The primitive tribes and nations were content of necessity with the spoils of the chase and the then more limited products of the vegetable world; and long before John the Baptist's time the Hebrews lived to no small extent upon locusts and kindred insects. In his enumeration of the animal food which they might eat without rendering themselves unclean, Moses specifies four insects of the locust family (Lev. x, 22). Some species of the Locusta are yet esteemed a delicacy in the East, these being cooked with oil, roasted upon wooden spits, baked in ovens, or broiled. The Bedouins, who are ever on the march, pack them with salt in close masses, carrying them in their leathern sacks. By the Athenians they were usually roasted; and mention is made by Athenæus of an archimagirus, or master cook, who, in his tour around the ovens and stock-pots, enjoins one of his subalterns to take the utmost precaution with them and see that they obtain only a light golden hue.
Eggs, milk, rice, and honey, onions, succory, leeks, and garlic, the leaves of the vine, radishes, and carrots, with other growths of the garden, formed the staple articles of diet among ancient peoples. Vegetable food was more common than animal, the latter being served principally in the case of entertainments and special occasions of hospitality (Gen. xviii, 7, 8). Instead of lard and butter, olive oil was employed, and is still almost entirely employed by the Orientals. Fish constituted an important article of diet, together with game, lambs, and kids. Though not common, the flesh of young bullocks and stall-fed oxen was highly prized (Prov. xv, 17; Matt. xxii, 4), the shoulder being considered the choicest part. The master of the house was the matador, and upon the mistress devolved the preparation of the food. Among primitive cooks, Rebekah proved herself a performer of no mean ability, as instanced by her dressing the flesh of a young kid after the manner of venison, in order to obtain a father's blessing for her favourite son. Roots, berries, fruits, and the quarry of the bow and harpoon composed the fare of aboriginal man, and proved all-sufficient. When the struggle for physical existence called for strong exercise in procuring necessary food, little variety in nutriment sufficed, at no loss of brawn and sinew.
With many savage races, bread-fruit, nuts, the plantain, the cocoa-palm—known as the "tree of life"—with numerous other food-yielding palms, served as a principal means of subsistence. The first fruit-tree cultivated by man is said by all the most ancient writers to be the fig, the vine being next in order. The almond and pomegranate were cultivated at an early date in Canaan, and the fig, grape, pomegranate, and melon were known to Egypt from time immemorial. In Solon's law's, the olive, the fig, and the vine are enumerated, as also the cabbage, crambe, or sea-kale, pulse of various kinds, and onions. Cabbage and asparagus were known to the Greeks from the earliest ages, and by them the chestnut, largely utilised for food, was termed the "Oak of Jupiter." The original home of wheat and barley is supposed to be Mesopotamia and the fertile plains of the Euphrates, whence, after a period of cultivation, they spread eastward to China and westward to Syria and thence to Europe. Among other food-stuffs of the inhabitants were onions, vetches, kidney-beans, egg-plants, pumpkins, lentils, cucumbers, chick-peas, and beans—with such fruits as the apple, fig, apricot, pistachio, almond, walnut, and the product of the palm and vine.
Coffee, of very remote use in Abyssinia, was unknown to the early Greeks and Romans; they were, however, familiar with the cucumber, cultivated in India for at least three thousand years. The cucumber was also known to Moses and the Israelites, the patriarch referring to fish and cucumbers, melons and leeks, as among the delicacies that were freely eaten in Egypt (Numbers xi, 5). Various kinds of Cichorium, or chicory, were familiar to antiquity, while Lactuca, or lettuce, was extensively grown as a salad. The onion was a favourite with the ancient Egyptians, garlic likewise being made much use of—a plant denounced by their priests as unclean.[1]
Baking in ovens is of great antiquity, the ovens of old Egypt being frequently represented in contemporary paintings. The table appointments of Egypt are similarly portrayed in her paintings—the guests of both sexes seated in gala attire, with jewelled fingers holding the lily of the Nile or sacred lotus, while slaves, naked except for necklace and girdle, served them with viands and wines. Differing from the Egyptians, the Greeks and Romans excluded women from their feasts, agreeing with the sentiment of Fulbert Dumonteil that for a true gourmand there exist no blue eyes, white teeth, or rosy lips that may take the place of a black truffle. The only exception related to the cup-bearers—fair youths and tender maids—who were enjoined to refuse nothing to the guests, and the richly and gorgeously arrayed hetæræ, the voluptuous Aspasias, Barinés, and Phrynes of the period, who made their appearance at the conclusion of the repast.
With a corps of twelve stewards to provide for his table, eleven of whom were constantly travelling in search of viands and wines, it is reasonable to assume that Solomon, of whose menus so little record exists, scarcely confined himself to coarse dishes prepared from the flesh of "bullocks, sheep, harts, and roebucks," but that he, with his thousand wives and concubines, observed a sufficient variety and luxury in his kitchen to correspond with the magnificent table appointments and sumptuous surroundings chronicled in the book of Kings. For ruthless extravagance, Cleopatra's dish of a melted pearl, weighing seventy-four carats and valued at six million sesterces, probably exceeds that of any single plate of the Egyptian rulers or prodigal Roman potentates. Horace, in the third satire of the Second Book, makes mention of the spendthrift son of Æsopus as also dissolving a pearl in vinegar—his mistress's earring—
"... to say he'd quaffed
A cool five thousand at a draught."
Boiling was another primitive mode of cooking; and the method even yet practised by barbarians is to utilise the hide of the slaughtered animal for a bag, placing the meat in this receptacle with water, and dropping in stones heated to a white heat until the flesh is cooked. Laving the meat on hot stones and covering it with ashes, or hanging it upon a tripod of sticks over the flames, was the mode of roasting and broiling of the aborigines, with whom utensils of pottery and metal were unknown—a method often resorted to by woodsmen at the present time.