THE science of cookery, which has so long been neglected by Americans, is beginning at last to provoke their attention. The labors of Professor Blot mark an epoch in our dietetic history. In lectures and magazine essays he has taught us how to eat, and, as pre-essential to it, how to roast, fry, and boil; and the lessons are of vital importance to our health and vigor as a people. Englishmen and Americans have too long regarded the art and mystery of cooking with contempt, as beneath the dignity of a cultivated, high-minded man. But good cookery is only another name for economy, health, temperance, and longevity; and what can be more inconsistent than to require a diploma of the man who professes to cure the diseases caused by vile cookery, and to regard him as eminently respectable, and yet to allow quacks and empirics, — the most slovenly and uninstructed persons in the community, — to create them?
That a man’s energy, happiness, and even goodness, are dependent more or less upon his bodily condition, and consequently upon the condition of his stomach, few persons at this day will hesitate to admit. “A sound mind in a sound body” is a condition, not only of healthy intellectual, but of healthy spiritual life. Hippocrates went so far as to assert that all men are born with equal capacity, and that the mental differences in men are owing to the different kinds of foods they consume, a theory which was very 160 plausibly illustrated by the late Mr. Buckle. A man of the kindliest impulses has only to feed upon indigestible food for a few days, and forthwith his liver is affected, and then his brain. His sensibilities are blunted; his uneasiness makes him waspish and fretful. He is like a hedgehog with the quills rolled in, and will do and say things from which in health he would have recoiled. Dr. Johnson said truly that “every man is a rascal when he is sick;” and Sydney Smith did not exaggerate when he affirmed that “old friendships are often destroyed by toasted cheese, and hard salted meat has often led to suicide.” Who does not know that a nervous headache, an attack of dyspepsia, a rheumatic pain, even so trifling a thing as a cold in the head, will often convert the most amiable of men into a bull-dog? Even so intellectual a man as William Hazlitt, writing to his lady-love, could say: ‘I never love you so well as when I think of sitting down with you to dinner, on a boiled scrag-end of mutton and hot potatoes.” The most blissful hours of domestic life are those most pervaded by the element of domesticity; and no prudent wife will despise the additional charm added to the soothing effects of her presence by the influence of “a boiled scrag-end of mutton and hot potatoes.” Who does not know that one of the secrets of begging favors successfully is to ask for them immediately after dinner. Many a man, who, before meal-time, would not give a sixpence for any purpose, will, post-prandially, talk with unction of the miseries of our race, and hand over his greenbacks without grumbling. The same person that at eleven o’clock A.M. repulsed a missionary with icy indifference, and almost laughed the world’s conversion to scorn, will sing Heber’s hymn with feeling, and almost 161 shed tears over the benighted condition of the Hottentots and Kickapoos, at three in the afternoon. Is there a lobbyist at Washington who is ignorant of the fact that his “little bill” is more clearly apprehended by a legislator after his one or two o’clock meal: or is that a wife who doubts that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach? “He had not dined,” says Shakespeare of Coriolanus; and to the flatulence and acerbity thus caused in the hero’s stomach Menenius ascribes his rejection of the prayers of Rome:
“He had not dined;
The veins unfilled, our blood is cold, and then
We pout upon the morning, are unapt
To give or to forgive; but when we have stuffed
These pipes, and these conveyances of our blood,
With wine and feeding, we have suppler souls
Than in our priest-like fasts.”
The truth that man is half-animal has too often been ignored by divines and moralists. The health which is dependent upon a good digestion has much more to do with a man’s piety than has generally been supposed. Evert minister of the Gospel has to grapple with cases of conscience which baffle all ordinary spiritual treatment, and which turn out at last to be simply cases of physical disorder whose remedy is in the pharmacopeia, or more frequently in the larder or cook-book. Constitutional, hereditary, and occasional diseases are constantly at work, modifying men’s opinions, feelings, and practices. Dr. Mason, of New York, used to say that the grace that would make John look like an angel, would be only just enough to keep Peter from knocking a man down. If the house of this tabernacle be shattered, and in constant need of props and repairs, its sympathetic tenant is apt to be like its crazy dwelling-place. There are only two 162 bad things in this world, said Hannah More, — sin and bile. Was she ignorant that a large part of the sin springs from bile?
The doctrine that health has a great deal to do with godliness may not be very flattering to our pride; but we must accept our natures, as the transcendentalist did “the universe,” and, accepting them, we must bow to the plain fact that a ladder reaching to Heaven must, if we are to climb it, have its feet upon the ground; and that, to reach to the highest degree of spiritual excellence, we must begin with physical and mental soundness. It is an indubitable truth that a man not only reasons better, but loves more warmly, gives more generously, and prays more fervently, when well than when ill. A man of unquestionable piety once said that he could not worship God until he had eaten his breakfast. It is equally true that a man who is well fed, clothed, and housed is a more amiable being than one who lacks the comforts of life. A man before dinner may talk scandal or write scathing criticism; may crawl like a horse-fly over the character or the writings of a neighbor; but, after he has well eaten and drunken, the thing is an impossibility. There is something in a generous meal that exorcises the devils of disparagement and calumny, and substitutes therefor the spirits of good-fellowship and philanthropy. It may be doubted whether half of the suicides, murders, heresies, false philosophies, and apostacies that have stained the annals of our race, have not had their origin remotely in a disordered stomach. Voltaire affirms that the massacre of St. Bartholomew was primarily due to the utter incapacity of the King to digest his food. Had Josephine been a good cook, perhaps history might have been spared 163 one of its saddest scandals. It is not the “fat, sleek-headed man,” but the “lean and hungry Cassius” that is dangerous.
As a moral institution, therefore, dinner cannot be too highly valued; but it has also its intellectual aspects. Even the literature of a nation, and its intellectual development generally, are more or less dependent on its cookery. It is easy to assert that the mind of an author should be independent of his physique, — that, being the nobler part of the man, it ought to rise superior to the trammels imposed on it by the body, or external influences. Your stout, robustious persons, with nerves of whip-cord and frames of cast iron, cannot understand why the delicate, sensitive frame of the child of genius should be “servile to every skyey influence,” as Shakspeare calls it; or why a man who earns his bread and butter by scribbling on foolscap, should not be able to dash off Iliads, Divine Comedies, and Hamlets at all times and seasons, just as another man wields the broad-axe, and handles the pitchfork, or shoves the jack-plane. It is, nevertheless, a stubborn fact with which literary men are only too familiar, that the flow and quality of a man’s ideas may be affected by even such vulgar and commonplace things as victuals. The elder Kean understood so well the physiological and psychological effects of diet, that he regularly adapted his dinner to his part; he ate pork when he had to play tyrants; beef for murderers; boiled mutton, for lovers. “Are you not afraid of committing murder after such a meal?” inquired Byron of Moore, on seeing him occupied with an underdone beefsteak. Had Shakspeare lived on corned beef and cabbage, he might have produced the monster Caliban, but he 164 could never had conceived the delicate Ariel; and had Milton lived on pork and beans, ten chances to one he would have introduced the hog into his description of Paradise. M. Esquiros, an acute Spanish writer, in speaking of the English diet, expresses the opinion that beer, the national drink, has inspired the English poets, their artists, and their great actors: — “The English,” he adds, “attribute to the use of this liquid the iron muscles of their laboring classes, who struggle so valiantly, afloat and ashore, in factories and vessels, for the power of Great Britain: they even attribute their victories to it. ‘Beer and wine,’ an orator exclaimed at a meeting where I was present, ‘met at Waterloo: wine red with fury, boiling over with enthusiasm, mad with audacity, rose thrice against that hill on which stood a wall of immovable men, the sons of beer. You have read history: beer gained the day.’ ”
Be this doctrine true, or the opposite, that “he who drinks beer thinks beer,” the conclusion still follows that a man’s thinking is more or less affected by his food, some of the most anomalous events in history, including great political revolutions, have had their origin in the disordered stomachs of kings and statesmen. The finest poets and prose writers that have charmed the world by their pens, have been mentally prostrated by a fit of indigestion; and generals who have proclaimed their pre-ëminence at the cannon’s mouth have been rendered powerless by a badly-cooked dish. Could we know the full history of all victories, ancient and modern, we should probably be amazed to find how important a part in the destiny of Empires has been played by the gastric juice. The fears of the brave, as well as the follies of 165 the wise, may often be resolved into an overtaxed biliary duct. Napoleon lost a battle one day because his poulet à la Marengo was inconsiderably scorched by his chef-de-cuisine. Indigestion, caused by his fast and voracious mode of eating, paralyzed him in two of the most critical events of his life , — the battle of Borodino and the battle of Leipsic, — which he might have converted into decisive and commanding victories had he pushed his advantages as he was wont. On the third day of Dresden, too, the German novelist, Hoffman, who was present in the town, asserts that the Emperor would have won far more brilliant success but for the effects of a shoulder of mutton stuffed with onions. It was owing in a great degree to the wretched condition of their commissariat that the Austrians were defeated at Austerlitz. C’est la soupe qui fait le soldat.
“Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we may die,” is a motto which has often been denounced, and most justly, by the Christian moralist. “Let us eat and drink well, lest to-morrow we die,” would be a good substitute. The pleasures of the table are not the highest form of human enjoyment, it is true; but for all that, an oyster-pie is a good thing when well made. “A man,” says Dr. Johnson, “who has no regard for his stomach, will have no regard for anything else.” We fully agree with the great moralist, and we subscribe no less heartily to the saying of the French magistrate, of whom regenerated France, according to Royer-Collard, has so much reason to be proud,* who declared that the discovery of a new dish is more important than the discovery of a new star, because there can never be dishes enough, but there are 166 stars enough already. Justly did Tallyrand inveigh against the English, that they had one hundred and fifty forms of religion, and but one sauce, — melted butter. It is a mistake to suppose that only brainless men, with full paunches and empty pates, have a keen relish for the luxuries of the table, — that, as Shakspeare says,
“— Dainty bits
Make rich the ribs, but bankrupt quite the wits.”
The celebrated scholar, Dr. Parr, confessed a love for “hot lobsters, with a profusion of shrimp sauce.” Pope was a decided epicure, and would lie in bed for days at Bolinbroke’s, unless he were told that there were stewed lampreys for dinner, when he would rise instantly and hurry down to table. Cleopatra is said to have owed her empire over Cæsar as much to her suppers as to her beauty; and who can tell how much the love of the Grand Monarque, Louis XIV, for Madame de Maintenon, was owing to the invention of the immortal cutlets which bear her name? Henry VIII was so grateful to the inventor of a dish whose flavor he relished, that he gave him a manor. Cardinal Wolsey was conciliated by the good dishes on the Field of the Cloth of Gold; and Agrippina won Claudius by a recipe for dressing Spanish onions. Handel ate enormously; and, when he dined at a tavern, always ordered dinner for three. On being told that all would be ready as soon as the company should arrive, he would exclaim: “Den bring up de dinner, pretissimo. I am de company.”
It is said that Cambacérès, second consul under the French republic, and arch-chancellor under the empire, never, under any circumstances, suffered the cares of government to distract his attention from “the great object of life,” — a good dinner. Being detained, on one occasion, 167 when consulting with Napoleon, beyond the appointed hour of dinner, he betrayed great symptoms of restlessness and impatience. At last he wrote a note, which he called a gentleman usher in waiting to carry. Napoleon, suspecting the contents, nodded to an aide-de-camp to intercept the despatch. As he took it Cambacérès begged earnestly that his majesty would not read a trifling note on family matters. Napoleon persisted, and found it to be a note to the chancellor’s cook, containing only these words: “Gardez les entremets, — les rôtis sont perdus.”
It is sometimes said that “plain living and high thinking” should be the motto of the scholar. The plain fact is, that, of all laborers, none more imperiously need a nutritious diet than the toilers with the brain. If there is any system of living which they should hold in horror, it is the bran-bread and pea-soup philosophy inculcated by Graham, Alcott and Co., and practised upon nervous people, valetudinarians, and others, who are continually scheming how to spin out the thread of a miserable, sickly existence, after all their capacities of pleasure and enjoyment have passed away. These profound philosophers take special pains to show that there is nothing but disease lurking in all the delicacies of ocean, earth, and air, which Heaven has blessed us with. All the piquant dishes which lie so temptingly on the well-spread table, to tickle the palate of the epicure, are, according to their view, impregnated with a subtle poison. One produces flatulency, another acidity; beef is stimulating, ham is bilious, pork is scrofulous, fish is indigestible, pastry is dyspeptic, tea is nervous; and so on, from the simplest article of diet to the most complicated effort of gastronomic skill.
It is a little amusing that, while these ascetic philosophers 168 declaim so vehemently against the good things of this life, and predict an early grave for every man who makes a hearty, careless, miscellaneous meal, they are generally amateurs in physic, and swallow all sorts of quack medicines and similar abominations with infinite relish. It is true that the theories of the bran-bread philosophers have received some countenance from a few distinguished writers, particularly Dr. Franklin, and the poet Shelley, who seem to have thought that, by living wholly upon vegetable food, we may preserve our physical and intellectual faculties in a state of much higher perfection. But it is evident, in spite of such speculations, that man is a carnivorous animal, and must, once a day at least, be fed with flesh, fowl, or fish; he cannot make a satisfactory repast off the roots and fruits of the earth; for, though
“— His anatomical construction
Bears vegetables in a grumbling sort of way,
Yet certainly he thinks, beyond a question,
Beef, veal, and mutton easier of digestion.”
Franklin, indeed, was not a very zealous convert to the Grahamite doctrine. He hesitated for some time what course to pursue, till, at last, recollecting that, when a cod has been opened, some small fish had been found in its stomach, he said to himself: “If you eat one another, I see no reason why we may not eat you.”
There was much good sense in the remark of a sainted Archbishop of York, who was very fond of roast goose, that so good a thing was not designed specially for sinners. Not less wise was the reply of Saint Thomas à Becket to a monk, who, seeing him eating a pheasant’s wing with much relish, affected to be scandalized, saying that he thought Thomas a more mortified man. “Thou art but a ninny,” 169 said the Archbishop; “knowest thou not that a man may be a glutton upon horse-beans; while another may enjoy with refinement even the wing of a pheasant, and have nature’s aid to enjoy what Heaven’s bounty gave?”
In advocating a due regard for the pleasures of the table, we commend no wanton profusion. There is a medium between the abstemiousness of the anchorite or the indifference of a Newton, who sometimes inquires whether he has dined, and the senseless profusion of a Cæsar who devoured at a meal the revenue of several provinces, or of those other Romans who had single dishes composed of five hundred nightingales’ tongues, or the brains of as many peacocks. The dinners of a people, — their coarseness or refinement, their profusion or scantiness, — are an unerring index of the national life. There is, indeed, as another has said, a whole geological cycle of progressive civilization between the clammy dough out of which a statuette might be moulded, and the brittle films that melt upon the tongue like flakes of lukewarm snow. In the early years of the French Revolution it was said to be impossible to understand that movement unless one dined at Barrère’s. It is France that leads the rest of the world in civilization; and it is in France that the art of gastronomy has been carried to the last limit of perfection. In what other country did ever a maître d’hôtel stab himself to the heart because he could not survive the dishonor of his employer’s table? Yet thus did Vatel, the cook of the great Condé because on a great occasion the sea-fish failed to arrive some hours before it was served; thus showing, as Savarin has said, that the fanaticism of honor can exist in the kitchen as well as in the camp, and that the spit and the saucepan have also their Deciuses and their Catos.
170While giving due honor to the French, we must not forget that they were indebted to the Italians for the germinal ideas, the fundamental principles, of the great science of which they are the acknowledged masters. It was in Italy that the revival of cookery, as well as the revival of learning, first began; and from that country the science of gastronomy was introduced into the land of Savarin and Soyer, by the artists that accompanied Catherine de Medicis. When Montaigne visited the land of Horace and Virgil, he was deeply impressed by the formal and weighty manner in which the cook in the service of Cardinal Caraffa spoke of the secrets of his art. “He discoursed to me,” says the old Gascon, “of the science de gueule with a gravity and magisterial air, as if he was speaking of some weighty point of theology.”
To conclude, the cook may not rank very high in the scale of humanity; but on the other hand it requires no great stretch of imagination to foresee that, should ever the bran-bread system come in fashion, “living skeletons” would cease to be a wonder; Calvin Edsons would meet us at every corner; a man of eighty or ninety pounds would be a monster of corpulence; and, ere many centuries could elapse, the human species would gradually dwindle into nothingness, and vanish from the earth.
* M. Henrion de Pensey, President of the Court of Cassation.