The evening meal, in Rome as in Greece of old, was the chief meal of the day, and, on special occasions, whenever dispensing hospitality, the Romans provided some form of entertainment for their guests towards the end of dinner. But the Romans never enjoyed the quick Hellenic wit, and, as they could neither count upon themselves nor on their guests to provide the entertainment, they paid, just as we do today, to be amused during and after dinner. With the fail of the Empire and the succeeding Dark Ages, the problem of securing a sufficiency of food from day to day was the most important to face, as well as the most difficult to solve; as late as the tenth century, during the plagues and famines which desolated many European countries, the kidnapping and eating of young children were not unusual occurrences: the art of cookery was no more. But it was not dead; it never ceased to be practiced in the monasteries, where it found a safe refuge, and as soon as conditions of greater security prevailed again, that is during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, it blossomed once more and bore an abundance of fruit.

In England, where the Danes had destroyed what vestiges of Roman culture had survived the Saxons, the Normans reintroduced the art of cookery. We know by the estates owned by the Conqueror's Head of the Kitchen - magister coquorum or magnus coquus - as recorded in Domesday Book, that the holder of this important office was no menial servant. We also have Stowe's testimony that William Rufus' prodigally spent in great banqueting and sumptuous apparel, for he would neither eate, drinke or weare anything, but that it cost unmeasurably deere.'

In Paris, at the same epoch, the Halles, or Central Market, provided a choice of no fewer than fifty different varieties of sea and fresh-water fish, which reached Paris every day, besides a number of different home grown vegetables.

The Crusades of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were responsible for the introduction of sugar, buckwheat, aniseed, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, pepper, saffron, and, generally speaking, a taste for spices and highly flavoured sauces; incidentally, for more elaborate cooking than had been the rule in both France and England.

In France, the corporation of Keus acquired some importance during the thirteenth century. The highest Keu in the land was the Royal Coquus or Keu, but all noble and religious houses had a Magister coquinae or Maitre Keu, whilst the name generally given to ordinary cooks was Qiers Coquinari, the goose or Qie being at the time the most popular barnyard bird. The dressing of fish and flesh was about all the cooks were expected or allowed to do in those days; the baking of bread and cakes was outside their province and so was the making of fish and meat pies and puddings, which was the monopoly of the Pastoier, the forerunner of the modern Patissier, who also sold tarts and cheese. Members of another corporation, quite distinct from that of the cooks, were entrusted with the making, compounding and selling of vinegar, mustard, and sauces, and the modern 'bottled' sauce is not nearly so modern as most of us imagine, since it existed as far back as the fourteenth century.

The Book of Apicius, copies of which must have been kept and circulated among convents and the master-cooks of noble establishments, appears to have been the only codified collection of recipes available up to the fourteenth century, when Guillaume Tirel, dit Taillevent, produced his Viandier, the first French cookery book. Guillaume Tirel was born in 1324 and we first hear of him as one of the Happelapins, the name given to the kitchen boys or 'Jacks' who kept the old spits on the move, in the kitchen of Jeanne d'Evreux, Queen of France, in 1326. In 1346, he was Keu or cook in the service of King Philip VI; in his title was Ecuyer de l'Ostel de Mons, and his master was the Dauphin or heir to the throne. In 1359 he was in the service of the Duke of Normandy; in 1368 he was cook to King Charles V of France, and in 1373 Premier Keu or chief cook. In 1381 he became Ecuyer de Cuisine to King Charles VI and from 1388 to 1392 he was Premier Ecuyer of the royal kitchens; in 1395 he died. So we know all about him and we know that his successive royal masters all had the greatest faith in his skill and honesty. It was at the request of one of them, Philip of Valois, that Tirel wrote a collection of recipes, in or about the year 1375.

At the time when Guillaume Tirel was in charge of the kitchens of King Charles VI of France, Richard II of England kept a much more sumptuous table with no fewer than three hundred servants in the kitchens under the Master Cook, whose name has unfortunately not been preserved. We have, however, ample proofs of his ability and professional skill 1375 the pages of The Forme of Cury, the title of the cookery book which this anonymous but truly great chef wrote at the request of his royal master, whom he addresses, in his Introduction, as 'best and ryallest viander of all christian kynges.'

There is no reason to believe that Richard's chef, who wrote the Forme of Cury, ever had the benefit of seeing the Viandier, written some fifteen years earlier by Guillaume Tirel. There are, of course, here and there, some points of analogy, as has happened with most cookery books published since then, but the two books bear unmistakable marks of the individuality of their respective authors.

Even when the recipe bears the same title in the two books, the ingredients used are different, since it was not possible to have exactly the same materials in France and in England. Thus the recipe given in the Viandier for Blancmange is somewhat like this 'Pound and mix together the boiled breast of a capon, some breadcrumbs, sugar, ginger and almond milk; rub through a sieve; flavour with rosewater and thicken on a slow heat.' In the Form of Cury, the recipe given for Blancmange is a better one, gastronomically since it leaves out the breadcrumbs and introduces boiled rice to be served with boiled and shredded breast of capon, with milk of almonds and some fried almonds as garnishing. The typically English part of this recipe is the rice, which was not introduced into France before 1421, whereas it was used in the kitchens of Richard II thirty years earlier.

In 1403, when Henry IV of England married Jeanne de Navarre, the wedding feast consisted of six courses, the first three being meat courses and the last three fish courses; each course included from six to eight different dishes, nearly every one of them mentioned in The Forme of Cury, the 'Mrs. Beeton's' of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in England. At Court and among the noble houses throughout England during the fifteenth century, fine fare and wines from many lands appear to have been more plentiful than on the Continent.

'Cooks with their new conceits, chopping,
stamping, grinding
Many new curries all day they are contriving and finding
That provoketh the people..........'
(John Russell's Book of Nurture, c. 1424. Harl. MS. 4011, fol. 171. Edited by F. J. Furnivall.)

In the year 1421 Bartholomeo Sicci was born at Piadena; he proved to be one of the best informed gastronomes of the fifteenth century. He collected a number of recipes and rules of good living at the time when the art of printing was introduced in Italy. Sicci was Librarian to the Vatican, a fact which made it easier for him to persuade the German printer, Ulrich Han, who had set up a printing press in Rome, to print his, Sicci's, book, the earliest printed cookery book on record. This book, for some unexplained reason, does not bear the name of its author, Bartholomeo Sicci; its title is Platine De Honesta Voluptate et Valitudine and it has been known ever since as Platina's book. Its success was widespread and lasting. The first edition is not dated, but it is believed to have been printed in Rome in 1474. A second edition was printed in Venice, in 1475: a third at Cividale del Friuli, in 1480; another at Louvain, in or about 1485; two others at Venice, in 1487 and 1498; one at Bologna, in 1499, and a number of others during the sixteenth century in different cities of Italy, France and Germany, mostly in Latin, but some also in French (the first at Lyons in 1505) Italian and German.

Sicci, who is referred to sometimes as Librarian and sometimes as Prefect of the Vatican, evidently had access to the writings of the doctors of the Sicilian 'School of Salemes' and to the works of Arnaldus de Villanova, once upon a time doctor to Pope Clement V (1305 - 1314). Sicci may have been responsible for the publication of the Regimen Sanitatis, printed first at the same time as the first edition of Platina, and with Arnaldus de Villanova's name as that of the director et ordinator, or editor as distinct from author.

The De Honesta Voluptate is of great interest from a culinary point of view; there were still no forks and most recipes are for soups, sauces, and stews which could be eaten with the aid of a spoon; also cakes and pastries which one ate with one's fingers. It is particularly important on account of the greater measure of attention to gastronomy as a polite art and to cookery as another which it encouraged. The mere fact that so erudite a man as Sicci, Pope Sixtus's librarian, had made a study of cooking and of what was best to eat and drink, proved a lead to other gastronomes and an encouragement to cooks. The very title of the little book De Honesta Voluptate, which, by the way, was dedicated to a Cardinal, reassured the more timorous of conscience.

The Regimen Sanitatis, which was published at the same time as the De Honesta Voluptate, dealt with questions of diet but not of cookery; it created quite a revolution in the daily lives of all the well-to-do classes, chiefly by making them bath-conscious. Baths had been one of Imperial Rome's greatest luxuries, but their use had been lost sight of during the Dark Ages that followed the fall of Roman power. Their popularity flared up again at the end of the fifteenth and early in the sixteenth centuries, when the printed words of wisdom of the School of Salemes reached the educated public on the Continent and in England. People who could afford to have baths in their own houses were too proud of it not to let their friends know it, and bathing parties were most fashionable at a time when bathing dress was as yet unthought of. Acting upon the assumption that to the pure all is pure, men and women, young and old, shared the same bath and food was served to the bathers upon boards that stretched across the tub or else floated upon the water.

Buckelz

Sicci's name is not the only one which ungrateful posterity never honoured. Buckelz is another. Buckelz was a Dutchman, who died in 1447 unrewarded and unsung, although it was he who discovered and introduced the art of salting herrings.

It was also during the fifteenth century that Venetian drinking glasses first came to be used in place of wooden mazers and the gold, silver, horn, and, chiefly, pewter cups and goblets. It was also at about the same period that toothpicks were introduced, not made of bone, wood, or quills, but toy-like little knives with a sharp point. Another table novelty that became the fashion during the fifteenth century was the serviette, which was not laid on the lap or tied round the chin but passed through a shoulder strap over the left shoulder.

By far the most important happening in the history of gastronomy during the fifteenth century was the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, in 1482, which threatened to cut off the regular supply of spices from the East. Life without spice was unthinkable, and it was in an attempt to reach the East and bring home the spices that all the cooks and vintners of Christendom clamoured for that, in 1492, Christopher Columbus chanced to discover the Americas, the home of the potato and the turkey, to name but two of the many good things which were soon after to find their way to Europe. Indeed, a considerable number of new vegetables and fruits were brought from the New to the Old World, but the public received many of them at first with more suspicion than gratitude. It seems difficult to believe, but it is none the less true, that, in spite of many periods of scarcity and even of famine in some French provinces, potatoes were not grown to any extent in France for more than two hundred years after they had been introduced.

Italian cooks, during the sixteenth century, showed greater enterprise and imagination than the cooks of other European states. Bartolomeo Scappi, chef to Pope Pius V, was the most famous cook of the time, but the brightest star to shine in the gastronomic firmament of the sixteenth century was Francois Rabelais. First a friar, then a doctor of medicine, and later on a publisher, Rabelais was a born cook and an incorrigible optimist, who laughed through a life of many adventures and made the world laugh with him. It was in Rome, as private physician to the then French Ambassador to the Vatican, that he collected seeds of vegetables unknown in France, including the Cos Lettuce, known to this day under the name of Romaine. Rabelais' writings are full of gastronomic and bibulous wisdom and his Pantagruel did much to sharpen the appetite for, and the appreciation of, the good things that mostly came from Italy.

It was in Italy that forks were invented; it was to Italy that caviar was first sent from Greece; it was in Italy that pigs were first trained to fiffles. It was also from Italy that cooks came who introduced many valuable innovations into French kitchens. And it was from Italy that Catherine de Medici came to be Henri II's queen; whatever gold pieces and silk robes she brought to France lasted but a very short time; not so parsley, the best part of her dowry, which is still with us. Spinach was introduced in France at the same time, and, in culinary French, Florentine means that any dish so named has spinach as one of its distinctive features. But spinach did not come, like parsley, from Florence. It chanced to come to France from Asia by way of Holland at the same time as Catherine de Medici came from Florence.

The Italian cooks of the sixteenth century, and other cooks who were influenced by them, were not lacking in imagination. Many also dabbled in medicine and some in alchemy. Their favourite recipes were very complicated and always highly scented. American gold also found its way into the kitchens of the nobility, and gold powder was a very fashionable, if somewhat extravagant, ingredient of sixteenth century recipes. It was also at this time that Goldwasser was invented, a strong spirit with specks of beaten gold leaf in it, which acquired a worldwide and lasting reputation under the name of Eau de Vie de Dantzig. They taught, and were probably right, that the flesh of young animals, more particularly birds, was unwholesome, a hare or an eighteen-months-old perdrix being preferable to a leveret or six-months-old perdreau, and six-year-old mutton better than six week old baby lamb.

In England, during the whole of the sixteenth century and the greater part of the seventeenth, the Italian gastronomic renaissance appears to have had very little influence. Large quantities of victuals were assembled to welcome honoured guests, but there was no refinement in their choice and probably none in their preparation. Thus, when James I spent a day and a night at Houghton in August 1617, the quantity of venison, poultry and game that they gave him for dinner and supper, and for breakfast on the Monday morning, was more surprising than gastronomically admirable:

SUNDAY, THE 17TH DAY OF AUGUST, 1617

The first course
Hot: Boiled capon, chickens, ducks, breast of veal. Roast shoulder of mutton, loin of veal, haunch of venison, turkey, swan, goose, capons, beef, pigs.
Pies: Chicken, tripe, mince.
Pasty: Venison.
Cold: Mutton, rabbits, tongue pie, roast herons, curlew pie.
Soused capon, and veal. Salads. Custards.

The second course
One hot pheasant and one for the king; six quails for the king, partridge poult, chickens, artichoke pie, curlew roast, pease buttered, rabbits, ducks, plovers, red deer pie, pigs' ears soused hot herons roast, 3 of a dish,' lamb roast, gammons of bacon, made dish, pear tart, palates of grease, dried tongue, turkey pie, pheasant pie, hog's cheek dried, turkey chicks cold.

For supper the same night, and again for breakfast the next morning, the fare was practically the same, with the addition of a wild boar pie and 'sliced beef humble pie.'
During the Commonwealth, the Puritans were responsible for the destruction of what sound gastronomic traditions existed among the nobility and gentry throughout the country, mostly puddings and pies, for which elaborate recipes were given in such books as The Treasury of Commodious Conceits and Hidden Secrets, by John Partridge, published in 1580 and again in 1586, 1596, 1600, 1637 and 1653; or The Good House wife's Jewel, by Thomas Dawson, published in 1585; The Good Housewife's Handmaid/or the Kitchen, published in 1594, and others.

It was during the seventeenth century that the Grande Cuisine or Cuisine Classique was born, in France. Louis XIV was no gourmet, but a glutton much more concerned with quantity than quality, but his Court was the most brilliant in Christendom and attracted men of taste and talent who were or soon became men of means and patrons of all the arts, the culinary art not excepted. We do not know the names of any famous cook of the time, because, between the men who prepared the feast in the kitchen and the noble company who enjoyed it in the banqueting hall, there were the Escuyers de bouche or Maitres d'Hôtel, who were responsible for the choice, preparation and presentation of the fare. One of the most famous of these was the Sieur de la Varenne, whose book, Le Cusinier Fransois, first published in 1651 was reprinted, amended and enlarged a considerable number of times from that year until the year 1738. La Varenne's book was a treasured possession of most French households of any distinction for close on a century. Yet La Varenne's name is today forgotten, but that of his master, as unfortunate as a soldier as he was unsuccessful as a diplomat, the Marquis d'Uxelles, to whom the book is dedicated, liveth still in Duxelles, the mushroom preparation introduced by La Varenne when Escuyer de Cuisine to the Marquis d'Uxelles. Another great Maitre d'Hotel of the time was Vatel, who probably owes to the manner of his death the fame that attaches to his own name, a name almost as well known as that of his noble master, Condé.

At no other time in the annals of gastronomy and nowhere else but in France were there ever so many and such gifted artists and poets among cooks. Claude Gelée, 'Le Lorrain,' whose landscapes so impressed Turner, was a pâtissier before he became a painter, and no mean patissier, since he is credited with the invention of the light pastry known as 'feuilletage.' Lulli, who was brought from Italy to France by the Chevalier de Guise, was a marmiton in the kitchen of Mademoiselle de Montpensier, when twelve years old. Regnard, the poet, who was taken prisoner by Algiers pirates and sold to Achmet Talem in Constantinople, cooked so well for his master that he was granted the only reward that he would accept, his liberty.

When Charles II 'enjoyed his own again,' a culinary renaissance set in England which was greatly assisted by some of the Merrie Monarch's French friends, none having more influence upon the social amenities of the time than St. Evremond, soldier, philosopher and courtier, but above all gastronome. He was an intimate friend of the Duke of Buckingham, the Duke of Ormond, the Earl of St. Albans, the Earl of Arlington, and many of the most fashionable men about town. St. Evremond loved sparkling champagne and he introduced it to polite society in England at the same time as greater refinement in both eating and drinking. Lady Gerrard's petits soupers are referred to by contemporaries as being served with the greatest elegance and attended by men of noble birth and of remarkable wit, and occasionally favoured with the presence of the King. The Chelsea home of the Duchesse de Mazarin, one of Charles's beautiful mistresses, was also the rendezvous of the most distinguished company and both the fare and the wines served were under the personal supervision of St. Evremond.

The revival of interest in culinary matters was not limited to the Court and the nobility: it was shared by all dasses and the culinary literature of the latter part of the seventeenth century is the surest proof of the wide appeal of gastronomy. The Whole Body of Cookery Dissected; The Queen-like Closet; The Compleat Servantmaid; Excellent Directions for Cooking; A Treatise of Cleanness in Meat and Drinks and of the Preparation of Food; The Genteel Housekeeper's Pastime, and a number of similar books were published and presumably sold in rapid succession from the Restoration up to the reign of George I. In 1710, Queen Anne's Master Cook, Patrick Lamb, published a book entitled 'Royal Cookery, or the Complete Court Book. By Patrick Lamb, Esq., near 50 years Master Cook to their late Majesties King Charles II, King James II, King William, Mary, and Anne.' Fifty years a master cook must surely be a record, to say nothing of cooking for three kings and two queens.

The tavern, where men met to enjoy each other's company and hospitality, in towns; the inn, which served the same social function throughout the country, besides offering rest and refreshment to travellers; and the cook-shops. Where town dwellers had a chance of feeding away from home, sufficed in England to supply the gastronomic requirements of natives and visitors from overseas, up to the time of the Restoration. There were also, in Elizabethan London, 'three-penny ordinaries,' where 'stale batchelors and thrifty attorneys do resort,' and 'twelve-penny ordinaries,' where gallants rubbed shoulders with templars and squires on a visit to town, but gambling was held in far greater honour than gastronomy in all such places. Very different were some of the 'Ordinaries,' which graced both the 'City' and Westminster during the latter years of the seventeenth century and the reign of Queen Anne, such as Locket's Ordinary, at Charing Cross, and Pontac's, in Abchurch Lane, where the cuisine was French. It was then that the name of kickshaws became popular, presumably as the nearest approach to quelq'chose.

At Locket's, Brown's and at Pontac's enquire
What modish kickshaws the nice Beaux desire,
What famed ragouts, what new-invented salad,
Has best pretensions to regale the palate.
If we present you with a medley here,
A hodge-podge dish served up in Chinaware,
We hope 'twill please 'cause like your bills of fare.
(Mrs. Centlivre's Love Contrivances; Prologue. 1703.)

Pontac's, in the City, was opened in 1688 by a Bordelais of that name; it was famous for the excellence of its wines and the extravagance of its charges. It is often referred to in the works of Steele, Congreve, Swift, and their contemporaries. One might dine at Pontac's for as little as five shillings, if one dared, but the usual cost of a dinner was from one to two guineas per head. In 1730, when a Mrs. Susannah Austin had succeeded the original Pontac, she advertised a daily 'Guinea Ordinary,' which makes the present day's prices of our most exclusive hotels appear very moderate.

During the reign of Queen Anne great attention was paid to culinary matters, not merely by cooks, but by the aristocracy and also by both men of letters and men of science in England. Dr. Lister was sufficiently interested in gastronomy to publish a translation of the famous Apicius Cookery Book, whilst Dr. King made himself responsible for an 'Art of Cookery, in imitation of Horace's Art of Poetry.'

Englishmen had wonderful cellars in the days of Queen Anne, judging from the opening lines of Dr. King's imitation of Horace's 'Invitation of Torquatus to supper':

If Bellvill can his gen'rous soul confine
To a small room, few dishes, and some wine,
I shall expect my happiness at nine.
Two bottles of smooth Palm, or Anjou white,
Shall give a welcome and prepare delight.
Then for the Bordeaux you may freely ask,
But the Champagne is to each man his flask.

In the cookery books published in England during the first half of the eighteenth century, there is ample proof of the interest taken by the aristocracy in culinary matters and of the growing influence of French chefs. Thus John Nott, once upon a time chef to the Duke of Bolton, published in 1723 The Cook's and Confectioner's Dictionary, and in its pages we find recipes for a leg of mutton A la Dauphine; an Amber Pudding according to Lord Conway's receipt; the Countess of Rutland's Banbury Cake. Another chef to the same Duke of Bolton, one John Middieton, also published a cookery book, in 1734. It was called Five Hundred Receipts in Cookery, Confectionary, Pastry, Preserving, Conserving and Pickling, and in it we find the recipe for the Sauce Robert, one of the oldest French sauces. In 1736, one E. Smith published a more ambitious cookery book under the title of The Compleat Housewife, in which, besides recipes, he gives a number of recommended menus for each month of the year. Two of those menus, a winter one and one for the summer, will show that quantity was still the first consideration and that the demand for what we would call a 'well-balanced meal' was non-existent at the time:

JANUARY MENU
FIRST COURSE
Soup a-la-royal
Carp Blovon
Tench stewed with pitch-cocked eels
Rump of beef a la braise
Turkeys a la daube
Wild ducks comporte
Fricando of veal with veal olives

SECOND COURSE
Woodcocks
Pheasants
Salmigondi
Partridge poults
Bisque of lamb
Oyster loaves
Cutlets
Turkey livers forced
Pippins stewed

JULY MENU
FIRST COURSE
Rice soop with veal
A dish of trouts
A brown fricassee of fowls
A Calf's head boned and stewed with a ragoo of mushrooms
Mutton Maintenon
Rabbit with onions
Lambes Pye

SECOND COURSE
A hare larded
Neck of venison
Partridges
Ragoo of artichokes
Cocks-combs a la crème
Fruit of sorts
Apple puffs

Artichokes provide the one and only dish of vegetables in all this assemblage of meat, game and poultry, and the mention of partridges both in January and July is as puzzling as the absence of all fish from the sea.

Gastronomy lost a good friend in Queen Anne; it never received any encouragement at Court during the reigns of the first three Georges, although it continued to be honoured in the lordly homes of a number of great noblemen, such as the Earl of Chesterfield, Lord Lytton, leader of the Savoir-Vivre Club, the Earl of Sandwich, whose name, blessed by millions of travellers during close upon two hundred years past, lives to this day in the culinary vocabulary of all civilized nations; the Duchess of Devonshire, goddess of the Whig Party, and a few other great hosts and hostesses. The Earl of Chesterfield had a famous French chef, Vincent de La Chapelle, who published an excellent book entitled The Modern Cook, in London in 1733, and, two years later in Paris, a French edition under the title of Le Cuisinier moderne, qui apprend à donner toutes sortes de repas en gras et en maigre, d'une manière plus delicate que ce qui en a été écrit jusqu'à présent.

Towards the close of the eighteenth century, in England, the Prince of Wales, the future George IV, showed some commendable interest in the pleasures and problems of the table, but the art of good living in England, during the whole of the eighteenth century, suffered to a considerable extent from the curse of hard drinking, which disgraced all ranks of the population from the most exalted to the lowest.

In France, during the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI, gastronomy flourished under royal patronage; courtiers and courtesans, financiers and church dignitaries paid lavishly for the services of gifted chefs who had to provide quantities of victuals, prepare them in the most novel way and present them in the most spectacular manner possible, in order to provoke the admiration of guests, many of whom were not merely exacting, but blasés. Unfortunately, whilst the Grande Cuisine had never been 'grander,' the people had never been poorer nor so poorly fed, and starvation brought in the Revolution.

The great chefs of the day, whose noble or wealthy masters had shared the fate of the king, or else had fled the country, had no hope of finding anybody anxious to secure their services or able to reward them. The best thing they could do was to give the benefit of their skill to 'la nations and 'les citoyens' ; it is what many of them did. They opened restaurants where all and sundry could and did seek better fare than they had at home. Wry, Meot, Beauvilliers and others soon became famous as restaurateurs. Simple and inexpensive as was the fare, which they offered to the public, at least at the beginning of their new career, it had the artist's touch, and must have been excellent. Chefs became very popular and their former association with hated aristocratic 'ci-devants' was forgiven and forgotten, even when their charges rose with their fortunes and when their cuisine became too dear for any but the nouveaux riches of the nouveau regime. Food, more food and better food was the cry of the hour; the cook's head was more sacred than that of his king, and the chef's calling became one of the most important as well as one of the best paid: many of the more intelligent youths of the day, attracted by the success of those who made it their business to feed the people, rushed forth as willing apprentices of the great chefs. They were taught and trained in the right tradition and, in time, they taught and trained others. By becoming more democratic, in France, gastronomy lost nothing: on the contrary, it gained a great deal. When it ceased to be the privilege of a comparatively few extravagant idlers, it brought to the mass of the people the glad tidings that food is not to man what fodder is to his horse, merely a necessity, but that it could be and that it should be a joy as well. This happy realization came about gradually: its dawn, as brilliant and sudden as that of the tropical sun, came in during the first decade of the nineteenth century, with Carême, and it reached its zenith a hundred years later, with Escoffier. Both Carême and Escoffier were remarkable men, skilled artisans, who possessed the great and rare gift of expression; men of taste both, and of great courage; men of faith and vision both, but, of course, men of their own generation. Careme, in spite of being, or maybe because he had been, brought up upon a starvation diet, was the apostle of majesty; his dishes are rich, his cakes are works of art. But Escoffier, in spite of, or perhaps because of, his long association with Ritz and having cooked for all the European crowned heads, at a time when they were numerous and brilliant, was always the apostle of simplicity.

During close upon one hundred years, from the death of Careme to that of Escoffier, a great many gifted chefs helped the cause of the popularisation of gastronomy in France, both by their professional skill and, in many cases, by their books on the culinary art. To know one's subject is but the first step, and it is the most important. The next is to know how to put into words what is so clear in one's own mind, that it may become equally clear to others, in order to make as many people as possible take a greater and more intelligent interest in food. Careme and Escoffier, and all the chefs who have followed their lead, found a 'good' public, chiefly in France, because whilst many men of noble birth and great taste encouraged and guided the chefs themselves, many gifted men of letters wrote attractively about the philosophy, the artistry and the poetry of food. They made the public, in France at any rate, much more food-conscious than it ever was before, hence keener to acquire and digest the professional works of the great chefs; hence also more ready or anxious to spend both time and labour in the kitchens of their own modest homes or in those of inns and hotels, in great cities as well as in the most out-of-the-way villages, in order to produce a soup, a stew, a roast or a sweet, that would be truly good and a real pleasure to those who were going to eat it.

First among those lay preachers to whom gastronomy owes so much we must place Brillat-Savarin, whose one and only book devoted to the noble cause of the better understanding of food, La Physiologie du Goût, has been the pattern and the inspiration of many of the greatest contributors to the literature of gastronomy ever since. But the fame of Brillat-Savarin has robbed of their fair share of limelight four of his contemporaries, all like himself unrepentant royalists, who lived through the Revolution and the Napoleonic aftermath; all, like himself, men of great taste and royal appetite, splendid hosts and gifted men of letters withal: Grimod de la Reynière (1758 - 1837), whose Almanach des Gourmand s and Manuel des Amphitrions were for many years exceedingly popular in France and are still greatly prized by gastronomes; the Marquis de Cussy (1772 - 1850); Berchoux (1775 - 1838); and Colnet de Revel (1768 - 1832). A list of the names of all the French writers on gastronomy -other than professional cooks - from that time to this day, and of their works, would be too long for the superficial survey of the subject attempted in these pages. Suffice it to say, however, that such a list would include among many other equally famous names that of Alexandre Dumas père, whose mother, Madame Laboureur, was an hotelier's daughter. As a boy, Alexandre had no greater pleasure than being allowed to do some cooking, and although he never lost his taste for cooking and sometimes claimed to be a better cook than novelist, none of his friends who ever tasted his cooking shared their host's illusion. Yet, even after the wonderful reception which the public accorded to Les Trois Mousquetaires and Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas declared that after all the fiction he had written would be forgotten, his name would still be famous as the author of the Cookery Book which was going to be his last and his best work. It was his last but by no means his best. He handed the manuscript of his Grand Dictionnaire de la Cuisine to his friend and publisher, Alphonse Lemerre, in March 1870, but he never saw it in print. His death and the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 - 71 intervened and the Grand Dictionnaire was not published before 1873. It was not, and it did not deserve to be, popular. A little later, Lemerre published an abridged edition, Petit Dictionnaire de la Cuisine; it had been both abridged and improved by one of Lemerre's young employees, Thibaud by name, who was destined to become famous under the nom de plume of Anatole France. Other gastronomic writings of Alexandre Dumas are his Propos d'art et de cuisine and La Bouillie de la Comtesse Berthe; the rarest of all is his Essai sur la Moutarde, in praise of Bornibus.

During the second half of the nineteenth century, two branches of the culinary art bore an abundance of wonderful fruit in France; one was the Grande Cuisine or Cuisine Classique, with roots deep down into the subsoil of the Ancien Regime, and the other the Cuisine Bourgeoise or Cuisine de Menage, which the post-Revolution higher standard of living among all classes of the population had brought into existence. The first flourished more particularly in the famous Paris restaurants and the newly erected luxury hotels, which the genius of César Ritz and the skill of Escoffier had made the fashionable rendezvous of Society, where the old aristocracy of Europe and the new plutocracy of the United States first met. It was in some of the more famous Paris restaurants, all of which have now ceased to exist, that many new dishes were introduced, which still hold pride of place in the menus of all the luxury hotels of the world. Thus whilst the Grand Véfour, the Café Anglais, the Maison Dorée, Bonnefoy, Bignon, Voisin, Foyot and many more are now merely names of another age - although so near to our own - the Sauce Mornay, first introduced at the Grand Vefour, is still used and abused in the kitchens of many homes and restaurants in every part of the world and the Homard à l'Américaine, so named for the first time at Bonnefoy's, is still universally popular, in spite of the Armoricaine heresy which first raised its pincers some twenty years ago; so, also, the sauce and garniture Financière, which we owe to the Maison Doree, where the marriage of Duck and Orange was also first consummated; the Pommes Anna, the Poulet Archiduc, the Tournedos Rossinil and ever so many other classic dishes, which were evolved at the time when the future Edward VII was Prince of Wales and a much honoured patron of the smartest Paris restaurants.

During the same period, more or less, that is during the forty years from 1871 to 1910, which might be called the Escoffier era, the Grande Cuisine or Cuisine Classique gained for fine fare as a fine art the recognition and patronage of the leaders of Society both in England and in the United States. It was during that period that hotels were first built, in London and New York, where, thanks to César Ritz, luxury and good taste reached in perfect harmony heights never before attained. The 'ordinaries' in the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and Queen Anne had been frequented by men only, just as in later times, and up to mid-Victorian years, civic and Masonic dinners and other gastronomic occasions were attended by men only, when the excellence of the fare was judged merely by its abundance and that of the drink by its potency. There was better cooking and equally hard drinking in the privacy of Clubs, none of which, however, had as yet given as much as a thought to the opening of its doors to members of the other sex. There were restaurants where gentlemen could and did entertain their fair friends, but ladies did not bare their shoulders and show off their fine feathers in public dining rooms, to be stared at by all and sundry, and, perhaps, sit in the same room as a demi-mondaine - a shattering thought in those pre-divorce days.

Escoffier's exquisite cooking tempted the fairest and noblest ladies to dine in public for the first time, whilst Ritz's exquisite taste and tact provided for them the perfect setting and warded off undesirable company. Both men were responsible for this revolution, since so great a change may rightly be called a revolution. It had on both sides of the Atlantic a most beneficial effect upon the art of cooking. Quality, and not quantity, became at last the most important feature of a meal: more simplicity as well as greater refinement became the law, Escoffler's law : roux were replaced by fumets and the Grande Cuisine was endowed with a large number of simpler and delicious recipes which bear the hall-mark of Escoffier's genius. Many of these recipes also bear the names of great ladies of the period, leaders of Society or great artists, the first mostly forgotten today, whilst the fame of the others still endures. Thus the Fraises and the Soufflé Sarah Bernhardt, the Poires Mary Garden, the Poularde Adelina Patti, the Pêches and the Toast Melba, bear names still familiar to most of us. But who remembers Clara Ward, Princesse de Chimay, when ordering either Oeufs á la Chimay or Poularde Chimay? Who knows that Dora was Labouchère's daughter, who married the Prince de Rudini? Or that the Coupe Hélène was named after the sister of the Duc d'Orléans; the Sole Alice, after H.R.H. Princess Alice, Countess of Athione; or that the Isabelle of the Grande Cuisine was not Queen of Spain but Duchesse de Guise?

l'Americaine

In the United States, the Goulds, Morgans, Vanderbilts, Goelets, Drexels, and other men and women not merely possessed of great wealth, but blessed also with great taste, were constantly travelling and helping Escoffier and the chefs formed at Escoffler's school improve their technique by rewarding their efforts. Their influence upon the Grande Cuisine can be traced by the number of recipes named á l'Americaine, from the first in date, the Homard á l'Americaine, to the Alose á l'Americaine, which is just Planked Shad; also by the names of classical dishes such as the Homard Delmonico, Homard Vanderbilt, Poulet Maryland, Crême Chicago, and so on.

The other kind of cookery, the more homely kind known as Cuisine bourgeoise or Cuisine de ménage appealed to a very much larger number of people, in France, where it graced the tables of very many well-to-do families of the bourgeoisie and of the small landed proprietor class. It also achieved a great measure of success in the restaurants of many provincial cities such as Lyons and Bordeaux, as well as in the inns and hostelries of smaller towns and even of small and remote villages, where it blossomed under the name of Cuisine régionaliste.

Unfortunately, the Cuisine bourgeoise and Cuisine régionaliste, the more homely and local types of cooking, which can be so good both in England and the United States, did not receive the same measure of attention in those countries from the hotels and restaurants catering for the middle classes. Instead of concentrating upon the quality and originality of the fare provided, they vied with one another in providing gaudy trappings, blinding illumination, noisome bands, everything, in fact, that was likely to distract the attention of the diners from the poor quality of the fare, dull fare but plenty of it. It is also to be regretted that the cookery books that the English public and the American public were supplied with during the same period might also be described as dull but plenty of them. In England Mrs. Beeton's Cookery Book, and in the States, The Boston Cooking School Cookbook were, and still are, among the most popular and typical, honest, sound, helpful books, but not stimulating, lacking the Alexandre Dumas touch altogether. It is only fair to add, however, that there is a marked improvement in this respect and that both in England and in the United States, much more original and 'human' cookery books are now being published, a sure and most encouraging sign that on both sides of the Atlantic there are more and more people beginning to realize that the preparation of food for the table is capable of providing pleasures over and above the mere satisfaction of appetite; hence that one should not grudge the time that must be given thereto. A can opener saves time even if it does not save money; and it often saves both, so why bother to clean a fresh herring or to trim fresh vegetables It is undoubtedly a sheer waste of effort, unless somebody is going to notice the difference.

Conclusion

Science, with its calories and vitamins and dogmatic pronouncements upon what is good and bad for us all, is paying much attention nowadays to our daily food. But the artistry of food and the intellectual pleasures of fine cooking are entirely outside the scope of Science. The men of science who are making a study of the problems of nutrition look upon the act of being alive as an end in itself. Although they know that death will beat them in the end, they concentrate upon the length or quantitative value of life. What pleasure we derive from life and what good we may be able to do during our lifetime are not concerns of theirs. The gastronome's approach to the problem of life is entirely different. He starts from this principle, that since it is indispensable for us all to eat and drink every day and twice a day, it is important not to let this daily task become a bore or even a mere habit, but to turn it into a source of daily relaxation and pleasure, both for our own sake and the sake of those who are dependent upon us for their living. Hence, whatever time and money we spend to solve the daily problems of the table are not time and money wasted, but well and intelligently spent. Whether we are likely to live a few years longer and whether we may die a little richer if we give up the pleasures of the table is wholly irrelevant. The gastronome's problem is how best to invest the loan entrusted to his care, that is the life that is but lent to him. He can follow the example of the man who, in the parable, wraps up in a cloth the talent that is lent to him, and keeps it safely until the time comes, as come it must, when the loan will be called in. Or else he can put it out to interest; get the best out of it and share the joy that he gets out of it with his fellow men. This is the better way, the more sensible way, the gastronome's way.