Game was almost as sacred to the Egyptian Priests, as eggs to the sacerdotal gentlemen of some of the modern tribes of Africa. Under the head of “game,” we no longer admit the birds which, according to Belon, figured at the gastronomic tables of France in the sixteenth century. These were the crane, the crow, and the cormorant, the heron, the swan, the stork, and the bittern. The last-named bird was in high estimation, although the taste for it was confessedly an “acquired” one. The larger birds of prey were not then altogether despised by epicures, some of whom could sit down with an appetite to roast vulture, while they turned with loathing from the plump pheasant.
This eastern bird, however, has, with this exception, enjoyed a deserved reputation from the earliest ages. The Egyptian Kings kept large numbers of them to grace their aviaries and their triumphs. The Greeks reared them for the less sentimental gratification of the stomach; and a simple Athenian republican, when giving a banquet, prided himself on having on his board as many pheasants as there were guests invited.
Pheasants’ brains were among the ingredients of the dish that Vitellius invented, and which he designated by the name of “Shield of Minerva.” They were greedily eaten by many other of the Cæsars; and an offering of them to the statue of Caligula was deemed to be propitiatory of that very equivocal deity. The Emperors generally esteemed them above partridges, which were trained for fighting, as well as fattened for eating. Roman epicures fixed on the breast as the most “eatable” portion of the gallant bird. The Greeks thought of it as we do of the woodcock; and with them the leg of the partridge was the part the most highly esteemed. At a Greek table would not have occurred the smart dialogue which is said to have taken place at an English dinner. “Shall I send you a leg or a wing?” said a carver to a guest he was about to help. “It is a matter of perfect indifference to me,” was the reply; and it is not a courteous one. “It is a matter of equal indifference to me,” said the first speaker, at the same time resuming his own knife and fork, and going on with his dinner.
Quails are variously said either to have recalled Hercules to life, or to have cured him of epilepsy. The Romans, however, rather feared them, as tending to cause epileptic fits. Galen thought so; Aristotle took a different view, and the Greeks devoured them as readily as though they had Aristotle’s especial authorization; and the Romans were only slowly converted to the same way of thinking. Quails, like partridges and the game-cock, were long reared for the arena; and legislators thought that youth might learn courage from contemplating the contests of quails!
The thrush was perhaps the most popular bird at delicate tables in Greece. They were kept from the young, lest the taste should give birth to permanent greediness; but when a girl married, she was sure of a brace of thrushes, for her especial eating at the wedding-feast. They were still more popular in Rome, where patrician ladies reared thousands yearly for the market, and made a further profit by selling the manure for the land. The thrush aviary of Varro’s aunt was one of the sights of Rome, where men ruined themselves in procuring dishes composed of these birds for their guests. Greatly, however, as they abounded, there was occasionally a scarcity of them; for when the physician of Pompey prescribed a thrush, by way of exciting the wayward stomach of the wayward soldier to enjoyment, there was not one to be found for sale in all Rome. Lucullus, indeed, had scores of them; but Pompey, like many other obstinate people, chose rather to suffer than put himself under an obligation; and he contrived to get well on other diet.
The diet was, nevertheless, held to be exceedingly strengthening; and blackbirds, also, were prescribed as fitting food for weak digestions. It was perhaps for this reason that the celebrated
“Four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie,”
were the dainty dish set before the legendary and, presumedly, dyspeptic King! In later times, we have had as foolish ideas connected with them. The oil in which they were cooked was said to be good for sciatica, or hip-gout; and Vieillot says that freckles might be instantaneously removed from the skin, if——but ladies would never try what Vieillot recommends.
The blackbird was not imperially patronized. The stomachs of the gastronomic Cæsars gave more greedy welcome to the flamingo. Caligula, Vitellius, and Heliogabalus ruined their digestions by ragoûts of this bird, the tongues of which were converted into a stimulating sauce. Dampier ate the bird, when he could get nothing else; and thought the Cæsars fools for doing so when they could get any thing beside. The ancients, whether Greeks or Romans, showed more taste in eating beccaficoes,—that delicate little bird, all tender and succulent, the essence of the juice of the fruits (especially the fig) on which it feeds. The only thing to be compared with it is the ortolan. Had Heliogabalus confined himself to these more savoury birds, instead of acquiring indigestion on ostrich brains and flamingoes, his name would have held a more respectable place in the annals of gastronomy. But master and people were alike barbarous in many of their tastes. Who now would think of killing turtle-doves for the sake of eating their legs “devilled?” And yet we eat the lark, that herald of the skies, and earliest chorister of the morn. We eat this ethereal bird with as little compunction as we do the savoury, yet unclean, of the earth, earthy, duck. And this thought reminds me of a story, for which I am indebted to a friend, himself the most amiable of Amphitryons, the good things at whose table have ever wit, wisdom, mirth, and good-fellowship attendant, as aids to digestion.[1]