Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 150.djvu/175

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1891.]

Cookery.

167

times? Nothing but a series of good dinners, judiciously blended with the delights of wine and conversation. “Tenez bonne table et soignez les femmes,” was Napoleon’s parting advice to his ambassador—advice as sound as it was successful. History, in fact, shows that the triumphs of diplomacy fall to the ambassador who has the strongest head, the largest appetite, and the best cook. Talleyrand’s dinners at the beginning of this century were the best in Europe; Prince Metternich’s cellars and cuisine were equally admirable; while Prince Bismarck is almost as famous for his gastronomic performances as for his political successes. “It is the manner of the great Chancellor,” says Dr Russell, “ridendo dicere—fumando, too, the very largest and strongest cigars, and to sit up till and after all hours. So that average diplomatists with weak constitutions had little chance with him in protracted negotiations.”

Leaving, however, these theories to take care of themselves, let us pass to the proper history of what has been called the master-art. Of Greek cookery we know, perhaps fortunately, very little beyond what can be gathered from scattered notices in Athenæus, the Deipnosophist; while of Roman cookery we know almost too much, for the long work attributed to Apicius (said by some to be the most useful thing the Romans have left us, next to the Pandects of Justinian) gives us ample opportunity for judging of its merits. But after giving it all the attention it deserves—which is not a great deal—what can be thought of the culinary taste of a nation who put sugar on their oysters, preferred roast parrot to pheasant, stuffed geese with rue and assafœtida, and whose favourite sauce was a detestable compound of wine, saffron, and rotten shell-fish? Those, however, who are curious on the subject might refer to Trimalchio’s banquet in Petronius Arbiter, where a dinner given by a rich parvenu is described in the fullest detail, and in the most amusing style. The dishes, which were many and various, would hardly find favour in the eyes of a modern epicure, though he might have appreciated the “Opimian Falernian, a hundred years old,” which was produced towards the end of the evening.

Fortunately for mankind, the Roman cuisine, with all its strange dishes and recipes, perished with the Empire. It was from Italy, however, that the revival of cookery came with the rest of the arts and sciences in the middle ages, and passed thereon to France with Catherine de Medici; but even before her time French cooks had made considerable progress in their art, if we may trust the picture given us by Sir Walter Scott of the meal set before Quentin Durward by Maitre Pierre in the Hotel de Fleur-de-lys at Tours.

“There was a paté de Perigord over which a gastronome would have wished to live and die, like Homer’s lotus-eaters, forgetful of kin, native country, and all social obligations whatever. Its vast walls of magnificent crust seemed raised like the bulwarks of some rich metropolitan city, an emblem of the wealth they are destined to protect. There was a delicate ragoût with just that petit point de l’ail which Gascons love and Scottishmen do not hate. There was, besides, a delicate ham, which had once supported a noble wild boar in the forest of Mountrichart. There was the most exquisite white bread made into little round loaves called boules, of which the crust was so inviting that even with water alone it would have been a delicacy. But the