitterly cold morning,
with the remark, that for the last two hours he had had the wind in
his teeth. “Had you?” said the unfortunate person who happened to be
nearest to him: “then, by Jove, the wind had the worst of it!”
An onion is all very well as an ingredient in a sauce, but to make
a meal of it! Well! it is on record that a dinner _has_ been made,
at which nothing was served but sauces. A dinner of sauces must have
been quickly prepared; but, for quick preparation, I know nothing that
can vie with a feat accomplished, on the 18th of March of the present
year, at the Freemasons’ Tavern. The “Round-Catch-and-Canon Club” were
to dine there at half-past five P.M. An hour previously, the active
Secretary, Mr. Francis, Vicar-Choral of St. Paul’s, arrived, to see
that “all was right.” He found all wrong. Through some mistake, no
company was expected; and, there being no other dinners ordered for
that day, the weary proprietors, and their chief “aids,” were enjoying
a little relaxation. Not only were the high priestesses of the kitchen
“out,” but the sacred fires of the altars had followed their example.
Great was the horror of the able counter-tenor Secretary; but the
difficulty was triumphantly met by the accomplished officers of the
establishment; and, at six o’clock precisely, forty-two of us sat
down to so perfect a banquet, that the shade of Carême might have
contemplated it with a smile of unalloyed satisfaction. This house may
boast of this _tour de force_ for ever!
SAUCES.
The donor of the sauce dinner, mentioned in the last page, was an
eccentric old Major. He invited three persons to partake of this unique
repast. The soup consisted of gravy sauce, and oyster and lobster
sauce were handed round instead of _filet de sole_. Then came the
sirloin in guise of egg sauce, on the ground, I suppose, that an egg
is proverbially “full of meat.” There was no pheasant, but there was
bread sauce, to put his guests in mind of the flavour; and if they had
not plum-pudding, they had as much towards it as could be implied by
brandy sauce; just as Heyne says, that Munich is the modern Athens in
this far,--that if it has not the philosophers, it has the hemlock,
and has Alcibiades’ dog, as a preparation towards getting Alcibiades.
The sauce-boats were emptied by the guests. The wine was well-resorted
to after each boat, and a little brandy settled the viand that was
represented by the egg sauce. Half the guests, between excess of
lobster sauce and Cognac, were all the worse for the banquet; but that
proved rather the weakness of their stomachs, than the non-excellence
of the feast. It is said that the Major, when alone in the evening,
wound up with a rump-steak supper,--a process rather characteristic of
the “old soldier;” but I have heard, in a provincial town, of large
parties to “tea,” followed by a snug family party, when the guests were
all departed, to a hot supper, with the usual _et cæteras_. But let
_us_ get back from the supper to the matter of seasonings.
Seasonings may be said to form an important item in the practice and
results of cookery. The first, and most useful and natural, is salt.
The ancients did not allow, at one time, of its use in sacrifices; but
Homer called it “divine,” and Plutarch speaks of it as acceptable to
the gods. Its value was not known to men until the Phœnicians, Selech
and Misor,--so, at least, says an ancient legend,--taught mankind the
real worth of this production as a condiment, and thereby gave to
meat increased flavour, and to the eaters of it increased health and
improved digestions.
The Roman soldiers received their pay in _salarium_, or “salt-money.”
The Mexican rulers punished rebellious provinces by interdicting the
use of salt; and Holland, some years since, cruelly took vengeance
on the breakers of the law, by serving them with food, without salt,
during the term of their imprisonment. The poor wretches were almost
devoured by worms, in consequence of this inhuman proceeding.
Of course, the salt-money of the soldiery was, like the pin-money of
a married lady, employed in other ways than those warranted by its
appellation. For above three centuries, soldiers served _gratis_, and
supported themselves. Then came “salt-money,” or _salarium_, in the
shape of a couple of _oboli_ daily to the foot, and a _drachma_ to
the cavalry. This was to the common men. The Tribunes were, however,
exorbitantly paid, if Juvenal’s allusion may be trusted, wherein he
says that,--
----“_alter enim, quantum in legione Tribuni
Accipiunt, donat Calvinæ vel Catienæ_;”
or, as it may be translated,--
“Such sums as a full Colonel’s coffers swell,
He flings to Lola, or to Laura Bell!”
But this must have been in very late times, previous to which
frugality, modesty, and indifferent pay were ever the Tribune’s share
of the national virtues and their consequences, lauded by Livy. The
first Cæsar doubled the _salarium_ of the army, and decreed that
it should never be reduced. His successors followed the example of
increase. Augustus fixed the salt-money at ten _asses_ a day, and by
the time of Domitian it was considerably more than double that amount.
From that period, the soldiery fed better, and fought worse, than ever.
Up to the time of the Empire they had been frugal livers, and were not
above preparing the rations of corn allowed them with their own hands:
some ground it in hand-mills, others pounded it between stones, and the
hastily-baked cakes were eaten contentedly upon the turf, with nothing
better to wash them down than pure water, or, at best, _posca_, which
was water mixed with vinegar,--and a very wholesome beverage, too, in
hot weather.
The Jewish dispensation, unlike that of the early Olympian theology,
enforced the use of salt in all sacrificial ceremonies. That of the
Dead Sea was abundant; and Galen pronounced it as the most favourable
for seasoning, and for promoting digestion. The Greeks learned to call
it “divine,” and at last consecrated it to their gods. Spilling salt
was accounted as unlucky in the days when “young Time counted his
birthdays by the sun,” as in these modern times when the schoolmaster
is abroad,--sometimes too much abroad.
Ancus Martius was the first of the Roman Kings who levied a duty on
salt. He was not visited by the gods--as legends say other Kings were
who created such imposts--by some dire calamity. The bad example of
Ancus Martius has continued over nearly the whole of Europe; and a
slave cannot eat salt to his bread without paying tribute to the King.
The word “salt” was often used for life itself. When Dordalus says
to Toxilus, in the “_Persa_,” “_Eodem mihi pretio sal præhibetur quæ
tibi_,”--“I get my salt at the same price as you do,”--he simply
means that his manner of life is as good as that of Toxilus, and that
a slave-merchant is as respectable as the very best-fed of slaves
themselves. Catullus employs the word to denote beauty; other poets
use it to signify virtues of various kinds; and in Terence we find a
man without salt to mean a man without sense. Plutarch was not wrong
when he styled salt “the condiment of condiments.” I do not know that
it has ever been used to point a proverb with a contemptuous meaning,
except in Greece, where he who had nothing to dine upon was called
a “salt-licker.” Rome, where it was of such commercial importance,
honoured it more by giving to the road along which it was conveyed the
name of “the Salarian Way.”
There were people who never knew its use, as in Epeiros; some who have
steadily rejected it, as the Bathurst tribe in Australia. The Peruvians
delighted in it, and ate it mixed with hot pepper and bitter herbs, as
a sort of “sweetmeat.” How sacred it is in Arabia, we all know; and,
in illustration of it, I have heard of an Arab burglar accidentally
letting his tongue come in contact, as he was plundering a house by
night, with a piece of salt. He instantly deemed he had partaken of the
owner’s hospitality, and he departed without booty. Could Christian
thieves be so influenced, we should salt our plate-baskets and
cash-boxes nightly!
In Sicily a salt is spoken of that melts only in fire, and hardens in
water. At Utica, one of the great salt suppliers of the ancient world,
it lay about in such huge mounds, hardened by the sun and moon, that
the pickaxe would scarcely penetrate it. In Arabia whole cities were
once built of it, the blocks of salt being cemented by water. It is
still procured with most difficulty in Abyssinia, where the clouds are
supposed to deposit the crystal in sandy plains, of heat so furious,
that it is only during one or two hours of the night that the seekers
of it dare dash into the locality, and carry off, as hastily as
possible, what they seek. It is procured far more pleasantly in those
parts of Chili where it is found deposited on the leaves of plants.
Off the warmer coasts of South America, and the still hotter shores of
Africa, blocks weighing from one to two hundred weight have been picked
up. Some writers tell us that lakes are nothing more than salt plains
in solution; and others, that salt plains are merely lakes congealed.
However this may be, it is known that generally four gallons of water
produce one of salt; but there is great difference of result in various
localities, some water yielding a sixth, other only a sixteenth. The
deep sea-water is the most highly productive. There are various strange
ingredients, too, used in different places to make the salt “grain”
properly. White of egg, butter, ale, and even blood, are employed
to produce the desired result. In its fossil or mineral state it is
nowhere seen to such great advantage as in the mines of Williska, in
Poland. I have seen those near Salzburg, in southern Austria; but these
are mere salt-cellars, compared with the Polish mine, which forms a
large subterranean city, has its streets, citizens, and coteries, and
is an underground republic, many of the natives of which die without
seeing a blade of grass, or a gleam of sunlight, upon the bosom of the
upper earth.
Finally, salt is the most natural stimulant for the digestive organs;
but it should be remembered that too much of it is _almost_ as bad
as too little. The lowering of the price of salt, a consequence of
the abolition of the duty, was beneficial to the poor, and ruinous to
the worm-doctors. It is a singular production. In small quantities it
is a stimulating manure; in large quantities it begets sterility. A
little of it accelerates putrefaction, while a large quantity prevents
it. Farther, it is to be remembered,--and I have mentioned the fact
in another page,--that the salt in salted meat is not (whatever it
may once have been) the table salt, the use of which is so favourable
to digestion. In the meat it undergoes a chymical change, by which
it deteriorates itself as well as the object to which it is applied.
“Sweet salt” was the name once given to sugar; and in reference to this
latter production, it may be safely averred, that its introduction
worked a considerable change in society. And it appears to have been
early added to that “significant luxury,” wheat. In Isaiah xliii. 24
there is an allusion made to it in these words: “Thou hast bought me
no sweet cane with money, neither hast thou filled me with the fat of
sacrifices.” And again, in Jeremiah vi. 20: “To what purpose cometh
there to me incense from Sheba, and sweet cane from a far country?” It
would seem, however, that though the sweet cane may have been known,
its uses were not very speedily appreciated, or, if they were, that
they were for a long time forgotten. Thus, as late as the thirteenth
century of our era, a writer speaks of a novel sort of salt that has
been discovered, the flavour of which was sweet, and, as he suggests,
might be found acceptable to sick persons, because of its soothing and
cooling properties. “Honey out of the rock,” which was the sweetener
most early noticed in Scripture, fell into comparative disuse, after
sugar had become a necessary of life, after being first a medicine,
and then a luxury. The Spaniards received it from the Arabs, and
familiarized it in Europe. Its first settlement beyond the Continent
was in Madeira, and at length it found a congenial soil in the islands
of the Western Indies. God gave the gift, but man has discovered how
to abuse it to his own destruction; and, from the sweet food offered
by an angel, he has distilled the fire-water, which slays like the
pestilence. But to return, for a moment, from the sweets to the salts,
and especially to the latter in the form of brine.
The Romans were fond of brine,--water in which bay-salt had been
dissolved,--as a seasoning; and after dinner, those who could not guess
the riddles that were put to them, were punished, like the refractory
gentlemen at the Nightingale Club, by being compelled to swallow a
cupful, without drawing breath. Apicius invented a composition made up
of salt, pepper, ginger, thyme, celery, rocket, and anise-seed, with
lamoni, wild marjoram, holy thistle, spikenard, parsley, and hyssop, as
a specific to be taken, after heavy dinners, against indigestion. They
who could digest the remedy need not have been afraid of the dinner.
That universal seasoning of the classical world, the _garum_, was
originally a shrimp sauce; but it was subsequently made of the
intestines of almost any fish, macerated in water, saturated with salt;
and when symptoms of putrefaction began to appear, a little parsley
and vinegar were added; and there was the famous _garum_, of which
the inventors were so proud,--and particularly of a _garum_ which was
prepared in Spain. Flesh instead of fish was occasionally used, with no
difference in the process of preparation; and it would be difficult to
say which was the nastier. But, perhaps, if we could see the witchery
of preparing any of our own flavouring sauces, we should be reluctant
ever to allow a drop of the polluted mixture to pass our lips. There
_is_ a bliss in ignorance.
Pythagoras showed better taste in the science of seasonings, when he
took to eating nothing but honey wherewith to flavour his bread.
Hybla sounds sweet, the very word smells sweet, from its association
with honey. Aristæus, who is said to have discovered its use, merited
the patent of nobility, whereby he was declared to have descended
from the gods; and the placing the honeycomb and its makers under the
protection of Mellona, expressly made by men for this purpose, was a
proof of the value in which they were held. Theophrastus placed sugar
among the honeys,--the honey of reeds,--or the “salt of India,” as some
strangely called it. The Greek physicians recommended its use, both as
food and as flavourer. It was at one time as scarce as cinnamon,--that
precious bark of which the phœnix made its nest, and which the Cæsars
monopolized. Cinnamon and cloves were not employed in seasoning until a
comparatively modern period. The good people of earlier days preferred
verjuice, in certain cases prescribed by Galen. They seemed to have a
taste for acids: hence the admiration, both in Greece and Rome, for
vinegar and pickles. Vinegar figured in the army statistics of Rome
especially; but it once, at least, figured in a still more remarkable
way in the statistics of the French army, in the time of Louis XIII.,
when the Duc de la Meilleraye, Grand Master of the Artillery of France,
put down £52,000 as the sum expended by him in cooling cannons. How hot
the war must have been, and at what a price the fever must have been
maintained, when the merely refrigerating process cost so much!
French epicures maintain that the pig was born to be “ringed,” and that
his mission was to rout at the foot of the yoke-elm trees, and turn up
truffles! Pliny gravely looked upon the truffle as a prodigy sown by
the thunderbolt in autumnal storms. However this may be, all lovers of
good things eat the truffle with a sort of devout ecstasy, in spite
of the wide differences of opinion which exist among the faculty of
guessers, as to whether the truffle be nutritious or poisonous, fit for
food, or monster sire of indigestion. The fact is, that they should be
delicately dealt with, like mushrooms; of which he who eats little is
wise, and he who eats not of them at all is safe from blaming them for
bringing on indigestion--as far as _he_ is concerned.
The truffle is thus elaborately, yet not verbosely, described by
Archimagirus Soyer: “The truffle is a very remarkable vegetable,
which, without stems, roots, or fibres, grows of itself, isolated in
the bosom of the earth, absorbing the nutritive juice. Its form is
round, more or less regular; its surface is smooth, or tuberculous;
the colour, dark brown outside, brown, grey, or white within. Its
tissue is formed of articulated filaments, between which are spheric
vesicles, and in the interior are placed reproductive bodies, small
brown spheres, called ‘_truffinelles_.’ Truffles vegetate to the depth
of five or six inches in the high sandy soils of the south-west of
France, Piedmont, &c. Their mode of vegetation and reproduction is not
known. (?) Dogs are trained to find them, as well as pigs, and boars
also, who are very fond of them. They are eaten cooked under the ashes,
or in wine and water. They are preserved when prepared in oil, which is
soon impregnated with their odour. Poultry is stuffed with them; also
geese’s livers, pies, and cooked pork, besides numerous _ragoûts_. They
possess, as it is said, exciting virtues.” The latter, we suppose, is
a paraphrase for the sentiment of “Falstaff,” before cited, “It rains
potatoes!” Shell-fish had the same reputation in the olden time. “_Tene
marsupium_,” says Italius to Olympio, in the _Rudens_:--
“_Abi atque obsonia propera; sed lepidè volo
Molliculas escas, ut ipsa mollicula est._”
As for the mushroom, if it be not in itself deadly, it has been made
the vehicle of death. Agrippina poisoned Claudius in one, and Nero,
his successor, had a respect for this production ever after. Tiberius,
in Pagan, and Clement VII., in Papal, Rome, as well as Charles VI.
of France, are also said to have been “approximately” killed by
mushrooms. Seneca calls them “voluptuous poison,” and of this poison
his countrymen ate heartily, and suffered dreadfully. The mushroom was
not rendered harmless by the process of Nicander,--raising them under
the shadow of a well-irrigated and richly-manured fig-tree.
One of the most perfect illustrations of “sauce,” in its popular sense,
with which I am acquainted, is conveyed in the reply once given by a
French _Curé_ to his Bishop. It is a regulation made by canonical law,
that a Priest cannot keep a female servant to manage his household,
unless she be of the assigned age of, at least, forty years. It once
happened that a Bishop dined with a _Curé_, at whose house the Prelate
had arrived in the course of a visitation tour. On that occasion he
found that they were waited on at dinner by two quietly pretty female
attendants, of some twenty years each. When diocesan and subordinate
were once more alone, the former remarked on the uncanonical condition
of the household, and asked the _Curé_ if he were not aware that, by
rule of church, he could maintain but one _menagère_, who must have
attained, at least, forty years of age? “I am quite aware of it,
_Monseigneur_,” said the rubicund _Curé_; “but, as you see, I prefer
having my housekeeper in two volumes!”
With respect to the use of spices, it may be safely said, that the
less they are used, the better for the stomach. A _soupçon_ of them
in certain preparations is not to be objected to; but it must be
recollected that in most cases, however pleasant they may be to the
palate, the apparent vigour which they give to the stomach is at the
expense of the liver, and the reaction leaves the former in a worse
condition than it was in before.
The world probably never saw a second time such a trade in spices
as that which was carried on of old between Canaan and Egypt. The
Dutch and Amboyna was a huckstering matter compared with it. Egypt
sent Canaan her corn, wine, oil, and linen; and Canaan sent, in
return, her spicery, balm, myrrh, precious woods, and minerals. The
Ishmaelites were the carrying merchants; and, while each class of them
had its especial article of commerce, they all dabbled a little in
slave-dealing. Thus, the men of the tribe that purchased Joseph dealt
in spicery only,--a term including balm and myrrh. The Egyptian demand
for the article was enormous. At the period of the sale of Joseph,
spicery was most extensively used, not only for the embalming of men,
but of sacred animals. In after times, this practice ceased to a great
extent, on account of a large failure in the supply.