He does not quickly jump,
Only cry ‘Oysters!’”
If the Emperors affected oysters, the gods themselves patronized mussels, a dish of which was contributed by Jupiter to the wedding banquet of Hebe. The mythological sanction has, however, failed to render the mussel popular, and for good reasons. It is often extremely poisonous, and in certain conditions of the stomach they who eat mussels may reckon upon being attacked by violent cutaneous disorders, painfully participated in by the oppressed intestines.
It was otherwise with the tortoise, the blood of which was reckoned good in cases of ophthalmia, and the flesh of which was eagerly devoured. The natural history of the products of those early times seems to have been written by philosophers with very poetical imaginations. We read of shells of tortoises being converted into roofs of cottages, as we are told by Pliny of crawfish measuring four cubits in length. It was then that men ate lobsters au naturel, and crabs converted into sausages. But this latter dish was a more dainty one than that afforded by the frog,—the abhorrence of early gastronomists, but the delight of many French and German epicures, who first find delight in angling for these unclean beasts with a bait of yellow soap, and then swallowing, with delight more intense, the hind-quarters of the animal they have caught. But if the moderns swallow frogs, the ancients ate the polypus,—and which were the nastiest even I could not tell! The Romans were especially fond of fish; and some “fast” epicures among them not only had preserve ponds of fish on the roofs of their houses, but little rivulets stocked therewith around the dinner-table, whence the guests selected their fish, and delivered them to be cooked.
It was once thought that the prawn, or shrimp, was somehow necessary to the production of soles, acting, it was believed, as a sort of nurse, or foster-parent, to the spawn. But this I suppose to be about as true as that soles always swim in pairs, with three-pennyworth of shrimps behind them, ready for sauce.
I remember two anecdotes connected with fish at table, which a guest may retail when he is next at that period of the repast. Talleyrand was dining, in the year 1805, with the Minister of Finance, who did the honours of his house in the very best style. A very fine carp was on the table opposite to Talleyrand, but the fish was already cold. “That is a magnificent carp,” said the financier: “how do you like it? It came from my estate of Vir-sur-Aisne.” “Did it?” said Talleyrand, “but why did you not have it cooked here?” This reply was not as fatal to the utterer of it, as a remark once made by Poodle Byng at Belvoir Castle. “Ah, ah!” he exclaimed, as he saw the fish uncovered at the Duke of Rutland’s board, “my old friend Haddock! I have not seen a haddock, at a gentleman’s table, since I was a boy.” The implication shut the gates of Belvoir on the unlucky Poodle from that day forward. He was never again the Duke’s guest.
Some French writers have asserted, after tracing the “vestiges of creation” according to a fashion of their own, that man originally sprang from the ocean; and that his present condition is one of development, the consequence of life ashore, and exposure to atmospheric air! According to this theory, I suppose, Venus Anadyomene was the Eve of our fishy generation, and mermaids show the transition state, when our ancestors were of both land and sea, and yet properly of neither!
As judges of fish, the moderns are inferior to the ancients. A Greek or Roman epicure could, at first sight, tell in what waters the fish before him had been caught. This sort of wisdom is, however, not uncommon to oyster-eaters, who swallow so greedily what contains little nourishment, but what may be easily digested. It was not unusual, some years ago, in France, for a gourmand to prepare for dinner by swallowing a gross, or a dozen dozen, of oysters! Twelve of them, including the liquor, will weigh four ounces; and the gross, four pounds (Troy)!—a pretty amount of ballast whereupon to take in freight. The skin of such a feeder had need be in a good condition; but so, indeed, ought that of every one who cares for his digestion. When we remember that a person in health, who takes eight pounds of aliment during twenty-four hours of his wakefulness, discharges five of the eight pounds solely through the pores by perspiration, it will at once be seen that to hold the skin clean, and keep the pores unobstructed, is of first-rate necessity for the sake of digestion and comfort.
There are sea-board populations who live almost exclusively on fish. They feed their domestic animals upon it, and with it manure their ground; so that the pork they may occasionally indulge in, acquires a fish-like flavour, and their bread is but a consequence of the plentiful rottenness of sprats. Such populations are usually lean and sallow, but they are strong-muscled and active-limbed; and altogether they afford good testimony in favour of the efficacy of a fish diet, when no better is to be had. As a diet, fish is only so far stimulating that it augments the lymph rather than renews the blood. It is a puzzle to many gastronomic philosophers that fish was so constant a diet of the monkish orders. Its heating quality hardly suited men who were required to be ever coolly contemplative. But this matter I leave to the philosophers to determine. One of them,—that is, a gastronomic philosopher,—M. Fayot, says, that “if you would have a dinner composed altogether of fish,” the meal should consist of “a turbot, a large salmon done in a court-bouillon, flanked with aromatic herbs, and covered with a fresh winding-sheet of delicate seasoning. In such dinners, sea-fish have, undoubtedly, the first rank; and among them the Cherbourg lobster, the shrimp of Honfleur, the cray-fish of the Seine, and the smelts of that river’s mouth, and numerous fresh-water fish mingle agreeably. Salmon and turbot should be done briskly; drink afterwards a glass of those old wines which give a digestive action to the stomach.” With M. Fayot, the turbot is “the king of fish, especially in Lent, as it is then of most majestic size. You may serve up salmon with as much ornament as you will, but a turbot asks for nothing but aristocratic simplicity. On the day after he makes his first appearance, it is quite another affair. It may be then disguised; and the best manner of effecting this is, to dress him à la Béchamel,—a preparation thus called from the Marquis de Béchamel, who, in the reign of Louis XIV., for ever immortalized himself by this one ragoût.”
The Almanach des Gourmands speaks of a Lorraine carp which was fed on bread and wine, and which was twice sent to the Paris market, in the care of a courier who travelled by the mail. It returned to its native waters in default of a purchaser willing to give thirty louis-d’ors for the monstrous delicacy. This was when fish dinners were much in vogue in Paris. There was then a table d’hôte for a fish repast only, held at a house profanely called, “The Name of Jesus.” This house stood in the “Cloître St. Jacques de l’Hôpital,” and every Wednesday and Friday it was crowded by the Clergy, who dined magnificently on maigre fare, for about 2s. a head. It is of one of these that Fayot recounts a pleasant story, the locality, however, of which was the Rocher de Cancale. A certain Abbé dined there so copiously off salmon, that a fit of indigestion was the consequence. Some days afterwards, when celebrating Mass, the savoury memories of the fish flocked into his mind; and he was heard to murmur, not the meâ culpâ of the “Confiteor,” but, as he quietly beat his breast, “Ah! that capital salmon! that capital salmon!”