David Hume, on retiring from public life, declared that he would devote the remaining years of his life to the science of cooking.
Henry VIII made a gift of a manor to his cook for originating a good pudding, and royal honors have been paid to many culinary inventors. By the ancient Romans Apicius was "almost deified for discovering how to maintain oysters fresh and alive during long journeys." In Athens Dionysos was highly esteemed as the inventor of bread; in his honor there were street processions of men carrying loaves.
A fifteenth century kitchen in France
ROSSINI, CARÊME AND PADEREWSKI.
Just as Caruso is prouder of the caricatures he draws than of his achievements as the leading tenor of his time, so Rossini prided himself more on his skill in dressing a salad than on his having written successful operas. He frequently delighted his guests with dishes prepared by himself, and used to declare, half seriously, that he had missed his vocation.
One day, when a friend, taking him at his word, asked him why he had not become a cook, he replied that he would have done so had not his early education been too much neglected.
A famous French chef, proud of his profession, declared that while there have been musicians and other artists who were already famous at the age of twenty, preëminence in cooking has never occurred under the more mature age of thirty.
Carême, at an early age, had the ambition, as he relates in his memoirs, of elevating his profession to an art. For ten years he studied with the most eminent chefs, besides reading books and taking notes like a scholar.
Like all genuine artists, he was grateful for true appreciation of his art. Of Talleyrand he wrote: "He understands the genius of a cook, he respects it, he is the most competent judge of delicate progress, and his expenditures are wise and great at the same time."