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A philosopher worthy to bear the title of cook, or a cook worthy to be a philosopher, according to the numerous curious passages scattered in Athenaeus, was an extraordinary genius, endowed not merely with a natural aptitude, but with all acquired accomplishments. The philosophy, or the metaphysics, of cookery appears in the following passage:–

“Know then, the COOK, a dinner that’s bespoke,
Aspiring to prepare, with prescient zeal
Should know the tastes and humours of the guests;
For if he drudges through the common work,
Thoughtless of manner, careless what the place
And seasons claim, and what the favouring hour
Auspicious to his genius may present,
Why, standing ‘midst the multitude of men,
Call we this plodding fricasseer a Cook?
Oh differing far! and one is not the other!
We call indeed the general of an army
Him who is charged to lead it to the war;
But the true general is the man whose mind,
Mastering events, anticipates, combines;
Else is he but a leader to his men!
With our profession thus: the first who comes
May with a humble toil, or slice, or chop,
Prepare the ingredients, and around the fire
Obsequious, him I call a fricasseer!
But ah! the cook a brighter glory crowns!
Well skill’d is he to know the place, the hour,
Him who invites, and him who is invited,
What fish in season makes the market rich,
A choice delicious rarity! I know
That all, we always find; but always all,
Charms not the palate, critically fine.
Archestratus, in culinary lore
Deep for his time, in this more learned age
Is wanting; and full oft he surely talks
Of what he never ate. Suspect his page,
Nor load thy genius with a barren precept.
Look not in books for what some idle sage
So idly raved; for cookery is an art
Comporting ill with rhetoric; ’tis an art
Still changing, and of momentary triumph!
Know on thyself thy genius must depend.
All books of cookery, all helps of art,
All critic learning, all commenting notes,
Are vain, if, void of genius, thou wouldst cook!”
The culinary sage thus spoke: his friend
Demands, “Where is the ideal cook thou paint’st?”
“Lo, I the man?” the savouring sage replied.
“Now be thine eyes the witness of my art!
This tunny drest, so odorous shall steam,
The spicy sweetness so shall steal thy sense,
That thou in a delicious reverie
Shalt slumber heavenly o’er the Attic dish!”

In another passage a Master-Cook conceives himself to be a pupil of Epicurus, whose favourite but ambiguous axiom, that “Voluptuousness is the sovereign good,” was interpreted by the bon-vivans of antiquity in the plain sense.

MASTER COOK.
Behold in me a pupil of the school
Of the sage Epicurus.

FRIEND.
Thou a sage!

MASTER COOK.
Ay! Epicurus too was sure a cook,
And knew the sovereign good. Nature his study,
While practice perfected his theory.
Divine philosophy alone can teach
The difference which the fish Glociscus[4] shows
In winter and in summer: how to learn
Which fish to choose, when set the Pleiades,
And at the solstice. ‘Tis change of seasons
Which threats mankind, and shakes their changeful frame.
This dost thou comprehend? Know, what we use
In season, is most seasonably good!

FRIEND.
Most learned cook, who can observe these canons

MASTER COOK.
And therefore phlegm and colics make a man
A most indecent guest. The aliment
Dress’d in my kitchen is true aliment;
Light of digestion easily it passes;
The chyle soft-blending from the juicy food
Repairs the solids.