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Ancient Cookery, And Cooks
by
[Footnote 1:
Nat. Hist. lib. ix. 56. Snails are still a common dish in Vienna, and are eaten with eggs. ]
[Footnote 2:
Dr. Lister published in the early part of the last century an amusing poem, “The Art of Cookery, in imitation of ‘Horace’s Art of Poetry.'” ]
[Footnote 3:
Genial. Dierum, II. 283, Lug. 1673. The writer has collected in this chapter a variety of curious particulars on this subject. ]
[Footnote 4:
The commentators have not been able always to assign known names to the great variety of fish, particularly sea-fish, the ancients used, many of which we should revolt at. One of their dainties was a shell-fish, prickly like a hedgehog, called Echinus. They ate the dog-fish, the star-fish, porpoises or sea-hogs, and even seals. In Dr. Moffet’s “Regiment of Diet,” an exceeding curious writer of the reign of Elizabeth, republished by Oldys, may be found an ample account of the “sea-fish” used by the ancients.–Whatever the Glociscus was, it seems to have been of great size, and a shell-fish, as we may infer from the following curious passage in Athenaeus. A father, informed that his son is leading a dissolute life, enraged, remonstrates with his pedagogue:–“Knave! thou art the fault! hast thou ever known a philosopher yield himself so entirely to the pleasures thou tellest me of?” The pedagogue replies by a Yes! and that the sages of the Portico are great drunkards, and none know better than they how to attack a Glociscus. ]
[Footnote 5:
Ben Jonson, in his “Staple of News,” seems to have had these passages in view when he wrote:–
A master cook! Why, he’s the man of men
For a professor, he designes, he drawes.
He paints, he carves, he builds, he fortifies;
Makes citadels of curious fowl and fish.
Some he dry-dishes, some moats round with broths,
Mounts marrow-bones, cuts fifty-angled custards,
Bears bulwark pies, and for his outerworks
He raiseth ramparts of immortal crust;
And teacheth all the tactics at one dinner:
What rankes, what files to put his dishes in;
The whole art military. Then he knows
The influence of the stars upon his meats,
And all their seasons, tempers, qualities;
And so to fit his relishes and sauces,
He has Nature in a pot, ‘bove all the chemists,
Or airy brethren of the rosy-cross.
He is an architect, an ingineer,
A soldier, a physician, a philosopher,
A general mathematician!
]
[Footnote 6:
Sat. iv. 140. ]