[10] Tabella Cibaria, a latin poem, relating to the pleasures of Gastronomy, and the mysterious art of Cooking, page 15.
“The gormand never loses sight of the exquisite organs of taste, so admirably disposed by Providence in the crimson chamber, where sits the discriminating judge, the human tongue.
“The glutton is anathematised in the Scripture with those brutes quorum deus venter est. The other appears guilty of no other sin than of too great, and too minute, an attention to refinement in commercial sensuality.”
Our neighbours on the other side of the channel, so famous for indulging in the worship of Comus, consider the epicure again under two distinct views, namely: as a gormand, or a gourmet. The epicure or gormand is defined—a man having accidentally been able to study the different tastes of eatables, does accordingly select the best food and the most pleasing to his palate. His character is that of a practioner. The gourmet speculates more than he practises, and eminently prides himself in discerning the nicest degrees, and most evanescent shades of goodness and perfection in the different subjects proposed to him. He may be designated a man, who, by sipping a few drops out of the silver cup of the vintner, can instantly tell from what country the wine comes, and its age.
The glutton practices without any regard to theory.
The gormand, or epicure, unites theory with practice.
The gourmet is merely theoretical.
IMPORTANCE OF THE ART OF COOKERY.
As man differs from the inferior animals in the variety of articles he feeds upon, so he differs from them no less in the preparation of these substances. Some animals, besides man, prepare their food in a particular manner. The racoon (ursus lutor) is said to wash his roots before he eats them; and the beaver stores his green boughs under water that their bark and young twigs may remain juicy and palatable.
The action of fire, however, has never been applied to use by any animal except man; not even monkies, with all their knacks of imitation, and all their fondness for the comforts of a fire, have ever been observed to put on a single billet of wood to keep up the fuel.