A cook is quite another thing. His mind
Must comprehend all facts and circumstances:
Where is the place, and what the time of supper;
Who are the guests, and who the entertainer;
What fish he ought to buy, and where to buy it.
This shows a nice appreciation of the duties of the all-round cook, supervised by a knowledgeable master, and is preferable to the fastidiousness of Sir Epicure Mammon in “The Alchemist,” who leaves the best fare, such as pheasants, calvered salmon, knots, godwits, and lampreys, to his footboy; confining himself to dainties such as cockles boiled in silver shells, shrimps swimming in butter of dolphin’s milk, carp tongues, camels’ heels, barbels’ beards, boiled dormice, oiled mushrooms, and the like. One must go back to Roman cookery, via Nero and others, for such gustatory eccentricities, a number of which, one may shrewdly believe, were not precisely what they are described to be in modern English. Do we not know, for instance, that a famous Roman cook (who was probably a Greek), having received an order for anchovies when those fish were out of season, dexterously imitated them out of turnips, colouring, condiments, and the inevitable garum; as to the exact and unpleasant constituents of which, authorities, including the great Soyer, differ considerably.
The result cannot have been of the nature described by Miss Lydia Melford in “Humphry Clinker,” who called the Bristol waters “so clear, so pure, so mild, so charmingly mawkish.”
