It must be confessed that cooks of that gastronomic era had to fulfil an incessant and most laborious task. What was then more natural than to abandon to them some thousands of those sesterces, which the profusion of the master devoured by millions, in the form of phenicopters’ tongues, scarus or parrot-fishes’ livers, and peacocks’ brains?
We see that the Cæsars encouraged this frightful gastronomic monomania. Tiberius gave more than £3,000 to the author of a dialogue, in which the interlocutors were mushrooms, fig-peckers, oysters, and thrushes.[XXII_27]
Galba breakfasted before day-break, and the breakfast would have enriched a hundred families.[XXII_28] Ælius Verus invented the pentapharmacum, a kind of Macédoine, composed of sows’ flanks, pheasants, peacocks, ham, and wild boars’ flesh.[XXII_29] 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.[XXII_30]
These follies, which cooks were forced to obey, continued to astonish the world until the moment when Rome—with her gods, the monuments of her ancient glory, and of her recent turpitudes—crumbled beneath the invincible weight of that horde of barbarians, that mysterious and implacable scourge, which Divine vengeance reserved for the punishment of unheard-of crimes.
But, as we have before remarked, the magiric art always survives revolutions and ruin 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 repasts.
Under the reign of Louis XII. there arose a company of sauce manufacturers, who obtained the exclusive privilege of making sauces. Their statutes (1394) inform us that the famous sauce à la cameline, sold by them, was to be composed “of good cinnamon, good ginger, good cloves, good grains of paradise, good bread, and good vinegar.” The sauce, Tence, was to be made of “good sound almonds, good ginger, good wine, and good verjuice.” We find in Taillevant, the celebrated cook of Charles V. and Charles VI., besides the cameline, l’eau bénite (holy water)—the sauce for pike, le saupiquet, le mostechan, la gélatine, la sauce à l’alose, au moût, that of milk-garlic, cold, red, and green sauces, sauce Robert, Poitevine, à Madame rappée, and à la dodine.
Platina, a Latin author of the 15th century, speaks of other sauces, in the composition of which sugar was frequently employed, according to the proverb of those times: “Sugar never spoiled sauce.”
In the middle ages, poultry, butchers’ meat, and roast game, were never eaten dry, as they are now, any more than fried fish. There were different sauces for all those dishes, and even for the different parts of each animal. The cooks of those days strove to acquire a reputation by inventing strange and grotesque sauces, which had no other merit than that of being surprising and difficult to make, as, for example: “eggs cooked on the spit,” “butter fried or roasted.” &c.[XXII_31]
We recognize in some of our most common ragoûts, those of which our ancestors were so fond in the middle ages, such as the bœuf à la mode, à la persillade, au vinaigre et persil, le miroton de bœuf, veau percé de gros lard, fricassée de poulet, blanquette de veau rôti; but we have lost the pot-pourri, composed of beef, veal, mutton, bacon, and vegetables, and the galimafrée, a kind of fricassée of fowl, seasoned with wine, verjuice, and spices, and thickened with the famous sauce cameline.[XXII_32]
The cooks frequently placed on their masters’ tables ragoûts and other dishes borrowed from foreign nations. They had a German brouet, a Flemish chaudeau, eggs à la Florentine, and partridges à la Catalane. They knew the olla—a mixture of all sorts of vegetables cooked with different kinds of meats, which we owe to the Spaniards, as well as the ragoût of fowl, called à la Chipolata, and the keneffes—a kind of forced-meat balls made of bread and meat, to which the Germans are very partial, and the pilau—a dish of mutton, fowl, and rice, borrowed from the Turks.[XXII_33]