Miss Seward.—“That would be Hercules with the distaff indeed!”
Johnson.—“No, madam; women can spin very well, but they cannot make a good book of cookery.” See vol. iii. p. 311.
Mr. B. adds, “I never knew a man who relished good eating more than he did: when at table, he was totally absorbed in the business of the moment: nor would he, unless in very high company, say one word, or even pay the least attention to what was said by others, until he had satisfied his appetite.”
The peculiarities of his constitution were as great as those of his character: luxury and intemperance are relative terms, depending on other circumstances than mere quantity and quality. Nature gave him an excellent palate, and a craving appetite, and his intense application rendered large supplies of nourishment absolutely necessary to recruit his exhausted spirits.
The fact is, this great man had found out that animal and intellectual vigour,[21-*] are much more entirely dependent upon each other than is commonly understood; especially in those constitutions whose digestive and chylopoietic organs are capricious and easily put out of tune, or absorb the “pabulum vitæ” indolently and imperfectly: with such, it is only now and then that the “sensorium commune” vibrates with the full tone of accurately considerative, or creative energy. “His favourite dainties were, a leg of pork boiled till it dropped from the bone, a veal-pie, with plums and sugar, or the outside cut of a salt buttock of beef. With regard to drink, his liking was for the strongest, as it was not the flavour, but the effect that he desired.” Mr. Smale’s Account of Dr. Johnson’s Journey into Wales, 1816, p. 174.
Thus does the HEALTH always, and very often the LIFE of invalids, and those who have weak and infirm STOMACHS, depend upon the care and skill of the COOK. Our forefathers were so sensible of this, that in days of yore no man of consequence thought of making a day’s journey without taking his “Magister Coquorum” with him.
The rarity of this talent in a high degree is so well understood, that besides very considerable pecuniary compensation, his majesty’s first and second cooks[22-*] are now esquires by their office. We have every reason to suppose they were persons of equal dignity heretofore.
In Dr. Pegge’s “Forme of Cury,” 8vo. London, 1780, we read, that when Cardinal Otto, the Pope’s legate, was at Oxford, A. D. 1248, his brother officiated as “Magister Coquinæ.”
This important post has always been held as a situation of high trust and confidence; and the “Magnus Coquus,” Anglicè, the Master Kitchener, has, time immemorial, been an officer of considerable dignity in the palaces of princes.
The cook in Plautus (pseudol) is called “Hominum servatorem,” the preserver of mankind; and by Mercier “un médecin qui guérit radicalement deux maladies mortelles, la faim et la soif.”