The Forme of Cury | Page 4

are the most wholesome of all fruits. The natives of the West Indies were no less averse to _salt_; and who would believe that hops should ever have a place in our common beverage [57], and that we should ever think of qualifying the sweetness of malt, through good housewifry, by mixing with it a substance so egregiously bitter? Most of the American fruits are exceedingly odoriferous, and therefore are very disgusting at first to us _Europeans_: on the contrary, our fruits appear insipid to them, for want of odour. There are a thousand instances of things, would we recollect them all, which though disagreeable to taste are commonly assumed into our viands; indeed, custom alone reconciles and adopts sauces which are even nauseous to the palate. Latinus Latinius therefore very rashly and absurdly blames _Apicius_, on account of certain preparations which to him, forsooth, were disrelishing.' [58] In short it is a known maxim, that _de gustibus non est disputandum_;
And so Horace to the same purpose:
'Tres mihi conviv? prope dissentire videntur, Poscentes vario multum diversa palato. Quid dem? quid non dem? renuis tu quod jubet alter. Quod petis, id sane est invisum acidumque duobus.' Hor. II. Epist. ii.
And our Roll sufficiently verifies the old observation of Martial--ingeniosa gula est.
[Addenda: after _ingeniosa gula est_, add, 'The Italians now eat many things which we think perfect carrion. _Ray_, Trav. p. 362. 406. The French eat frogs and snails. The Tartars feast on horse-flesh, the Chinese on dogs, and meer Savages eat every thing. _Goldsmith_, Hist. of the Earth, &c. II. p. 347, 348. 395. III. p. 297. IV. p. 112. 121, &c.']
Our Cooks again had great regard to the eye, as well as the taste, in their compositions; flourishing and strewing are not only common, but even leaves of trees gilded, or silvered, are used for ornamenting messes, see No. 175 [59]. As to colours, which perhaps would chiefly take place in suttleties, blood boiled and fried (which seems to be something singular) was used for dying black, 13. 141. saffron for yellow, and sanders for red [60]. Alkenet is also used for colouring [61], and mulberries [62]; amydon makes white, 68; and turnesole [63] pownas there, but what this colour is the Editor professes not to know, unless it be intended for another kind of yellow, and we should read _jownas_, for _jaulnas_, orange-tawney. It was for the purpose of gratifying the sight that sotiltees were introduced at the more solemn feasts. Rabelais has comfits of an hundred colours.
Cury, as was remarked above, was ever reckoned a branch of the Art Medical; and here I add, that the verb curare signifies equally to dress victuals [64], as to cure a distemper; that every body has heard of _Doctor Diet, kitchen physick_, &c. while a numerous band of medical authors have written _de cibis et alimentis_, and have always classed diet among the _non-naturals_; so they call them, but with what propriety they best know. Hence Junius '[Greek: Diaita] Gr?cis est victus, ac speciatim certa victus ratio, qualis a Medicis ad tuendam valetudinem pr?scribitur [65].' Our Cooks expressly tell us, in their proem, that their work was compiled 'by assent and avysement of maisters of phisik and of philosophie that dwelliid in his [the King's] court' where physik is used in the sense of medecine,
physicus being applied to persons prosessing the Art of Healing long before the 14th century [66], as implying such knowledge and skill in all kinds of natural substances, constituting the _materia medica_, as was necessiary for them in practice. At the end of the Editor's MS. is written this rhyme,
Explicit coquina que est optima medicina [67].
There is much relative to eatables in the _Schola Salernitana_; and we find it ordered, that a physcian should over-see the young prince's wet-nurse at every meal, to inspect her meat and drink [68].
But after all the avysement of physicians and philosophers, our processes do not appear by any means to be well calculated for the benefit of recipients, but rather inimical to them. Many of them are so highly seasoned, are such strange and heterogeneous compositions, meer olios and gallimawfreys, that they seem removed as far as possible from the intention of contributing to health; indeed the messes are so redundant and complex, that in regard to herbs, in No. 6, no less than ten are used, where we should now be content with two or three: and so the sallad, No. 76, consists of no less than 14 ingredients. The physicians appear only to have taken care that nothing directly noxious was suffered to enter the forms. However, in the Editor's MS. No. 11, there is a prescription for making a _colys_, I presume a _cullis_, or Invigorating broth; for which see Dodsley's Old Plays, vol. II. 124. vol. V.