Chapter III: Preface (2)

Such, at the first glance, appears to be the domain of gastronomy, a realm fertile in results of every kind and which is aggrandized by the discoveries and inventions of those who cultivate it. It is certain that before the lapse of many years, gastronomy will have its academicians, courses, professors, and premiums.

At first some rich and zealous gastronomer will establish periodical assemblies, in which the most learned theorists will unite with artists, to discuss and measure the various branches of alimentation.

Soon (such is the history of all academies) the government will intervene, will regularise, protect, and institute; it will seize the opportunity to reward the people for all orphans made by war, for all the Arianas whose tears have been evoked by the drum.

Happy will be the depository of power who will attach his name to this necessary institution! His name will be repeated from age to age with that of Noah, Bacchus, Triptolemus, and other benefactors of humanity; he will be among ministers what Henri IV. was among kings; his eulogy will be in every mouth, though no regulation make it a necessity.

MEDITATION IV.

APPETITE.

DEFINITION OF APPETITE.

MOTION and life occasion in the animal portion of all that lives a constant loss of substance, and the human body, that most complicated machine, would soon be unfit for use, did not Providence provide it with a mark to inform it of the very moment when its power is no longer in equilibrium with its wants.

This monitor is appetite. By this word we understand the first impression of the want of food.

Appetite declares itself by languor in the stomach, and a slight sensation of fatigue.

The soul at the same time busies itself with things analogous to its wants; memory recalls food that has flattered its taste; imagination fancies that it sees them, and something like a dream takes place. This state is not without pleasure, and we have heard many adepts say, with joy in their heart, "What a pleasure it is to have a good appetite, when we are certain of a good meal."

The whole nutritive apparatus is moved. The stomach becomes sensible, the gastric juices are moved and displace themselves with noise, the mouth becomes moist, and all the digestive powers are under arms, like soldiers awaiting the word of command. After a few moments there will be spasmodic motion, pain and hunger.

Every shade of these gradations may be observed in every drawing- room, when dinner is delayed.

They are such in nature, that the most exquisite politeness cannot disguise the symptoms. From this fact I deduced the apothegm, "THE MOST INDISPENSABLE QUALITY OF A GOOD COOK IS PROMPTNESS."

ANECDOTE.

I will sustain this grave maxim by the details of an observate, made at an entertainment where I was,

"Quorum magna pars fui,"

and where the pleasures of observation preserved me from the anguish of misery.

I was invited to dine with a high public functionary. The hour was half past five, and at the appointed time all were present. We knew he liked exactness, and always scolded the dilatory.

I was amazed, when I came, at the consternation which pervaded the party. People whispered together, and looked into the court-yard through the window--all betokened something extraordinary.

I approached the one of the guests I thought best able to satisfy my curiosity, and asked him what the news was.

"Alas!" said they, "Monsieur has been sent for to the Council of State; he has just gone, and none know when he will return."

"Is that all!" said I. "Be of good cheer, we will be detained only a quarter of an hour; something particular has happened. All know to-day is his regular dinner, and we will not have to fast." I was not, however, easy, and wished I was away.

The first hour passed well enough, and those who were intimate sat together. Common places were exhausted, and conjectures were formed as to what could have called the Prince to the Tuilleries

At the commencement of the second hour there were many signs of impatience; people looked anxiously at each other and the first who murmured were three or four guests who, finding no place to sit in, were not in a convenient position to wait.

At the third hour, the discontent became general, and every symptom became exaggerated. "When will he return?" said one. "What can he be thinking of?" said another. "This is death," said a third. This question was then put, but not determined, "Shall we go or not?"

At the fourth hour every symptom became aggravated. People stretched out their arms without the slightest regard whether they interrupted their neighbors or not. Unpleasant sounds were heard from all parts of the room, and everywhere the faces of the guests bore the marks of concentration. No one listened to me when I remarked that beyond doubt our absent amphytrion was more unhappy than any one of us.

Our attention was for a moment arrested by an apparition. One of the guests, better acquainted with the house than the others, had gone into the kitchen, and returned panting. His face looked as if the day of judgment had come, and in an almost inarticulate voice, which announced at once both the fear of making a noise and of not being heard, "Monsigneur went away without giving any orders, and happen what may, dinner will not be served until his return."

The terror caused by what he said could not be exceeded by that to be expected at the last trump.

Among the martyrs, the most unfortunate was D'Aigrefeuille, whom all Paris knew. His whole body seemed to suffer, and the agony of Laocoon was marked on his face. Pale, terrified, he saw nothing but sank in a chair, grasped his hands on his round stomach, and closed his eyes, not to sleep but to die.

He did not though. About ten o'clock a carriage drove into the yard. All were on the qui-vive and a arose spontaneously. Hilarity succeeded suffering, and in five minutes we were at the table.

Appetite however was gone, all seemed amazed to sit down to dinner at such an unusual hour; the jaws had not that isochronous measure which announces a regular business. I know many were sufferers thus.

The course to be taken is not to eat immediately after the obstacle has ceased, but to drink a glass of eau-sucree, or take a plate of soup to sustain the stomach, and then in ten or fifteen minutes to begin dinner, to prevent the stomach being oppressed by the weight of the aliments with which it is surcharged.

GREAT APPETITES.

When we see in early books a description of the preparations made to receive two or three persons, and the enormous masses served up to a single guest, we cannot refuse to think that those who lived in early ages were gifted with great appetites.

The appetite was thought to increase in direct ratio to the dignity of the personage. He to whom the saddle of a five year old ox would be served was expected to drink from a cup he could scarcely lift.

Some individuals have existed who testified to what once passed, and have collected details of almost incredible variety, which included even the foulest objects.

I will not inflict these disgusting details on my readers, and prefer to tell them two particular circumstances which I witnessed, and which do not require any great exertion of faith.

About forty years ago, I made a short visit to the cure at Bregnier, a man of immense stature and who had a fearful appetite.

Though it was scarcely noon I found him at the table. Soup and bouilli had been brought on, to these two indispensables had succeeded a leg of mutton a la Royale, a capon and a salad.

As soon as he saw me he ordered a plate which I refused, and rightly too. Without any assistance he got rid of every thing, viz: he picked the bone of mutton and ate up all the salad.

They brought him a large white cheese into which he made an angular breach measured by an arc of ninety degrees. He washed down all with a bottle of wine and glass of water, after which he laid down.

What pleased me was to see that during the whole of this business, the venerable pastor did not seem busy. The large mouthfulls he swallowed did not prevent him either from laughing or talking. He dispatched all that was put before him easily as he would have a pair of birds.

So it was with General Bisson who drank eight bottles of wine at dinner every day, and who never appeared the worse for it. He had a glass larger than usual and emptied it oftener. He did not care for that though, for after having swallowed six ounces of fluids he could jest and give his orders as if he had only swallowed a thimble full.

This anecdote recalls to me my townsman, General P. Sibuet, long the chief aide of Napoleon, and who was killed in 1813 at the passage of the Bober.

He was eighteen years old, and had at that time the appetite by which nature announces that its possessor is a perfect man, and went one night into the kitchen of Genin, an inn keeper of Belley, where the old men of the town used to meet to eat chestnuts and drink the new white wine called in the country vin bourru.

The old men were not hungry and paid no attention to him. His digestive powers were not shaken though, and he said "I have just left the table, but I will bet that I eat a whole turkey."

"If you eat it I will pay for it," said Bouvier du Bouchet, a rich farmer who was present, "and if you do not I will eat what is left and you shall pay for it." [Footnote: This sentence is patois, and the translator inserts the original. "Sez vosu meze, z'u payo, repondit Bouvier du Bouchet, gros fermier qui se trouvait present; e sez vos caca en rotaz, i-zet vo ket paire et may ket mezerai la restaz."]

They set to work at once, and the young athlete at once cut off a wing, he ate it at two mouthfulls and cleaned his teeth by gnawing the bone and drank a glass of wine as an interlude.

He then went into the thigh which he ate and drank another glass of wine to prepare a passage for the rest. The second went the same way, and he had come to the last limb when the unfortunate farmer said, "alas! I see it is all over, but Mr. Sibouet as I have to pay, let me eat a bit." [Footnote: This also is patois. "Hai! ze vaie praou qu'izet fotu; m'ez, monche Chibouet, poez kaet zu daive paiet, lesse m'en a m'en mesiet on mocho."]

Prosper was as good a fellow as he was a soldier, and consented. The farmer had the carcass at spolia opima, and paid for the fowl with a good grace.

General Sibuet used always to love to tell of this feat of his youth. He said that his admitting the farmer to eat was a pure courtesy, and that he could easily have won the bet. His appetite at forty permitted none to doubt the assertion.

Brillat-Savarin, says in a note, "I quote this fragment of the patois of Bugey with pleasure. In it is found the English 'th and the Greek 0, and in the word praou and others, a dipthong existing in no language, the sound of which no character can describe." (See 3d Volume of the Memoirs of the Royal Society of Antiquarians of France.)

MEDITATION V.

FOOD IN GERMS.

SECTION FIRST.

DEFINITIONS.

WHAT is understood by aliments?

POPULAR ANSWER. All that nourishes us.

SCIENTIFIC ANSWER. By aliments are understood the substances which, when submitted to the stomach, may be assimulated by digestion, and repair the losses which the human body is subjected to in life.

The distinctive quality of an aliment, therefore, is its liability to animal assimulation.

ANALYSIS.

The animal and vegetable kingdoms are those which until now have furnished food to the human race.

Since analytical chemistry has become a certain science, much progress has been made into the double nature of the elements of which our body is composed, and of the substances which nature appears to have intended to repair their losses.

These studies had a great analogy, for man is to a great degree composed both of the substances on which animals feed, and was also forced to look in the vegetable kingdom for affinities susceptible of animalization.

In these two walks the most praiseworthy efforts have been made always as minute as possible, and the curious have followed either the human body or the food which invigorates it, first to their secondary principles, and then to their elements, beyond which we have not been permitted to penetrate.

Here I intended to have given a little treatise on alimentary chemistry, and to tell my readers, to how many thousands of hydrogen, carbon, etc., may be reduced the dishes that sustain us. I did not do so, however, because I remembered I would only have to copy many excellent treatises on chemistry in the hands of every body. I feared, too, that I would relapse into very barren details, and limited myself to a very reasonable nomenclature, which will only require the explanation of a small number of very usual terms.

OSMAZOME.

The greatest service chemistry has rendered to alimentary science, is the discovery of osmazome, or rather the determination of what it was.

Osmazome is the purely sapid portion of flesh soluble in cold water, and separated from the extractive portion which is only soluble in boiling water.

Osmazome is the most meritorious ingredient of all good soups. This portion of the animal forms the red portion of flesh, and the solid parts of roasts. It gives game and venison its peculiar flavor.

Osmazome is most abundant in grown animals which have red or black hair; it is scarcely found at all in the lamb, sucking pig, chicken, and the white meat of the largest fowls. For this reason true connoisseurs always prefer the second joint; instinct with them was the precursor of science.

Thus a knowledge of the existence of osmazome, caused so many cooks to be dismissed, who insisted on always throwing away the first bouillon made from meat. This made the reputation of the soupe des primes, and induced the canon Chevrier to invent his locked kettles. The Abbe Chevrier was the person who never would eat until Friday, lobsters that had not been cooked on the previous Sunday, and every intervening day placed on the fire with the addition of fresh butter.

To make use of this subject, though yet unknown, was introduced the maxim, that to make good bouillon the kettle should only smile.

Osmazome, discovered after having been so long the delight of our fathers, may be compared to alcohol, which made whole generations drunk before it was simply exhibited by distillation.

PRINCIPLE OF ALIMENTS.

The fibre is what composes the tissue of the meat, and what is apparent after the juices have been extracted. The fibres resist boiling water, and preserve their form, though stripped of a portion of their wrappings. To carve meat properly the fibres should be cut at right angles, or nearly so, with the blade of the knife. Meat thus carved looks better, tastes better, and is more easily chewed.

The bones are composed principally of gelatine and the phosphate of lime.

The quantity of gelatine diminishes as we grow older. At seventy the bones are but an imperfect marble, the reason why they are so easily broken, and why old men should carefully avoid any fall.

Albumen is found both in the flesh and the blood. It coagulates at a heat above 40 Reaumur, and causes the scum on the pot-au-feu.

Gelatine is also found in the bones, the soft and the cartilaginous parts. Its distinctive quality is to coagulate at the ordinary temperature of the atmosphere; to effect this only two and a half per cent. are needed.

Gelatine is the basis of all jelleys, of blanc manges, and other similar preparations.

Grease is a concrete oil formed in the interstices of the cellary tissue. It sometimes agglomerates in animals whom art or nature has so predisposed, such as pigs, fowls, ortolans and snipe. In some of these animals it loses its insipidity and acquires a slight and agreeable aroma.

Blood is composed of an albuminous serum and of fibrine, some gelatine and a little osmazome. It coagulates in warm water and is most nourishing, (e. g.) the blood pudding.

All the principles, we have passed in review, are common to man and to animals which feed.

All the principles we pass in review are common both to man and animals which he eats. It is not then surprising that animal food is eminently restorative and invigorating. The particles of which it is composed having a great similitude with those of which we are formed may easily be animalized when they are subjected to the vital action of our digestive organs.

VEGETABLE KINGDOM.

The vegetable kingdom however presents not less varied sources of nutrition.

The fecula is especially nutritious, especially as it contains fewer foreign principles.

By fecula we mean farina or flower obtained from cereals, from legumes and various kinds of roots, among which the potato holds a prominent place.

The fecula is the substance of bread, pastry and purees of all kinds. It thus enters to a great degree into the nourishment of almost all people.

Such food diminishes the fibres and even the courage. [Footnote: The H. E. I. Co. Sepoys, however, fight well. It may be doubted though if either Ireland or Italy will be free, until the one gives up the potato and the other macaroni. The reason why Irishmen fight better in other countries than their own, is possibly that abroad they are better fed than at home.] We must, to sustain this, refer to the Indians (East) who live on rice and serve every one who chosea to command them.

Almost all domestic animals eat the fecula, and are made by it extremely strong; for it is a more substantial nourishment than the dry and green vegetables which are their habitual food.

Sugar is not less important, either as a remedy or as an aliment.

This substance once obtained, either from the Indies or from the colonies became indigenous at the commencement of this century. It has been discovered in the grape, the turnip, the chestnut, and especially in the beet. So that speaking strictly Europe need appeal neither to India or America for it. Its discovery was a great service rendered by science to humanity, and furnishes an example which cannot but have the happiest results. (Vide enfro Sugar.)

Sugar, either in a solid state or in the different plants in which nature has placed it, is extremely nourishing. Animals are fond of it, and the English give large quantities to their blood-horses, and have observed that it sustained them in the many trials to which they were subjected.

Sugar in the days of Louis XIV. was only found in apothecary shops, and gave birth to many lucrative professions, such as pastry-cooks, confectioners, liquourists, &c. Mild oils also come from the vegetable kingdom. They are all esculent, but when mingled with other substances they should be looked on only as a seasoning. Gluten found in the greatest abundance in cheese, contributes greatly to the fermentation of the bread with which it is united. Chemists assign it an animal nature.

They make at Paris for children and for birds, and in some of the departments for men also, patisseries in which gluten predominates, the fecula having been removed by water.

Mucilage owes its nourishments to the many substances of which it is the vehicle.

Gum may be considered an aliment, not a strong thing, as it contains nearly the same elements as sugar.

Vegetable gelatine, extracted from many kinds of fruits, especially from apples, goose-berries, quinces, and some others, may also be considered a food. It is more nutritious when united with sugar, but it is far inferior in that respect to what is extracted from bones, horns, calves' feet and fish. This food is in general light, mild and healthy. The kitchen and the pharmaceutist's laboratory therefore dispute about it.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FAT AND LEAN.

Next to the JUICE, which, as we have said, is composed of asmazome and the extractus, there are found in fish many substances which also exist in land animals, such as fibrine, gelatine, albumen. So that we may really say JUICE distinguishes the flesh diet from what the church calls maigre.

The latter too has another peculiarity. Fish contains a large quantity of phosphorus and hydrogen, that is to say of the two most combustible things in nature. Fish therefore is a most heating diet. This might legitimate the praise once bestowed on certain religious orders, the regime of whom was directly opposed to the commonly esteemed most fragile.

INDIVIDUAL INSTANCE.

I will say no more on this physiological fact, but will not omit an instance which may be easily verified.

Some years ago I went to a country house, in the vicinity of Paris, and on the Seine, near St. Denis, near a hamlet composed chiefly of fishing huts. I was amazed at the crowd of huts I saw swarming in the road.

I remarked it with amazement to the boatman who took me across the river.

"Monsieur," said he, "we have eight families here, have fifty- three children, among whom are forty-nine girls and four boys. That one is mine." As he spoke he pointed triumphantly to a little whelp, of about five years of age, who was at the bow of the boat eating raw craw-fish.

From this observation I made ten years ago, and others I could easily recall, I have been led to think that the genesiac sense is moved by fish-eating, and that it is rather irritating than plethoric and substantial. I am inclined to maintain this opinion the more, because Doctor Bailly has recently proved, by many instances, that when ever the number of female children exceeds the male, the circumstance is due to some debilitating circumstances. This will account to us for the jests made from the beginning of time, whenever a man's wife bears him a daughter instead of a son.

I might say much about aliments considered as a tout ensemble, and about the various modifications they undergo by mixing, etc.; I hope, though, that the preceding will suffice to the majority of readers. I recommend all others to read some book ex professo, and will end with the things which are not without interest.

The first is that animalization is affected almost as vegetation is, that is that the reparative current formed by digestion, is inhaled in various manners by the tubes with which the organs are provided, and becomes flesh, nails, hair, precisely as earth, watered by the same fluid, becomes radish, lettuce, potato,--as the gardener pleases.

The second is that in the organization of life, the same elements which chemistry produces are not obtained. The organs destined to produce life and motion only act on what is subjected to them.

Nature, however, loves to wrap herself in veils, and to stop us at every advance, and has concealed the laboratory where new transformations are affected. It is difficult to explain how, having determined that the human body contained lime, sulphur, and phosphorous iron, and the other substances, all this CAN be renewed every ten years by bread and water.

MEDITATION VI.

FOOD IN GERMS.

SECTION SECOND.

SPECIALITIES.

WHEN I began to write, my table of contents was already prepared; I have advanced slowly, however, because a portion of my time is consecrated to serious labors.

During this interval of time much of my matter has escaped my memory, or been wrested from me. Elementary books on chemistry or materia medica have been put into the hands of every body, and things I expected to teach for the first time, have become popular. For instance, I had devoted many pages to the chemistry of the pot-au-feu, the substance of which is found in many books recently published.

Consequently, I had to revise this part of my book, and have so condensed it that it is reduced to a few elementary principles, to theories which cannot be too widely propagated, and to sundry observations, the fruits of a long experience, which I trust will be new to the majority of my readers.