In the olden time, every man of consequence had his magister coquorum, or master cook, without whom he would not think of making a day’s journey; and it was often no easy matter to procure master cooks of talent.
By a passage of Cicero[12] we are led to understand, that among other miseries of life, which constantly attended this consular personage and eloquent orator, he laboured under the disappointment of not having an excellent cook of his own; for, he says, “coquus meus, præter jus fervens, nihil potest imitari.” Except hot broth, my cook can do nothing cleverly.
[12] Fam. ix. 20.
The salary of the Roman cooks was nearly £1000.[13] Mark Antony, hearing Cleopatra, whom he had invited to a splendid supper, (and who was as great a gormand as she was handsome,) loudly praise the elegance and delicacy of the dishes, sent for the cook, and presented him with the unexpected gift of a corporate town.—Municipium.
[13] Tabella Cibaria, ps. 19 and 20.
Even in our own times great skill in cookery is so highly praised by many, that a very skilful cook can often command, in this metropolis, a higher salary than a learned and pious curate.
His Majesty’s first and second cooks are esquires, by their office, from a period to which, in the lawyer’s phrase, the memory of man is not to the contrary. We are told by Dr. Pegge, that when Cardinal Otto, the Pope’s Legate, was at Oxford, in the year 1248, his brother officiated as magister coquinæ, an office which has always been held as a situation of high trust and confidence.
We might defend the art of cookery on another principle, namely—on the axiom recognized in the Malthusian Political Economy, that he who causes two blades of grass to grow where only one grew before, is a benefactor to his country and to human nature. Whether or not Malthus is quite right in this, we are not competent to decide; we leave that to Say, Godwin, Ricardo, and[14] Drummond. But certainly it must in many cases be of the utmost consequence, for families in particular, when embarrassed in circumstances, to make food go twice as far as without the art and aid of rational cookery it could do. We would particularly press this remark, as it is founded on numerous facts, and places the art of cookery in a more interesting point of view than any of the other circumstances which we have been considering.
[14] Principles of Currency, and Elements of Political Economy—1820.
Cookery has often drawn down on itself the animadversions of both moralists, physicians, and wits, who have made it a subject for their vituperations and their ridicule.