for cooking the cabbage--the silken-leaved, curled, and hard white
varieties. From these recipes we at once may judge of his resources,
and obtain an idea of a master vegetable-cook of the period:
"1. Take only the most delicate and tender part of the
cabbage, which boil, and then pour off the water; season it
with cummin seed, salt, old wine, oil, pepper, alisander,
mint, rue, coriander seed, gravy, and oil.
"2. Prepare the cabbage in the manner just mentioned, and make
a seasoning of coriander seed, onion, cummin seed, pepper, a
small quantity of oil, and wine made of sun raisins.
"3. When you have boiled the cabbages in water put them into
a saucepan and stew them with gravy, oil, wine, cummin seed,
pepper, leeks, and green coriander.
"4. Add to the preceding ingredients flour of almonds, and
raisins dried in the sun.
"5. Prepare them again in the above manner, and cook them with
green olives."
To what an extent strange condiments, herbs, and other seasonings were
employed, as well as to what a task the human stomach was subjected,
will be apparent from a recipe, given by the same authority, for a
thick sauce for a boiled chicken: "Put the following ingredients
into a mortar: anise-seed, dried mint, and lazer-root (similar to
asafœtida); cover them with vinegar; add dates; pour in garum, oil,
and a small quantity of mustard-seeds; reduce all to a proper thickness
with red wine warmed; and then pour this same over your chicken, which
should previously be boiled in anise-seed water."
With regard to the olden wines, let us be duly grateful for the
progress of viniculture, and thankful that we may read of them,
rather than have to partake of them, to rue the _Katzenjammer_ of the
following morning. For if one must have a headache on rare occasions
as the penalty of dining, it were assuredly less to be deplored if
obtained through a grand vintage of the Marne or the Médoc than from a
wine mixed with sea-water or spices, or old Falernian cloyed with honey
from Mount Hymettus. By all means, if we must drink an excessively
sweet wine, let it be, at most, a glass of Hermitage _paille_ or Muscat
Rivesaltes, iced to snow!
The tables, the plate, and the dinner-service corresponded with the
rarity of the viands and beverages. Cicero's table of lemon-wood cost
him two hundred thousand sesterces, or over seven thousand dollars.
Besides being made of the most precious foreign woods, veined and
spotted to imitate the tiger's and the leopard's skin, they were also
wrought of ivory, silver, bronze, and tortoise-shell.
The drinking-cups of gold and glass, the _nimbus_ and
_ampulla_--crystal chalices, ewers, and flagons in which the luxurious
were wont to mix myrrh, spikenard, and other perfumes with their
wine--were equally costly. Martial extols a jewelled cup: "See how
the gold, begemmed with Scythian emeralds, glistens! How many fingers
does it deprive of jewels!" His lovely description of an exquisitely
chased wine-cup of gold, received from Instantius Rufus, will also be
recalled. Again, he praises a gold dinner-service: "Do not dishonour
such large gold dishes with an insignificant mullet; it ought at least
to weigh two pounds." "I see," says Seneca, "the shell of the tortoise
bought for immense sums and ornamented with the most elaborate care;
I see tables and pieces of wood valued at the price of a senator's
estate, which are all the more precious the more knots the tree has
been twisted into by disease. I see murrhine-cups, for luxury would
be too cheap if men did not drink to one another out of hollow gems
the wine to be afterwards thrown up again." In vain Pompey the Great
and Licinius Crassus strove to cheek the riotous table extravagance,
which continued despite previous and subsequent sumptuary laws for its
suppression.
"To-day," says Pliny, "a cook costs as much as a triumph, a fish as
much as a cook, and no mortal costs more than the slave who knows best
how to ruin his master." Fabulous prices were paid for fish, notably
for the famed red mullet or sea-barbel. Tiberius, who was an exception,
and was not partial to this fish, on being presented with an unusually
large specimen, weighing four and a half pounds, sent it to the market
to be sold. "I will be greatly surprised," he observed, "if the mullet
is not purchased by Apicius or Octavius." It was borne off in triumph
by Octavius, who became celebrated for having paid two hundred dollars
for a fish sold by the emperor and that Apicius himself had not secured.
Seneca also states that the mullet was looked upon as tainted unless
it expired in the hands of the guests, who were provided with glass
vessels in which to put their fish, in order the better to perceive
their changes and motions in the last agony betwixt life and death.
"Look how it reddens!" cries one; "there is no vermilion like it; look
at those lateral veins, see how the grey brightens upon its head, and
now it is at its last gasp, it pales and its inanimate body fades to
a single hue." "The mullet of the ocean is certainly a meritorious
fish," observes Baron Brisse, "but how greatly superior is that of the
Mediterranean!"
This greatly valued fish was the European _Mullus barbatus_, one of the
forty or more different species of the red mullet, found chiefly in the
subtropical parts of the Indo-Pacific Ocean. By far the most abundant
in the Mediterranean, it is nevertheless not uncommon to the coasts
of England and Ireland, though nowhere does it attain so delicate a
flavour as in the Mediterranean. The name is said to have reference to
the scarlet colour of the sandal or shoe worn by the Roman consuls, and
in later times by the emperors, which was called _mullus_.
Like the ruby, the mullet increased rapidly in price when it exceeded
the usual size--the largest weighing scarcely three or four pounds.
Suetonius is authority for the statement that this fish was so esteemed
in his time that three large specimens were sold for thirty thousand
sesterces, or more than a thousand dollars, which caused Tiberius to
enact sumptuary laws and tax the provisions brought to market. The red
mullet, although much less highly thought of than in olden days, is
still in request by the modern French epicure. Francatelli cautions
that it should never be drawn; it is sufficient to remove the gills
only, as the liver and trail are considered the best part--an opinion
held by the Romans. It is possible that, owing to this circumstance, it
has been termed the "sea-woodcock."
The mullet was served by the Romans with a seasoning of pepper, rue,
onions, dates, and mustard, to which was added the flesh of the
sea-hedgehog reduced to a pulp and oil. When the priceless liver alone
was to be eaten by an emperor or a senator, it was cooked and then
seasoned with pepper, salt, or a little garum, some oil was added, and
hare's or fowl's liver, and oil poured over the whole.
The turbot was another favourite supplied by the sea, and one will
remember Martial's panegyric concerning it: "However great the dish
that holds the turbot, the turbot is still greater than the dish."
From the foam-fleeced flocks of Proteus many other fish with strange
names were transferred by the wealthy Romans to their vast aquaria--the
sargus, the harp-fish, the hyca, the synodon, the hespidus, the
chromis, the callichithys,
"The orphus, the sea-grayling, too, who haunts
The places where the sea-weed most abounds."
The huge tunny and sturgeon, the tiny anchovy, and, in fact, nearly
every denizen of the ocean appeared upon the Roman tables in some
form. The dolphin was a sacred fish, and was left unmolested to pilot
Triton's car. Even the polypus, sea-urchin, and cuttlefish were held
in great esteem. The scaurus or char, a species unknown to us, and the
murex, an edible purple mussel of which the finest flavoured came from
Baiæ were highly prized. Fatted eels were considered a great delicacy,
and among fresh-water species the tench, carp, and pike were the most
employed. Piscis was the Phryne of the Roman feasts, and dolphins,
whales, and mermaids appear to be the only species that were not
consumed.
According to Juvenal, who relates the story at great length, the
members of Domitian's cabinet were one day suddenly summoned to the
Alban Villa, where they were obliged to remain in waiting while the
emperor gave audience to a fisherman who had brought him an unusually
large _Rhombus_, and when they were finally admitted they found they
had nothing to debate about except whether the fish was to be minced or
cooked in a special dish, there being none of sufficient size in the
imperial kitchens. After mature deliberation, a special receptacle was
decided upon, when the audience was dismissed. The turbot was served
with a _sauce piquante_.
Nor were the affluent nobles and business men far behind the triumvirs,
consuls, and emperors in their ruinous manner of living. Autocracy set
the pace, and her wealthy vassals were not slow to follow. Trimalchio,
the moneyed landholder, was accustomed to serve a wild boar whole, with
a number of live fieldfares inside, ready to fly out as soon as they
were given their liberty by Carpus, his professional carver. These, as
they fluttered about the room, were caught by fowlers with reeds tipped
with bird-lime.
The minute account of one of Trimalchio's dinners, given by the
licentious Latin classicist Petronius Arbiter, descriptive of the
viands, beverages, service, and table customs of the day, may be
advantageously consulted by those whose powers of digestion are strong
enough to enable them to consider a representative feast during the
reign of Nero at the home of this ostentatious host. The elaborate
first course is described as terminating with the appearance of a
servant bearing a silver skeleton so artfully constructed that its
joints and backbone turned in all directions; when, having cast it
several times upon the table and causing it to assume various postures,
Trimalchio cried out, "Of such are we--let us live while we may!" The
first course finished, the second was presented in the form of a large
circular tray with the twelve signs of the zodiac surrounding it, upon
each of which the arranger had placed an appropriate dish--on Aries,
ram's-head pies; on Taurus, a piece of roasted beef; on Gemini, kidneys
and lamb's fry; on Cancer, a crown; on Leo, African figs; on Virgo, a
young sow's haslet; on Libra, a pair of scales, in one of which were
tarts, in the other cheese-cakes; on Scorpio, a little sea-fish of
the same name; on Sagittarius, a hare; on Capricorn, a lobster; on
Aquarius, a goose; on Piscis, two mullets, while in the centre spread a
green turf on which lay a honeycomb. It will be readily apparent that
the modern French chef does not stand alone in his skill of producing
a _pièce-montée_. Meanwhile, an Egyptian slave carried bread in a
silver portable oven, singing a song in praise of wine flavoured with
laserpitium. Whereupon four attendants came dancing in to the sound of
music, and, removing the upper part of the tray, there was revealed on
a second tray beneath stuffed fowls, a sow's paps, and in the middle
a hare fitted with wings to resemble Pegasus. At the several corners
stood four figures of Marsyas spouting a highly seasoned sauce on a
school of fish.
At the third course a very large hog was brought in, much larger even
than the wild boar that had been previously served. This was followed
by a young calf, boiled whole, with more wine, perfumes, fruits, and
sweetmeats--thrushes in pastry, stuffed with nuts and raisins, and
quinces stuck over with prickles to resemble sea-urchins. "Only command
him," exclaimed the host, "and my cook will make you a fish out of a
pig's chitterlings, a wood-pigeon out of the lard, a turtle-dove out of
the gammon, and a hen out of the shoulder!"
Apparently, the artist of Trimalchio was no less fertile in resources
and liberal ideas of expenditure than the chef of the Prince of
Soubise, who, on being taken to task by his employer for including
fifty hams for a single supper, replied:
"Only one will appear upon the table, monseigneur; the rest are not the
less necessary for my _espagnole_, my _blonds_, my _garnitures_, my--"
"Bertrand, you are plundering me."
"Oh, monseigneur," replied the conjurer, "you do not understand our
resources; say the word, and these fifty hams which confound you--I
will put them all into a glass bottle no bigger than your thumb!"
To be sure, the accounts given by Petronius Arbiter, Juvenal, Martial,
and other satirists must be taken with some limitation. Yet, making all
due allowance for exaggeration, it is hardly to be wondered at that
many of the olden rulers and opulent personages, armed with unbounded
power and possessed of unlimited riches, should have yielded so
abjectly to luxury and vice as to have fully warranted the stricture of
Juvenal:
"The baffled sons must feel the same desires,
And act the same mad follies as their sires.
_Vice has attained its zenith._..."
These accounts, moreover, attested as they are by serious annalists,
may not be dismissed as largely imaginative or grossly exaggerated.
The strictures on the besetting vices that occur in the contemporary
works of historians, moralists, philosophers, and poets are far too
vehement and voluminous to leave any doubt of the inordinate abuse
of the table among the ancients, particularly among the Romans, when
their wealthy capital, as Propertius records, "was beset all round
in its own victories." It was the period of insatiable voracity and
the peacock's plume. Even Martial was careful to state that it was
vices, not personages, to which his scourge was applied. His caustic
and highly seasoned epigrams deal largely with the dinner-table, and
from these one may derive a most realistic idea of the bill of fare of
his contemporaries, as well as of the varied and luxurious character
of the presents made to the guests at feasts. The excesses of eating
and drinking are roundly denounced by him at every turn, while his
picture of the crapulous Santra in the Seventh Book is only equalled by
the "Portrait of a Gourmand" of Carle Vernet, or Spenser's etching of
"Gluttony" in the "Faerie Queene."
Horace in particular, a scholar, poet, and man of the world, the
friend of Mæcenas, and an onlooker and frequenter of society, may be
accepted as a competent authority on the table manners and customs of
the times. No one more than he was aware of the gross extravagance and
intemperance of the age. Nor has any writer depicted his own and the
everyday life of the Romans more vividly. To peruse him attentively
in the "Satires," "Epistles," "Epodes," and "Odes," is to take part
in the feasts, be admitted to the inner circle of the _optimates_,
knock at the door of Lydia, and join in the pageant of the Sacra Via.
The table of Mæcenas, the rich voluptuary and dilettante, who had
a palace on the Esquiline Hill, where Horace was often a guest, was
widely celebrated. As the poet was a visitor also at the palace of
Augustus, and numbered among his friends the most eminent men of Rome,
he had unusual opportunities to become acquainted both with the _vie
intime_ and _haute cuisine_ of his day. While not a gastronomer, he was
far from averse to good living, though, from his digestion not being
of the soundest, he had frequent cause to rue the sumptuous banquets,
borrowed from the Asiatic Greeks, which were in vogue at the time. And
while he was a frequent attendant at the entertainments of the wealthy,
we nevertheless find him constantly censuring their intemperance and
extravagance at table. For himself, he would have "simple dinners,
richly dressed," and "let the strong toil give relish to the feast."
Rare old Cæcuban, Falernian, and Massic, Mæcenas might pour out at home
from his well-filled amphoræ into chased crystal cups and vessels of
gold--at the Sabine farm the common Sabine wine in modest goblets would
alone be tendered him.
If we may regard the elaborate repast of Nasidienus as a typical one,
we may readily conceive the nightmares that must have ensued from such
a plenitude of viands and wines and such copious libations. The student
of Horace will remember the menu. First a Lucanian boar, surrounded by
excitants to the appetite--
"Rapes, Lettuce, Radishes, Anchovy-Brine
With Skerrets, and the Lees of Coan Wine."
Fish and wild fowl, lampreys and shrimps, succeeded, washed down with
brimmers of Cæcuban, Alban, Falernian, and vintages of Greece; and
finally, as the feast and the night wore on,
"The Slaves behind in mighty Charger bore
A Crane in Pieces torn, and powder'd o'er
With Salt and Flour, and a white Gander's Liver,
Stuff'd fat with Figs, bespoke the curious Giver;
Besides the Wings of Hares, for, so it seems,
No man of Luxury the Back esteems.
Then saw we Black-birds with o'er roasted Breast,
Laid on the Board, and Ring-Doves Rump-less drest!
Delicious Fare! did not our Host explain
Their various Qualities in endless Strain,
Their various Natures; but we fled the Feast,
Resolved in Vengeance nothing more to taste,
As if Canidia, with empoison'd Breath,
Worse than a Serpent's, blasted it with Death."[6]
That Nasidienus was proverbially penurious, was guilty of purchasing
tainted game in order to save expense, and would have been chary of
his wines had it not been for Servilius, who cried loudly for "larger
goblets," leads one to conclude that even his repast was far below
those of the pampered upper classes in its prodigality.
Apicius, who is referred to by Pliny, Seneca, Juvenal, and Martial,
is said to have squandered nearly four million dollars in riotous
living, when, looking over his accounts, he found he had only about a
tenth of that amount remaining, and, unwilling to starve on such a
pittance, he poisoned himself. Of the three persons bearing the name of
Apicius, one of whom lived in the times of Sulla, another during the
reign of Tiberius, and the third under Trajan, none is supposed to be
the author of "De re Culinaria," since published in so many different
editions, a work now ascribed to Cœlius, who, in admiration of
the renowned Marcus Gabius, termed himself Apicius. The latter, the
richest of the three who bore the name by right, vied with royalty in
his regal tastes. He is reported as having voyaged to Africa expressly
to ascertain whether the crawfish there were superior to those he was
accustomed to have at Minturnæ; but finding them inferior, he returned
immediately, without setting foot to land. "Look at Nomentanus and
Apicius," says Seneca, "who digest all the good things, as they call
them, of the sea and the land, and review upon their tables the whole
animal kingdom. Look at them as they lie on beds of roses, gloating
over their banquet and delighting their ears with music, their eyes
with exhibitions, their palates with flavours."
Where the deliciously scented cyclamen carpets the shore of the
Mediterranean in myriads at Baiæ, Apicius repaired to savour
shell-fish--"the manna of the sea"--and from the self-same sea that
laves the isle of Capri and rolls its azure wave into the famed blue
grotto, Tiberius sent turbots to him that Apicius was not rich enough
to buy himself.
Yet far exceeding Apicius, who was almost deified for discovering how
to maintain oysters fresh and alive during long journeys, was his
predecessor Lucullus, the wealthy general, a great patron of learning
and the arts, as well as the king of epicures. Juvenal has etched his
portrait in four lines:
"Stretch'd on the unsocial couch, he rolls his eyes
O'er many an orb of matchless form and size,
Selects the fairest to receive his plate,
And at one meal devours a whole estate."
The Monte Cristo of Naples, he pierced a mountain to place two of his
country villas in closer communication and to conduct the sea-water to
one of them, where he had constructed a huge aquarium for sea-fish.
His carvers were paid at the rate of four thousand a year. The various
dining-rooms at his Neapolitan palace were designed according to the
costliness of the repasts which were given in them, the saloon of
Apollo being the most sumptuous. Cicero and Pompey, resolving one day
to surprise him, presented themselves unceremoniously, and, upon being
pressed to remain to dinner, assented on condition that he would go to
no extra trouble. Summoning his major-domo, he dismissed him with the
simple command:
"Place two more covers in the saloon of Apollo"--the cost of the dinner
in this apartment being fixed at a thousand dollars per plate.
No review of the Roman table, however brief, would be complete without
retelling the story of Lucullus as his own host. On this occasion,
when, through some misunderstanding, he was without guests for dinner,
his cook appeared as usual to receive his orders.
"I am alone," said Lucullus; whereupon his servitor, thinking that
a five-hundred-dollar dinner would suffice, acted accordingly. At
the conclusion of his repast, his face flushed with the juices of
Falernian, Lucullus sent for his minister of the interior and took him
severely to task. There were no fig-peckers, and the prized spawn of
the sea-lamprey was missing. The cook was profuse in his apologies.
"But, seigneur, you were alone--"
"It is precisely when I happen to be alone that you require to pay
especial attention to the dinner; at such times you must remember that
Lucullus dines with Lucullus."
The great dining-room of Claudius, termed "Mercury," was constructed
on an equally magnificent scale. But this was eclipsed by Nero's
marvellous _Domus aurea_, which, through a circular movement of
its sides and ceiling, counterfeited the changes of the skies and
represented the different seasons of the year, while at intervals
during the repast flowers and essences were showered down upon the
guests.
The gluttonous feasts of Verres, Claudius, Nero, Vitellius, Domitian,
and the rest of the Roman potentates are familiar to the student of
ancient history. Claudius, who had usually six hundred guests at his
feasts, died of an indigestion of mushrooms, facilitated, it is said,
by a poisoned feather applied to his throat. Tiberius is also said to
have met his death through an asphyxia of poisonous mushrooms, seconded
by suffocation on the part of his favourite Macro, who in turn was
put to death by Caligula. Caligula was noted for the fabulous sums
spent upon his suppers, while Cæsar is credited with a four months'
supper bill of more than five millions sterling. The present of this
monarch, during one of his table debauches, of a sum equivalent to
eighty thousand dollars to his charioteer Eutychus is the largest
table present recorded of the Romans. Seneca states that one of his
suppers cost nearly half a million, and he also it was who gave his
charger Incitatus barley mixed with wine in a vase of gold. Vitellius
spent not less than fifteen thousand dollars for each of his repasts,
the composition of his favourite dishes requiring that vessels should
constantly ply between the Gulf of Venice and the Straits of Cadiz. The
flocks of flamingos placidly feeding in the Pontine marshes dreaded
his fowlers--he had dishes made of their tongues. Later on, their
haunts were invaded by Heliogabalus, who preferred their brains.[7] The
life and reign of Vitellius were a continuous orgy, and his name was
bequeathed to a multitude of dishes. According to Suetonius, Tiberius,
who was inordinately fond of fig-peckers and mushrooms, presented
Sabinus the author with eight thousand dollars for having composed a
dialogue in which the fig-pecker, mushroom, oyster, and thrush were
the _dramatis personæ_. As the author and the poet are proverbially
scantily remunerated, it is easy to imagine the wealth that a competent
chef could command in the days when the haughty mistress of the world,
sated with conquest and exultant with victory, lapsed into luxury and
sensuality, while a constant stream of riches flowed into her treasury
from tributary rulers and oppressed and spoliated nations.