No. 4. A simpulum, or cup with a long handle, commonly ending with a hook, which was used as a ladle to take wine or other liquids out of large vessels.
No. 5. Fork mentioned in the text, and given as antique in the “Recueil d’Antiq.,” III., Pl. 84.
where they wait till some one comes to request their services.[XXII_89] His remarks, full of sense and precision, proclaim profound study and consummate experience. “Never will this depsiticius bread,”[XXII_90] says he to one of them, “obtain the necessary lightness by baking; the flour should have been passed through a Spanish sieve of linen thread;[XXII_91] Use the Gallic sieve of horsehair for the artocreas,[N][XXII_92] and one of papyrus, or Egyptian rush,[XXII_93] for the coarser kinds of flour.” “The grasshoppers require great precaution,” he exclaims, an instant after, approaching a young Sicilian; “fry them so that they obtain only a light gold colour.”[XXII_94] Then, passing to a third stove, he shows to one of his favourite pupils how to season highly an excellent sauce of snails (this hors-d’œuvre, dear to the Romans), and by what marks to distinguish those fattened by art in particular inclosures, from those which feed in gardens and are only fit for the common people.[XXII_95] He then stops before a stewpan, where a cook is browning large worms of a whitish hue, which breed in the hollows of trees, and are considered by the Romans[XXII_96] as a most delicious dish: “The flour with which these cossi were fed was heated,” says he; “they will present to the teeth only a soft and insipid substance.”[XXII_97]
We will not accompany this great master any further: his instructions are already known to us. An enthusiastic disciple of Apicius, he practises the lessons of that illustrious professor; and we should only hear from him precepts which we have already faithfully transmitted.
When the moment of supper is arrived, we shall find the Archimagirus presiding at that gastronomic order of battle on which depends the success of the day. May Vesta and Comus be propitious to him.