Cooks, Gluttons and Gourmets: A History of Cookery

By Betty Wason

This is the first and only book which traces the history of cookery from the days of primitive man up to the present day of the Four Seasons Restaurant and gourmet supermarkets. It is full of curious lore about cooking down through the ages, and also features over 150 extra-special recipes, adapted from their historical sources for the modern American kitchen.

Opening with a description of feasts in ancient Greece, Miss Wason rapidly covers a gastronomical tour of Greece and Rome—including feasts where each guest was served an entire roast boar; visits to neighbors when you brought your own goatskin of wine and they provided appetizers; banquets at which one rose was placed on the table, signifying that nothing said there could be repeated, thus sub rosa.

Undaunted by the scope and complexity of her subject matter, Miss Wason covers cookery in the Far and Near East, all of Europe and the New World, using anecdotes about those who cook and enjoy food. The last four chapters are devoted to the United States—from Thomas Jefferson to the Harvey girls to Betty Crocker.

COOKS, GLUTTONS AND GOURMETS is a book for everyone interested in food—fun reading for the gourmet, invaluable as a reference work for home economists and others in the food field, it is also a practical guide for the home cook who can now give company meals the added spice of history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Muriwai Books
• Release date: Dec 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781789124590

Betty Wason

Betty Wason (1912-2001) was an American author and broadcast journalist. She was a pioneer, with such others as Mary Marvin Breckinridge and Sigrid Schultz, of female journalism in the United States. She was born Elizabeth Wason on March 6, 1912 in Delphi, Indiana, the daughter of judge James Paddock Wason, who was appointed to the 39th Indiana Circuit Court in 1906, and Susan Una Edson Wason. Wason studied classical violin and painting, and graduated from Purdue University in 1933 with a B.S. in Home Economics. During World War II she became a CBS correspondent in Europe. After war end, she turned her wartime work as a correspondent into a long career in broadcasting and writing. She worked as women’s editor at Voice of America, and as an editor at McCall’s and Woman’s Home Companion. She was also editor at General Foods Kitchen and food publicist for a number of wine and food firms in New York City. A prolific author, Wason published numerous books, including Dinners That Wait, Cooking Without Cans, and Miracle in Hellas: The Greeks Fight On. She died on February 13, 2001, aged 88.

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Text originally published in 1962 under the same title.

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Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

COOKS, GLUTTONS & GOURMETS

A HISTORY OF COOKERY

BY

BETTY WASON

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

DEDICATION 4

INTRODUCTION 5

CHAPTER ONE—In the Land of Epicurus 7

A Few Epicurean Recipes 15

CHAPTER TWO—Apicius, the Fannie Farmer of Imperial Rome 18

Some Apician Recipes 26

CHAPTER THREE—Cookery Contests of Ancient Persia 30

Some Persian Delights 38

CHAPTER FOUR—Gourmets Among the Cannibals 41

A Trio of Prehistoric Recipes 54

CHAPTER FIVE—The Culinary Wisdom of the Orient 56

Some Savory Indian Curries 67

A Chinese Dinner 70

Two Japanese Contributions 72

CHAPTER SIX—Medieval Feasting 74

Dishes of Medieval Heritage 83

Florentine Dishes 86

CHAPTER SEVEN—Discoveries of the Conquistadores 88

Classic Spanish Dishes: Of Moorish Heritage 99

From Discoveries of the Conquistadores 101

Marriage of Mexican and Spanish 108

CHAPTER EIGHT—Ottoman and Austrian 110

Byzantine Specialties 118

Ottoman Favorites 120

Austro-Hungarian Contributions 121

Coffee Recipes 124

CHAPTER NINE—Kings and Drunken Cakes 126

CHAPTER TEN—The French Glory 139

Immortal French Recipes 149

CHAPTER ELEVEN—Even Queens Kept Receipt Books 155

Recipes of Queens 165

CHAPTER TWELVE—Thomas Jefferson’s Kitchen 169

Of Indian Inspiration—Favorites from Thomas Jefferson’s Kitchen 185

CHAPTER THIRTEEN—The Art of the Creole 192

Famous Dishes of New Orleans 201

CHAPTER FOURTEEN—Melting Pot-au-Feu 206

Melting Pot Heritage: From New England 222

From the Pennsylvania Dutch 224

Delmonico Creations 226

West Coast Creations 228

A Sample of Fannie Farmer 230

Midwestern Favorites 232

CHAPTER FIFTEEN—A Gourmet in Every Split Level 239

Recipes for the Split-Level Age 253

Four Creations of Albert Stockli 255

Polynesian Foods 257

A Trio of Famous Restaurant Creations 258

A Patio Special 261

BIBLIOGRAPHY 262

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 268

DEDICATION

To my daughter,

ELLEN PAMELA HALL

INTRODUCTION

With some women it’s jewelry, with others mink coats; with me it’s cookbooks. Collecting cookbooks is my obsession. As soon as I’m in the vicinity of a bookstore, something begins to happen; my pulse quickens; I scold myself in advance for the extravagance I am about to commit, but my feet take me inexorably to the cookbook section and there time flies by. An hour later I emerge with an armful of books, an empty wallet, and a nagging conscience. Why should anybody want over two hundred cookbooks cluttering the house?

New books are luring enough, old cookbooks even more so. My lodestar is a secondhand bookshop on lower Fourth Avenue in Manhattan, The Corner Book Shop, which is not on a corner at all but wedged between two other equally dingy, cluttered book emporiums. The shop’s hours of business are erratic, its merchandise thick with dust, and I rarely find the subject matter I have come there to seek. On the other hand, I never leave empty-handed.

One day Miss Eleanor Lowenstein, the manager of the store, cunningly put before me a three-volume translation from the Greek of The Deipnosophists, a treatise written, historians believe, sometime during the second century by an Egyptian-Greek who called himself Athenaeus. Next to cooking, the subject which fascinates me most is ancient Greece. How could I possibly resist such a treasure? I went away twenty dollars poorer, and my conscience raging. Yet this was the book which led me to write the present volume, and an exciting adventure it has been, a true labor of love.

Once upon a time I sat at dawn upon the steps of an ancient stadium on the brow of Mount Parnassus, above the old village of Delphi in Greece. The visit to Delphi had been a kind of pilgrimage—I was born in Delphi, Indiana. The village itself, however, was something of a disappointment, and I slept scarcely at all that night in the village inn because of the howling of the winds around my window. At dawn, rather than toss longer on the hard bed, I crept out of the inn and up the slopes of Mount Parnassus alone, and so I reached the stadium just as the sky reddened with the sunrise. It was an exciting moment. I could swear there were ghosts up there with me, joyous Hellenes whose spirits refused to die. Now I am sure, after reading The Deipnosophists, that there were gourmets among those ghosts on Parnassus, ancient spirits who had loved the delights of eating and drinking as much as I.

Even more astonishing was to learn from Athenaeus that cooking in ancient Greece was regarded as an art and cooks were men of stature. Men, yes—note that. Athenaeus mentions by name twenty authors of cookery books and not one a woman. This was true in other civilizations as well up to comparatively modern times.

Already, before buying The Deipnosophists, I had been fascinated by the history of cookery, and many other volumes in my private library touched on the subject. But nowhere had I come across a complete history of cookery tracing man’s (and woman’s) efforts in this art from early times up to the present. I felt there should be such a book, and why should I not be the one to write it?

The research was a far bigger job than I had anticipated. There was voluminous information about the cookery of certain periods, scarcely any about cookery in the Orient. I dug through volumes of history and philosophy, visited all the larger libraries in New York City, contacted people who were considered experts. The staff of my own library in Pleasantville was wonderfully helpful; they borrowed books from other libraries for me, even, on one occasion, locating a copy of a book long out of print, not even available from the largest bookstore in London (where it had been published). Yet despite all this research, I found precious little about Chinese cookery, nothing at all to confirm the widely held view that Marco Polo brought back from China the secret of making the noodles from which spaghetti evolved. I read three separate translations of Marco Polo’s Travels, and none contained any information about Chinese cookery.

Finally I visited the East Asian Library at Columbia University. They had several ancient Chinese cookbooks—but all in Chinese. I would have to find someone to translate them. This, too, proved harder than I would have anticipated. Most of the young Chinese students at Columbia cannot read the ancient Chinese. At last, through a mutual friend, I found a Chinese language teacher lately arrived from Shanghai who was willing to go to the library with me and make a rough translation from a book published about the thirteenth century, during the period when Marco Polo visited China. The book was as much a revelation to him as to me. The Chinese people should know about this book! he exclaimed.

The hardest task, when I had completed my research, was determining what to delete. I had material enough for a small library! There will be many protests, I am sure, about events or people important to culinary history which have not been mentioned. I can only reply that to put together a truly comprehensive history of cookery would have resulted in a book the size of the unabridged Oxford Dictionary.

Something needs to be said about the recipes in this book. For future historians it would have been more useful to include the original authentic recipes, however time-consuming preparation of them might be. But for twentieth-century cooks this would have had only passing interest. I chose to adapt ancient recipes, to put them in modern terms and make use of available supermarket items. After all, if one can achieve the same effect by using packaged gelatin in place of calf’s-foot jelly, what’s the difference? (And where can you buy calves’ feet today anyway?) Very well, some critics will say, but why go to the extent of using pudding mixes and even a hot-roll mix? The answer is that I used short-cut foods where I felt they were justified and the results acceptable to my own exacting culinary standards.

From my own experience I can predict that any host or hostess who tosses off the casual remark, I am serving you stuffed capon tonight made as they used to serve it back in ancient Rome, will be injecting something new and refreshing into dinner-table conversation. It gives cookery that extra dimension that makes it fun as well as art.

CHAPTER ONE—In the Land of Epicurus

Awakening to the sounds of a summer morning, Philoxemus saw that the day was dazzling, the Aegean sky stark blue above the garden walls. A perfect day for a wedding feast, he mused. But whose wedding? Someone must be getting married in the city of Athens—it was the season. Dimly he remembered having heard an argument in the market place only the day before between two cooks....

A wedding feast! It was a week since Philoxemus had attended a banquet. Jumping from his couch, he called his slaves.

Do we have some of that Syrian cuminseed? Excellent! Pour some Hymmetus honey into a jar. And...let’s see. A few marinated fig leaves. Some pickle juice—that pickle juice we put up last week is a superb concoction. Ah, yes, I think we can go visiting today!

Philoxemus hummed a popular melody as he pulled down herbs and spices from the shelves. Then he was ready for departure, his lyre tucked under his arm. Three slaves prepared to follow him, one with a jar of olive oil, another carrying a basket of spices and the pickle juice, the third bearing honey and seasoned fig leaves.

By now the sun was high in the heavens, the soft sea air caressing eucalyptus leaves and fluttering azalea blossoms. Philoxemus sniffed. Why, of course! The daughter of Mnesitheus the physician is to be married today. We should arrive at just the right time!

At the Mnesitheus villa, so frantic were the wedding preparations that no one noticed the arrival of Philoxemus and his slaves. He entered the open kitchen and watched the master cook stuff a dressed pig with chopped eggs and Salamis sausages.

You know, a little powdered cumin sprinkled over those eggs would add divine flavor—and it happens I have some very fine Syrian cuminseeds with me.

The flushed cook turned around. Philoxemus again, he muttered. One can always count on you to turn up when there is a banquet being prepared.

Yes. The scent of your superb cooking carried over the rooftops—it awakened me from my slumbers this morning. I said to myself, Alexis, the cook of Mnesitheus, must be busy creating some magnificent dish. And then, suddenly, I remembered about the wedding. Philoxemus signaled to his slaves to enter the kitchen and ordered them to help with preparations for the feast.

When wedding guests began to arrive, Philoxemus left for the dining hall and quickly made himself at home among them. He had long ago perfected the art of gate-crashing. Before an exasperated host could throw him out, he would always pick up his lyre, start singing a naughty song, and soon have everyone laughing at his wit. This was to happen at today’s wedding feast. Before sundown Philoxemus, the uninvited guest, was the hit of the party. The delighted bridegroom insisted Philoxemus stay on for the rest of the celebration, and for three days the wedding guests were regaled with songs, stories, and mouthwatering food prepared under the direction of this audacious Athenian.

The story of Philoxemus is told in The Deipnosophists, a sprawling fifteen-book account of food and feasting written in the second century by a Greek who called himself Athenaeus. In the Athens of that era people frequently were seen carrying baskets of food along the streets. Most often it was for a dole-basket supper, an elegant picnic at which each guest contributed a share of the food and wine. These were not simple affairs. Culinary competition was keen. A man had as much pride about his contribution to the dole-basket supper as any contemporary American matron baking a cake or pie for a church festival. The picnickers ate from alabaster dishes, drank wine from silver bowls, and nibbled at cheesecakes served in gaily decorated boxes.

Philoxemus was welcome at dole-basket suppers because he was an excellent cook himself and could always be counted on to furnish superb food, but the lavish outlay of a wedding feast was more to his liking—a wedding feast which might last for days, as did the celebration for the daughter of the physician, where there would be not only wine and food, groaning abundantly on the tables day after day, but diversified entertainment furnished as well.

In the year 310 B.C. a man named Hippoluchus wrote a letter to a friend in Athens describing a wedding feast he had attended in Macedonia. Only twenty guests were present, though each brought at least one slave along—to carry home the loot.

As soon as the guests were seated, Hippoluchus related, servants of the host entered, carrying silver drinking bowls brimming with wine. These bowls were meant as gifts, mementos of the feast. Soon the servants appeared again with brazen platters of Corinthian workmanship, also gifts, but serving meanwhile as plates for the first course. This consisted, says Hippoluchus, of poultry, ducks, pigeons, and a goose.

No one was expected to eat everything. The slaves came along to wrap up the leftovers, carrying these home with the silverware.

For the next course golden platters were handed the guests, then they were offered hares, and kids, and rolls curiously made, and doves, turtledoves, partridges, and every other kind of bird imaginable.

After this they washed their hands in the sea, had wine to drink, and watched some flute-playing women. Presently, instead of supper, huge silver platters, each containing a roast boar, were brought in. Each guest was handed an entire roast boar. It was a pretty thing, done to a crackling brown, with a stuffing of roasted thrushes and paunches and a most countless number of figpeckers and the yolks of eggs spread on the top, and oysters and periwinkles.

Hippoluchus told his Athenian friend, Every one of the guests was presented a boar stuffed this way, nice and hot, together with the dish on which he was served up. And after this we drank wine, and each of us received a hot kid, on another platter like that on which the boar had been served up.

This was only the beginning. Again they rested between courses, watched jugglers and dancers and conjuring women tumbling, and standing on their heads on swords, and vomiting fire out of their mouths.

While watching this act the wedding guests were served a hot drink, several kinds of wine, roast fishes of every imaginable sort and a silver breadbasket full of Cappadocian loaves, some of which we ate and some we delivered to the slaves behind us.

The drinking went on until shadows were beginning to fall. Then there was more entertainment—and more food. At last the evening came to a close, and sweetmeats in plaited baskets made of ivory were distributed to everyone. And cheesecakes of every kind known, Cretan cheesecakes, and your Samian ones, and Attic ones, with the proper boxes or dishes suitable to each kind of confection.

Hippoluchus concludes his letter by saying, After this we all rose up and departed, quite sobered, by Jove, by the thoughts of, and our anxiety about, the treasures which we had received.

Food was apparently as fascinating a subject to the literati of Pericles’ land as any other aspect of life. Athenaeus mentions the names of as many as twenty cookbook authors; one, Archestratus, produced his masterpiece Gastrology in 350 B.C. Archestratus was said to have traveled widely searching for new recipes, many of which are still in use today. Not only epicurean aristocrats collected recipes; professional cooks held a respected position in Greek society. The Greek cook was an artisan, paid better than any other hired workman, often an educated man who would declaim poetry on occasion and who fully expected to be called in to drink with the guests when he produced a masterpiece for their enjoyment. Cooking was, in fact, a recognized art, and Greek intellectuals considered a new dish as important as a new poem.

Athenaeus’ book is a dialogue between two men at a banquet who talk not for just hours but for days on end about food, feasting and drinking, famous epicureans and infamous gluttons. All that is known of the author is that he came from Egypt to Athens toward the end of the second century A.D. He was a bookworm as well as a gourmet; the libraries of Athens lured him like a lodestar. No man ever applied reed pen to parchment more assiduously in copying down quotations from the works of others. He gives not only a rare picture of contemporary life and of the people who made up his world; he also quotes copiously from plays, letters, essays, and cookbooks which no longer exist—his is the only record of most of the authors still extant. He wrote not only of his own time but of the Hellenic world back to the days of Homer, spanning continents from Persia to Britain.

A man named Agres of Rhodes was said to have first thought of filleting fish; a Corinthian named Nereuse turned the conger eel into a dish fit for the gods; Euthymus was famous for his delectable vegetable dishes; the god, Orion, was said to have invented white wine sauce.

Athenaeus tells us that Aristotle was an epicure of fish. Epicurus himself, the man whose name was to become a synonym for gustatory pleasure, was the idol of Athenaeus. This wise man, declares Athenaeus, shouted out, as I may say, ‘The fountain and root of every good is the pleasure of the stomach.’

Plato, on the other hand, emerges as something of a prig. Plato urged a system of temperance: boys should not taste wine until they were eighteen. (It is not well to heap fire on fire.)

Even after eighteen moderate drinking should be the rule until a man reached thirty. But once a man was forty (how old was Plato when he suggested this?) he could relax and enjoy himself, invoking the gods and especially Bacchus...since he it is who has given us this means of indulgence as an ally against the austerity of old age.

Plato was hired by Dionysius, the ruler of Sicily, to tutor his son, but when the renowned Athenian philosopher journeyed to Sicily he was appalled. He returned to Athens in disgust, explaining why in one of his letters.

The way of life that I found was not at all pleasing to me. Twice in the day they eat to satiety, and they never sleep alone at night; and they indulge also in all other such practises as naturally follow on such habits....

Other accounts of life in the Greek cities of Italy bear out Plato’s impressions. In Sybaris social entertaining was so lavish that invitations to banquets were issued a year in advance to give the ladies ample time to design their gowns. A law prohibited noisy artisans, such as coppersmiths, from plying their trade within city limits so that the slumber of the city fathers—and their concubines and wives—should never be disturbed.

But the cook was even more respected in Sybaris than in Athens. At public celebrations cooks who had served up the most exquisite dishes at banquets were crowned on a dais before public throngs. A law was passed providing a copyright for outstanding recipes; anyone who created a peculiar and excellent dish was entitled to all profits from its sale for a full year, and no one else during that period could copy it.

Dionysius, the Sicilian ruler who had hired Plato as a tutor, fitted happily into this lascivious life. He often recited his own poetry at banquets. Finally he became ambitious to air his literary powers in Athens and arranged for one of his plays to be produced in a Greek amphitheater. His play was well received. Dionysius was elated. He gave a sumptuous feast in the Sicilian manner to celebrate. Wine was poured copiously; servants bore in course after course after course of food. Dionysius ate and drank himself into a stupor, and by morning he was dead—from overeating.

In this he holds rank with an even more famous Greek, Alexander the Great. Accounts of how Alexander met his death differ, but all historians agree he was much too fond of the goblet–one of the most celebrated drunks of all time. According to his erstwhile tutor, Aristotle, this was the cause of Alexander’s lack of success with the ladies. In Aristotle’s words, it left Alexander with little inclination for amatory pleasures. When Alexander did at last marry, it was to a beautiful dancing girl named Roxana. Roxana bore him a son, but she was not so devoted to the Greek ruler as he thought; secretly she plotted to destroy him. According to one tale, she did so by preparing him a delectable feast which she served to him one summer evening by the deep pool in their Persian garden. Alexander, as usual, drank more than anyone else—and this time ate more too. When he had finished and lay back belching on his royal couch, Roxana cunningly suggested, Why don’t you cool off with a swim in the pool? Alexander, tipsy with wine, jumped to his feet and plunged into the icy-cold water. By evening he was delirious with fever. A few days later the dashing conqueror of Persia, at the age of thirty-three, lay dead. (According to another tale, it was a six-day drinking bout that led to the fever which cost Alexander his life, but there is agreement, at least, that overindulgence was his ruin.)

Drinking was as controversial a question in those days as now. Plato’s was not the only voice to plead temperance. In Lacedaemon (Sparta) they clamped a fine on any man found to be drunk; even at the festival of Bacchus drunkenness was forbidden, and the Lacedaemonians were proud of the fact that in their city sobriety was fashionable. This led the Sicilians to remark that they knew why the Lacedaemonians were such devilish fighters—it was because they had been trained in hell. Aristophanes, the playwright, expressed his feeling about wine with an immortal phrase; he called it the milk of Aphrodite. And a poet named Diphilus anticipated the feelings of generations of tipplers to come when he penned the lines:

Pour me now a cup of wine to drink,

For watery things are ruinous to the stomach!

At drinking parties which lasted until dawn Athenian philosophers and pundits on their couches talked long and lovingly about food, if we can take The Deipnosophists as an example. They discussed the comparative succulence of different species of fish, which eggs were the sweetest (peacock eggs, according to cookbook author Heraclides), and how to make a cheesecake. They also harked back to the good old days of Homer when two men might share a roast pig between them for lunch, washed down with ever brimming cups of rosy wine, and to the opulence of kings in times past who gave away entire joints of meat and birds and fishes ready-dressed, enough to fill a wagon, to guests who came to their feasts.

Women were barred from Athenian drinking parties—respectable women, at least—but in Illyria things were different. There wives accompanied their husbands to banquets so that they could steer the men home safely afterward. The Illyrian banquets were more sedate; the guests sat up when they ate and drank. Also, it was reckoned a decorous custom for the women to pledge the guests who were present.

Drinking in Athens was not confined to banquets and dole-basket suppers. They had a cocktail hour, too. You could drop by at a neighbor’s with your own goatskin of wine and be treated to a fine outlay of appetizers. Provocatives to drinking, the Greeks called them. Roasted grasshoppers were offered along with caviar and oysters. Pistachio nuts, many kinds of cheese, olives, tiny shrimp, marinated octopus, and a pâté made from goose liver might also be among the items served to provoke thirst. (As the Alsatians were to do centuries later, the Greeks raised geese especially for their livers, force-feeding them in much the same way.)

A still more elaborate provocative to drinking might be tiny rolls of spicily seasoned chopped meat wrapped in grape leaves, the dolmades still enjoyed in Greece today—except that today’s dolmades are more often filled with a rice mixture, and rice was not known in Greece in Athenaeus’ day.

Occasionally dolmades were made with cabbage leaves instead of grape leaves; in time the meat rolls would become larger and would be served as a dinner entree in South and Central Europe and become known the world over as Stuffed Cabbage. (A recipe for dolmades, based on the description given in The Deipnosophists, will be found at the end of this chapter.)

Banquets were lavish, but everyday meals were simple. One man laments, as he leaves a banquet hall, …and tomorrow I must go back to barley-meal and cheese!

Two main meals a day were the rule, the first mostly leftovers from the day before, a hearty mid-morning breakfast. In early afternoon came the big meal of the day, served to the men of the family in the dining hall while the women ate alone in their own quarters. A typical villa was almost a village; there might be fifty women under the same roof, including kinswomen and slave girls. Within the walls there were vegetable plots and orchards where grew apricot, peach, plum, almond, and fig trees. Oranges, the golden apples of the Hesperides, might also be there, as well as a plant called a Persian apple, whose leaves served as an antidote to food poisoning or to keep moths away from woolens, or the seeds could be chewed as a breath sweetener. (Theophrastus, in his History of Plants, expressed the belief that this Persian apple was related to the citron. It may have been a lemon tree.)

Even in Homer’s day meals were daintily served in aristocratic homes. A servant girl would first set out small, highly polished tables before each man of the family—as well as any male strangers who happened down the road, for it was traditional Greek hospitality to invite travelers in to partake of the family fare. Next she brought a basin to each man for washing. If the meat was a stew which had simmered on a tripod over the fire, the caldron itself might be carried right to the dining hall. Achilles once offered such a caldron as prize to the winner of a chariot race; it held seventeen gallons and was embossed with silver, with handles and castors of gold.

The women of the Greek household ground cereals, baked bread, made porridge and soups—but men did all the serious cooking. In Homer’s day fish was despised as poor man’s food; the only decent meal for a gentleman was one of roasted or boiled meat, bread, cheese, and salad. Salad, according to Homer, was one of the favorite foods of the gods.

Three hundred years later fish had become not only respectable but a gourmet’s food. Aristotle wrote an entire book about the different species of fish and shellfish in Aegean waters with suggestions as to how to cook them. Not only did aristocratic epicures exchange recipes; playwrights wrote cooking hints into their plays—and audiences loved it. Listen to the instructions for preparing pickled horaeum as described by a cook in the play, A Wicked Woman.

"I wish now, sitting quiet by myself,

To ponder in my mind some dainty dishes;

And also to arrange what may be best

For the first course, and how I best may flavour

Each separate dish.

Now first of all the pickled horaeum comes...

Wash it well

Then strew a large flat dish with seasoning,

Put in that the fish. Pour in white wine

And oil, then add some boiled beef marrow-bones.

After taking it from the fire, the last zest

Shall be by assafoetida imparted."

Another cook in still another play, boasting that he does not depend on receipts or books of cookery, lets the audience in on the secret of how to bake a shark: you stuff it with half-ripe mulberries. To cook limpets, you tear the heads away, cover them with flour and bread crumbs, and fry them in oil. Dainty grayling he would cook simply with herbs, cumin, some water, and some salt. Best of all, he declares, is a widowed amia...a noble and dainty fish which he did wrap in fig-leaves, soaked it through with oil, and over all with swaddling clothes of marjoram did I fold it, and hid it like a torch beneath the ashes.

Greeks used spices judiciously and with respect. They had a word for them: aroma. Herbs were said to improve brain power; chervil was said to cure hiccups; parsley would delay intoxication—the Greeks wore garlands of parsley on their heads before embarking on a drinking bout. Dill seeds were chewed as a brain stimulant, to keep awake.

As highly prized as fish recipes were those for cheesecakes. This must have been used as a generic term, for some cheesecakes were made with flour and sesame seeds, a pastry for holding a soft cheese mixture; some were baked, some fried or boiled in oil (probably what we call deep-fat frying); others were molded and chilled in snow. Other cheesecakes had no cheese in them at all. A Cretan cheesecake was made of toasted crushed nuts, fruit, and boiled honey. Sour wine might be blended with soft cheese for a cake, or grated hard cheese might be passed through a sieve, then mixed with mead.

With their cheesecakes they drank hippocras, a sweetened spiced wine which was to be a favorite drink with European royalty for hundreds of years to come.

The number of cooks that appeared as characters in the plays of ancient Greece is extraordinary. Granted that Athenaeus was a fanatic about food and purposely sought out culinary references in Greek literature. In how many modern plays do cooks appear, especially cooks that give out recipes over the footlights?

In one play, written by Dionysius, a cook declares that his art is one that requires as much skill as that of an architect, a general, a philosopher, and historian combined.

"...It’s not every one

That’s called a general