Macédoine Germanique of Milk.—Pound dry almonds, and put them into a stewpan with the following ingredients:—the most delicate parts of mallows only, and white-beet, some leeks, parsley, and other leguminous herbs, previously cooked, a fowl boiled and minced small, the brains of poultry or sucking pigs, also boiled, and lastly, some hard eggs cut in two. Put all these together, as mentioned before; some little time after that, add sausage meat, fowls’ livers, fresh cod fish, and oysters—the whole reduced into pulp—some fresh cheese, pine nuts, and whole pepper. Whilst this is boiling on a very slow fire, prepare the following seasoning: pound some pepper, alisander, parsley seeds, and silphium; stew separately with gravy; mix raw eggs with a great quantity of milk; add it to the preceding seasoning; pour it over the contents of the stewpan, then pepper, and serve.[XVIII_20]
BUTTER.
A learned writer[XVIII_21] has maintained that the ancient inhabitants of the east did not know of butter, and that by this word must be understood, when it occurs in the holy writings, sour milk or cream. Whatever may be the respect due to the grave authority of Beckmann, we beg leave to adhere to the opinion of various translators of the Bible, and believe with them that the Jews knew how to prepare butter. Independently of the signification of chemack, to which a profound philosopher gives the same sense,[XVIII_22] and which appears very naturally to offer this acceptation, we could still fortify our opinion by the passage where Job, recalling with sorrow the happy days of his youth, says, that he used to wash his “feet in butter.”[XVIII_23] We agree that these words are understood in a figurative sense, and that the man of God wished to show by it that he was the possessor of a great number of flocks.
But it is nevertheless true, that this metaphorical locution recalls also one of the uses made of that fat substance, which was for a long while employed, like oil, to soften and refresh the limbs.
Indulgent reader, excuse this episode upon a ground which we ought not to touch, and let us re-enter the kitchen.
The Greeks, who understood many things, and knew them so well, passed over several centuries without once thinking that the milk of their ewes and cows contained a food already well-known by several barbarous nations. Aristotle mentions the serous part of milk, and cheese;[XVIII_24] but he hardly suspects the existence of butter, which he describes but very imperfectly as a liquid oil.[XVIII_25] Antecedent to him, Hippocrates never thought of it, except as a foreign remedy which Asia supplied to Greece.[XVIII_26]
It was only fifty years after Aristotle that it began to be noticed as an aliment. The Greeks, in imitation of the Parthians and Scythians, who used to send it to them, had it served upon their tables, and called it at first “oil of milk,”[XVIII_27] and later, bouturos, “cow cheese,” probably on account of the quantity made from the milk of that animal.[XVIII_28]
The Germans, according to Beckmann, taught the Romans how to make butter, but they never employed it otherwise than as a remedy in Italy.
It is certain that in the time of Pliny it had hardly been heard of at Rome,[XVIII_29] and that, according to this writer, the barbarians only—that is to say, those who were unfortunate enough not to be either Greeks or Romans—made their food of it.[XVIII_30] Towards the year 175 of the Christian era, Galen then placed butter only among the therapeutic agents useful in medicine.[XVIII_31] However, more than a century before him, Dioscorides wished it to be noticed that fresh butter made of ewes’ or goats’ milk was served at meals instead of oil, and that it took the place of fat in making pastry.[XVIII_32]