POEMS OF WILLIAM KING. THE ART OF COOKERY, &c. THE happiness of hearing now and then from you extremely delights me; for, I must confess, most of my other friends are so much taken up with politics or speculations, that either their hopes or fears give them little leisure to peruse such parts of learning as lay remote, and are fit only for the closets of the curious. How blest are you at London, where you have new books of all sorts! whilst we, at a greater distance, being destitute of such improvements, must content ourselves with the old store, and thumb the classics as if we were never to get higher than our Tully or our Virgil. You tantalize me only, when you tell me of the edition of a book by the ingenious Dr. Lister, which you say is a treatise De Condimentis & Opsoniis Veterum, Of the Sauces and Soups of the Ancients, as I take it. Give me leave to use an expression, which, though vulgar, yet upon this occasion is just and proper: You have made my water, but have not sent me wherewithal to satisfy my appetite. mouth he might transgress in using something not common to the ancients. Dispatch it, therefore, to us with all speed; for I expect wonders from it. Let me tell you; I hope, in the first place, it will, in some measure, remove the barbarity of our present education: for what hopes can there be of any progress in learning, whilst our gentlemen suffer their sons at Westminster, Eaton, and Winchester, to eat nothing but salt with their mutton, and vinegar with their roast-beef, upon holidays? what extensiveness can there be in their souls; especially when, upon their going thence to the university, their knowledge in culinary matters is seldom enlarged, and their diet continues very much the same; and as to sauces, they are in profound ignorance? It were to be wished, therefore, that every family had a French tutor; for, besides his being groom, gardener, butler, and valet, you would see that he is endued with a greater accomplishment; for, according to our ancient author, Quot Galli, totidem coqui, As many Frenchmen as you have, so many cooks you may depend upon; which is very useful, where there is a numerous issue. And I doubt not but, with such tutors, and good housekeepers to provide cake and sweet-meats, together with the tender care of an indulgent mother, to see that the children eat and drink every thing that they call for; I doubt not, I say, but we may have a warlike and frugal gentry, a temperate and austere clergy, and such persons of quality, in all stations, as may best undergo the fatigues of our I have raised a thousand notions to myself, only from the title. Where could such a treasure lay hid? What manuscripts have been collated? Un-fleet and armies. der what emperor was it written? Might it not have been in the reign of Heliogabalus, who, though vicious and in some things fantastical, yet was not incurious in the grand affair of eating? Consider, dear sir, in what uncertainties we must remain at present. You know my neighbour Mr. Greatrix is a learned antiquary. I showed him your letter; which threw him into such a dubiousness, and indeed perplexity of mind, that the next day he durst not put any catchup in his fish-sauce, nor have his beloved pepper, oil, and lemon, with his partridge, lest, before he had seen Dr. Lister's book, Pardon me, sir, if I break-off abruptly; for I am going to monsieur D'Avaux, a person famous for easing the tooth-ach by avulsion. He has promised to show me how to strike a lancet into the jugular of a carp, so as the blood may issue thence with the greatest effusion, and then will instantly perform the operation of stewing it in its own blood, in the presence of myself and several more virtuosi. But, let him use what claret he will in the perform ance, I will secure enough to drink your health and the rest of your friends. I remain, sir, &c. 246 SIR, LETTER II. To Mr. I SHALL make bold to claim your promise, in your last obliging letter, to obtain the happiness of my correspondence with Dr. Lister; and to that end have sent you the inclosed, to be communicated to him, if you think convenient. SIR, LETTER III. To Dr. LISTER, present. tried for a murder, and was acquitted." Now it does not appear upon record, nor any stone that I have seen, whether the jury clubbed, or whether Mars treated them, at dinner, though it is most likely that he did; for he was a quarrelsome sort of a person, and probably, though acquitted, might be as guilty as count Koningsmark. Now the custom of juries dining at an eating-house, and having glasses of water brought them with toothpicks tinged with vermillion swimming at the top, being still continued, why may we not imagine, that the tooth-picks were as ancient as the dinner, the dinner as the juries, and the juries at least as the grand-children of Mitzraim? Homer makes his heroes feed so grossly, that they seem to have had more occasion for skewers than goose-quills. He is very tedious in describing a Smith's forge and an anvil: where he might have been more polite, in I AM a plain man, and therefore never use compliments; but I must tell you that I have a great setting out the tooth-pick-case or painted snuff-box of ambition to hold a correspondence with you, espe- Achilles, if that age had not been so barbarous as And here I cannot but consider, cially that I may beg you to communicate your to want them. that Athens, in the time of Pericles, when it flouremarks from the ancients concerning dentiscalps, rished most in sumptuous buildings, and Rome in vulgarly called tooth-picks. I take the use of them to have been of great antiquity, and the original to its height of empire, from Augustus down to Adrian, come from the instinct of Nature, which is the best had nothing that equalled the Royal or New Exchange, or Pope's-head Alley, for curiosities and mistress upon all occasions. The Egyptians were a people excellent for their philosophical and ma- toy-shops; neither had their senate any thing to alleviate their debates concerning the affairs of the thematical observations: they searched into all the springs of action; and, though I must condemnuniverse, like raffling sometimes at colonel Parson's, their superstition, I cannot but applaud their inven- Although the Egyptians often extended their conquests into Africa and Ethiopia, and though the tion. This people had a vast district that worshipped the crocodile, which is an animal, whose Cafre Blacks have very fine teeth; yet I cannot jaws, being very oblong, give him the opportunity of find that they made use of any such instrument; nor does Ludolphus, though very exact as to the having a great many teeth; and, his habitation and business lying most in the water, he, like our Abyssinian empire, give any account of a matter so important; for which he is to blame, as modern Dutch whitsters' in Southwark, had a very good stomach, and was extremely voracious. It is show in my treatise of Forks and Napkins, of certain, that he had the water of Nile always ready, which I shall send you an Essay with all expeand consequently the opportunity of washing his dition. I shall in that treatise fully illustrate or mouth after meals; yet he had farther occasion confute this passage of Dr. Heylin, in the third book of his Cosmography, where he says of the for other instruments to cleanse his teeth, which are serrate, or like a saw. To this end, Nature has Chinese, "That they eat their meat with two provided an animal called the ichneumon, which sticks of ivory, ebony, or the like; not touching it performs this office, and is so maintained by the with their hands at all, and therefore no great product of its own labour. The Egyptians, seeing foulers of linen. The use of silver forks with us, such an useful sagacity in the crocodile, which they by some of our spruce gallants taken-up of late, came from hence into Italy, and from thence into so much reverenced, soon began to imitate it, England." I cannot agree with this learned doctor great examples easily drawing the multitude; so that it became their constant custom to pick their in many of these particulars. For, first, the use of these sticks is not so much to save linen, as out of teeth, and wash their mouths, after eating. I cannot find in Marsham's Dynasties, nor in the Frag-pure necessity; which arises from the length of ments of Manethon, what year of the moon (for I their nails, which persons of great quality in those hold the Egyptian years to have been lunar, that countries wear at a prodigious length, to prevent is, but of a month's continuance) so venerable an all possibility of working, or being serviceable to usage first began: for it is the fault of great philo-themselves or others; and therefore, if they would, logers, to omit such things as are most material. they could not easily feed themselves with those Whether Sesostris, in his large conquests, might claws; and I have very good authority, that in the extend the use of them, is as uncertain; for the East, and especially in Japan, the princes have the glorious actions of those ages lay very much in the meat put into their mouths by their attendants. Besides, these sticks are of no use but for their sort of meat, which, being pilau, is all boiled to dark. It is very probable that the public use of tians made use of juries. I find, in the preface to shall rags. But what would those sticks signify to carve a turkey-cock, or a chine of beef? therefore our forks Chaldees had a great esteem for the number are of quite different shape: the steel ones are biTWELVE, because there were so many signs of the dental, and the silver generally resembling triZodiac; from them this number came to the Egyp-dents; which makes me think them to be as tians, and so to Greece, where Mars himself was ancient as the Saturnian race, where the former is appropriated to Pluto, and the latter to Neptune. I Whose tenter-grounds are now almost all built It is certain, that Pedro Della Valle, that famous Italian Traveller, carried his knife and fork into the upon. East Indies; and he gives a large account how, at the court of an Indian prince, he was admired for his neatness in that particular, and his care in wiping that and his knife before he returned them to their respective repositories. I could wish Dr. Wotton, in the next edition of his Modern Learning, would show us how much we are improved since Dr. Heylin's time, and tell us the original of ivory knives, with which young heirs are suffered to mangle their own pudding; as likewise of silver and gold knives, brought in with the dessert for carving of jellies and orange-butter; and the indispensable necessity of a silver knife at the side-board, to mingle sallads with, as is with great learning made out in a treatise called Acetaria, concerning dressing of sallads. A noble work! But I transgress And yet, pardon me, good doctor, I had almost forgot a thing that I would not have done for the world, it is so remarkable. I think I may be positive, from this verse of Juvenal, where he speaks of the Egyptians, Porrum et cepe nefas violare, et frangere morsu, that it was "sacrilege to chop a leek, or bite an onion." Nay, I believe, that it amounts to a demonstration, that Pharaoh Necho could have no true lenten porridge, nor any carrier's sauce to his mutton; the true receipt of making which sauce I have from an ancient MS. remaining at the Bullinn in Bishopsgate-sreet, which runs thus: "Take seven spoonfuls of spring-water; slice two onions of moderate size into a large saucer, and put in as much salt as you can hold at thrice betwixt your fore-finger and thumb, if large, and serve it up." Probatum est. HOBSON, carrier to the university The effigies of that worthy person remains still at that inn; and I dare say, not only Hobson, but old Birch, and many others of that musical and delightful profession, would rather have been labourers at the pyramids with that regale, than to have reigned at Memphis, and have been debarred of it. I break off abruptly. Believe me an admirer of your worth, and a follower of your methods towards the increase of learning, and more especially your, &c. If Bellvill can his generous soul confine This I'll perform, and promise you shall see I am, sir, yours, &c. SIR, LETTER IV. I AM now very seriously employed in a work that, I hope, may be useful to the public, which is a poem of the Art of Cookery, in imitation of Horace's Art of Poetry, inscribed to Dr. Lister, as hoping it may be in time read as a preliminary to his works. But I have not vanity enough to think it will live so long. I have in the mean time sent you an imitation of Horace's invitation of Torquatus to supper, which is the fifth epistle of his first book. Perhaps you will find so many faults in this, that you may save me the trouble of my other proposal; but, however, take it as it is: LETTER V. I HERE send you what I promised, A Discourse of Cookery, after the method which Horace has taken in his Art of Poetry, which I have all along kept in my view; for Horace certainly is an author to be imitated in the delivery of precepts for any art or science. He is indeed severe upon our sort of learning in some of his satires; but even there he instructs, as in the fourth satire of the second book, ver. 13. Longa quibus facies ovis erit, illa memento, I am much of his opinion, and could only wish that the world was thoroughly informed of two other truths concerning eggs. One is, how incomparably better roasted eggs are than boiled; the other, never to eat any butter with eggs in the shell. You cannot imagine how much more you will have of their flavour, and how much easier they will sit upon your stomach. The worthy person who recommended it to me made many proselytes; and I have the vanity to think, that I have not been altogether unsuccessful. I have in this poem used a plain, easy, familiar style, as most fit for precept; neither have I been too exact an imitator of Horace, as he himself directs. I have not consulted any of his translators; neither Mr. Oldham, whose copiousness runs into paraphrase; nor Ben Jonson, who is admirable for his close following of the original; nor yet the lord Roscommon, so excellent for the beauty of his language, and his penetration into the very design and soul of that author. I considered, that I went upon a new undertaking; and though I do not value myself upon it so much as Lucretius did, yet I dare say it is more innocent and inoffensive. Sometimes, when Horace's rules come too thick and sententious, I have so far taken liberty as to pass over some of them; for I consider the nature and temper of cooks, who are not of the most patient disposition, as their under-servants too often experience. I wish I might prevail with them to moderate their passions, which will be the greater conquest, seeing a continual heat is added to their native fire. Amidst the variety of directions that Horace gives us in his Art of Poetry, which is one of the most accurate pieces that he or any other author has written, there is a secret connection in reality, though he doth not express it too plainly; and therefore this imitation of it has many breaks in it. If such as shall condescend to read this poem would at the same time consult Horace's original Latin, or some of the aforementioned translators, they would find at least this benefit, that they would recollect those excellent instructions which he delivers to us in such elegant language, I could wish the master and wardens of the Cooks' company would order this poem to be read with due consideration; for it is not lightly to be run over, seeing it contains many useful instructions for human life. It is true, that some of these rules may seem more principally to respect the steward, clerk of the kitchen, caterer, or perhaps the butler. But the cook being the principal person, without whom all the rest will be little regarded, they are directed to him; and the work being designed for the universal good, it will accomplish some part of its intent, if those sort of people will improve by it. It may happen, in this as in all works of art, that there may be some terms not obvious to common readers; but they are not many. The reader may not have a just idea of a swoled mutton, which is a sheep roasted in its wool, to save the labour of flaying. Bacon and filbert-tarts are something unusual; but, since sprout-tarts and pistachiotarts are much the same thing, and to be seen in Dr. Salmon's Family Dictionary, those persons who have a desire for them may easily find the way to make them. As for grout, it is an old Danish dish; and it is claimed as an honour to the ancient family of Leigh, to carry a dish of it up to the coronation. A dwarf-pye was prepared for king Jaines the First, when Jeffry, his dwarf, rose out of one armed with a sword and buckler; and is so recorded in history, that there are few but know it. Though marmated fish, hippocraes, and ambigues, are known to all that deal in cookery; yet terrenes are not so usual, being a silver vessel filled with the most costly dainties, after the manner of an oglio. A surprise is likewise a dish not so very common; which, promising little from its first appearance, when open abounds with all sorts of variety; which I cannot better resemble than to the fifth act of one of our modern comedies. Lest Monieth, Vinegar, Taliessin, aud Bossu, should be taken for dishes of rarities; it may be known, that Monteth was a gentleman with a scalloped coat, that Vinegar keeps the ring at Lincoln's-inn-fields, Taliessin was one of the most ancient bards amongst the Britons, and Bossu one of the most certain instructors in criticism that this latter age has produced. I hope it will not be taken ill by the wits, that I call my cooks by the title of ingenious; for I cannot imagine why cooks may not be as well read as any other persons. I am sure their apprentices, of late years, have had very great opportunities of improvement; and men of the first pretences to literature have been very liberal, and sent in their contributions very largely. They have been very serviceable both to spit and oven; and for these twelve months past, whilst Dr. Wotton with his Modern Learning, was defending pye-crust from scorching, his dear friend, Dr. Bentley, with his Phalaris, has been singing of capons. Not that this was occasioned by any superfluity or tediousness of their writings, or mutual commendations; but it was found out by some worthy patriots, to make the labours of the two doctors, as far as possible, to become useful to the public. Indeed, cookery has an influence upon men's actions even in the highest stations of human life. The great philosopher Pythagoras, in his Golden Verses, shows himself to be extremely nice in eating, when he makes it one of his chief principles of morality to abstain from beans. The noblest foundations of honour, justice, and integrity, were found to lie hid in turnips; as appears in that great dictator, Cincinnatus, who went from the plough to the command of the Roman army; and, having brought home victory, retired to his cottage: for, when the Samnite ambassadors came thither to him with a large bribe, and found him dressing turnips for his repast, they immediately returned with this sentence, That it was impossible to prevail upon him that could be contented with such a supper." In short, there are no honorary appellations but what may be made use of to cooks; for I find throughout the whole race of Charlemagne, that the great cook of the palace was one of the prime ministers of state, and conductor of armies: so true is that maxim of Paulus Æmilius, after his glorious expedition into Greece, when he was to entertain the Roman people, "that there was equal skill required to bring an army into the field, and to set forth a magnificent entertainment; since the one was as far as possible to annoy your enemy, and the other to pleasure your friend." In short, as for all persons that have not a due regard for the learned, industrious, moral, upright, and warlike profession of cookery, may they live as the ancient inhabitants of Puerte Ventura, one of the Canary Islands, where, they being so barbarous as to make the most contemptible person to be their butcher, they had likewise their meat served up raw, because they had no fire to dress it; and I take this to be a condition bad enough of all conscience! that poets are not so well acquainted with good eating, as otherwise they might be, if oftener invited. However, even in Mr. D'Urfey's presence, this I would be bound to say, "That a good dinner is brother to a good poem:" only it is something more substantial, and, between two and three a clock, more agreeable. I have known a supper make the most diverting part of a comedy. Mr. Betterton, in The Libertine, has set very gravely with the leg of a chicken: but I have seen Jacomo very merry, and eat very heartily of pease and buttered eggs, under the table. The host, in The Villain3, who carries tables, stools, furniture, and provisions, all about him, gives great content to the spectators, when from the crown of bis hat he produces his cold ca As his small essay finds acceptance, I shall be encouraged to pursue a great design I have in hand, of publishing a Bibliotheca Culinaria, or the Cook's Complete Library, which shall begin with a translation, or at least an epitome, of Athenæus, who treats of all things belonging to a Grecian feast. He shall be published,, with all his comments, useful glosses, and indexes, of a vast copiousness, with cuts of the basting-ladles, dripping-pans, and drudging-pon: so Armarillis (or rather Parthenope, as I bores, &c. lately dug up at Rome, out of an old subterranean skullery. I design to have all authors in all languages upon that subject; therefore pray consult what oriental manuscripts you have. I remember Erpenius, in his notes upon Locman's Fables (whom I take to be the same person with Æsop), gives us an admirable receipt for making the sour milk, that is, the bonny clabber, of the Arabians. I should be glad to know how Mahomet used to have his shoulder of mutton dressed. I have heard he was a great lover of that joint; and that a maid of an inn poisoned him with one, saying, "If he is a prophet, he will discover it; if he is an impostor, no matter what becomes of him." 1 shall have occasion for the assistance of all my friends in this great work. I some posts ago desired a friend to inquire what manuscripts Sol. Harding, a famous cook, may have left behind him at Oxford. He says, he finds among his executors several admirable bills of fare for Aristotle suppers, and entertainments of country strangers, with certain prices, according to their several seasons. He says, some pages have large black crosses drawn over them; but for the greater part the books are fair and legible. Sir, I would beg you to search Cooks' Hall, what manuscripts they may have in their archives. See what in Guildhall: what account of custard in the sword-bearer's office: how many tun he, a common cryer, or a common hunt, may eat in their life-time. But I transgress the bounds of a letter, and have strayed from my subject, which should have been, to beg you to read the following lines, when you are inclined to be most favourable to your friend; for else they will never be able to endure your just censure. I rely upon your goodnature; and I am Your most obliged, &c, take it) in The Rehearsal, with her wine in her spear, and her pye in her helmet; and the cook that slobbers his beard with sack-posset, in The Man's the Master+; have, in my opinion, made the most diverting part of the action. These embellishments we have received from our imitation of the ancient poets. Horace, in his Satires, makes Mæcenas very merry with the recollection of the unusual entertainments and dishes given him by Nasidienus; and with his raillery upon garlick in his third Epode. The supper of Petronius, with all its machines and contrivances, gives us the most lively description of Nero's luxury. Juvenal spends a whole satire about the price and dressing of a single fish, with the judgment of the Roman senate concerning it. Thus, whether serious or jocose, good eating is made the subject and ingredient of poetical entertainments. I think all poets agree, that episodes are to be interwoven in their poems with the greatest nicety of art; and so it is the same thing at a good table: and yet I have seen a very good episode (give me leave to call it so) made by sending out the leg of a goose, or the gizzard of a turkey, to be broiled: though I know, that critics with a good stomach have been offended that the unity of action should be so far broken. And yet, as in our plays, so at our common tables, many episodes are allowed, as slicing of cucumbers, dressing of sallads, seasoning the inside of a surloin of beef, breaking lobsters' claws, stewing wild ducks, toasting of cheese, legs of larks, and several others. A post, who, by proper expressions and pleasing images, is to lead us into the knowledge of necessary truth, may delude his audience extremely, and indeed barbarously, unless he has some knowledge of this Art of Cookery, and the progress of it. Would it not sound ridiculous to hear Alexander the Great command his cannon to be mounted, and to throw red-hot bullets out of his mortarpieces? or to have Statira talk of tapestry-hangings, which, all the learned know, were many years after her death first hung up in the hall of king Attalus? Should sir John Falstaff complain of having dirtied his silk stockings, or Anne of Boleyn call for her coach; would an audience endure it, when all the world knows that queen Elizabeth was the first that had her coach, or wore silk stock 2 A tragedy by Thomas Shadwell, acted 1676. 3 A tragedy by Thomas Porter, acted 1663. 4 A comedy by sir William Davenant, acted 1669. |