Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

Hegesippus further illustrates the vanity of the _genus coquorum_ of _his_ days. In a dialogue between Syrus and his chef, the master declares that the culinary art appears to have reached its limit, and that he would fain hear something novel upon the subject. The cook’s reply admits us to an insight into ancient manners. “I am not one of those fellows,” says the personage in question, “who are content to suppose that they learn their art by wearing an apron for a couple of years. My study of the art has not been superficial: it has been the work of my life; and I have learned the use and appliances of every herb that grows--for kitchen purposes. But I especially shine in getting up funeral dinners. When the mourners have returned from the doleful ceremony, it is I who introduce them to the mitigated affliction department. While they are yet in their mourning attire, I lift the lids of my kettles, and straightway the weepers begin to laugh. They sit down with their senses so enchanted, that every guest fancies himself at a wedding. If I can only have all I require, Syrus,” adds the artist, “if my kitchen be only properly furnished, you will see renewed the scenes which used to take place on the coasts frequented by the Syrens. It will be impossible for any one to pass the door; all who scent the process will be compelled, despite themselves, to stop. There they will stand, mute, open-mouthed, and nostrils extended; nor will it be possible to make them ‘move on,’ unless the police, coming to their aid, shut out the irresistible scent by plugging their noses.”

Posidippus shows us a classical master-cook instructing his pupils. Leucon is the name of the teacher; and the first truth he impresses on his young friend is, that the most precious sauce for the purpose of a cook is impudence. “Boast away,” he says, “and never be tired of it.” For, as he logically remarks, “if there be many a Captain under whose dragon-embossed cuirass lies a poor hare, why should not we, who kill hares, pass for better than we are, like the Captains?” “A modest cook must be looked on,” he says, “as a contradiction in nature. If he be hired out to cook a dinner in another man’s house, he will only get considered in proportion to his impudence and overbearing conduct. If he be quiet and modest, he will be held as a pitiful cook.”

Alexis, another artist, takes other and higher ground. He says, that in all the arts the resulting pleasure does not depend solely on those who exercise the art; there must be others who possess the science of enjoyment. This is true; and Alexis further adds, that the guest who keeps a dinner waiting, or a master who suddenly demands it before its time, are alike enemies to the art which Alexis professes.

The earthly paradise of the early cooks was, unquestionably, among the Sybarites,--the people to whom the crumpling of a rose under the side on which they lay, gave exquisite pain. They were as self-luxurious as though the world was made for them alone, and they and the world were intended to last for ever. They would not admit into their city any persons whose professions entailed noise in the practice of them: the trunkmaker at the corner of St. Paul’s would have been flogged to death with thistle-down, if he had carried on his trade in Sybaris for an hour, and if a Sybarite could have been found with energy enough to wield the instrument of execution! The crowing of one of the proscribed race of cocks once put all the gentlemen of the city into fits; and, on another occasion, a Sybarite telling a friend how his nerves had been shaken by hearing the tools of some labouring men in another country strike against each other, at their work, the friend was so overcome, that he merely exclaimed, “Good gracious!” and fainted away.

Athenæus, borrowing, if I remember rightly, from one of the authors whose works were in that Alexandrian library, the destruction of which by the Caliph Omar, Dr. Cumming tells us in his “Finger of God,” is a circumstance at which he is rather glad than sorry,--Athenæus mentions the visit of a Sybarite to Sparta, where he was invited to one of the public dinners, at which the citizens ate very black broth, in common, out of wooden bowls. Having tasted the national diet, he feebly uttered the Sybaritic expression for “Stap my vitals!” and convulsively remarked, that “he no longer wondered why the Lacedæmonians sought death in battle, seeing that such a fate was preferable to life with such broth!”

Certainly the public repasts of the Sybarites were of another quality. The giver of such repasts was enrolled among the benefactors of their country, and the cook who had distinguished himself was invested with a golden crown, and an opera ticket; that is, free admission to those public games where hired dancers voluptuously perverted time and the human form divine.

I am afraid that all cooks in remote ages enjoyed but an indifferent reputation, and thoroughly deserved what they enjoyed. The comic Dionysius introduces one of the succulent brotherhood, impressing upon a young apprentice the propriety of stealing in houses where they were hired to cook dinners. The instruction is worthy of Professor Fagan of the Saffron-Hill University. “Whatever you can prig,” says the elder rogue, “belongs to yourself, as long as you are in the house. When you get past the porter into the street, it then becomes _my_ property. So fake away! (Βάδιζε δεῦρ’ ἅμα,) and look out for unconnected trifles.”

And yet Athenæus asserts that nothing has so powerfully contributed to instil piety into the souls of men, as good cookery! His proof is, that when men devoured each other, they were beasts,--which is a self-evident proposition; but that when they took to cooked meats, and were particular with regard to these, why, then alone they began to live cleanly,--which is a proposition by no means so self-evident. In his opinion, a man to be supremely happy only needed the gift of Ceres to Pandora,--a good appetite, and an irreproachable indigestion. These are, doubtless, great portions of happiness; and if felicity can do without them,--which is questionable,--where they are not, comfort is absent, and a good conscience is hardly a sufficient compensation.

If Sybaris was the paradise of cooks, Lacedæmon was their purgatory. They were blamed if men grew fat on their diet, and plump children were legally condemned to get spare again upon their gruel. The Romans, again, restored the cook to his proper place in society. He might be still a slave, and so were greater men than he; but he was the confidant of his master, and there were not a few who would have exchanged their liberty for such a post and chains. And who dare affirm that the _coquus_ was not an officer of distinction? He who knows how to prepare food for digestion and delight, is a greater man, in one particular at least, than Achilles, who could go no farther in culinary science than turning the spit; than Ulysses, who could light fires and lay cloths with the dexterity of a Frankfort waiter; or than Patroclus, who could draw wine and drink it, but who knew no more how to make a stew, than he did how to solve the logarithms of Napier.

When it is asserted that it was Cadmus, the grandfather of Bacchus, who first taught men how to eat as civilized beings should, it is thereby further intimated that good eating should be followed by good drinking.

We have heard of cooks in monasteries who made dissertations on eternal flames by the heat of their own fires: so Timachidas, of Rhodes, made patties and poetry at the same stove, and both after a fashion to please their several admirers. Artemidorus was the Dr. Johnson of his own art, and wrote a Kitchen Lexicon for the benefit of students. Sicily especially was celebrated for its literary cooks, and Mithœcus wrote a treatise on the art; while Archestratus, the Syracusan, looking into causes and effects, meditated on stomachs as well as sauces, and first showed how digestion might be taught to wait on appetite. Then theoretical laymen came in to the aid of the practical cook, and gastronomists hit upon all sorts of strange ideas to help them to renewed enjoyments. Pithyllus, for instance, invented a sheath for the tongue, in order that he might swallow the hottest viands faster than other guests, who wisely preferred rather to slowly please the palate than suddenly satisfy the stomach. It is of Pithyllus the Dainty, that it is related how, after meals, he used to clean his tongue by rubbing it with a piece of rough fish-skin; and his taking up hot viands with his hand, like that of Götz von Berlichingen, encased in a glove, is cited as proof that the Greeks used no forks. The spoons of the Romans had a pointed end, at the extremity of the handle, for the purpose of picking fish from the shell.

Then came the age when, if men had not appetites of nature’s making, they were made for them by the cooks; and the latter, in return, were crowned with flowers by the guests who had eaten largely, and had no fears of indigestion. The inventor of a new dish had a patent for its exclusive preparation for a year. But ere that time it had probably been forgotten in something more novel discovered by a Sicilian rival; for the Greeks looked on Sicily as the Parisians of the last century used to look on Languedoc,--as the only place on earth where cooks were born and bred, and were worth the paying. The artists of both countries, and of the opposite ages mentioned, were especially skilled in the preparation of materials which were made to appear the things they were not; and a seemingly grand dinner of fish, flesh, and fowl, was really fashioned out of the supplies furnished by the kitchen-garden. The Greeks, however, never descended to the bad taste of which the diarists of the last century show the French to have been guilty; namely, in having wooden joints, carved and painted, placed upon their tables for show. Artificial flowers may be tolerated, but an artificial sirloin, made of a block of deal, would be very intolerable board indeed, particularly to the hungry guests, who saw the seemingly liberal fare, but who could make very little of the deal before them.

In Sicily, the goddess of good cheer, Adephagia, had her especial altars, and thence, perhaps, the estimation in which the Sicilian cooks were held, who prayed to her for inspiration. Her ministers were paid salaries as rich as the sauces they invented. Something like £800 _per annum_ formed the _honorarium_ of the learned and juicy gentleman. But he was not always to be had, even at that price; and the disgusted Languedocien who would not remain in the _cuisine_ of the Duke of Richmond, when Governor of Ireland, for the sufficient reason that there was no Opera in Dublin, had his prototype among his Sicilian predecessors. The jealousy of the culinary bondsman in Greek households against the free cook from Sicily, must have been sometimes deadly in its results.

The best-feed cook on record is the happy mortal to whom his master Antony gave a city, because he had cooked a repast which had called forth encomium from that dreadful jade, Cleopatra.

But money was the last thing thought of by the wearied epicures of Rome, especially when what they gave belonged to somebody else. When Lucullus spent £1,000 sterling on a snug dinner for three,--himself, Cæsar, and Pompey,--he doubtless spent his creditors’ money; at least, extravagant people generally do. Claudius dined often with six hundred guests, and the Roman people paid the cooks. The dinners of Vitellius cost that sacrilegious feeder upwards of £3,000 each, but the bills were discharged by a levy on the public pocket. When Tiberius ordered several thousands sterling to be bestowed on the author of a piece wherein every thing eatable was made to speak wittily, the author was really paid out of the popular pocket; and when Geta insisted on having as many courses at each repast as there were letters in the alphabet, and all the viands at each course so named that their initials should be the same as that of the course itself, he was the last person who troubled himself about the payment for such extravagance.

The cooks of such epicures must necessarily, however, have been as despotic in the kitchen as their lord was in the saloon. The slaves there, who hurried to and fro, bearing their tributes of good things from the market-place, or distributing them according to his bidding, obeyed the cook’s very nod, nay, anticipated his very wishes. They were, in fact, the ministers of an awful Sovereign. The cook was their Lord paramount. The stewards possessed no little power; but when the fires were lighted, and the dinner had to be thought of, the head cook was the kitchen Jupiter; and when he spoke, obedience, silence, and trembling followed upon his word.

From his raised platform, the _Archimagirus_, as he was called, could overlook all the preparations, and with his tremendous spoon of office he could break the heads of his least skilful disciples, and taste the sauces seething in the remotest saucepans. The effect must have been quite pantomimic; and to complete it, there was only wanted a crash of discordant music to accompany the rapid descent of the gigantic spoon upon the skull or ribs of an offender. The work was done in presence of the gods, and scullions blew the fires under the gaze of the _Lares_,--sooty divinities to whom, the legend says, inferior cooks were sometimes sacrificed in the month of December. “But,” as Othello says, “that’s a fable!”

Great Roman kitchens were as well worth seeing, and perhaps were as often inspected by the curious and privileged, as that of the Reform Club. “Order reigned” there quite as much as it did, according to Marshal Sebastiani, at Warsaw, amid the most abject slavery. Art and costliness were lavished upon the vessels, but the human beings there were exactly the things that were made the least account of.

No doubt that the triumph of the art of the cook consisted in serving up an entire pig at once roasted and boiled. The elder Disraeli has shown from Archestratus how this was done. “The animal had been bled to death by a wound under the shoulder, whence, after copious effusion, the master-cook extracted the entrails, washed them with wine, and hanged the animal by the feet. He crammed down the throat the stuffings already prepared. Then, covering the half of the pig with a paste of barley thickened with wine and oil, he put it in a small oven, or on a heated table of brass, where it was gently roasted with all due care. When the skin was browned, he boiled the other side, and then, taking away the barley paste, the pig was served up, at once boiled and roasted.” And such was the way by which the best of cooks spoiled the best of pigs.

According to Plautus, cooks alone were privileged in the old days to carry knives in their girdles. In the “_Aulularia_,” old Euclio says to Congrio, the cook, “_Ad tres viros jam ego deferam tuum nomen_,”--“I’ll go and inform against you to the Magistrates.” “Why so?” asks Congrio. “Because you carry a knife,”--“_Quia cultrum habes._” “Well,” says the artist, standing on his rights, “_cocum decet_,” “it is the sign of my profession.” From another of the many cooks of Plautus we learn, in the “_Menæchmei_,” that, when a parasite was at table, his appetite was reckoned as equivalent to that of eight guests; and when Cylindrus is ordered to prepare a dinner for Menæchmus, his “lady,” and the official parasite, “Then,” says the cook, “that’s as good as ten; for your parasite does the work of eight:”--

“_Jam isti sunt decem,
Nam parasitus octo hominum munus facile fungitur._”

The musicians would appear to have lived as pleasantly as the parasites. Simo remarks to Tranio, in the “_Mostellaria_,” that he lives on the best the cooks and vintners can procure for him,--a real fiddler’s destiny:--

“_Musice hercle agitis ætatem: ita ut vos decet.
Vino et victu, piscatu probe electili,
Vitam colitis._”

Stalino complains in the “_Casina_,” that, clever as cooks are, they cannot put a little essence of love into all their dishes,--a sauce, he says, that would please everybody. Their reputation in Rome for stealing was much the same as that enjoyed by their Grecian brethren. The scene of the “_Casina_,” indeed, is in Athens; but Olympio utters a Roman sentiment when he says, that cooks use their hands as much for larceny as cookery, and that wherever they are they bring double ruin, through extravagance and robbery, upon their masters: “_Ubi sunt, duplici damno dominos multant._” This is further proved by the speech of _Epidicus_, in the comedy so called, where that slave-cook speaks of his master’s purse as if it were game, to disembowel which, he says, he will use his professional knife:--

“_Acutum cultrum habeo, senis qui exenterem
Marsupium._”

We learn something of the pay of a cook from a speech of one of the craft, in the “_Pseudolus_.” Ballio, seeing a single practitioner remaining in the square to be hired, asks how it is that he has not been engaged. “_Eloquar_,” says the cook, “here is the reason:--

“He who, now-a-days, comes here to hire cooks,
No longer seeks the best, that is, the dearest,
But some poor spoil-sauce who for nothing works.
Therefore you see me here alone to-day.
A poor drachma hath my brethren purchased;
But under a crown I cook a dish for no man.
For ’twixt the common herd and me, you see,
There is a diff’rence: they into a dish
Fling whole meadows, and the guests they treat, Sir,
As though they were but oxen out at grass.
Herbs season they with herbs, and grass with grass;
And in the mess, garlic, coriander, fennel,
Sorrel, rochet, beet-root, leeks, and greens,
All go together, with a pound of benzoin,
And mustard ditto, that compels the tears
From out the eyes of those that have to mix it.

* * * * *

“If men are short-lived now, the reason’s plain:
They put death into their stomachs, and so
Of indigestion and bad cookery die.
Their sauces but to think of, makes me shudder;
Yet men will eat what asses would not bend to.

* * * * *

“Who of _my_ dishes eats, obtains at least
Two hundred happy years of life renew’d.
I season Neptune’s fishes with a juice
Made up of Cicilindrum, Muscadel,
Sipolindrum, and Sancapatides.
The odour of my mutton, nicely stuffed
With Cicimandrum, Nappalopsides,
And of Cataractaria a pinch,
Feeds Jupiter himself, who, when I rest,
Sleeps on Olympus, sad and supperless.
As for my potions, he who deeply drinks,
Gulps with the draught the gift of endless youth.”

Finally, after inventing the above names unpronounceable of sauces that do not exist, the boaster adds, that his fee is a crown, provided he is not overlooked; but that if there be supervision to check him in his perquisites, he is not to be hired under a mina:--

“_Si credis, nummos; si non, ne mina quidem!_”

I do not know if cooks more especially used different fingers in mingling their sauces, according as they were employed on wedding banquets, martial feasts, senatorial entertainments, _al-fresco déjeuners_, or commercial suppers; but certain it is, that the fingers were sacred to diverse deities. The thumb was devoted to Venus, the index finger to Mars, the longest finger to Saturn, the next to the Sun, and the little finger to Mercury.

I conclude with a remark that I hope will be gratifying to all culinary artists who respect themselves and their calling, and who are anxious to prove that their vocation is of ancient and honourable descent. Cadmus, who introduced letters into Greece, had formerly been cook to the King of Sidon. Thus learning ascended to us from the kitchen; and to the ex-cook of the King of Sidon we perhaps owe all the epics that have ever been written. By this genealogy, even “Paradise Lost” may be traced to the patties of Cadmus. But cooks in England may boast of a _noblesse de cuisine_, which dates from the Norman Conquest. When William, who wooed his wife Matilda by knocking her down, had established himself in England, he gave a banquet, at which his cook, Tezelin, served a new white soup of such exquisite flavour, that William sent for the artist, and inquired its name. “I call it _Dillegrout_,” said Tezelin. “A scurvy name for so good a soup,” said the Conqueror; “but let that pass. We make you Lord of the Manor of Addington!” Thus modern cooks may boast of a descent from the landed aristocracy of the Conquest! Some of their masters cannot do as much; and this, perhaps, accounts for the pride of the one, and the simplicity of the other.

THE MODERN COOK, AND HIS SCIENCE.

If it were necessary that the cook of the ancient world should be a Sicilian, and that the _cuisinier_ of the ancient régime should be of Languedoc, (the native place of “_blanc manger_,”) so in these modern times he alone is considered a true graduate in the noble science _de la gueule_ who is a Gaul by birth, or who has gone through his studies in the University of French Kitchens. In England, it must be confessed that great cooks have formed the exception rather than the rule; and that our native culinary literature, however interesting in certain national details, is chiefly based upon a French foundation. And yet we may boast of some native professors who were illustrious in their way. Master John Murrel, for instance, wrote a cookery book in 1630, and dedicated it to the daughter of the Lord Mayor. He starts by asserting that cookery books generally mar rather than make good meats; and then shows what good meats were in his estimation, by teaching how to dress “minced bullock’s kidney, a rack of veal, a farced leg of mutton, an umble pie, and a chewit of stockfish.” He is succulently eloquent on a compound production, consisting of marrow bones, a leg of mutton, fowls and pullets, and a dozen larks, all in one dish.

The Duke of Newcastle, in the last century, had a female cook of some renown, named “Chloe.” General Guise, at the siege of Carthagena, saw some wild fowl on the wing, and, amid the din of war, he thought of “Chloe” and her sauces. She was famous for her stewed mushrooms, and there is an anecdote connected therewith that will bear repeating. “Poor Dr. Shaw,” writes Horace Walpole, “being sent for in great haste to Claremont, (it seems the Duchess had caught a violent cold by a hair of her own whisker getting up her nose, and making her sneeze,) the poor Doctor, I say, having eaten a few mushrooms before he set out, was taken so ill that he was forced to stop at Kingston; and, being carried to the first apothecary’s, prescribed a medicine for himself which immediately cured him. This catastrophe so alarmed the Duke of Newcastle, that he immediately ordered all the mushroom-beds to be destroyed; and even the toadstools in the park did not escape scalping in this general measure. And a voice of lamentation was heard at Ramah in Claremont, ‘_Chloe_’ weeping for _her_ mushrooms, and they are not!” But, let us turn to trace lightly the genealogy of the cooks of modern times.

The descent of the barbarians from the north was the ruin of cooks as well as of Kings, of kitchens as well as constitutions. Many of the cooks of the classic period were slain like the Druid Priests at the fire of their own altars. A patriotic few fled rather than feed the invader; and the servile souls who tremblingly offered to prepare a _fricassée_ of ostrich brains for the Northmen, were dismissed with contempt by warrior princes, who lived on under-done beef, and very much of it!

But as sure as the Saxon blood beats out the Norman, so does good cookery prevail over barbarous appetites. The old cooks were a sacred race, whose heirs took up the mission of their sires. This mission was so far triumphant, that, at the period of Charlemagne, the imperial kitchen recognised in its _chef_ the representative of the Emperor. The oriental pheasant and the peacock, in all the glories of expanded tail, took the place, or appeared at the side, of coarser viands. The dignity and the mirth of Charlemagne’s table were heightened by the presence of ladies. Brillat de Savarin states, that since that period the presence of the fair sex has ever been a law of society. But in this he errs; for the Marquis de Bouillé, in his admirable work on the Dukes of Guise, affirms that the good civilizing custom had fallen into disuse, but that a permanent improvement was commenced in the reign of Francis I., when the Cardinal of Lorraine induced that Monarch to invite ladies to be present at all entertainments given at Court. Society followed the fashion of the Sovereign; and as it used to be said, “No feast, no Levite,” so now it was felt that where there was no lady, there was no refined enjoyment.

At whatever period the emancipation of the ladies from their forced seclusion took place, from that period the tone of social life was elevated. They went about, like Eve, “on hospitable thoughts intent.” The highest in rank did not disdain to supervise the kitchen; they displayed their talents in the invention of new dishes, as well as in the preparation of the old; and they occasionally well-nigh ruined their lords by the magnificence of their tastes, and their sublime disregard of expense. All the sumptuary laws of Kings to restrain this household extravagance were joyously evaded, and banquets became deadly destructive to men’s estates.

The French Kings granted corporate rights to the different trades connected with the kitchen and the table; and perhaps the most valued privilege was that conceded by Charles IX. to the pastrycooks, who alone were permitted to make bread for the service of the Mass.

Montaigne, in his pleasant way, recounts a conversation he had with an Italian _chef_ who had served in the kitchen of Cardinal Caraffa, up to the period of the death of his gastronomic Eminence. “I made him,” says the great Essayist, “tell me something about his post. He gave me a lecture on the science of eating, with a gravity and magisterial countenance as if he had been determining some vexed question in theology. He deciphered to me, as it were, the distinction that exists between appetites:--the appetite at fasting; that which people have at the end of the second or third service; the means of awaking and exciting it; the general ‘police,’ so to speak, of his sauces; and then particularized their ingredients and effects. The differences of salads, according to the seasons, he next discoursed upon. He explained what sorts ought to be prepared warm, and those which should always be served cold; the way of adorning and embellishing them, in order to render them seductive to the eye. After this he entered on the order of table-services,--a subject full of fine and important considerations; and all this was puffed up with rich and magnificent terms; phrases, indeed, such as are employed by statesmen and diplomatists, when they are discoursing on the government of an empire.” We see by this what the “_art de la gueule_” was in the days of Charles IX., whose mother, Catherine de Medicis, had introduced it into France, as a science whereby men should enjoy life. The same lady introduced also poisoning, as a science whereby men might be deprived of life. Her own career was full of opposing facts like these,--facts which caused a poetic cook to write the epitaph upon her, which says:--

“Here lieth a Queen, who was angel and devil,
Admirer of good, and a doer of evil;
She supported the State, and the State she destroyed;
She reconciled friends, and she friendships alloyed;
She brought forth three Kings, thrice endanger’d the Crown,
Built palaces up, and threw whole cities down;
Made many good laws, many bad ones as well,
And merited richly both heaven and hell.”

The mention of Cardinal de Caraffa, by Montaigne, reminds me that, for a gastronome, the Cardinal was singularly sanguinary in spirit. I know no one to compare with him, except Dr. Cahill, who is not averse to good living, and who has earned so gloomy a notoriety by his terrible sentiment of the massacre of Protestants being “a glorious idea.” Caraffa was enabled to enjoy both his propensities, of swallowing good things and slaughtering heretics. “Having obtained leave from the Pope to establish the Inquisition at Rome, at a time when the resources of the State ran low, he turned his private property to the use of his zeal, and set up a small Inquisition at his own expense.” Thus he could dine within hearing of the groans of his victims; his cook could inform him that the hares and heretics had both been roasted; and he _may_ have been occasionally puzzled to know whether that smell of burning came from the patties or the Protestants.

The Italian cooks were, for a season, fashionable in France; but they had a passion for poetry as well as for pies, and were given to let their sauces burn while they recited whole pages of “Orlando Furioso.” They were critics as well as cooks, and the kitchens resounded with their denunciations of all who objected to the merits of the divine Ariosto. But even the Papal ennobling of a cook could not compensate for an indifferent dinner; and though Leo X., in a fit of modest delight at a sauce made by his cook during Lent, named him from that circumstance “Jack o’ Lent,” or “_Jean de Carême_,” the French would not allow that such an event authorized the _artiste_ to be dreaming over epics, when he should be wide awake to the working of his proper mystery. But the mystery itself was much obstructed by the political events of the times. There were the bloody wars of the Guises, the troubles of the League, the despotic reign of Richelieu, the cacochymical temperament (as the editor of the “_Almanach des Gourmands_” would call it) of Louis XIII., and the ridiculous war of the Fronde. The glory of the French kitchen rose with that of the _Grand Monarque_, and Vatel and Louis XIV. were contemporaries. Vatel slew himself to save his honour! The King had come to dine with Condé; but the cod had not arrived in time to be dressed for the King, and thereupon the heroic artist fell upon his sword, like an ancient Roman, and is immortalized for ever by his glorious folly!

But there was nothing really heroic in the death of Vatel, whose sword was pointed at his breast by wounded vanity. Far more heroic was the death of the cook of the Austrian Consul, in the late cruel massacre, by the cowardly Russian fleet, at Sinope. The Consul’s cook was a young woman of thirty years of age. The Muscovite murderers were at the very height of their bloody enjoyment, and sending shots into the town, when the cook attempted to cross a garden, to procure some herbs; for Consuls _must_ dine, though half the world be dying. She had performed her mission, and was returning, when a thirty-six pounder shot cut her completely in two. Rather than give up the parsley for her master’s soup, she thus encountered death. What was Vatel and his bodkin, to this more modern cook and the thirty-six pounder, loaded by the Czar for her destruction?

The cooks “looked up” in the nights and suppers of the Regency, and the days and dinners of Louis XV. It would be difficult to say whether under the Regent, or under the King, the culinary art and its professors most flourished. I am inclined, however, to think, that, during the tranquil and voluptuous period of the reign of Louis XV., the cooks of France rose to that importance from which they have never descended. They became a recognised and esteemed class in society, whose spoiled children they were; and, in return, it was very like spoiled children that they behaved. But how could it be otherwise, when the noble, the brave, and the fair girded aprons to their loins, and stood over stew-pans, with the air of alchymists over alembics? It is to the nobility and other distinguished persons in high life, yet not noble, in France, that gastronomy owes many a dish, whose very name betrays to ecstasy. And here are a few of these droll benefactors of mankind.

The Marquis de Béchamel immortalized his name, in the reign of Louis XIV., by his invention of cream-sauce, for turbot and cod. Madame de Maintenon imagined the “cutlets in curl-papers” which go by her name, and which her ingenuity created in order to guard the sacred stomach of the Grand Monarque from the grease which he could not digest. The “_Chartreuse à la Mauconseil_” is the work, and the most innocent one, of the free and easy Marchioness of that name. A woman more free and easy still, the Duchess of Villeroy, (Maréchale de Luxembourg,) produced, in her hours of reflection, the dish known as the _poulets à la Villeroy_. They were eaten with bread _à la Régent_, of which the author was the _roué_ Duke of Orleans. His too “well-beloved” daughter, the Duchess of Berry, had a gastronomic turn of mind, like her illustrious father. She was an epicurean lady, who tasted of all the pleasures of life without moderation, whose device was, “Short and sweet,” and who was contented to die young, seeing that she had exhausted all enjoyment, and had achieved a renown, that should embalm her name for ever, as the inventor of the _filets de lapereau_. The _gigot à la Mailly_ was the result of much study, on the part of the first mistress of Louis XV., to rid herself of a sister who was a rival. Madame de Pompadour, another of the same King’s “ladies,” testified her gratitude for the present which the Monarch made her of the Château de Bellevue, by the production of the _filets de volaille à la Bellevue_. The Queen of Louis was more devout, but not less epicurean, than his mistresses; and the _petites bouchées à la Reine_, if they were not of her creating, were named in honour of Maria Leczinzka. Louis himself had a contempt for female cooks; but Madame Du Barry had one so well-trained, that with a charming dinner of _coulis de faisans_, _croustades de la foie de lottes_, _salmis de bécassine_, _pain de volaille à la suprême_, _poularde au cresson_, _écrevisses au vin de Sauterne_, _bisquets de pêches au Noyau_, and _crème de cerneaux_, the King was so overcome with ecstasy, that, after recovering from the temporary disgust he experienced at hearing that it was the handywork of a woman, he consented to ennoble her by conferring upon her the _cordon bleu_,--which phrase, from that time, has been accepted as signifying a skilled female cook.

With respect to other dishes and their authors, the _vol au vent à la Nèsle_ owns a Marquis for its father; and the _poularde à la Montmorency_ is the offspring of a Duke. The _Bayonnoise_, or the _Mabonnoise_ rather, recalls one of the victories of the Duke de Richelieu; and _veau à la Montgolfier_, well inflated, was the tribute of a culinary artist to the hero who first rode the air at the tail of a balloon. The _sorbet à la Donizetti_ was the masterpiece of the Italian confectioner of the late Duke of Beaufort. He had been to the Opera; and one of the composer’s charming airs having given him an idea, he brooded over it, till, an hour or so before dawn, it was hatched into reality, when he rushed to the Duke’s bed-chamber, and, “drawing Priam’s bed-curtains in the night,” announced to his startled Grace the achievement of a new _sorbet_.

The _tendrons d’agneaux au soleil_, and the _filets de poulets à la Pompadour_, were two of the dishes invented by the famous lady of that name. The _carbonnade à la Soubise_, and the _carré de veau à la Guemenée_, date--the first from the reign of Louis XV., the last from that of Louis XVI.,--periods when the people were famishing. The Pompadour was a great patron of the arts, and especially of the culinary art; and the _cuisine des petits appartements_, during _her_ reign, was at the very height of its savoury reputation. The Prince of Soubise was a poor General, but a rich glutton; and his son-in-law, the Prince de Guemenée, was famous for his invention of various _ragoûts_, his inordinate extravagance, and his bankruptcy, with liabilities against him amounting to twenty-eight millions of francs. Madame la Maréchale de Mirepoix was the authoress of _cailles à la Mirepoix_; and her descendants live on the reputation acquired thereby by their epicurean ancestress. The Bourbons vied with the aristocracy in taxing their genius, and cudgelling their brains, in order to produce new dishes. Thus, the _potage à la Xavier_ was the production of Louis XVIII., in the days of his early manhood; while the _soupe à la Condé_ was a rival dish invented by his princely cousin,--a cousin, by the way, who, when a refugee in England, used to pass his evenings at Astley’s, with his pockets full of apples, which he gallantly presented to ladies as highly, but not as naturally, coloured as the fruit. Perhaps the reputation of the Maréchal de Richelieu rests more on his _boudins à la carpe_, than on his battles and _billets-doux_. Finally, a mysterious obscurity conceals from us the name of the inventor of the _petites bouchées de foie gras_. He is the Junius of gastronomic literature; but if he be guessed at in vain, he is blessed abundantly, as one who has concentrated paradise, (an Epicurean’s paradise,) and given an antepast thereof, in a single mouthful.

The Prince de Soubise was famous in the reign of Louis XV. for giving great dinners, and paying nobody but his cooks, and the young ladies of the opera. He once varied his extravagance by a splendid fête, which was to terminate by a supper. His _chef_ waited on him with the bill of fare for the banquet, and the first article which attracted his attention was “fifty hams.” “Half a hundred hams!” said the Prince, “that’s a coarse idea, Bertrand. You have not got to feed my regiment of cavalry.” “Truly, Prince! and only one ham will appear on the table; I want the remaining forty-nine for adjuncts, seasonings, flavourings, and a dozen other purposes.” “Bertrand,” replied the Prince, “you are robbing me, and I cannot allow this article to pass.” “Monseigneur!” exclaimed the offended _artiste_, “you doubt my morals, and libel my merit. You do not know what a treasure you possess in me; you have only to order it, and those fifty hams which so terribly offend you, why, I will put them all into a phial not bigger than my thumb!” The Prince smiled, and Bertrand triumphed.

The cooks of the young King Louis XVI. remarked, with mingled terror and disgust, that his appetite was rather voracious than delicate. He cared little what he ate, provided there was enough of it; and he looked to nutrition rather than niceness. A succulent joint with him had more merit than the most singular of dishes, the invention of which had perhaps caused three nights of wakefulness to its author. But the aristocracy, the law, and finance, maintained tables which ought to have been the pride of Versailles. Late dinners, or gorgeous suppers, were indulged in to such a degree by the moneyed classes, that it was familiarly said, that of an evening the chimneys of the Faubourg Saint Honoré made fragrant with their incense the entire capital. It was reckoned that, at this period, twenty thousand men had no other profession than that of “diner-out,” which they carried on, like the parasites of old, by retailing anecdotes and news in return for the repast. It was a time when “Monseigneur” thought nothing of dispatching his cook to London to procure a turtle; which, after all, was less extravagant than the process of Cambacères, who had his Périgord pies sent to him through the post, “On His Majesty’s Service.” The Languedocien cooks in France were paid the quadruple of the salary of the family tutor, good eating being so much more essential to life than mere instruction; and, besides, could the family tutor have accomplished any thing that could equal the achievement of the family cook who could bring to table _entire_ a “_sanglier à la crapaudine_?” The cooks of the age of Louis XVI. invented the “_bouillie_” and the “_consommé_,” because mastication was considered by them a vulgar process; and the royal cooks, during Passion Week, manipulated the vegetables placed before the King into the forms of ocean-dwelling fish, and gave to the semblance the taste of the reality for which it passed to the eye.

The glory of gastronomy was again rising when it was suddenly quenched by the revolutionary torrent, and the nation was put on a three years’ meagre dietary by the Jacobins and the Directory. But the Revolution, which affected to hate cooks as aristocratic appendages that ought to be suppressed, sometimes made, where it hoped to mar. The case of Ude is one in point.

Monsieur Ude, like Prince Eugene, was originally intended for the Church. At the breaking out of the French Revolution, he was residing, for instruction, with an Abbé, and master and pupil had to fly before the popular indignation, which, for a time, assailed the Church, and all therewith connected. Ude’s life was in peril in the public streets, and he just saved it, by rushing into the shop of a pastrycook, where he found a permanent asylum. The “house of Ude,” like other great houses, nearly perished in the great political shipwreck of the day, and this particular scion thereof took to the study of practical gastronomy, and became chief supreme in various great kitchens, from that of royalty down to that of Crockford.

When the sluices of the French Revolution were opened, how diverse were the fortunes of those who fled from before it! It was the same with the gentlemen who had followed the fortunes of Napoleon. They were scattered, like the Generals of Alexander, without being able, like them, to retire upon independent sovereignties, and rear dynasties of barbaric splendour. Some went to Greece to crush despotism, some went to Lahore to aid it. A few, like Latour d’Auvergne, took to the Church; but, saving that portly person himself, none had the good luck to reach the archiepiscopate. Those who failed to procure employment in foreign armies, and yet could not lay aside their propensity for killing, went to the East, and prescribed as Physicians. Such of the rest as were absolutely fit for nothing, and willing to do it, inundated England, and undertook the light and irresponsible office of Private Tutors!

But it was the earlier Revolution that afforded examples of the greatest contrasts. Many young men, intended for the Church, changed their profession, and became popular, useful, and rich, in the households of European royalty, as civilizers of the kitchen, who raised cookery from its barbarous condition to a matter of science and taste. Perhaps the most curious of the waifs and strays of the Revolution flung upon our shores, was the Chevalier D’Aubigné, who contrived to live, as so many French gentlemen of that time did, in bitter poverty, without a sacrifice of dignity. He had one day been invited by an English friend to dine with the latter at a tavern. In the course of the repast, he took upon himself to mix the salad; and the way in which he did this, attracted the notice of all the other guests in the room. Previous to the period of which I am speaking, lettuces were commonly eaten, by tavern frequenters at least, _au naturel_, with no more dressing than Nebuchadnezzar had to his grass when he dieted daily among the beasts. Consequently, when D’Aubigné handled the preparation for which he had asked, like a chymist concocting elixir in his laboratory, the guests were lost in admiration; for the refreshing aroma of a _Mayonnaise_ was warrant to their senses, that the French Knight had discovered for them a new pleasure. One of them approached the foreign magician, and said, “Sir, it is universally known that your nation excels all others in the making a salad. Would it be too great a liberty to ask you to do us the favour to mix one for the party at my table?” The courteous Frenchman smiled, was flattered, performed the office asked of him, and put four gentlemen in a state of uncontrollable ecstasy. He had talked cheerfully, as he mixed gracefully and scientifically, and, in the few minutes required by him to complete his work of enchantment, he contrived to explain his position as emigrant, and his dependence on the pecuniary aid afforded by the English Government. The guests did not let the poor Chevalier depart without slipping into his hand a golden fee, which he received with as little embarrassment, and as much dignity, as though he had been the Physician De Portal taking an _honorarium_ from the hands of the Cardinal de Rohan.

He had communicated his address, and he, perhaps, was not very much surprised when, a few days after, he received a letter in which he was politely requested to repair to a house in Grosvenor Square, for the purpose of mixing a salad for a dinner party there to be given. D’Aubigné obeyed the summons; and, after performing his mission, returned home richer by a five-pound note than when he went out.

Henceforth he became the recognised “fashionable salad-maker;” and ladies “died” for his salads, as they do now for Constantine’s simulative bouquets. The preparer was soon enabled to proceed to his responsible duties in a carriage; and a servant attended him, carrying a mahogany case, containing the necessary ingredients for concocting various salads, according to the respective tastes of his employers. At a later period, he sold, by hundreds, similar mahogany cases, which he had caused to be made, and which were furnished with all matters necessary for the making an irreproachable salad, and with directions how to administer them. The Chevalier, too, was, like old Carré,--whose will was so cleverly made by the very disinterested friends who had never before spoken to him,--a prudent and a saving man; and by the period which re-opened France to the _émigrés_, he had realized some eighty thousand francs, upon which he enjoyed a dignified retirement in a provincial town. He invested sixty thousand francs in the Funds; with the other twenty thousand he purchased a little estate in the Limousin, and, if he lacked a “legend” to his device, I would have helped him to one in “_Sal adfert_.”

A Knight over a salad-bowl is not a chivalrous picture; but the stern necessity of the case gave it dignity, and the resulting profits quieted the scruples of the gentleman. When Booth pounced upon Captain Bath, sitting in a dirty flannel gown, and warming his sister’s posset at the fire, the noble and gaunt Captain was taken something aback, and said, in a little confusion, “I did not expect, Sir, to be seen by you in this situation.” Booth told him “he thought it impossible he could appear in a situation more becoming his character.” The compliment was equivocal; but the Captain said, “You do not? By G-- I am very much obliged to you for that opinion; but I believe, Sir, however my weakness may prevail on me to descend from it, no man can be more conscious of his own dignity than myself.” The apology of good Captain Bath in Fielding’s “Amelia,” would have served the Chevalier who made salads, had he needed one.

If a salad made the fortune of a Chevalier, it on one occasion made that of a female cook, with whose dexterity in this respect a learned English Judge was so enchanted, that he raised the lucky maiden to the quality of wife. If we discuss the traits of life at table, we have nothing to do with the secrets of household; but an incident, illustrative of the consequences of this match, may be mentioned. The Judge ever after was famous for protracting the sittings in court beyond all precedent and patience; and when weary Barristers were aghast at hearing a new cause called on, when the night was half spent, and fairly remonstrated against the judicial cruelty, the learned husband of his cook would remark with a sigh, “Gentlemen, we _must_ be somewhere; we cannot be better any where than where we now are,”--the half of which assertion was stoutly denied by his hearers.

Our aristocracy are not quite so famous for their invention of dishes as that of France; but their love for good dinners, and their knowledge of what they ought to be, are not inferior to the affection and science of our neighbours. When Lord Marcus Hill officiated as whipper-in to the Whig Government, it was part of his office to order the fish dinner at which Ministers regale themselves when sessional cares no longer molest them. The fish dinners of Lord Marcus are remembered with satisfaction and gratitude; for they were first-rate in their way. The reputation of the Carlton _cuisine_ and cellar is said to be chiefly owing to Sir Alexander Grant, of whom a gastronomic critic says, “No living Amphitryon has given better dinners in his time; and few can boast of having entertained more distinguished guests.” His name, as a patron, reminds me of that of Carême, as a practitioner.

PEN AND INK SKETCH OF CARÈME.

It would be as easy to compile a Dictionary of Cooks, as of Musicians or Painters; but it would not be so amusing or so edifying, except perhaps to those who think more of their stomach than of their mind. But it _would_ then be attractive and useful to the majority of readers; for the sages themselves are not unmindful of their stomachs, and, according to a sage, they would be unworthy of the name if they neglected that vital matter. Johnson, you know, lived in an age when things were called by their real names. “_J’appelle un chat un chat_,” was the device of the plain-spoken, when not only men, but ladies, bold as the Thalestris of Young’s pungent satire, loudly dared to name what nature dared to give. Dr. Johnson, then, says, “Some people have a foolish way of not minding, or pretending not to mind, what they eat. For my part, I mind my _belly_ very studiously; for I look upon it that he who does not mind his _belly_, will hardly mind any thing else!”

To the world, then, even a Biographical Dictionary of Cooks might be captivating; but as my present mission is not to write an Encyclopædia, but rather deferentially to offer my little sketches to gentle, and not too critical, readers, with leisure half-hours at their command, so do I offer them a sketch of Carême, as the knowledge of the individual may stand for that of the class.

He was illustrious by descent; for one of his ancestors had served in the household of a Pope, who himself made more sauces than saints, Leo X. But Carême was one of so poor and so numerous a family, that when he came into the world, he was no more welcome than Oliver Goldsmith was: the respective parents of the little-cared-for babes did not know what future great men lay in naked helplessness before them. One wrote immortal poetry, and starved: the other made delicious pastry, and rode in a chariot! We know how much Oliver received for his “Vicar;” while Anthony Carême used to receive twice as much for merely writing out a recipe to make a “_pâté_.” Nay, Carême’s untouched patties, when they left royal tables, were bought up at a cost which would have supported Goldsmith for a month; and a cold sugared _entremets_, at the making of which Carême had presided, readily fetched a higher price than the public now pay for the “Complete Works” of the poet of Green-Arbour-court!