A chapter on Ancient cooking.
Archistratus, a poet of Syracuse, traveled through all the known world of the ancients, spending the best years of his life, and encountering perils and dangers by sea and land, for the sole purpose of acquiring the culinary lore of the nations that he visited, and getting new recipes for the benefit of his countrymen. Upon his return, he published a poem, embodying the result of his labors, and thus gave to the world the first practical cookery-book.An Athenian cook could imitate, in the most perfect manner, in flavor and in form, certain rare fishes, much esteemed, but difficult to obtain, and would thus impose upon the most accomplished epicures. A fraud, by-the-by, not unknown to the hotel-keepers at the present day, who cheat cockneys into praising the delicate flavor-of a bull-head served up to them as front.
The culinary philosophers of Athens passed days in the study of their divine art. Carefully experimenting with sources and flavors, forming combinations of different incongruous substances to try effects, patiently working out problems in cookery, and reaping the reward for successful exertions in inventing a new dish by naming it after — themselves or their patrons. We do not know that they took out-patents for their inventions, but they took such good care to keep the secrets of their art exclusively that no torture could draw them out. --When the glory of Greece culminated, and Athens was on the wane, the riches and luxuriant style of the Romans brought the professional Greek cooks to Rome, and Greek literature and Greek cookery became as fashionable among the Romans of the Empire as French literature and French cooks are in London and New York in the nineteenth century. Having the benefit of the experience, the traditions and the skill of the Greeks, with the increased material for the exercise of that skill upon the product of an empire embracing every variety of climate, the Roman cooks soon outstripped their Grecian predecessors. They searched the world to find delicacies for the table. They not only excelled in cooking, but particular attention was paid to finding animals destined to beaten. Pigs, birds and fishes were fed on certain kinds of food to give them peculiar flavors. The favorite dish of the Romans in the later days of the Empire was "Hog a la Trojan." This was a Greek importation, and was so named because the hog was cooked whole, and, being stuffed with ortolans, thrushes and other birds, and even small animals, was intended as an imitation of the soldiers enclosed in the belly of the Trojan Horse.
Some Roman dishes were sought after only for the expensive materials required for their preparation. The brains of pheasants and thrushes, the tongues of nightingales, and the livers of certain rare fish, were much esteemed. Vitellius cooked a plat of this kind, which cost him forty thousand dollars. Heliogabalus was accustomed to have the brains of six hundred thrushes served up for his supper. In the dark ages the race of professional cooks died out, and culinary art was only cultivated in Europe in the kitchens of wealthy monastic institutions. It, however, flourished in a decayed condition in Constantinople and the East. One of the favorite dishes, however, of the middle ages, was an imitation of "hog in Trojan style," the favorite Roman dish. At all great feasts, an ox, or some other large animal, was roasted whole, having been previously stuffed with rabbits, hares, pheasants, etc. The meat of the ox was given to the meaner guests; the stuffing was called "the King's meat," and was reserved for the more noble feasters. The smaller animals cooked in this way retained all their own juices, and were cooked in the steaming blood of the ox, and are said to have been delicious.--One of the famous dishes of modern times is cooked in the same way, and its inventor, De la Reyniere, gives us the recipe for preparing it, as follows:
‘ "Stuff a fine large olive with capers and jolets d'anchois; then place the olive inside the body of a fig-picker, from which you cut the head and feet; then inclose the fig-picker in the body of a plump ortolan, neatly dressed; then insert the ortolan in the body of a fat lark, from which you dissect the principal bones; then cover the lark with a thin slice of lard, and put it into the body of a thrush, which, having in a like manner dissected, you stuff inside a fat and juicy quail (a wild one preferred); which you should cover with a vine leaf and insert in the body of a lapwing; which is boned and trussed and inserted in the body of a golden plover; which in its turn is covered with lard and inclosed in a young woodcock; having rolled this in grated bread-crumbs, place it in the body of a neatly-prepared teal, which put into the body of a guinea-hen; which secrete in the body of a young wild duck; which encage in the body of a chicken; which conceal in the body of a young and carefully-selected pheasant; which entomb in the body of a young and fat goose (wild, of course); which insert in the body of a very fine hen turkey; which, finally, inclose in the body of an outarde (a species of wild turkey), or a young swan, and fill the interstices with Lucea chestnuts, forced meat, and a savory stuffing. Having thus prepared the roast, put it into a pot sufficiently large, with onions, cloves, carrots, chopped ham, celery, a bouquet of parsley and thyme, mignonette, several slices of salt pork well salted, pepper, salt, fine spices, coriander seeds, and one or two sprigs of garlic. Then scale this pot hermetically with a strip of paste or clay, place it on a slow fire where the heat will penetrate it gradually, and let it remain twenty-four hours. Then uncover it, skim it if necessary, and serve on a hot dish."
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