Gastronome, Gastronomer

[Gr. gaster, and nomos, a rule.) An epicure; a gourmand; one who is fond of good eating; a gourmet; a glutton. Gastronom'ic, Gastronomical, a . [Fr. gas tronomique .] Having reference or pertaining to gastronomy; as, the gastronomic art. Gastronomist, n. A gastronome; a bon-vivant. Gastronomy, n. [Fr. gastronomie , from Gr. gastro nomia- gaster , the belly, and nomos , a rule.] Cookery is the art of preparing food so as to render it fit for digestion by the human body; and gastronomy is the science of good living, or of enjoying plentifully, though with prudent moderation, the pleasures of the table. Between cookery and gastronomy stands the cook, the greatest, or at least the most useful, of all functionaries, if we consider that there cannot be a sound mind where the stomach is not in a healthy condition, and that the cook is its great ruler. We therefore propose to illustrate in this article cookery , cooks , and gastronomy , as things e entially connected and almost inseparable. It appears that the attractive luxuries of the table were first appreciated by the A yrians and the Persians, those voluptuous Asiatics who, by reason of the enervating mildne of their climate, were powerle to resist sensual seductions. Greece, "beloved daughter of the gods," speedily embellished the culinary art with all the exquisite delicacy of her poetic genius. Rome was long renowned for her austere frugality; and it is remarked that during more than five centuries the art of making bread was there unknown, which says little for her civilization and intelligence. Subsequently, the conquest of Greece, the spoils of the subjugated world, and the peculiar refinement of the Syracusans, gave to the conquered nations, says Juvenal, a complete revenge on their conquerors. The unheard-of exce es of the table swallowed up patrimonies which seemed to be inexhaustible, and illustrious gourmands obtained a durable but sad renown. A pa age in Macrobius, (a curious monument of Roman cookery,) gives the following account of a supper given by the pontiff Lentulus on the day of his reception: - "The first course ( ante - can a ) was composed of sea-hedgehogs, raw oysters in abundance, and all sorts of shell-fish, and asparagus. The second course comprised a fine fatted pullet, a fresh dish of oysters and other shell-fish, different kinds of dates, univalvular shell-fish (as whelks, conchs, .), more oysters (but of different kinds), sea-nettles, beccaficoes, chines of roe-buck and wild boar, fowls covered with a perfumed paste, a second dish of shell-fish, and purples -a very costly kind of crustaceæ. The third and last course presented several hors - d'œuvre , a wild boar's head, fish; a second set of hors - d'œuvre , -ducks, potted river-fish, leverets, roast fowls, and cakes from the marshes of Ancona." Many of these delicacies would very much surprise an epicurean of the present day, particularly if they were offered to him in the order indicated by Macrobius. The author of a rare and very curious book, Medicus at Palatum , formed the charitable project of reconciling medicine and gastronomy, by proving that culinary preparations do not poison - as it has been said the food which nature gives us, and that cooks, far from being the destroyers, are the great benefactors of mankind; indeed, it is a common thing in men to throw upon cooks all the blame for which they ought to accuse their own intemperance. Gourmandise would never rebel against the kitchen if all polyphagists had obtained from the godde Ceres the gift she granted to Pand are a-a celebrated eater, who could pa days and nights at table without experiencing the slightest inconvenience. Seneca, the at rabi lari ous preceptor of Nero, combats, it is true, "those dangerous men who are busied with a single stomach, and who lay the foundation for a train of maladies," ( Epist . 95;) but it must be noted that the pedant Seneca, attacked with an incurable consumption, could eat but very little, which much enraged him, and that his denunciations of the exce ive riches and prodigious luxury of the Romans of his age neither hindered him from po e ing and unceasingly adding to a more than royal fortune, nor from feeding several you sand slaves, and pompously displaying in his palace 500 tables of the most elaborate workmanship, of the rarest wood, all alike, and ornamented with precious incrustations. ( Dio , in Nera .) How often have people extolled the Lacedæmonians and their legislator Lycurgus-strange lawgiver of a strange people, who never learned to eat, and yet who invented the celebrated "black sauce," the jus nigrum , for which the entrails of the hare served as a foundation. Hence, true it is that cookery always preserves certain imprescriptible rights over the most fervent disciples of frugality. Mankind had long obeyed that imperious and periodical nece ity which has been called hunger , before any one thought to form a code of doctrine calculated to guide a sensation which, if its demands be judiciously gratified, procures us the most unique and lasting pleasures. The primitive nations, no doubt, gave themselves up to their mere native gluttony. They ate much, but they fed badly. They had no idea of gastronomy; and consequently they had no cooks in the serious and most complete acceptation of the word. Homer's heroes prepared their repasts with their own hands, and prided themselves on their culinary talents. Uly es surpa ed all others in the art of lighting the fire and laying the cloth. ( Athen . i. 31.) Patroclus drew the wine, and Achilles very carefully turned the spit. (Homer. Iliad.) The conquerors of Troy shone more in the combat than under the tent which served them as kitchen. At length the aurora of the magian ages began to dawn. Man had hitherto known only hunger; he was now to become acquainted with satisfying that hunger on gustatory principles. The king of Sidon learns how to eat; and it is Cadmus, grandfather of Bacchus, the future founder of Thebes, who takes upon himself to instruct his own august palate. In the time of Alcibiades the best cooks came from Sicily; Trimialcio was one of the most celebrated. Athenæus tells us that, when he could not procure rare and highly esteemed fish, he understood so well how to imitate their form and flavor with common fish, that even the most cunning epicures were invariably deceived; - which reminds us of the cook of Louis XIV., who, on a Good Friday, served the king with a dinner, apparently composed of poultry and butcher's meat, but which, in reality, consisted of vegetables only, and prepared, too, au maigre . The Romans, inheritors of the luxury of Asia and Greece, did not erect a temple to the greedy Adephagia, godde of good cheer, who po e ed altars in Sicily ( Elian . Var. Hist . i. 27); but they thought it impo ible to remunerate too highly those who knew how to extend the limits of the pleasures of the table. Antony gave a supper to Cleopatra, and that prince praising the excellence of the repast, her lover immediately called for the cook, and presented him with a city in recompense. How far the most sumptuous banquets of us moderns are behind the most modest collations of Greece and Rome! Lucullus caused to be served to Cicero and Pompey a little ambigu , which cost $5,000. There were only three of them to partake of it! The Emperor Claudius had generally 600 guests at his table ( Sueton . in Claud. 32). Vitelli us did not spend le than $16,000 upon each of his repasts, and the composition of his favorite dishes required that ve els should regularly ply between the Gulf of Venice and the Straits of Cadiz, in the pursuit of delicacies (Sueton. Dio). Galba breakfasted before daybreak, and the breakfast would have enriched a hundred families. Ælius Verus invented the pent a pharma cum, a kind of macédoine, composed of sows' flanks, pheasants, peacocks, ham, and wild boars' flesh (Spartian. In Vero , 5). Geta insisted upon having as many courses as there were letters in the alphabet, and each of these courses must contain all the viands whose name began by the same letter. These follies continued to astonish the world until the moment when Rome crumbled beneath the invincible weight of that horde of barbarians which Divine vengeance reserved for the punishment of unheard-of crimes. But the culinary art always survives revolutions and ruins of empires. Modern Italy inherited the wrecks of Roman cookery, and, thanks to her, Europe is at the present day acquainted with the delights of good cheer, and the charm of joyous and digestible repasts. In the Middle Ages, poultry, butchers' meat, and roast game, were never eaten dry, as they are now, any more than fried as well as the ragout of fowl called à la Chipolata , and the keneffes , a kind of forced-meat balls made of bread and meat, to which the Suabians are very partial, and the piluu , a dish of mutton, fowl, and rice, borrowed from the Turks.-The Jews originally sat down to their meals; but when they became subject to Persia, they laid on couches at their repasts (see Fig. 1129), like their conquerors, and other Oriental nations from whom the Greeks and Romans borrowed their custom ( Hor . Sat. ix. 8,9). The most distinguished place was at the head of the table, at the extremity of the room, near the wall. Under the reign of Solomon, the Hebrews still used seats. The Egyptians were early acquainted with the effeminate sumptuousne of table couches ( Petron . à Nodot . tom . i. p. 124). Homer's heroes sat down to table, and Alexander the Great appears to have preserved the custom. That prince, giving a repast to 10,000 persons, caused all to be seated in silver armchairs, covered with purple. Italy always imitated Greece, and like her had table couches, which at first were used only by men; a feeling of propriety interdicted their nse by women. But the relaxation of morals, seconded by fashion, soon banished this seeming reserve, and the two sexes could only eat in a reclining posture. (Athen. iv.) Among the Persians, the middle place was reserved for the king. In Greece the most distinguished personage occupied the head of the table. The Celts seated themselves at their repasts on hay, before very low tables; the Belgians reclined on a kind of couch; the Gauls on the skins of dogs or wolves ( Martial . xiii. 44). As an example of the magnitude and component substances of a dinner of the Middle Ages, we give the following bill of fare of the banquet given by the great Earl of Warwick (the "King-maker") on the occasion of his brother's installation as Archbishop of York, in 1479: 300 qrs. of wheat; 300 tons of ale; 104 tuns of wine; 1 pipe of spiced wine; 10 fat oxen; 6 wild bulls; 300 pigs; 1,004 wether sheep; 300 hogs; 3,000 calves; 300 capons; 100 roast peacocks; 200 cranes; 200 kids; 2,000 chickens; 4,000 pigeons; 4,000 rabbits; 4,000 ducks; 204 bitterns; 400 herons; 200 pheasants; 500 partridges: 5,000 woodcocks; 400 plovers; 100 curlews; 100 quails; 100,000 eggs; 200 roes; 4,000 roebucks; 155 hot venison pasties, and 4,000 cold ditto; 1,000 dishes of jellies; 2,000 hot custards, and 4,000 cold ditto; 400 tarts; 300 pikes (fish); 300 bream; 8 seals, and 4 porpoises. At this monster "spread," the earl himself acted as steward; the Earl of Bedford was treasurer, and Lord Hastings, comptroller, with many other noble officers; 1,000 servitors or waiting-men; 62 chief cooks, and 515 under-cooks and scullions. - An inexhaustible fund of information respecting G. and the noble art of cookery may be found in the works of Brillat Savarin ( Physio logie du Goût), Ude, Carême, Franc a tell i, Soyer, and Baron Brise.