Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome Part 4

THE EXCERPTS OF VINIDARIUS

And now, from a source totally different than the two important ma.n.u.scripts so much discussed here, we receive additional proof of the authenticity of Apicius. In the _codex Salmasia.n.u.s_ (cf. III, Apiciana) we find some thirty formulae attributed to Apicius, ent.i.tled: _Apici excerpta a Vinidario vir. inl._ They have been accepted as genuine by Salmasius and other early scholars. Schuch incorporated the _excerpta_ with his Apicius, placing the formulae in what he believed to be the proper order. This course, for obvious reasons, is not to be recommended. To be sure, the _excerpta_ are Apician enough in character, though only a few correspond to, or are actual duplicates of, the Apician precepts. They are additions to the stock of authentic Apician recipes. As such, they may not be included but be appended to the traditional text. The _excerpta_ encourage the belief that at the time of Vinidarius (got. Vinithaharjis) about the fifth century there must have been in circulation an Apicius (collection of recipes) much more complete than the one handed down to us through Fulda. It is furthermore interesting to note that the _excerpta_, too, are silent about Clius.

We may safely join Vollmer in his belief that M. Gabius Apicius, celebrated gourmet living during the reign of Tiberius was the real author, or collector, or sponsor of this collection of recipes, or at least of the major part thereof--the formulae bearing the names of posterior gourmets having been added from time to time. This theory also applies to the two instances where the name of Varro is mentioned in connection with the preparation of beets and onions (bulbs). It is hardly possible that the author of the book made these references to Varro. It is more probable that some well-versed posterior reader, perusing the said articles, added to his copy: "And Varro prepared beets this way, and onions that way...." (cf. Book III, [70]) Still, there is no certainty in this theory either. There were many persons by the names of Commodus, Traja.n.u.s, Frontinia.n.u.s, such as are appearing in our text, who were contemporaries of Apicius.

With our mind at ease as regards the genuineness of our book we now may view it at a closer range.

OBSCURE TERMINOLOGY

Apicius contains technical terms that have been the subject of much speculation and discussion. _Liquamen_, _laser_, _muria_, _garum_, etc., belong to these. They will be found in our little dictionary.

But we cannot refrain from discussing some at present to make intelligible the most essential part of the ancient text.

Take _liquamen_ for instance. It may stand for broth, sauce, stock, gravy, drippings, even for _court bouillon_--in fact for any liquid appertaining to or derived from a certain dish or food material. Now, if Apicius prescribes _liquamen_ for the preparation of a meat or a vegetable, it is by no means clear to the uninitiated what he has in mind. In fact, in each case the term _liquamen_ is subject to the interpretation of the experienced pract.i.tioner. Others than he would at once be confronted with an unsurmountable difficulty. Scientists may not agree with us, but such is kitchen practice. Hence the many fruitless controversies at the expense of the original, at the disappointment of science.

_Garum_ is another word, one upon which much contemptuous witticism and serious energy has been spent. _Garum_ simply is a generic name for fish essences. True, _garus_ is a certain and a distinct kind of Mediterranean fish, originally used in the manufacture of _garum_; but this product, in the course of time, has been altered, modified, adulterated,--in short, has been changed and the term has naturally been applied to all varieties and variations of fish essences, without distinction, and it has thus become a collective term, covering all varieties of fish sauces. Indeed, the corruption and degeneration of this term, _garum_, had so advanced at the time of Vinidarius in the fifth century as to lose even its a.s.sociation with any kind of fish.

Terms like _garatum_ (prepared with g.) have been derived from it.

Prepared with the addition of wine it becomes _nogarum_,--wine sauce--and dishes prepared with such wine sauce receive the adjective of _nogaratum_, and so forth.

The original _garum_ was no doubt akin to our modern anchovy sauce, at least the best quality of the ancient sauce. The principles of manufacture surely are alike. _Garum_, like our anchovy sauce, is the _puree_ of a small fish, named _garus_, as yet unidentified. The fish, intestines and all, was spiced, pounded, fermented, salted, strained and bottled for future use. The finest _garum_ was made of the livers of the fish only, exposed to the sun, fermented, somehow preserved. It was an expensive article in old Rome, famed for its medicinal properties. Its mode of manufacture has given rise to much criticism and scorn on the part of medieval and modern commentators and interpreters who could not comprehend the "perverse taste" of the ancients in placing any value on the "essence from putrified intestines of fish."

However, _garum_ has been vindicated, confirmed, endorsed, reiterated, rediscovered, if you please, by modern science! What, pray, is the difference in principle between _garum_ (the exact nature of which is unknown) and the oil of the liver of cod (or less expensive fish) exposed to the beneficial rays of ultraviolet light--artificial sunlight--to imbue the oil with an extra large and uniform dose of vitamin D? The ancients, it appears, knew "vitamin D" to exist. Maybe they had a different name for "vitamins," maybe none at all. The name does not matter. The thing which they knew, does. They knew the nutritive value of liver, proven by many formulae. Pollio, one of the vicious characters of antiquity, fed murenas (sea-eel) with slaves he threw into the _piscina_, the fish pond, and later enjoyed the liver of the fish.

Some "modern" preparations are astonishingly ancient, and _vice versa_. Our anchovy sauce is used freely to season fish, to mix with b.u.t.ter, to be made into solid anchovy or fish paste. There are sardine pastes, lobster pastes, fish forcemeats found in the larder of every good kitchen--preparations of Apician character. A real platter of _hors d'oeuvres_, an _antipasto_ is not complete unless made according to certain Apician precepts.

_Muria_ is salt water, brine, yet it may stand for a fluid in which fish or meat, fruits or vegetables have been pickled.

The difficulties of the translator of Apicius who takes him literally, are unconsciously but neatly demonstrated by the work of Danneil. Even he, seasoned pract.i.tioner, condemns _garum_, _muria_, _asa ftida_, because professors before him have done so, because he forgets that these very materials still form a vital part of some of his own sauces only in a different shape, form or under a different name. Danneil calls some Apician recipes "incredibly absurd,"

"fabulous," "exaggerated," but he thinks nothing of the serving of similar combinations in his own establishment every day in the year.

Danneil would take pride in serving a Veal Cutlet a la Holstein. (What have we learned of Apicius in the Northern countries?). The ancient Holsteiner was not satisfied unless his piece of veal was covered with a nice fat herring. That "barbarity" had to be modified by us moderns into a veal cutlet, turned in milk and flour, eggs and bread crumbs, fried, covered with fried eggs, garnished with anchovies or bits of herring, red beets, capers, and lemon in order to qualify for a restaurant favorite and "best seller." Apicius hardly has a dish more characteristic and more bewildering.

What of combinations of fish and meat?

_De gustibus non est disputandum._ It all goes into the same stomach.

May it be a st.u.r.dy one, and let its owner beware. What of our turkey and oyster dressing? Of our broiled fish and bacon? Of our clam chowder, our divine _Bouillabaisse_? If the ingredients and component parts of such dishes were enumerated in the laconic and careless Apician style, if they were stated without explicit instructions and details (supposed to be known to any good pract.i.tioner) we would have recipes just as mysterious as any of the Apician formulae.

Danneil, like ever so many interpreters, plainly shared the traditional belief, the egregious errors of popular history. People still are under the spell of the fantastic and fanciful descriptions of Roman conviviality and gastronomic eccentricities. Indeed, we rather believe in the insanity of these descriptions than in the insane conduct of the average Roman gourmet. It is absurd of course to a.s.sume and to make the world believe that a Roman patrician made a meal of _garum_, _laserpitium_, and the like. They used these condiments judiciously; any other use thereof is physically impossible. They economized their spices which have caused so much comment, too. As a matter of fact, they used condiments n.i.g.g.ardly and sparingly as is plainly described in some formulae, if only for the one good and sufficient reason that spices and condiments which often came from Asia and Africa were extremely expensive. This very reason, perhaps, caused much of the popular outcry against their use, which, by the way, is merely another form of political propaganda, in which, as we shall see, the mob guided by the rabble of politicians excelled.

We moderns are just as "extravagant" (if not more) in the use of sauces and condiments--Apician sauces, too! Our Worcestershire, catsup, chili, chutney, walnut catsup, A I, Harvey's, Punch, Soyer's, Escoffier's, Oscar's (every culinary coryphee endeavors to create one)--our mustards and condiments in their different forms, if not actually dating back to Apicius, are, at least lineal descendants from ancient prototypes.

To readers little experienced in kitchen practice such phrases (often repeated by Apicius) as, "crush pepper, lovage, marjoram," etc., etc., may appear stereotyped and monotonous. They have not survived in modern kitchen parlance, because the practice of using spices, flavors and aromas has changed. There are now in the market compounds, extracts, mixtures not used in the old days. Many modern spices come to us ready ground or mixed, or compounded ready for kitchen use. This has the disadvantage in that volatile properties deteriorate more rapidly and that the goods may be easily adulterated. The Bavarians, under Duke Albrecht, in 1553 prohibited the grinding of spices for that very reason! Ground spices are time and labor savers, however.

Modern kitchen methods have put the old mortar practically out of existence, at the expense of quality of the finished product.

THE "LABOR ITEM"

The enviable Apicius cared naught for either time or labor. He gave these two important factors in modern life not a single thought. His culinary procedures required a prodigious amount of labor and effort on the part of the cooks and their helpers. The labor item never worried any ancient employer. It was either very cheap or entirely free of charge.

The selfish gourmet (which gourmet is not selfish?) almost wonders whether the abolition of slavery was a well-advised measure in modern social and economic life. Few people appreciate the labor cost in excellent cookery and few have any conception of the cost of good food service today. Yet all demand both, when "dining out," at least. Who, on the other hand, but a brute would care to dine well, "taking it out of the hide of others?"

Hence we moderns with a craving for _gourmandise_ but minus appropriations for skilled labor would do well to follow the example of Alexandre Dumas who cheerfully and successfully attended to his own cuisine. Despite an extensive fiction practice he found time to edit "Le Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine" and was not above writing mustard advertis.e.m.e.nts, either.

SUMPTUARY LAWS

The appet.i.te of the ancients was at times successfully curbed by sumptuary laws, cropping out at fairly regular intervals. These laws, usually given under the pretext of safeguarding the morals of the people and accompanied by similar euphonious phrases were, like modern prohibitions, vicious and virulent effusions of the predatory instinct in mankind. We cannot give a chronological list of them here, and are citing them merely to ill.u.s.trate the difficulty confronting the prospective ancient host.

During the reign of Caesar and Augustus severe laws were pa.s.sed, fixing the sums to be spent for public and private dinners and specifying the edibles to be consumed. These laws cla.s.sified gastronomic functions with an ingenious eye for system, professing all the time to protect the public's morals and health; but they were primarily designed to replenish the ever-vanishing contents of the Imperial exchequer and to provide soft jobs for hordes of enforcers. The amounts allowed to be spent for various social functions were so ridiculously small in our own modern estimation that we may well wonder how a Roman host could have ever made a decent showing at a banquet. However, he and the cooks managed somehow. Imperial spies and informers were omnipresent. The market places were policed, the purchases by prospective hosts carefully noted, dealers selling supplies and cooks (the more skillful kind usually) hired for the occasion were bribed to reveal the "menu." Dining room windows had to be located conveniently to allow free inspection from the street of the dainties served; the pa.s.sing Imperial food inspector did not like to intrude upon the sanct.i.ty of the host's home. The pitiable host of those days, his unenviable guests and the bewildered cooks, however, contrived and conspired somehow to get up a banquet that was a trifle better than a Chicago quick lunch.

How did they do it?

In the light of modern experience gained by modern governments dillydallying with sumptuary legislation that has been discarded as a bad job some two thousand years ago, the question seems superfluous.

_Difficile est satyram non scribere!_ To make a long story short: The Roman host just broke the law, that's all. Indeed, those who made the laws were first to break them. The minions, appointed to uphold the law, were easily accounted for. Any food inspector too arduous in the pursuit of his duty was disposed of by dispatching him to the rear entrance of the festive hall, and was delivered to the tender care of the chief cook.

Such was the case during the times of Apicius. Indeed, the Roman idea of good cheer during earlier epochs was provincial enough. It was simply barbaric before the Greeks showed the Romans a thing or two in cookery. The methods of fattening fowl introduced from Greece was something unheard-of! It was outrageous, sacrilegious! Senators, orators and other self-appointed saviors of humanity thundered against the vile methods of tickling the human palate, deftly employing all the picturesque tam-tam and _elan_ still the stock in trade of ever so many modern colleagues in any civilized parliament. The speeches, to be sure, pa.s.sed into oblivion, the fat capons, however, stayed in the barnyards until they had acquired the saturation point of tender luscious calories to be enjoyed by those who could afford them. How the capon was "invented" is told in a note on the subject.

Many other so-called luxuries, sausage from Epirus, cherries from the Pontus, oysters from England, were greeted with a studied hostility by those who profited from the business of making laws and public opinion.

Evidently, the time and the place was not very propitious for gastronomic over-indulgence. Only when the ice was broken, when the disregard for law and order had become general through the continuous practice of contempt for an unpopular sumptuary law, when corruption had become wellnigh universal chiefly thanks to the examples set by the higher-ups, it was then that the torrent of human pa.s.sion and folly ran riot, exceeding natural bounds, tearing everything with them, all that is beautiful and decent, thus swamping the great empire beyond the hopes for any recovery.

APICIUS THE WRITER

Most of the Apician directions are vague, hastily jotted down, carelessly edited. One of the chief reasons for the eternal misunderstandings! Often the author fails to state the quant.i.ties to be used. He has a mania for giving undue prominence to expensive spices and other (quite often irrelevant) ingredients. Plainly, Apicius was no writer, no editor. He was a cook. He took it for granted that spices be used within the bounds of reason, but he could not afford to forget them in his formulae.

Apicius surely pursues the correct culinary principle of incorporating the flavoring agents during the process of cooking, contrary to many moderns who, vigorously protesting against "highly seasoned" and "rich" food, and who, craving for "something plain" proceed to inundate perfectly good, plain roast or boiled dishes with a deluge of any of the afore-mentioned commercial "sauces" that have absolutely no relation to the dish and that have no mission other than to grant relief from the deadening monotony of "plain" food. Chicken or mutton, beef or venison, finnan haddie or brook trout, eggs or oysters thus "sauced," taste all alike--sauce! To use such ready-made sauces with dishes cooked _a l'anglaise_ is logical, excusable, almost advisable.

Even the most ascetic of men cannot resist the insidiousness of spicy delights, nor can he for any length of time endure the insipidity of plain food sans sauce. Hence the popularity of such sauces amongst people who do not observe the correct culinary principle of seasoning food judiciously, befitting its character, without spoiling but rather in enhancing its characteristics and in bringing out its flavor at the right time, namely during coction to give the kindred aromas a chance to blend well.

Continental nations, adhering to this important principle of cookery (inherited from Apicius) would not dream of using ready-made (English) sauces.

We have witnessed real crimes being perpetrated upon perfectly seasoned and delicately flavored _entrees_. We have watched ill-advised people maltreat good things, cooked to perfection, even before they tasted them, sprinkling them as a matter of habit, with quant.i.ties of salt and pepper, paprika, cayenne, daubing them with mustards of every variety or swamping them with one or several of the commercial sauce preparations. "Temperamental" chefs, men who know their art, usually explode at the sight of such wantonness. Which painter would care to see his canvas varnished with all the hues in the rainbow by a patron afflicted with such a taste?

Perhaps the craving for excessive flavoring is an olfactory delirium, a pathological case, as yet unfathomed like the excessive craving for liquor, and, being a problem for the medical fraternity, it is only of secondary importance to gastronomy.

To say that the Romans were afflicted on a national scale with a strange spice mania (as some interpreters want us to believe) would be equivalent to the a.s.sertion that all wine-growing nations were nations of drunkards. As a matter of fact, the reverse is the truth.

Apicius surely would be surprised at some things we enjoy. _Voila_, a recipe, "modern," not older than half a century, given by us in the Apician style or writing: Take liquamen, pepper, cayenne, eggs, lemon, olive oil, vinegar, white wine, anchovies, onions, tarragon, pickled cuc.u.mbers, parsley, chervil, hard-boiled eggs, capers, green peppers, mustard, chop, mix well, and serve.

Do you recognize it? This formula sounds as phantastic, as "weird" and as "vile" as any of the Apician concoctions, confusing even a well-trained cook because we stated neither the t.i.tle of this preparation nor the mode of making it, nor did we name the ingredients in their proper sequence. This mystery was conceived with an ill.u.s.trative purpose which will be explained later, which may and may not have to do with the mystery of Apicius. Consider, for a moment, this mysterious creation No. 2: Take bananas, oranges, cherries, flavored with bitter almonds, fresh pineapple, lettuce, fresh peaches, plums, figs, grapes, apples, nuts, cream cheese, olive oil, eggs, white wine, vinegar, cayenne, lemon, salt, white pepper, dry mustard, tarragon, rich sour cream, chop, mix, whip well.

Worse yet! Instead of having our appet.i.te aroused the very perusal of this quasi-Apician _mixtum compositum_ repels every desire to partake of it. We are justly tempted to condemn it as being utterly impossible. Yet every day hundreds of thousand portions of it are sold under the name of special fruit salad with _mayonnaise mousseuse_. The above mystery No. 1 is the justly popular tartar sauce.

Thus we could go on a.n.a.lyzing modern preparations and make them appear as outlandish things. Yet we relish them every day. The ingredients, obnoxious in great quant.i.ties, are employed with common sense. We are not mystified seeing them in print; they are usually given in clear logical order. This is not the style of Apicius, however.

LATIN CUNNING