Innovate, then, studious disciples of the illustrious Roman: consult only the measures of your strength, the conscience of your genius, and the infallible good taste of some chosen guests. Create for your seasoning unheard-of combinations, the strangeness of which shall strike and astonish; whose flavour shall subjugate and stifle criticism beneath the sweet efforts of a voluptuous mastication.
Learn how to make your areopagitæ eat: this innocent seduction will insure your triumph.
Treat not with too much disdain these Roman recipes; for although the formidable list may excite a smile from the reader, and, perhaps, the scorn of the cook, a great and prolific idea slumbers beneath the cold ashes of the ovens of Apicius which a breath may rekindle; and, at the same time, resuscitate some of those culinary wonders of a bygone civilisation, and endow our modern age, so impatient of the future, so curious concerning the past.
Two Phœnicians—whose names are never mentioned by forgetful posterity—Selech and Misor, taught mankind the art of heightening the flavour of their food by mixing with it a certain quantity of salt. The science of seasoning has no other origin.[XXIII_1]
SALT.
The law of Moses commanded the Jews to mix salt with everything offered in sacrifice.[XXIII_2] This prescription sufficiently testifies the use of this condiment at an epoch which the uncertainty of profane writers appears to invade on all sides, and which the great Hebrew legislator alone enlightens with a ray invariably steady and pure.
The Asphaltite lake produced abundance of salt.[XXIII_3] It was sent even to Rome, and was considered by Galen as the most desiccatory and digestive of any kind.[XXIII_4]
The Greeks placed this substance in the list of things which ought to be consecrated to the gods; and it is in this sense that Homer gives it the epithet of divine. Pagan superstition, of which some traces may still be remarked in the 19th century, threatened with some great misfortune any one who spilt salt; and it was deemed a signal impiety to forget placing salt-cellars on the table, or to dare go to sleep before removing them. This strange superstition was common among the Greeks and Romans.[XXIII_5] Those nations never failed consecrating their repasts by filling salt-cellars, near to the vase in which they presented the gods with the first portion of meat and fruit.[XXIII_6]
Certain nations, among others the Numidians, were not acquainted with salt;[XXIII_7] and in the greater part of countries where it abounded, cupidity almost invariably subjected it to a heavy tax, which rendered its use less practicable.