Table traits, with something on them

by Dr. Doran

Of the more nutritive species of fish, turbot, cod, whiting, haddock, flounder, and sole, are the least heating. Of these, the cod is the least easy of digestion, though turbot is quite as difficult of digestion when much lobster sauce is taken with it. The crimping of cod facilitates the digesting of the fish. Sole and whiting are easily digested. Salmon is nutritive, but it is oily, heating, and not very digestible; far less so than salmon trout. The favourite parts of most of these fish are the least fit for weak stomachs, and the most trying to strong ones. Salmon, caught after the spawning season has commenced, is almost poisonous; and eels are objectionable at all seasons, from their excessive oiliness. Shell-fish generally may be put down as “indigestible,” particularly the under-boiled lobsters of the London market. The mussel is especially so; and these are not rendered innocuous by the removal of the beard, which is not more hurtful than any other part. Shell-fish, and, indeed, fish generally, affects the skin, by sympathy with the stomach. The effect is, sometimes, as if a poison had been generated: at others it very sensibly affects the odour of the cutaneous secretions. This effect was thoroughly understood when the Levitical Priests, like those of Egypt, were prohibited from eating fish. The prohibition was based upon a just principle.

The Egyptian and Levitical Priests were more obedient to such prohibitions than St. Patrick, who once, overcome by hunger, helped himself to pork chops on a fast-day. An angel met him with the forbidden cutlets in his hand; but the saint popped them into a pail of water, pattered an Ave-Mary over them, and our indulgent Lady heeded the appeal by turning them into a couple of respectable and orthodox-looking trout. The angel looked perplexed, and went away, with his index finger on the side of his nose. And see what came of it! In Ireland, meat dipped into water, and christened by the name of “St. Patrick’s Fish,” is commonly eaten there even on fast-days, and to the great regret of all those who eat greedily enough to acquire an indigestion.

St. Patrick’s fish ought to have fetched as high a price as the four cod which formed the sole supply in Billingsgate-market on one of the great frost-days in January, 1809; they were sold to one dealer for fourteen guineas. During the same month, salmon was sold at a guinea a pound! When fish is so high-priced, it is time to have done with it. So, enlevez! and let us to the succeeding courses of viands more substantial. While the fish is being removed, I will merely relate that it was the practice of Sir Joshua Reynolds, who gave plentiful dinners to admirable men, in his house in Leicester Square, always to choose his own fish, of which he was a capital judge. He was, on those occasions, ever the first visitor to the fish-shop still existing, in its primitive simplicity, in Coventry-street. He selected the best; and later in the day, his niece, Miss Palmer, used to call, dispute the price, and pay for the fish. Sir Joshua’s table is said to have been too crowded, both as to guests and dishes, while there was scant attendance, and a difficulty of getting served; but the hilarity compensated for all. The guests enjoyed themselves with a vulgar delight that would have very much ruffled the dignity of such a pompous president at repasts as the bewigged, bepatched, and bepowdered Sir Peter Lely.

With the introduction of animal food is dated the era of professional cooks; and that era itself is set down by M. Soyer, a competent authority, as having commenced in the year of the world 1656. Other authorities give 2412 as the proper date, when Prometheus, or Forethought, as his name implies, taught men the use of fire, and cooked an ox. But I think that both dates and mythology are somewhat loose here, and that the period is easier of conjecture than of determination. Ceres killed the pig that devoured her corn, Bacchus the goat that nibbled at the tendrils of the vine, and Jupiter the ox that swallowed his sacred cakes; and the animals slain by deities were roasted and eaten by men. Another tradition is, that roast meat originally smoked only on the altars of the gods, and that the Priests lived on the pretended sacrifices, until some lean and greedy heretic, having wickedly pilfered the sacred viands, so improved under the diet, that his example was promptly followed, and men took to animal food, in spite of the thunder of gods and the anathemas of Priests. I need not say where there is better authority than all these pretty tales for man’s subduing to his use and service the beasts of the earth, the birds of the air, and the fishes of the sea.

A rearer of cattle was, in the olden time, an aristocrat in his way. The gods looked after his herds, and the law gave its protection where Olympian divinity so often proved worthless. Bubona sat the watchful goddess of their fattening; and it was she who blessed the cabbages steeped in vinegar, the straw and wheat-bran, and the bruised barley, wherewith the oxen were prepared for the cattle-show or the market. In the latter, the office of the Roman Prefect fixed the selling price: the breeder could neither ask more nor take less than according to the official tariff. There was a singular custom at one time in Rome, which proves, however, that the seller had a voice in declaring the value of his stock. Purchaser and vendor simultaneously closed, and then suddenly opened, one of their hands, or some of the fingers. If the number of fingers on both sides was even, the vendor obtained the price which he had previously asked for his meat; but if the number was uneven, the buyer received the viands for the sum he had just before tendered. This was as singular a custom as, and a more honest one than, that adopted by the first Dutch settlers in America. In their trading with the Indians a Dutchman’s fist was established as the standard of weight, with this understanding, that when a Dutchman was selling to an Indian his fist weighed a pound, but that it should only be half that weight when the Hollander was a purchaser!

The Roman markets were well supplied, and the pig seems to have been the national favourite. The Emperors used to distribute thousands of pounds of pork to the poor, as on festive occasions we, less magnificently, divide among the needy our time-honoured English roast beef. There was even an edict against making sausages of any thing but pork,—an edict which is much needed in some of our suburbs, where “pork sausages” are made of any thing but pig;—and, after all, they could not be made of a dirtier animal. But the grave Romans strangely reverenced this unclean beast. Pliny places him only one degree below humanity; and certainly the porcine and human stomachs are very much alike! In the East, our ancient friend was a Pariah, and his position among the unclean was fixed by a Jewish doctor, who said, that if ten measures of leprosy were flung into the world, nine of them would naturally fall to the execrated pig. There is no doubt that the eating of the flesh of the pig in hot climates would bring on diseases in the human system akin to leprosy; and this fact may have tended to establish the unpopularity of the animal throughout the East, and to account also for the prohibition. Galen, however, prescribed it as good food for people who worked hard; and there are modern practitioners who maintain that it is the most easily digested of all meats. It is certainly more easy of digestion than that respectable impostor, the boiled chicken, which used so cruelly to test, and defy, the feeble powers of invalids.

Pigs were fatted, both in Greece and Rome, until they had attained nearly the bulk of the elephant. These fetched prices of the most “fancy” description; and they were served up whole, with an entire Noah’s-ark collection of smaller animals inside, by way of stuffing. A clever cook could so dress this meat as to make it have the flavour of any other viand; and the first culinary artistes of the day prided themselves on the preparation of a ragoût composed of young pigs stifled before they were littered. The mother would have had no difficulty in performing this feat herself for her own young, if sows generally had been as huge as the one mentioned by Varro, and which he says was so fat as to be incapable of movement, and to be unconscious that a mouse, with a young family, had settled in the folds of her fat, where they lived like mites in cheese.

In another page, I have spoken of what were called “the sacred pigs and lambs.” Menæchmus, in Plautus, asks the price of the “porci sacres, sinceri.” “Sacres” was applied to all animals intended for immolation. The sinceri porci were the white and spotless pigs offered to the Lares on behalf of the insane. The merchant who gives instruction, in the Pseudolus, to his servant, as to the splendid repast that is to be served up on his birthday, is very particular on the subject of pork; and he shows us what parts formed a dish that might tempt princes,—the ham, and the head: “Pernam, callum, glandium, sumen, facito in aquâ jaceant.”

If men were not, anciently, fonder of beef than of pork, the reason, perhaps, was, that the ox was religiously reverenced, because of his use to man, whereas the pig was really of no value at all but for consumption. The excellence of the ox as food was, nevertheless, very early ascertained, and acted on by some primitive people. The Jews were permitted to eat of that of which Abraham had offered a portion to angels; and calf and ox were alike an enjoined food. The Greeks, too, devoured both with much complacency, as they also did tripe, which was deemed a dainty fit for heroes. Indeed, for tripe there was an ancient and long-standing propensity among the early nations. It formed the chief dish at the banquets of men who met to celebrate the victory of mortals and gods over the sacrilegious Titans.

The lamb and the kid have smoked upon divine altars and humble tables. The Greeks were especially fond of both, and the Romans were like them in this respect; but the Egyptians religiously abstained from the kid; and more than one Eastern nation held, as of faith, that the lamb was more fitting as an offering to the gods than as a dish for men. On the other hand, there were people who preferred the flesh of the ass, which was not an uncommon dish at Roman tables, where dogs, too, were served as a dainty; for Hippocrates had recommended them as a refined food; and the Greeks swallowed the diet thus authoritatively described. The Romans, however, are said to have eaten the dog out of vengeance. The curs of the Capitol were sleeping, when the sacred and watchful geese saved it by their cackling; and thence arose, it is believed, the avenging appetite with which puppies, dressed like hares, were tossed into the stomachs of the unforgiving Romans. They were also sacrificed to the Dog-star.